February 1, 2024 and 70 comes Monday! I’ll start maintaining this weblog again. Styling needs to change to a responsive/mobile first design. I don’t know how to do that. I’ve also got a lot of work to do to make changes or eliminate plugins that are no longer necessary. Suffice it to say that I’ll have to run a checklist of alterations for every section of the website. Here’s a tiny example:
The inspiration that first came from Textpattern, Textdrive Lifetime Accounts and the writing of Dean Allen have faded to a dim glow like the wick of an old, oil lantern.
My only self-serving way to hold those memories and trim the wick will be to revive a bit of writing here and get reacquainted with all that remains from the list above, Textpattern.
Perhaps 2018 is the year. Thank you, Dean. You have been and will continue to be missed.
It was 1969. I was in the tenth grade. Clearly, we weren’t thinking about thingslikethis.
There’s not much no chance that I’m going to take up computer programming any time soon. However, I like the motivational aspect of seeing what a 15-year old has done with his skills. Spend a few minutes at Yuvi’s weblog and you’ll probably find a lot to like about his weblog design as well as its content.
Sometimes I find myself wishing I could be more positive about goods and services that I spend money on. More accurately, I wish I could bring myself to spare loyal readers the grimy details. Alas, I can’t.
Regular readers are well aware of The HP Way and how After Hoursships the wrong sizes of clothes for the most important events in a person’s life. It’s tiresome to write about such atrocious service, but cathartic and necessary.
On December 8 Amazon took an order for a camera. I didn’t realize at the time that they were “farming the order out” to TigerDirect. Worse, TigerDirect was backordered. None of that stopped these two companies from billing my credit card and going completely silent. When I finally inquired I got a string of differing delivery dates and promises.
When I attempted to cancel the order, I was given a couple of email lectures followed by a return authorization. Why would I need a return authorization when TigerDirect is backordered and I never received the camera?
Finally, when I suggested that TigerDirect simply cancel my order, they went silent again. Please understand that this is all about $129.99 plus $7.24 for shipping which has already been charged to my credit card. In other words, it ain’t about the money, it’s about the lousy service and misrepresentations. Hint to both companies: Christmas has come and gone!
We’ll see whether Amazon and/or TigerDirect are willing to make good on this mess. As for not reporting these matters in the New Year, fugedaboudit.
If your company is clueless (and careless) about quality, the public (including my 7 readers) deserves to know.
UPDATE: For those who want to read a little more about Tiger Direct and the parent (public) company, follow this link and then, this one. Here’s a quote:
Users at several Internet scam-reporting message boards report that TigerDirect and its sister organization OnRebate.com deliver shoddy equipment or fail to pay promised large rebates on items. Support requests by e-mail and phone are refused or delayed. The Better Business Bureau has given TigerDirect an “unsatisfactory” rating for its performance in these matters. These allegations also exist against its twin site (in design and merchandise), globalcomputer.com. A website named TigerDirectSucks.org carries pro and con messages about the company, including what purport to be postings from ex-employees.
In the early 1980’s I spent some time heading up a firm that developed computer-generated energy management models for commercial buildings. We modeled a facility using software that dealt with three primary aspects of building operation: architecture, mechanical equipment and electrical equipment.
Architectural issues included the orientation of a building, how the windows were installed and maintained and what type of energy-conserving techniques were employed at the windows and doors. Mechanical issues included plumbing and HVAC demands for energy, but also the additional HVAC demands that might be required due to excessive electricity use for lights. Finally, we looked at both the demand and consumption that the building presented as an electrical load.
Our models provided detailed payback analyses for each retrofit that might be introduced to the facility. In those years our lighting retrofits often resulted in substantial savings, but required some compromises to the aesthetics of the occupied space.
If you’re interested in technology, the article is worthwhile. Here’s a point that caught my eye:
How much is 100 million bulbs? It’s 25 million classic GE four-packs. That many boxes of bulbs would fill 262 Wal-Mart tractor trailers, a ghost convoy of Wal-Mart trucks, loaded with nothing but lightbulbs, stretching 3.5 miles—a convoy that will never roll. Every year for six years—just from one bulb, this year. Not to mention the line of garbage trucks necessary to cart 100 million burned-out incandescent bulbs to the landfill.
You see—it’s one thing to save on your own electricity bill—but, it’s quite another to accrue the kinds of ancillary savings that keep on giving for years. With 262 fewer trucks on the highway, imagine how much more pleasant your next road trip might be!
(Star of wonder, star of might)
(Star with royal beauty bright)
(Westward leading, still proceeding)
(Guide us to thy perfect light)
From the beginning the Father
Had a magnificent plan
Revealed through the law and the prophets
To fulfill the redemption of man
He spoke after centuries of silence
In the midst of a still, starry night
And Emmanuel came down among us
And the Father said “Let there be light”
Let there be light!
Let it shine bright
Piercing the darkness with dazzling white
Hope for the hopeless was born on that night
When God sent his Son
And said “Let there be light”
Let there be light! Oh Yea Yea!
People who walked in great darkness
Gathered from near and afar
Shepherds with flocks in their keeping
Three kings who follow a star
Together the poor and the richest
Witness that Bethlehem night
And the sky full of angels announcing
The birth of a glorious light
Let there be light!
Let it shine bright
Piercing the darkness with dazzling white
Hope for the hopeless was born on that night
When God sent his Son
And said “Let there be light”
Let there be light! Oh Yea Yea!
We who are His have this calling
To praise Him, and make His name known
So one day the presence of Jesus
Shines in every heart and every home
(Shines in our home)
(Star of wonder, star of beauty bright)
Let there be light!
Let it shine bright
Piercing the darkness with dazzling white
Hope for the hopeless was born on that night
When God sent his Son
And said “Let there be light”
Let there be light! Oh Yea Yea!
After a week-long cooling off period, I’ve composed myself well enough to write clearly about After Hours Formalwear. This company is a classic example of a company that wants to appear good, but is unwilling to pay the price to be good. Companies that have grown almost exclusively by acquisition often show this trait.
The short story comes first. They botched the ordering and sizing of a tux for the father of the bride. Their attempt to recover was worse. They simply do not understand the importance of what they are doing. No matter how many people I talk to, I’ll spend the rest of my days discouraging anyone who will listen from using the services of After Hours Formalwear.
Now for the longer story. My oldest daughter got married last Saturday. The wedding was far removed from Memphis where I went for the tux fitting. I was instructed to pick up the tux the Thursday prior to the wedding in a city near the wedding site.
I put the tuxedo on that Thursday and discovered that the coat had been improperly measured and sized. For overnight delivery, I requested a replacement coat in the proper size. It was then that I discovered that “overnight” meant after 3pm on Friday.
Now for some conjecture and lessons. After Hours probably knows better than I ever will – they have the data – but, I suspect a majority of weddings occur on weekends. Just a guess. Further, most traditional and semi-traditional weddings have a rehearsal and a rehearsal dinner the evening before the wedding. The father of a bride must attend the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. The last thing he has time to do is to go to some After Hours location after 3pm when a rehearsal is scheduled for 4pm.
The lesson here is that After Hours should design and implement a business process that accommodates the tight time table and the importance of the product they offer. This will be difficult to pull off when you employ teenage girls who think that fathers-of-brides are simply the downside of the job — sort of like cleaning the tables was the downside of flipping burgers at their last job.
Here are the things that After Hours got wrong:
the shirt sleeves were not the right length
the shirt was missing a button
the shoes were caked with dried mud
the coat was the wrong size
the time for picking up the replacement coat was unacceptable
the attitude toward a Dad trying to look good for his daughter’s wedding was awful
the replacement coat was the wrong size
there was no time to correct the second error made concerning the coat
when inquiring about how to escalate my concerns, both locations were well-schooled to say, “we can’t do anything here; you’ll have to talk to a district manager.”
neither location was able to provide information about how to reach a district manager
These are not the idle rantings of someone with too little to do. They are not the ravings of some persistently offended consumer. Rather, they are the complaints of a customer who attempted to use the services of After Hours Formalwear. They are the complaints of a customer who was further offended by the lack of concern and attention given to the original errors and complaints.
If you are planning a wedding or you have any influence over the planning for a wedding, advise this:
DO NOTRENTTUXEDOSFROMAFTERHOURSFORMALWEAR
Rent from someone more dependable or advise the wedding party to buy traditional tuxes for future needs
Make certain that any company you rent from appreciates the importance of their role in the wedding
As a long-time quality professional who has some insight into quality and customer service challenges, it’s obvious what is needed. After Hours should immediately undertake a detailed process and measurement review to fix their quality problem. They must begin by getting brutally honest about what an error or non conformance is in the eyes of their customer. They won’t, but it is precisely what they ought to do. They simply don’t have a clue.
Since our last meeting we have been through a disastrous election. It is easy for us to be discouraged, as pundits hail that election as a repudiation of our philosophy and even as a mandate of some kind or other. But the significance of the election was not registered by those who voted, but by those who stayed home. If there was anything like a mandate it will be found among almost two-thirds of the citizens who refused to participate.
Bitter as it is to accept the results of the November election, we should have reason for some optimism. For many years now we have preached “the gospel,” in opposition to the philosophy of so-called liberalism which was, in truth, a call to collectivism.
Now, it is possible we have been persuasive to a greater degree than we had ever realized. Few, if any, Democratic party candidates in the last election ran as liberals. Listening to them I had the eerie feeling we were hearing reruns of Goldwater speeches. I even thought I heard a few of my own.
Those words were in Ronald Reagan’s 1975 speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference. They could have been delivered this morning. They probably should have been.
The first individual, group or party to (seriously) stand for most (or all) of the following principles and run for office will get my next vote. Each is supported by another quote from Reagan’s speech!
Operate government efficiently and with common sense:
They went into every department of state government and came back with 1,800 recommendations on how modern business practices could be used to make government more efficient. We adopted 1,600 of them.
Reduce taxes (of all types):
We also turned over—for the first time in almost a quarter of a century—a balanced budget and a surplus of $500 million. In these eight years just passed, we returned to the people in rebates, tax reductions and bridge toll reductions $5.7 billion. All of this is contrary to the will of those who deplore conservatism and profess to be liberals, yet all of it is pleasing to its citizenry.
Balance the budget:
What side can be taken in a debate over whether the deficit should be $52 billion or $70 billion or $80 billion preferred by the profligate Congress?
Inflation has one cause and one cause only: government spending more than government takes in. And the cure to inflation is a balanced budget.
Drive free market capitalism:
Shorn of all side issues and extraneous matter, the problem underlying all others is the worldwide contest for the hearts and minds of mankind. Do we find the answers to human misery in freedom as it is known, or do we sink into the deadly dullness of the Socialist ant heap?
Rebuild our military:
We did not seek world leadership; it was thrust upon us. It has been our destiny almost from the first moment this land was settled. If we fail to keep our rendezvous with destiny or, as John Winthrop said in 1630, “Deal falsely with our God,” we shall be made “a story and byword throughout the world.”
Stand for lofty ambitions:
Americans are hungry to feel once again a sense of mission and greatness.
Fix the broken and ponderous tax code:
Let us also include a permanent limit on the percentage of the people’s earnings government can take without their consent.
Let our banner proclaim a genuine tax reform that will begin by simplifying the income tax so that workers can compute their obligation without having to employ legal help.
And let it provide indexing—adjusting the brackets to the cost of living—so that an increase in salary merely to keep pace with inflation does not move the taxpayer into a surtax bracket. Failure to provide this means an increase in government’s share and would make the worker worse off than he was before he got the raise.
I like what Simon Phipps writes. His reporting of what others are saying about the Novell/Microsoft alliance as well as his own comments are worth your time.
Sun is one of those companies I’ve always liked, but wished could achieve even greater market share. In spite of that company’s challenges, they’ve always been on my short list of companies I’d gladly work for.
I’ve seen so many better mousetraps cast off for want of a market big enough to sustain them. In the early 1980’s there were numerous Silicon Valley startups focused on multiuser Unix systems running on Motorola 68000 chips. Those companies are long gone, but Sun found a different niche in 1982 and sustained itself.
When Sun began applying all of that Unix and 68000 know-how to single-user workstations in a network, it became clear what the future of multiuser systems would be. Fuzzy recollections prevent me from being certain whether I first saw Sun’s product running SunOS or an early Solaris. Whatever, I remember seeing Sun’s software desktop wrapped around Unix and thinking, “that’s where this whole thing is headed.”
Recent experimentation with Ubuntu Linux brought back some of those impressions. No operating system in common use today has been through the depth of history and development that Unix/Linux has been through.
Let’s hope that Sun and some respectable alliance of FOSS folk can prevent all the patents from stifling innovation.
Sun’s Blackbox has gotten a lot of press. Rave reviews have come in on Sun’s X4500. Now is a great time for Sun to restate its position in the operating system, hardware and networking industry.
I voted yesterday. My selections of candidates were based upon whether or not I thought they understood the most important issues facing city, state and nation. In my view there are very few priorities that rank higher than the security of our nation and our families. There are plenty of other important matters.
Our stands on so many issues simply cannot rise to the level of importance of seeing our nation continue. Clearly, in a time of peace, those other matters are vital issues to debate. In a time of threat, I sense a need to focus on survival. Perhaps you disagree and will make different choices when you vote to fill state and federal positions.
One of the great mudpuddles in the national debate has seen all of us splashing around, getting each other really muddy, but with little real result. It’s often described in weighty terms by those who lead with a constitutional argument. Others lead with a concept of personal belief that involves some degree of hell-fire and brimstone. Another group seems to think examples set for us are more important than rules that were set in stone. Still others believe we are entirely self-sufficient, entirely capable of making wise and moral decisions apart from a God they say doesn’t exist.
Again, we return to priorities. What do we emphasize? How does one respond when attacked — either physically or intellectually? Once we determine what we believe, how does it relate to our government? Should faith guide someone we elect? Does one who lives a life of faith inherently make decisions that run counter to the First Amendment? Can a person who believes there is no God make consistently moral decisions?
Too often we get testy when these questions are pressed or debated at length. I voted for candidates that probably don’t have a good handle on the answers to every one of these questions. Your candidates aren’t likely to have them all down cold either! However, I voted for people that impressed me as being a bit better prepared to deal with each of these debates and the many more questions which we’re going to face in the coming years.
Berkshire Hathaway’s closing share price for an A share topped $100,000 this week. Today, the stock has traded between $100,000 and $101,000 per A share. The company is clearly on track to have an outstanding year. Remember, when one buys Berkshire Hathaway the thought process is that you are buying small slices of the great list of businesses that Berkshire owns.
While we’re talking about businesses, how does a business make and sell 1,511,000 of something in three months and lose $5.8 billion? In other words, on every unit you sell, you are losing $3839 in either direct losses or write-downs associated with past decisions. At Ford, quality is job 1. The fact is that quality is the path from where they are to where they want to be—not in a quarter, but during the coming years. Their’s is a stressful, but interesting problem to solve if quality, value and US manufacturing catches your fancy.
This is yet another attempt to uncover the recent difficulties when posting new articles to the web site. To all my readers, I apologize for having to expose these tests to you, but the nature of the problem doesn’t lend itself to offline work. This should be over relatively soon.
I’m going to post this article, check its placement on the home page and immediately post another test article. The goal of these tests is to uncover some coding problem that is causing the most recent articles to post out of sequence on the home page.
EDIT: This is a simple addition to the original article to see if it properly updates on the home page.
Some political issues never captured my attention as the most important thing that government should be about. Abortion is an example. Clearly, given two (theoretically) identical candidates—something impossible—I might use their respective stances on abortion as a deciding factor. However, long before I get to abortion or gay marriage or some other issues, I’ve made up my mind about most candidates.
With the USA targeted as it is right now by various people and countries, I find security high on my list of issues for testing candidates. Mike Hollihan has written well about last week’s October surprise in Tennessee politics. Political stunts are of little interest to me when we face such stultifyingly complex problems as control of nuclear knowledge, economic polarization and religious extremism.
However, in this one stunt, we get to see our candidates reacting to real, unscripted situations that tell us a great deal about the character of the men and how they respond when decisions must be made alone and on the spot.
A trip to the bookstore not only reignited my frustrations with drivers, but it reminded me of the sorry state of publishing these days. You’re buying books for $27.95 (give or take) and they contain grammatical mistakes, spelling errors and word omissions. That shouldn’t happen.
It seems that there might still be some problem with the way this new version of Textpattern is assigning the date and time to each new article.
The latest suspicion is that a plugin might be causing the problem.
This is a test post to see if the problem persists.
EDIT: This article posted correctly with the date and time assigned properly. This edit will determine whether the date and time can be updated correctly after editing an article.
Two recent articles initially posted out of order on this weblog. Only after resetting the date/time for the article was I able to move them to the top of the weblog.
The articles each carried the proper article number indicating that Textpattern assigned precisely the right sequence.
This is simply a test to see if this article appears at the top of the weblog when I press publish.
The gadget and technology fans among you are most likely Gizmodo and Engadget readers. But, have you been reading the Make magazine weblog? It’s more than one can keep up with in a day!
After an afternoon and evening of updating sites to Textpattern 4.0.4, there’s much to be pleased about. Four websites updated without any tweaking at all. Those happened in a matter of minutes. Exploring the new feature set and improvements took a bit longer.
Built into the new version is Textile 2.0. It fixes the problems associated with multi-paragraph blockquotes and a host of other difficulties.
There isn’t a tutorial for Textpattern. There’s a wiki for documentation and there are some new help screens for the fields that make up the heart of the system. Unfortunately, some of those help screens contain typos and spelling errors which can be distracting.
There are still some challenges for a rookie who wants to take the software from download to a styled site with minimal frustration. I suspect there will be a renewed effort to help those of us who are not site designers and software developers now that 4.0.4 is out.
With so many content management systems available, these notes about documentation, tutorials and help screens are the only things that prevent Textpattern from competing with and surpassing Blogger or LiveJournal or TypePad or other “starter” systems. Before raising anyone’s ire, let me add that Textpattern isn’t really a competitor to those entry-level blogging tools.
Textpattern clearly goes well beyond basic blogging software in capabilities and power. It’s the initial start that can be a little tough for those of us not steeped in deep site design and software development knowledge. A tutorial that takes you from software download through installation to theme and template implementation for both a basic weblog and a basic web site would open the product up to a new realm of users.
Unfortunately, any mention of these kinds of things is often met with a write-it-yourself comment in Textpattern’s support forum. However, it is that very forum which is the ultimate documentation and resource for virtually any challenge one faces with Textpattern. The folks there are a savvy bunch and helpful.
To undertake the list of small improvements planned for this website, two approaches are available. One involves taking each individual improvement into the forum, asking a question and implementing the change. A second approach involves finding a Textpattern designer/developer who can optimize the installation of Textpattern, rid it of unnecessary plugins and ready the site for its next 4500 articles.
One’s knowledge is enriched with the first way. The results come quicker with the second approach. Either way, Textpattern is clearly capable of taking any type of web site from back-of-the-napkin to thousands of pages of content. It’s all a matter of just how deeply involved with the workings of your site you want to be.
In no order whatsoever are the following ruminations:
More people are issuing dares in traffic. It’s not the least bit unusual to have someone turn in front of you daring you to somehow violate all laws of physics that say an automobile driving at the speed limit can be stopped by a competent driver in ten feet or less.
More and more cars are being sold in Memphis that apparently lack turn signals.
Textpattern 4.0.4 was released this morning. I’m impressed that all prior sites work, but can now avail themselves of all the new features in the product.
Crime is up. Election day is near. Some world leaders are daring the rest of the world to do something about their contempt for all authority.
We’ve now got over 300,000,000 folks in this country.
IBM has just announced outstanding third quarter results.
The best television show of the new season won’t be decided for several more weeks—except for me. Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip has already won my loyalty. Aaron Sorkin’s writing of dialog has simply soared since he last wrote for Sports Night and The West Wing.
In something shy of two minutes last night, we caught a glimpse of the creative process required to fill ninety minutes of air time with a live television broadcast. The two minutes illustrated the breaking of a writer’s block and the sudden flood of inspiration that essentially developed the rest of the show.
The episode was called The Cold Open, and it indicated Sorkin’s respect for the intelligence of television viewers. He doesn’t waste our time and he doesn’t coddle. Listen and watch carefully and he’ll reward you with some of the finest dialog and actors that television has ever offered. Try to multitask with the TV as background noise and Sorkin’s work will be lost on you.
Teamwork, collaboration, chaos and deadlines were depicted as realistically last night as in any television show I’ve ever watched. Whether you wrestle with collaborative work among scattered people, or spend time considering the intrinsic business value of NBC as compared to Google, this show has something for you. It’s entertainment. It’s TV about TV. It’s metaphor. It’s full of lessons for anyone who feels challenged by the ways and means of today’s work place.
17Though the fig tree should not blossom
And there be no fruit on the vines,
Though the yield of the olive should fail
And the fields produce no food,
Though the flock should be cut off from the fold
And there be no cattle in the stalls,
18Yet I will exult in the LORD,
I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. Habakkuk 3:17-18 NASB
Anticipating some word this afternoon from Hewlett-Packard’s telephone conference among board members, I went to the Wall Street Journal’s web site and read this article[subscription may be required]. The title is Divided H-P Board To Discuss
Leak Scandal, Dunn’s Future and it was written by Joann S. Lublin and Peter Waldman. Here’s a paragraph that caught my eye:
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Friday, Ms. Dunn said she knew little about the tactics used by outside firms hired by H-P, and said she was “appalled” to learn in the past two months that investigators disguised their identities to obtain private telephone records of reporters and H-P directors. She said she had previously thought the directors’ phone records were obtained properly.
What does it mean to “obtain the directors’ phone records properly?” It seems to me that anyone—short of the FBI—who calls my phone company and identifies themselves as me has instantly committed fraud. If a private investigator has been asked to get my phone records, they are faced with asking me for them, asking me for (written) permission to gather them or they must commit a crime to get them. What am I missing here?
Why isn’t’ something called pretexting also called identity theft and a crime? Can a chairman of a company the size of Hewlett-Packard be so naive as to cover her own mistake with something so silly as, “she thought the records were obtained properly?” Apparently so.
My admiration of and disappointment with Hewlett-Packard has been no secret here. While in engineering school, I calibrated HP oscilloscopes. My first scientific calculator was an HP, and I later taught the RPN notation that made HP’s calculators unique. One of the first HP-150 touchscreen PC’s was shipped to a company I co-owned during the 1980’s. I loved HP products.
The story of HP’s founding, the garage and a long list of amazing products stands as one of the great business stories of all time.
There was a time when the worst thing that could be said about HP was, “oh, that’s just a bunch of engineers over there who don’t know anything about marketing.” Great products and amazing innovations have given way to all the trappings of the rat race. Why can’t sensational engineering be the goal? Why must politics undermine each and every professional effort in the world today?
Textpattern is a feature-rich tool for publishing on the web. It provides for a wealth of additional features using independently-developed plugins.
This site currently has a dozen plugins installed with eleven of them “active.” Once added to your Textpattern installation and made active, these plugins provide sets of tags and features that extend Textpattern’s features beyond the native capabilities.
In other cases, plugins simplify the way something might be done in Textpattern. However, as Textpattern’s own features have become richer, some plugins may not be required. Plugins used in 2004 may not be required when using Textpattern 4.0.4—which is on the horizon—in 2007. In other words, plugins that plugged feature gaps might be displaced when Textpattern’s own capabilities expand.
Hundreds of plugins have been written. Little has been said about what liberal use of plugins does to a Textpattern site’s performance. By the way, what is liberal use of plugins? Even less has been said about which plugins make serious impacts on a site’s web host! How many plugins is too many? Do they conflict with one another? Does a site become more fragile after exceeding a certain number of plugins?
Clearly, there are challenges—38 pages worth—associated with administering plugins as they are updated and as Textpattern changes versions. This is largely a manual process completely dependent upon a user’s vigilance.
Textpattern’s developers are “doing everything they can” to prevent breakage as users upgrade. Plugins make this more difficult, even though specific rules exist for writing plugins that minimize the risk of problems.
But, here’s the real challenge: with eleven plugins installed and active, where are all the occurences of each plugin’s tags in the templates of the site? How does one locate all of the tags related to plugins and distinguish them from native Textpattern plugins? What if you are managing a dozen Textpattern-based web sites? Imagine how long it might take to “fix” the sites if plugins aren’t updated or compliant with the rules.
The work required to answer those questions is about to begin here. We mentioned a bit about some of the goals this week. Stay tuned for more information as we learn the secrets of applying plugins wisely.
Since January of 2002 this weblog has accumulated 4683 entries, posts, essays or articles. The terminology varies depending upon who you talk to about weblogs.
With some design improvements and structural changes expected in the next few months, it was time to review those articles and make some decisions. Interesting by-products resulted:
23 entry titles begin with the word “so”
32 entry titles begin with the word “there”
34 entry titles begin with the word “if”
41 entry titles begin with a numeral or a special character
58 entry titles begin with the word “another”
65 entry titles begin with the word “it”
84 entry titles begin with the word “I” or “I’m”
195 entry titles begin with the word “a”
288 entry titles begin with the word “the”
That accounts for 820 entry titles or 17.5% of all I wrote for the past 1703 days. These numbers also show that my early (experimental) blogging days were multi-post days. With multi-week gaps in writing of late, I’m still averaging 2.75 entries per day!
What about entry titles that begin with questions?
Who? 19
What? 121
When? 44
Where? 40
How? 74
Why? 29
Which? 8
Those questions produced another 335 titles or 7.2% of the entire crop. This means that you might conclude that the other 3528 entries began more imaginatively. You would be wrong. Plenty of the entries from those experimental years were names of people I was quoting or admonitions to “please avoid Voicestream.” (They were a particularly disgusting predecessor to what is now T-Mobile.)
What changes can readers expect?
First, I’ll do better with the titles. Second, a major revision of Textpattern is just around the corner. That will provide some new behind-the-scenes features. Anticipate a switch to a strict doctype. Expect some improved accessibility.
If I’m successful at locating a designer who wants to help with the clean-up, paint-up and fix-up, there will be some new photos in the header rotation and some improved color schemes here and there. Archives and searching will be better along with the possibility of tags as replacements for categories.
Textpattern plugins may give way to native features – again, depending upon the kind of help I’m able to procure. I’m not crazy about the way my comments feature behaves or looks, so that’s probably due for a makeover. Links from Ma.gnolia may find their way into the site as well.
It all begins the instant I find a Textpattern-savvy collaborator who is willing to add to what has already been built without proposing a tear-down-and-rebuild. I’m looking for an architect who likes to add a room or two and tear out a wall here and there – not a McMansion designer!
Bottom line? Things will get better here over the next six months!
This is a call for the right kind of CSS instruction for people who are just getting their start with web design.
Modern arguments about any subject usually contain some elements of truth from both sides. Except in those (often political) debates where one side knowingly distorts the position of the opponent, the tidbits of truth can serve as a perfect starting point for a real education.
There was a CSS rant. Then, there was a CSS training offer. “What would those two days of training cost…?”Now, what is there for the more pedestrian users of CSS? While there were some misguided conclusions in Dvorak’s article, there were also elements of truth. CSS can be very frustrating when one is left to some sort of self-taught methodology. Standards bodies don’t provide the kinds of answers that work-a-day CSS users need in spite of protestations to the contrary.
If experts can’t agree, what are those of us on the outside supposed to do? Books about CSS sometimes use valuable chapters explaining table-based layouts before declaring those techniques to be wrong. What we need is a video of Molly’s two-day training session. Better yet, we need An Event Apart focused on those of us who want answers like the ones Molly promises to Dvorak.
The question is this, “what would those two days of training cost if they were provided to an audience of about ten or twelve interested designers?”
Once upon a time I owned an awarding-winning computer dealership in Memphis, TN. Part of that time we were the leading reseller of Apple products in the area. With a degree in electrical engineering and thirty years of technology industry experience, I’m not completely clueless about technology, obsolescence (whether technical, functional or economic) or sales techniques.
Apple stores could achieve a sales increase of at least fifteen percent with some relatively simple attitude adjustments. First, make sure Apple store employees don’t treat customers as second-class beings. Second, make sure Apple store employees don’t dress like homeless people. Third, make sure Apple store managers don’t look like they are in a drug-induced stupor. Finally, teach Apple store employees to ask just a few simple questions, clarify the answers, empathize just a bit and then offer some suggestions. You see, Apple stores, it’s not about you. It’s about your customers and prospects! Shut up and listen to them!
What set me off? An incident approximately one hour ago at the Apple store in Germantown, TN has frosted me. I’ll tell the story, but some background is needed.
This city and county are having a sales tax holiday beginning tomorrow and running through Sunday. That amounts to a savings of 9.25% on stuff like computers.
Because one of my daughters works in one of those ultra-creative fields, she wants a Mac like many of her compatriots. What better weekend to buy at the Apple store than during a weekend when the 9.25% sales tax is suspended?
Here’s what she wants to buy:
2Ghz white Apple MacBook $1299.00
AppleCare for the MacBook $249.00
Apple Mighty Mouse $49.00
Add Apple’s Back-to-School Promotion to all of this, and she could wind up with an iPod Nano as part of the deal. However, two of Apple’s (obnoxious) Germantown store employees weren’t able to listen carefully to this question:
What if she buys the Mac tomorrow to take advantage of Tennessee’s sales tax holiday and Apple announces something on Tuesday she return the unopened box for a full credit?
Apple store employee #1 responded with, “we’re not aware of nor are we allowed to comment on any upcoming product announcements.” I know that. Can I return the computer on Tuesday for a full credit and buy whatever newly announced machine better suits her needs? Apple store employee #1 responded with, “we won’t be able to honor the sales tax holiday?” I know that. Can she return the unopened computer for full credit five days after buying it? Apple store employee #1 says, “that’s a question that will have to be answered by someone else; I’m not the one who makes our policies.” Clearly, she not only doesn’t make the policies, she doesn’t have any idea what the policies are.
I then ask her to point me to someone who can answer my questions. Apple store employee #1 says, “only the store manager can answer your questions.” Is the store manager here? In quite a huff Apple store employee #1 says, “I’ll go find her, and walks—I kid you not—three steps to a woman straightening accessory shelves. “This man wants to buy a Mac without paying sales tax and then get credit for it on Tuesday with the sales tax included.”
I’m not making this up. That’s what she said. The store manager then looks at me and says, “no.” After some explanation and corrections to my question, I finally get this answer, “all returns of unopened cartons will be credited with a deduction for a 10% restocking fee.” So, here’s how that scenario looks if Apple announces a new and improved MacBook on Tuesday with exactly the same price as the current one:
The $1597 price—if I buy tomorrow—saves me $147.62 in sales tax. Return it on Tuesday and Apple keeps $159.70 as a restocking fee. I pay the $1597 for some new product and owe the $147.62 of sales tax because the “holiday” is over. So, Apple has cost me $307.32 that I could use to buy external drives, cases, software, memory, etc. Through it all I’ve dealt with people who don’t give two hoots in Hades about me, my daughter, her needs or our business.
Two web sites I read regularly are written by James Lileks and John Gruber. Both are Apple loyalists. How in the world do they get straight answers to simple questions when visiting Apple’s stores?
The experience this evening makes me realize that there are reasons beyond technical lock-in that breaks the bough! That was Mark Pilgrim’s reason. Obtuse answers and obnoxious treatment are mine. I’ll avoid Apple at all costs. The daughter will get what she wants, but it won’t be because the employees in the Apple store in Germantown, TN want her to have what she wants or show any willingness to make the sales process a pleasant experience!
I’ve found a community I want to join! It’s the growing creative class in Memphis.
Memphis would not make anyone’s list of global centers of design excellence in any field, much less web design. In fact, Memphis is probably one of those places where the nephew’s FrontPage site is good enough for eight out of ten small businesses (i.e. fewer than 50 employees). Memphis is a place where price always trumps any other criteria for purchasing anything.
A few of the weblogs written by people in this area actually strive for valid (X)HTML mark-up. Many of them are excellent political, lifestyle or gossip blogs. Apparently, there’s even a gathering of bloggers from time to time. However, there isn’t a great deal of discussion—that I’ve been able to locate—involving web standards, design tools and techniques or sites free of tables and spacer gifs.
Perhaps that is changing! Our local fish wrap ran an article this weekend about tech firms that use blogs to connect with others. The article specifically mentioned the following blogs, firms and people in Memphis:
Weblogs I read are written by people who are hitting all the latest conferences for the best and brightest. While those conference attendees are looking at next-generation technologies and techniques, Memphis wrestles with how to become one of the so-called Smart Cities.
Contrary to popular notions, some of the leaders of the march to creativity in Memphis are not twenty-something. Rather, there is a blend of leaders who have caught the vision that Richard Florida has described for urban centers along with the young creatives who are actually getting it done. The beauty of this blend is that it isn’t limited to specific age, gender or other demographic data. Those with a willingness to grasp the ideas can drive the growth of and focus on creativity.
There appears to be a practical side to all of this as well. People who are leading the efforts here are profit-minded capitalists who have recognized a better way of providing products and services to customers. They understand what Jeff Cornwall explains in Revisiting Self-Interest. Whether one sees self-interest from the perspective of the designer or the designer’s client, the rewards are congruent.
Take web sites as the example. The hierarchy of enlightened web design creativity looks something like this:
Creatives using standards-based design for all their work.
Web site designers who found a tool and use it free of any concern for web standards.
Ad agencies who added a web site design department without understanding the medium.
The nieces and nephews with a copy of FrontPage or Dreamweaver.
Each of these groups is creative. Each of these groups makes a (handsome) living. However, only one of the groups is fostering the growth of their businesses, growing their clients’ businesses and leading a community to see creativity, design and the role of standards in a completely different way. That’s a community I want to join!
Whatever you do with your choices about technology in a small company (defined as a business with fewer than 25 employees), DO NOT use the Microsoft Active Directory Migration Tool or the document (doc download) that tells you how to use it.
After almost 21 hours of phone time on a $245 Microsoft case number and 7 engineers’ efforts, recovery from the effects of using the ADMT was complete. The real work could then begin. Remember the Apple ad that says something like, “sounds like you’ve got some stuff to do before you can do stuff?”
Apple runs Windows, though it’s been unclear just how dependably a Mac can remain joined to a Windows server domain when there are multiple network connections installed on the computer. With all of the announcements, what’s a dependable path? Remember, we’re not talking about businesses rich with I.T. savvy or time to work on their I.T. problems.
To keep this brief, I’ll boil it down this way:
Career-perspective: Were a new entrant into the business of installing and supporting basic I.T. needs in small businesses to inquire about where to develop expertise, what would we answer?
Business owners perspective: Were a small business with basic collaboration, email, file-sharing, backup, calendar sharing and office productivity needs to inquire about what to install, what would we answer?
Short answers go like this:
For the server, install Microsoft Small Business Server 2003R2.
For the workstations, install Intel Pentium 4-based PC’s running Windows XP Professional.
For the adventurous who have access to a knowledgeable support team, you can consider replacing MS-SBS with Ubuntu’s server and a mix of Windows XP Professional and Ubuntu PC’s. Just be certain you know how to replace the Windows applications that users are accustomed to with their corresponding products in the FOSS world.
Finally, whatever you do, begin to think of long-term data storage as something that must withstand a series of short-term technology changes. Remember, 8-inch floppies? Remember when you took photos at low resolution to “save space.” Remember when you downloaded music at low bit-rates to “save space.” Some of those things will be terribly disappointing in thirty or forty years. Decide whether or not your applications really are providing data that you can save and see long after the application or the storage medium is gone.
Know how to pick and update your technologies in 36 to 60-month intervals so that the 40-year run is sustainable!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
Warren Buffett has announced plans to make substantial annual donations to five foundations. You can read the five letters at the Berkshire Hathaway site. You really should. You’ll gain some insight into how the really large sums of money change hands.
Rick Warren launched his P.E.A.C.E. plan. Beyond merely identifying his notion of the globe’s five (previously) insoluble problems, he’s thinking of the ways that technology and coordination can help the efforts of the many service initiatives around the world. In effect he’s identified the five really large problems in the world today.
Bill Gates has a 2-year plan that allows him to migrate from full-time duty at Microsoft to full-time focus on the efforts of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. With today’s announcements by Warren Buffett, the Gates Foundation will have to find ways to double the amount of money they distribute annually by 2009.
...a simple “cheat sheet” for those confused and worried about the place of Christianity in AmericaIt’s easy to carry a flawed notion about people of faith these days. Sometimes the notions are spot on. Encountering the choir member berating the waitress etches an image that’s probably not flawed at all. Reading the mainstream media’s views of Christians, one gets the impression that Sunday mornings involve snake-handling wherever Christians have gathered. That’s a bit less accurate.
Too many Christians want credit for their behaviors while doing their Christian stuff. Then, they want that credit to buy them a pardon when they do their non-Christian stuff. Like berating the waitress! That’s the way it is with all of us though, isn’t it? We hope the good things we do gather some slack for those moments when we get wound a little too tightly.
There’s humor in all of it. There’s humor in the misimpressions that people form. There’s humor in the attempts people make to appear holier than thou. After all we’re humans and we can be pretty funny regardless of how you look at us.
Mike Holihan points to the glossary that can untangle all the flawed thinking in a Salon article by Michelle Goldberg. Read the Salon article first. Follow that with a bit of a rebuttal—in glossary form. Here’s the teaser:
To be fair to these perplexed and terrified people, Christians are not easy to understand. To begin with, there are roughly 2,000 years of history to grasp, and certainly more denominations and subdivisions than that to take on board. For people who were raised secular, I imagine it’s like trying to understand an opera after coming in halfway before the end: the stage is crowded with people, two of them seem to be dead, a woman is wearing a hat with horns, and everyone is making a terrible racket.
How timely that the branches of our government have chosen to fight amongst themselves on this Memorial Day weekend. For me, the play-by-play announcer, color commentator and referee who One hundred percent turnover of Congress in the next three elections!can call this game correctly is Glenn Reynolds. The links are here, here, here and here, and they lead to all manner of insight into this separation of powers crisis. Once you’ve read those (and the included links), take a look at these: 1—2—3—4—5—6—7—8—9—My gosh; just keep reading this stuff.
Our veterans didn’t fight because we’re entitled to our opinions. They fought for the rights, privileges and the rule of law derived from our Constitution. No one is above the law—not me—not you—not Hastert—not Jefferson—not Boxer—not Pelosi—none of them.
I’d like to see a movement in this country that calls for all 535 members of Congress to be replaced during the next three elections. That’s a hundred percent turnover! Make sure that no more than a fourth of them are lawyers, too. Then, require the newly-elected to operate under a balanced budget equal to 75% of our current budget. Sure—it sounds naive, but give me a better idea!
I’ve got friends of faith who are in a tizzy over The Da Vinci Code – book and movie. They’ve been going to seminars to learn how to refute those who object to what my friends have been believing since they were nine years old.
Somehow, I don’t think revisionist history should be that threatening. After all this isn’t the first time that the Christian faith has been challenged. If you can get to it—subscription may be needed—read what Joseph Loconte has written in Debunking the Debunkers. Loconte quotes C.S. Lewis as follows:
“I do not wish to reduce the skeptical element in your minds,” Lewis explained. “I am only suggesting that it need not be reserved exclusively for the New Testament and the Creeds. Try doubting something else.”
Berkshire’s meeting is getting blogged by the Omaha World Herald (free registration may be required)
Yesterday’s closing numbers for Berkshire show that an “A” share carries a price of $88,710. Learn more about the company by reading here and here. Just to whet your appetite, the business press is reporting that Berkshire’s first quarter earnings show a 70% increase over the same quarter last year!
College textbooks cost too much. Even timeless books of literature, calculus and basic chemistry cost too much. Move into a study of computer science, microbiology or biomedical engineering and the books, which sometimes take a year or more to get to print, are out of date before they are a professor’s required text, and…they cost too much.Also a story about an angry Hispanic lacrosse player who vanished from a cruise ship during Bush’s low poll numbers
The “simple” in the title of this article refers to this question which you’ve read here before:
How much of an American citizen’s income should be paid to the government in taxes?
Nevermind the debate about what those taxes will be used to pay for. The question is how much is enough? In Memphis, TN we pay almost ten percent in state and local sales tax. We pay city property taxes. We pay county property taxes. We pay for car tags and driver’s licenses. We pay many other taxes.
Send a child to a state-run university and either you or your government subsidize the cost of that education. The only question is a trick, “who pays the greater share of the student’s education cost?” Answer: You paid 100% of the cost. The government has no money it didn’t receive from you.
Readers still with me at this point will enjoy an essay titled Tuition Soars Due to Knowledge Shortfall by Anne Coulter. Though one of her clever, obscure asides, here’s the quote that captures:
The two big topics on CNN last week were (1) high gas prices and (2) the high cost of college tuition. (Also a story about an angry Hispanic lacrosse player who vanished from a cruise ship during Bush’s low poll numbers.)
Kathy Sierra’s weblog makes you think she’s reading your mind. Her recent articles read like confessions from clients. The things that keep clients awake at night—at least my clients—are clearly explained at Kathy’s site.
In The Myth of Keeping Up we see the reading pile that has become all too familiar. Unfortunately, the reading pile that once resided at the office has a big brother gaining weight at home. Articles, books, magazines and even newspapers accumulate like loose change, but that loose change grows in value as its weight increases. Those reading piles do not!
Put the pile on a scale and you’ll discover another sibling or two with their toes on the corners pressing down. These siblings are email—in multiple accounts—along with RSS feeds, pdf downloads and web sites far and wide. Even the best automated filters and organizers do little to reduce the pressure people feel when falling behind.
Never has it been more important to understand what you are truly passionate about, what your purpose is and with whom (or what) you’re trying to keep up. Here’s a tip: if you’re trying to keep up with somebody else, stop! Stop now and free yourself from that struggle. It’s unimportant.
If you work in a place where the culture pits you against your coworker, get out now. It is 2006 and if your employer hasn’t discovered the benefits of collaboration over competition, he or she never will. You, your health and your relationships to others are far more important than trying to “keep up.”
Constant striving in these areas defines the rat race. There’s a big difference between the rodent regatta and a peaceful afternoon of sailing. Purpose, passion and balance characterize the latter. Toil, frustration and a fuzzy finish line characterize the former. Let the Jones family pull ahead. You won’t lose a thing!
Some of the brightest developers I know about are doing open source coding for the Textpattern content management system. They are continuing to improve and extend the capabilities of that software.
One challenge involves properly providing RSS 2.0 feeds from Textpattern-based sites given a rather wide variety of site designs. My own RSS feed was once described as funky. That saga dates to the summer of 2003. 1 – 2 – 3 – 4. Absent solid, understandable answers at that time, I went about my business. I actually believe that around the time of those links, the Atom initiative was getting off the ground. It gave birth to another syndication technique. Many sites now provide both RSS and Atom feeds.
With the request from the Textpattern developers comes an opportunity to solve the RSS 2.0 problems once and for all. I’m no developer, but I’m a cheerleader for bringing some resolution to the entire debate. The call is out for a who’s who of (apolitical) developers to answer the questions raised here. Maybe those who write the feed readers could weigh in as well.
Twenty four 8 1/2in. x 5 1/2in. pages hold my web passwords. Firefox manages passwords fairly well, but the pages are beyond dog-eared due to frequent references required to log into a news service, software forum or web site.
Three questions remain unanswered in the whole arena of web 2.0, hosted, software-by-subscription, software-on-demand, utility computing, web apps…you get it. I talked about those questions earlier. Here’s the quick reminder:
Who has my data and can I get a copy of it that is useful?
What do I do when you—my web app provider—go away?
Can you really survive the bubble?
Now, a far more eloquent essay about the matter exists. Joel Dueck has written The Nuclear Proliferation of Little Rails Apps. He hits on all the concerns, but with a more immediate focus on whether or not we are really more effective with dozens of specialized “little Rails apps.”
This one is drop-everything-read-it-right-now good.
The whole thing began as a short weblog entry by Jason Hoffman at the Joyent weblog. That entry pointed to an article titled Shaking Up Tech Publishing. There are currently forty six comments about that article.
Here’s how that turned into a two-day excursion through all kinds of new thinking:
In addition to being a creative genius who came up with a brilliant new teaching methodology, Kathy is also a great promoter, with an amazing blog, and hugely successful training seminars at our conferences.—Tim O’Reilly commenting about David Heinemeier Hansson’s Shaking Up Tech Publishing and Kathy Sierra’s development of O’Reilly’s Head First series.
The questions begged. What’s the Head First series? Who is Kathy Sierra? What’s this “brilliant new teaching methodology?” How do I find Kathy’s weblog?
On the web one thing leads to another. I found Kathy’s weblog first. In the sidebar of her weblog, I noticed How To Be An Expert. That one has a bunch of comments, too.
I headed for my bookstore, bought a Head First title and launched a push for new expertise. Intense focus on a subject for one hour each day for three years could make you (or me?) an expert. You might not have spent 1095 hours on your undergraduate major. Oh…and you could do far worse than to keep David Heinemeier Hansson’s site on the reading list as well!
Then we spent a day building a dead-simple shop in Rails that would take $19 from your credit card and give you a PDF.—David Heinemeier Hansson
The shop he refers to should be put on sale. Joel should put Ship It on sale, too.
One challenge that extremely bright, young people face: knowing what is marketable in spite of their own view that it seems so mundane or simple. ERP suites that have been revised over a period of ten or twenty years sometimes lack the brilliance of these simple tools.
Writers who have spent dozens of hours searching for a way to get published would happily pay for a simple tool that could be dropped into their website to sell a pdf file.
So that’s why I said nothing yesterday; I was filled with the dark corrosive ichor that comes when even your hobbies disappoint. The Bleat by James Lileks on March 17, 2006.
Three things continue to bother me about the concept of software as service, web 2.0, software on demand, utility computing or web applications. They are:
Can I back up my data to a local PC or device?
What happens when the application(s) are down? They will be.
Who will win among the contenders as populous as in 1999?
Yesterday’s Order II has met this morning’s reality. Origami is not the answer that a mobile business professional seeks. The Reuters story reveals many of the reasons why Microsoft’s UMPC just won’t serve the converging needs. At a minimum, you’ll still need your phone. Worse, you may also need to hang onto the phone and the PDA—whether those have converged for you or not.
About a month ago, we discussed Order. Bringing order to life in an orderly way seems to get more challenging each day. I’ve never spent much time using Outlook Express, but I have been a long-time user of Outlook.
Because my life (and work) are about projects, I carry a Treo 650. Before that I carried a PDA of one type or another. For a Palm, palmtop or Treo, the synch between the device and Outlook has been flawless for a decade or more.
Weaknesses remain. These devices are too small to browse the Internet, research articles, write and do web design work. Weaker still are the techniques for managing projects at such a small scale. I have a rather finely tuned project management methodology that has served me well for a long time. Documents, spreadsheets, project management applications, email, contacts, calendars and prioritization tools are all part of the suite. Currently, a laptop is the only tool that really makes that suite mobile. When collaboration leading to a launch date is essential, the tools cannot be weak.
Alternatives to my trusted methods are creeping over the horizon, but what will they really permit? Will one of them emerge or will you still need a meshed suite of hardware and software? Here’s a glimpse of my radar screen:
The time has come to dive deeply into CSS, XHTML, standards, doctypes, validation…again! I’ve produced a laundry list of embellishments I’d like to make to this website. Most stem from a suggestion or request from readers.
You’ve read here many times that I have a mental block when it comes to spanning the connections between a tag in a template, XHTML in an article and the CSS that styles both. A simple example is in order.
What you’re looking at when you click on the thumbnail is a section of my home page. You’re seeing the tags from the Web Developer Toolbar (for Firefox) produced by Chris Pederick. The challenge for me is understanding how to observe that image and go into the stylesheet for the page and make appropriate changes to alter the way links appear within articles.
Please understand—I don’t want to alter the way a link appears in the navbar, in the titles of articles, in the sidebar or anywhere else on the page. I do however want to style the links within an article differently from their existing (obscure) styling.
I know people who see this, visualize the change, find the appropriate selector and change it in less than 30 seconds. For me, this will amount to a half day of trial-and-error digging, research, reading and tedium. That’s the frustrating part about not being a designer with deep skills in web development.
Clearly, both CEO’s have the toughest jobs in business. It’s time to do something revolutionary. It’s time to stop dithering and make some things happen. Selling nine million cars a year at GMC and with Ford seeking The Way Forward, you cannot shrink to greatness. Do something radical. Regain your prestige, but do it with insanely great products.
I want a Mac, but I want a Mac that I can work with as effectively as I can work with my PC. Wait…perhaps that’s an overstatement. Plenty of days I find myself hating PC’s and Windows and USB and technology…and, I digress. Why haven’t I switched?
The three reasons are beautifully summarized by John Gruber’s essay this morning called Familiarity Breeds a User Base. He quotes liberally from and responds to this entry from Joshua Micah Marshall. However, the spur to the flank that apparently got all of the discussion under way is here.
* * * UPDATE * * * Less to do with Macs per se, but a clear message about technology, here’s I’m just sayin’.
* * * UPDATE #2 * * * All (logical) objections notwithstanding, Joshua Micah Marshall bought a Mac.
At roughly 9:00a.m. EST tomorrow, Berkshire Hathaway will post the annual report and letter to shareholders on the web site. Each year we remind readers that careful study of Warren Buffett’s letters and annual reports since 1977 may provide a better education than a couple of years in a top-notch business school. Others said it; we believe it.
Berkshire completed the acquisition of BusinessWire this week. You can read about that here and here.
The company’s results for 2005 will include some charges for the losses incurred for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, other storms and other catastrophic losses. Remember, Berkshire is first and foremost an insurance company, though its list of holdings grows nearly every year. In the third quarter alone, Berkshire recorded almost $3 billion as an estimate against the ultimate losses recorded from Hurricane Katrina.
Yesterday, March 2, 2006, an “A” share of Berkshire closed at $87,000. Many believe that number might be well below the company’s intrinsic value. Let’s watch!
After all the planning and preparation, a large technology project I’ve been leading will wrap up in the next two or three weeks. It’s been a great success for everyone involved.
What’s next? That’s where I need you—fellow participants in life’s Rodent Regatta—to offer some suggestions. I’m looking for a big project. Define big along any of several dimensions: numbers of participants, scope of the challenge, timeline, budget or mission/impact.
Some examples might help:
Leaders at Bass Pro Shops are talking about taking a public arena off Memphis’s books and turning it into one of the great destination stores in the USA. Once they finish the contractual details of acquiring or leasing the property from the city, the fun begins. Architects, engineers, merchandisers and a broad selection of contractors and subcontractors will take the next two years and $75 million to transform the Tomb of Doom into a store rivaling the company’s 300,000 square foot flagship store in Springfield.
Unfortunately, I’m looking for something other than a voluntary opportunity. Who is hiring folks to rebuild the Gulf Coast? The volunteer opportunities abound, but I’m looking for a project-for-pay.
I’m ready to go to work. I’m looking for a project. Let me know what’s on your radar screen! If you’ve got contacts that have inroads into one of these initiatives, I’d like to talk to them. If you know of other big projects, use the comments to tell us about them. Oh…and thanks!
Today a shipping carton arrived on my doorstep. Inside was a display carton like those you might find sitting on a retail counter. Inside the display carton were twenty (20) cardboard CD cases with two (2) CD’s in each one.
Clearly, there is money in all of this open source stuff somewhere.Made out of good materials and with nice-looking graphics, both the CD’s and the cardboard carriers were from Ubuntu or Canonical, LTD. I’m not a Linux user. I’ve never really had a notion that I’d replace my Windows laptop with anything other than a Macintosh. Yet, compelling graphics coupled with these twenty sets of open source software CD’s shipped unexpectedly to my desk make me curious.
These CD’s carry version 5.1 of the Unbuntu distro of Linux. The second CD in each package contains such things as Firefox, Open Office, Thunderbird, etc. Check it out here. I don’t know when I might need Linux, but this unexpected package and the sites that I’ve linked to make me curious. I’ll pay more attention to what Linux is doing and what Mark Shuttleworth is doing to promote it.
Back country flying presents a host of challenges. Operating conditions take a toll on aircraft that were designed for those situations. Yet, service intervals, mean time between failures and pilot flying styles alter even the most rugged aircraft’s ability to perform on a continuous basis.
You saw End of the Spear? You got a glimpse of one type of aviation need in the field of mission and humanitarian flight. Now comes word that the Quest Aircraft Company is preparing the next generation of airplanes designed for this work.
From a daydream several weeks ago to yesterday’s receipt of instructions providing access to Joyent, things are changing. What things? What changes?
Joyent bought TextDrive. Now Joyent lists three products on their weblog. They include the “Joyent connector services. There’s the TextDrive’s hosting service. Then, there is the Strongspace service.
All three services are needed. They are needed by the small business, and they are needed by the freelancer providing any type of collaborative goods or services to a list of customers. The question is whether or not the small business and/or the freelancer can manage all of these features without an intermediary. If so, how? Let’s work an example…
The best experience I’ve ever had trying to manage four or five domain names at a web host and the associated email accounts involved a product called cpanel. However, as I read through the discussion forum at TextDrive, the techies show great contempt for the product. Though it was easily understood by even a novice user of web hosting, it must have some underlying technical problems that make it less than desirable as the administration center for a next generation host like TextDrive.
If cpanel is wrong, what’s right? TextDrive talked for a while about writing a product called TextPanel. It was to be their answer to easy to use and technically sound administration of hosting services (and email). There was even some suggestion that TextPanel might provide a way to administer all of the services that the Joyent-TextDrive-Strongspace folks offer.
I’m ready for it. With the introduction of the Joyent services, there is yet another set of administrator name and password, user name and password and forum name and password. Those come on top of the TextDrive user name and password, the forum user name and password and all of the email names and passwords. I suspect the same will be true when I get the Strongspace services. Another user name and password combo for the administrator. More for the user(s). There’s a weblog and a forum for this one as well.
Joyent (et al) will make their mark when they simplify the management of all of these. Clearly, any of them stand alone as services that individuals and businesses need. However, the three are so compelling that they’ll be used together. There needs to be a single administrative center for these. It’s time to combine the forums. It’s time to reduce the number of user names and passwords. It’s time to combine the weblogs using sections or categories to help someone see it all or filter the content to suit their needs.
If something similar to this recommendation does not happen, we’re going to see intermediaries hired to manage it all. If they aren’t hired for their technical know-how, they’re going to be hired to save time for those who have higher and better uses of their time than to keep track of a multitude of user names, passwords, weblogs, forums and administrative centers.
Perhaps all of this has already been designed by folks far smarter than me. Perhaps it is simply a matter of time before it rolls out. If not, let me say I want a place where I can manage all of this stuff without having to become an übergeek. The list calls for a variety of services to be taken to the Internet so that no person is bound to a single PC to get work done:
Backup services
Storage space
Domain hosting & management
Email management & spam blocking (including everything one can do with Outlook and Gmail, as well as clarifying aliases, forwarding, etc.)
Shared calendars & project status information
Contact & address book administration
Statistics about hosting, email, storage, etc.
Capacity and account information related to costs (i.e. am I doing anything to drive my costs up or to harm others given the shared nature of the services?)
I’m visiting too many sites that expect me to make the switch now from reading to listening. There are problems with that. First, the behavior of Windows Media Player, RealPlayer and QuickTime on a Windows PC is highly variable from one PC to the next. Get them all together on a single machine and you’re simply begging to watch the turf wars as they fight it out for control of your PC. Take a look at that URL and imagine yourself trying to jot it down…Second, there remains a lot of variability from one day to the next in what passes for broadband in this country. [Hint: 5Mbps down and 1Mbps up isn’t broadband except in the marketing suites of America’s ISP’s.]
Finally, if you’ve got a well-behaved and properly-configured PC and your bandwidth is working just fine, you still lose something when a link-filled weblog entry becomes a podcast. For now, there are places where traditional entries and podcasts coexist very well. However, and strictly as an example, 43 Folders is also a shining example of a site where going all-podcast-all-the-time wouldn’t work. There is too much information there that is right-brained—you simply have to see it to fully grasp how you might use it. Take a look at that URL and imagine yourself trying to jot it down or type it in while listening to a podcast.
Meanwhile, back at the Rat Race—we’ll add podcasting here when 100Mbps up and down is the rule rather than the exception. By that time a podcast will be all-video-all-the-time complete with a clickable whiteboard showing the links as the podcaster talks. Then, I’m in.
It’s time for Super Bowl XL, and today’s the day for CSP LII.
Life is good.
* * * UPDATE * * * Do meetings happen within the deep recesses of the NFL where referrees and “league officials” discuss the upcoming outcome of games? Wait…that’s wrestling. Sorry.
Norton Antivirus 2006 from Symantec carries a passenger. He goes by Norton Protection Center, and he’s one of those arrogant blowhards who knows everything about everything. Dealing with him is ponderous at best and like watching your computer handle every bit on screen at worst. He’s big, loud, unentertaining and slow.
If he visits you, here’s what you should do:
Right-click on My Computer and select “manage”
Navigate to Services and Applications in the left-hand window and expand that menu
Click on “services” and then find Norton Protection Center in the right-hand screen
Right-click on the surly pig and choose “properties”
Neuter him by stopping him and changing his startup type to “disabled”
Having sufficiently crippled him, you will now return to antiviral computing at speeds approximating normal.
Oh, and thanks Symantec for bringing this louse into our lives. Your pursuit of all things anti-computing continues to make you one of the least customer-friendly companies in existence.
Our President spoke tonight. The sound bites were plentiful, but the statements of fact were compelling. Either we believe these things or we do not:
“But even tough debates can be conducted in a civil tone, and our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger.”
“We will choose to act confidently in pursuing the enemies of freedom – or retreat from our duties in the hope of an easier life.”
“No one can deny the success of freedom, but some men rage and fight against it.” Hindsight alone is not wisdom. And second-guessing is not a strategy.
“Yet there is a difference between responsible criticism that aims for success, and defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure. Hindsight alone is not wisdom. And second-guessing is not a strategy.”
“The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions – and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons.”
“We must also confront the larger challenge of mandatory spending, or entitlements.”
“By 2030, spending for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid alone will be almost 60 percent of the entire Federal budget.”
“Our Nation needs orderly and secure borders.”
“Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. Here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.”
“We need to encourage children to take more math and science, and make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations.”
“Today, having come far in our own historical journey, we must decide: Will we turn back, or finish well?”
Are there problems of national scope and scale that should rank higher than these? If so, we must identify and agree on them. If not, we must get on with the (civil) debates that lead to lasting solutions.
As I heard the story told, it went something like this:
Henry Ford’s assembly line went down. Teams of engineers tried everything to no avail. Losing money by the minute, Ford called Thomas Edison. Edison arrives, spots the problem and instructs the engineers. Ford’s dollars start flowing again. Two weeks later Edison sends Ford a bill for $10,000. Ford replies by letter that Edison was only on site for a few hours and he (Ford) needs an itemized invoice. By return mail Edison provides this itemized invoice:
Time on site......$100.00
Know-how.......$9900.00
Total due......$10,000.00
It’s a story representative of what a designer or expert in any field faces when billing for services. Read what Andy Rutledge has to say about staring at ceiling tiles and billing for your results.
Don’t state your position relative to your opponent’s. Don’t state your party’s position relative to the opposition. Tell us what you think. Tell us what you plan to do. Tell us what your party stands for.
We’ll do the comparing and contrasting. When your next statement begins with, “Contrary to what my opponent believes…,” you’ve already lost me. I want to know what you think without all the flourishes and embellishments. Veiled commentary about your opposition buried within your remarks will cost you my vote…period.
Whether you seek a career in politics or have chosen to term-limit yourself to 1, 2 or 12 terms, I don’t care. Just tell me what you think. If you want to talk about the war, don’t begin your remarks with some backhanded slap at how we find ourselves in a war. We’re there…what’s your position on what we do now? Some tax cuts were put in place. Don’t critique that decision. Tell me what you will do about taxation, now.
I’m not interested in whether or not you are angry. I’m not interested in whether or not you feel threatened. I’m not interested in how much (or how little) you fear for our nation. I want to hear your position on issues. Spending time talking about somebody else’s legal entanglements or failed policies or lousy strategies doesn’t tell me what you’ll do.
All we want to hear is what you will do if you get elected.
Oh…one more thing. When you get elected, remember that you are then to get on with the business of running the government of the country, the state, the county, the city or whatever. You are not there to run the politics of the country or state. Simpler, politics isn’t government. Politics is a method for getting elected to a role in the government. Learn that!
Berkshire Hathaway’s shares closed at $90,200.00 and $2963.50 for the A & B shares respectively. The annual report is scheduled to be posted on the company’s website in the next few weeks.
Here’s a link to the pdf file covering Berkshire’s acquisition of Business Wire. The annual meeting is scheduled for Saturday, May 6, 2006 in Omaha.
Long-time readers will recall the statement that a thorough reading and re-reading of Warren Buffett’s letters to shareholders is worth more than two years in a good graduate business school. Hyperbole aside, a bit of understanding and insight helps!
Joyent acquired TextDrive and the two companies began merging their know-how, dreams and skills. Thanks to Dean Allen, the company continues to offer incredible products and services with the best still on the horizon. Today, there is another lifetime hosting arrangement offered with the first taste of combining the services of Joyent, TextDrive and also Strongspace. Take a careful look at The Mixed Grill. Here’s a glimpse:
In the Textpattern support forum I asked, How did you learn CSS? Do you have advice for someone who wants to learn how to properly “write CSS” and position elements on the screen?
a book or books
strictly by doing; is there a sample problem you’d recommend?
an online site or tutorial
a software tutorial (e.g. StyleMaster or TopStyle?)
As a bonus, I learned of Hemingway, a template for another weblog application. I’m hoping that the Textpattern Theme Competition produces some templates like that one!
UPDATE: Resources for learning CSS continue to come in. One writer pointed to the following people and links:
Chariots of Fire was playing on A&E this morning. The coffee was a repackaging of four bags of remnants. I called it pilgrim berry.
Deciding to really learn more about what Newsvine is all about, I began browsing. The first thing that caught my eye was I Have Seen the End of the United States. What an excellent take on the behavior of politicians and what it foretells of our future.
Wanting to learn more about Andy, I visited his web site. From there I learned of his employer’s web site. The message is clear that great, attention-grabbing web sites can also be standards-compliant and key marketing components for businesses.
After the towers collapsed and the news coverage of the event subsided, I found a need to change some things. I wasn’t sure what needed to change, and there were some false starts.
This weblog became part of the answer and has lasted. January 13, 2002 marked the date of the first post. By some quirk of Userland hosting, you can even visit that first post by clicking here. The home page of that site is here. In case ties back to the old beginnings get severed, here’s how that post appears under today’s design.
Recently some new software has entered the toolbox or will very soon. Different people get excited about different features in software. Sometimes there’s a definite functional aspect that sets a product apart. There are look-and-feel issues that carry the day for others. Notepad sits at one extreme. Perhaps TextMate sits at another.
Here are some tools that are becoming a bigger part of my work:
Social networking tools haven’t typically been on my radar screen. However, I think ma.gnolia may have the potential to change my thinking. Newsvine is a new way to look at (and contribute to) reported news. I’ve used FeedDemon to subscribe to RSS feeds for some time now. Under new ownership and with version 2.0 just around the corner, I’ll be spending more time reading sites via the aggregator. Finally, SnagIt has caught my fancy as a useful tool for dealing with images.
Click the logos above for more information about each tool!
I like the concept of city-wide wireless access to the Internet. I dislike the notion of taxpayers covering the costs—either the capital costs or the operating costs. Government does some things well and other things poorly. Internet access provides a new set of examples of things governments do poorly.
However, it’s beginning to look like the concepts behind municipal wi-fi may be as flawed as some other things that cities do. In my city they frequently repave a street only to have a crew cutting holes in the new pavement once the paving crews get a few blocks away. Department A in public works didn’t know what Department B had before it; that’s life in government.
Techdirt has lots of coverage as you’ll see if you visit the links above. Here’s the extent of what I believe a city’s involvement should be: the city has the easements; donate them!
Let a business (with enough capital and knowledge to do the job right) have a long-term lease on those easements for $1.00 a year. Then, be willing to listen to the endless grousing by the legacy phone companies who will whine like little children.
Complete with sponsors, rules and a deadline, there’s now a template design competition for Textpattern. Reviewing designs will be a great way to learn the details of Textpattern’s tags, forms, sections and pages.
If you’re a designer looking for new business, this might be an excellent community to support.
Many thanks to Tom Fadial for making it all happen!
Newsvine is a place to get, write and comment on the news. Here’s how the company describes itself:
Seattle-based Newsvine, Inc. was founded in 2005 by a small team of like-minded colleagues with one purpose: to build a perfectly different, perfectly efficient way to read, write, and interact with the news. Founded by veterans of Disney, ESPN, and other media organizations, the mission of Newsvine is to bring together big and little media in a way which respects established journalism and empowers the individual at the same time.
The “private beta” of Newsvine is under way. I have fifteen invitations available. Leave a comment below and I’ll get an invitation on the way to you.
Technologists don’t understand Google. Some say the Google Pack is worthless because it’s focused (first) on Windows XP. Others point out that the software is already available elsewhere. Still others know a better way. There’s more to the story than what the insiders believe is reality.
What the techies don’t get is everybody’s not a techie! Having a trusted source say, “do this,” well, it’s what so many users of PC’s need. A friend and I often help individuals and small businesses with their information technology strategies and implementations.
Most users know there’s something called spyware, but they have no clue as to what to do about it. Viruses offer the same puzzle. Multi-media is loudly hyped, but what does a business user select as the single application or suite of applications for this “need?”
Google is providing quite a service by making a decision for the unknowing and—more importantly—providing a centralized spot for keeping everything up to date! If you don’t have a trusted advisor, I’d suggest you uninstall any and all of your past attempts at the tools that Google Pack replaces. Then, download it and use it!
Here’s my history with the applications prior to Google Pack:
Google Earth – got it; love it
Picasa – what to use?; Flickr?; this one awaits my camera choice
Google Pack Screensaver – I use plain vanilla Windows XP screensavers
Google Desktop – it’s downloaded, but I don’t use it
Google Toolbar for IE – I recommend it to clients who stick with IE, but I use Firefox
Firefox with Google Toolbar – my daily browser
Norton AV 2005 Special Edition – I use & install Norton; it or something like it must be on every PC
Ad-Aware SE Personal – use it every week & recommend it along with Spybot Search & Destroy
Adobe Reader 7 – this & Winzip belong on every Windows PC
You’ve got alternatives? That’s what the comments are for!
Start with an aside: Dr. Michael A. Covington writes an online notebook almost every day. He’s a prof at the Artificial Intelligence Center at the University of Georgia. He photographs the skies among other things. He also has wisdom to share. While I haven’t found a syndication feed, I’ve got his site bookmarked and enjoy his work.
I need any reader’s advice. Within the next thirty days or so, I’m going to dive into digital photography. There’s a photography show coming up in February which gives me some pause. New product announcements are frequently made there. That’s the only thing that may delay my decisions.
Otherwise, my dilemma is one of too many choices. Here are four cameras I’m thinking about:
I’ll be photographing everything from travel sites to family gatherings to items to list on eBay. Some of those cameras are reach-in-the-pocket-and-shoot. Some are semi-pro SLR’s.
Now for the questions:
What do you use and like?
What are the must-have accessories to go with these?
Where do you like to buy this stuff?
What are the good rumors about new equipment?
What can I buy now that offers pleasing and broadly flexible photographic options for the next thirty six months?
Journalism is fact. It’s not your thoughts about fact—that’s opinion. It’s not presenting the facts with your findings—that’s editorial.
Journalism is fact. It exists when someone writes or reports fact. Fact comes from someone who knows. The journalist’s job is to determine who knows the facts, collect them and report them to the rest of us. Telling us what some other reporter or network might have reported isn’t journalism. That’s called a grapevine.
TV infobabes emotionally chatting with others about what either of them thinks they might have overhead—well, that’s just chit-chat. It’s not reporting. It’s not journalism. It’s hardly entertainment. It’s a poll. It’s a man-on-the-street discussion. It’s not journalism. It’s simply an airing of opinions.
Why does it take over seven hours to download an update to Adobe’s Photoshop Elements 3.0? The 4.0 update is a 500MB+ file.
This application better really be good. What on earth could Adobe’s Download Manager be doing to throttle the download to such an extent. Oh well, here’s to better doctored digital photos in 2006!
After 88 years in business a local bicycle shop is closing in 2006.
The Wall Street Journal listed the actors/movies that Jeff Daniels watches over and over to improve his skill: Alan Arkin in The In-Laws, Eddie Bracken in The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove, Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon, Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson. It seems the star of Dumb and Dumber might have been acting! [Thanks to Lauren Mechling of the Wall Street Journal for the insight.]
Bill Miller of Legg Mason managed a mutual fund so that for the fifteenth consecutive year he beat the S&P500. No other mutual fund manager has done that.
What can I do to help Wal-Mart with quality and customer service?
Someone used the term “junior seniors” this week to refer to people aged 55-64. Demographics are becoming more important. Young folk may see their forays into age discrimination come back to haunt them.
A minister wrongfully dismissed from a smallish church after 21 years of faithful service now ministers in a church over twenty times the size of the former one. Life loops. Good wins. God is good.
Natural gas prices continue to escalate in Memphis. I wonder what a normal annual inventory turnover rate is for Memphis Light, Gas & Water?
In 2006 some more CEO’s will discover that employees and investors and customers expect more from them than celebrity, financial engineering and high profile shenanigans. Run the business, please.
During 2006 I’d like to interview Mr. Lee Scott, CEO of Wal-Mart for about one hour – in person. All of my questions during that interview will relate to how he views Wal-Mart’s performance in the areas of quality and customer service. Let me explain.
First, I’ve previously written Mr. Scott in an open letter here. That letter was prompted by a bad experience with the automotive department at one of Wal-Mart’s stores. Recently, the scene was repeated with some really bad twists. Yes, I went back.
I like to buy Michelin tires at Wal-Mart, because they are cheaper than anywhere else I’ve found. However, once things began to go horribly wrong in the area of customer service, I asked one Wal-Mart employee, “Do you or any of your co-workers really care about what’s happening to me or these other folks that have been waiting?” The answer came with a vacant stare, “Not really.”
My experience left me pondering Wal-Mart’s particular challenges in the areas of quality and customer service. It seems to me there are three areas where Wal-Mart’s “risks” go beyond merely selling a product and letting the manufacturer of the product handle complaints. Those three areas are automotive services, pharmacy services and food storage services.
If I buy a hammer, hit my thumb with it and want to sue someone for my stupidity, I’d have to look to the hammer manufacturer – not Wal-Mart. However, if I buy a side of beef that has been stored at improper temperatures and the block party sends a herd of people to the emergency room, Wal-Mart might have some exposure. Similar scenarios can be cooked up with pharmacy operations.
Let me be perfectly clear. These are extreme, ridiculous examples. I have no intention of entering into any form of litigation with Wal-Mart.
All of this is driven by a desire to see the company improve. I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with so many of the things others are using to slam the company. Outsourcing is fine. Employing people at prevailing rates with prevailing benefits is fine. Making suppliers find new ways to cut costs, become more effective and improve service is fine. Aggressively moving into new markets is fine.
My belief – and what I’d like to talk to Mr. Scott about – is that with some rather simple improvements in customer service practices, Wal-Mart might go further in countering the naysayers than with any public relations budget or morale-boosting campaign.
Continue to be known as the place to go for low prices, but add a touch of kindness and customer appreciation and the sky is the limit.
Clearly, I’m tipping my hand. Mine is not going to be a contentious interview. Rather, I want to have an open dialog about quality, customer service and how he views things. I’m a fan of what of Wal-Mart wants to be. Capitalism is the only way to go. Wal-Mart’s critics and those clamoring for “social reform” must constantly weigh their social causes against the risk of becoming socialists.
I just want to talk about how you bring a servant’s attitude to over a million employees. We can meet anywhere at any time that is convenient for both of us. We can meet in Bentonville. We can meet in at an airport where you’ll be traveling. We can meet at a Wal-Mart store.
To those assuming this is some idle dream, it’s not. If we have a discussion that ultimately makes Wal-Mart one of the friendliest and most convenient places for customers to get great prices and great service attitudes, well, we will produce one of the highest returns on the investment of an hour’s time in the history of free enterprise!
Memphis owns and operates its own public utility company which sells or resells electricity, natural gas and water. Along with those services we get sewer services and some billing of other city services.
The utility is called MLG&W and it can only be mismanaged. It cannot lose money if properly managed.
So, quite predictably, they raised rates on natural gas in the same month that Memphis has its coldest (coolest) temperatures. Not only is your utility bill higher because of consumption, but it is also higher because of new rates.
Here’s a web site devoted to all the maladies that make Memphis so special.
Memphis, Tennessee is in Shelby County. This county is bordered on the west by the Mississippi River and Arkansas. On the south it is bordered by Mississippi. It’s a city that is flagging in spite of superficial signs of progress.
Memphis is dealing with political corruption that is as bad as at any point in its history. Within the city limits we pay a county property tax as well as the city’s property tax. Poorly run government causes the tax rate to go up each year. Greed makes the property assessment go up as well. No one has been able to peg the level of taxation that is due to corruption. Whatever the case, people are fleeing.
The impressions have been there for a while. Now, the data is coming in. The local newspaper, called The Commercial Appeal, documented another round of citizens fleeing the city and the county. You can read about it in this article [free subscription may be required].
Here’s an example of just how bad it has become:
The U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday estimated that Shelby’s median household income dropped from $41,048 to $39,099 between 2000 and 2003, while Tennessee as a whole and several surrounding counties had gains.
Those are 2003 numbers. Expect those trends to accelerate when 2004, 2005 and 2006 numbers are examined.
Check the end of this entry called Edit 3 for an update on TextDrive specs. It seems that everybody participating in TextDrive’s various “VC” plans can now occupy 2GB of disk space with up to 15 domains and use 20GB of bandwidth per month.
My own interpretation of this says that someone who combined the VC200 with the VCII now has 4GB of space, can host 30 domains and possibly can use 40GB of bandwidth each month. This for single payments of $199 and $399 respectively. That’s $598 for a lifetime hosting arrangement.
As of this entry, similar specs would cost between $16 and $40 per month for shared hosting arrangements from popular hosts. Payback is sweet and takes only 15 to 37 months!
Memphis sits on the high river bluffs on the banks of the Mississippi River. Known as the “Bluff City,” the city is viewed by cynics as a place where bluff city refers to an attitude.
The wannabes in Memphis—typically new money—frequently turn any traditional event or activity into a place to be seen by their latte-sipping, Lexus-driving friends. Nowhere is this easier to find than at the theater. Whether an opera, symphony, ballet or Broadway show, the wannabes want to be seen.
Here’s a tip: get to your seat before the show starts and get back into that seat before intermission ends. You’re annoying enough as it is. It’s simply rude and ignorant behavior to be walking to the front of a theater and sliding into your row five seat when little kids are trying to see the stage. You are what you are; there’s no bluffing your way through that.
Over the next few hours or days, I’m going to flush my craw of some things that have stuck in it. Here’s the somewhat tentative list:
Theater attendees in Memphis are wannabes
Utility management at Memphis Light Gas & Water
A Wal-Mart story you simply won’t believe
Why they’re leaving my county in droves
When will CEO’s get real jobs?
This—again somewhat tentatively—will be a batch of five articles during the rest of this weekend and into the new week. By Christmas weekend, the goal is to cleanse the attitude. Clueless customer service, or worse, customer service driven solely by the assumptions and preferences of the server is getting much worse. I’m beyond tired of it.
There’s a Slashdot pointer to an Ars Technica history of the most popular computers in the personal computer industry.
As someone who built a large computer dealership, then helped build one of the largest PC distributors in the country, there’s a lot to recall about the greatest days of the industry. We sold to commercial users of personal computers. Most often we were talking to people who were looking for alternatives to stand-alone word processing systems and better terminals to the “mainframe.”
Clearly, there was a consumer and hobbyist demand that sustained the market for small, personal computers in the earliest days. Yet, the industry was built by sales to those with volume requirements for PC’s. There were some tricky periods within certain eras. Difficult to imagine today are the moments when it wasn’t completely clear that AT&T or Texas Instruments would ultimately give way to IBM’s clout. Would Compaq or Corona prevail or would both fall by the wayside?
Faced with buying inventory, training field engineers, stocking replacement parts and selecting software, the choices of brand were anything but trivial. Our dealership launched in 1981. I sold in 1990 and helped build one of the big distributors. By 1994, it was obvious that consolidation would bring about some huge reversals of fortune. I left the PC distribution industry and largely observed the implosion from afar.
Organizations built around names like Computerland, Entre, Inacom, MicroAge and others began to fold in the face of slow shifts from their controlled (franchise) distribution models to the wide open distribution models being pursued by Ingram Micro, Tech Data and (ultimately) the major manufacturers.
In those years, owning computer inventory was like owning heads of lettuce. One day it had value. The next day it looked a little brown around the edges. By the next day it was beginning to smell. What a great place to learn high-speed logistics, sophisticated inventory control and zero-stock distribution models. Some got it. Many did not.
Measuring things can be tricky. To correctly provide a metric, you must usually have some certainty about who wants to know and why? Otherwise, you get purposeful distortions or you get inaccuracies brought about by imprecision.
“I think they should count them differently,” she said of the list, which combines single-ticket attractions, such as Dollywood’s theme park, with multiple-ticket attractions like the Golf & Games Family Park. The park counts every ticket sold to its three 18-hole Putt-Putt courses, two go-kart tracks, an arcade, a golf driving range, batting cages, a laser tag arena and, in warm weather, a bumper-boat ride.—from Bigger Draw Than Graceland by Michael Lollar writing for The Commercial Appeal [free subscription may be required]
There you have it. Memphis offers its number one attraction to the state of Tennessee list with a putt-putt golf course. Let’s hope we do a bit better job of appraising and assessing property for taxation. Oh, wait, this is Memphis! Yet, ten million people go to Dollywood every year?
Hubris is a subject we’ve covered several times before. Lately, it has come to mind again. This time it’s about technical people who simply cannot tolerate the “ignorant users.”
Examples include:
a web host unsatisfied with a customer’s requests
a technical writer indifferent toward a customer’s ignorance
a medical office receptionist accusing the patient when the receptionist is unable to find fifteen years of patient history
a university forcing people to park in the wrong place in order to go inside a building and request that the gate be opened into the area visitors are supposed to park—complete with reprimand for parking in the wrong place
a software company overly confident that they know the better way in the face of customer requests to the contrary
a community of users now seeing their discussion forum dominated by a narrow group of snarky experts threatened by any intrusion from the outsiders
There are solutions, but those in a position to change things must want to satisfy customers. You must be willing to ask (sincerely), “who are the customers and what do they want?”
In a 2002 poll, the Consumer Electronics Association discovered that 87% of people said ease of use is the most important thing when it comes to new technologies. “Engineers say, ‘Do you know how much complexity we’ve managed to build in here?’ But consumers say, ‘I don’t care. It’s just supposed to work!’ ” says Daryl Plummer, group vice president at Gartner Group.—from The Beauty of Simplicity by Linda Tischler writing for Fast Company magazine.
Had you invested $25,000 in Starbucks back in 1992, your investment would be worth about a million today. You can see the details here.
Hindsight like this raises a question. What can we see going into 2006 that carries the potential for an annual compound growth rate of 32%? Starbucks delivered in excess of 4000% over thirteen years in spite of a bubble. What’s next?
Only four days after our Pacific Fleet was bombed by the Japanese in 1941, the United States was at war with Germany throughout Europe and the Japanese throughout the south Pacific. American industry rose to the challenges of supplying the nation’s needs at home and abroad.
Yes, there were sacrifices. Yes, there was rationing. Women worked unbelievably hard in factories where men had left jobs behind to go fight for freedom.
I’m thankful for the Greatest Generation. They provided in ways that some current and nearly all future generations will never understand.
This morning I’m writing without a solid outline. The topic blends the recent news about TextDrive, Joyent and hosted (ASP) applications. The thoughts are partially fueled by Seattle’s Best made too strong this morning, but also by this entry in the TextDrive forums.
I’ve bought, sold and invested in way too many businesses to have any of the sense of ownership and control that some members of the TextDrive community have. I’ve received more than a fair ROI from my two purchases of lifetime hosting from TextDrive. I may never use the disk space, bandwidth or domain counts that I’m allowed. Yet, when I think of the entire investment as education, I’ve gotten quite a return.
Now, how to build from here. I’m no designer. I’m no programmer. Yet, I’ve spent thirty years watching small to large companies manage and mismanage information technology. I’ve watched driven owners tell the receptionist to just pick a phone system. When he can’t get his email, he yells, “call the computer guy.” I’ve seen overloaded CIO’s commanded to build Rome in a day.
What can we bundle together that makes it easy for a 5-person business or a 50-person business to get all of the services they count on from technology? How can we get to the benefits without having to pore over every specification? Security ought to be a major part, but it shouldn’t require a hacker to set up, operate, monitor and verify. Simply providing great contact management and follow-up isn’t enough.
Email is part of the need. Shared calendars and documents are needs. But, what if you’re attempting to create this week’s “call list” and you want to also mention past due accounts to those who have them? What if you’re calling someone about a new promotion, but they have orders pending? How do you make sure the caller (your employee) is made aware of those pending orders and their status in advance of or during the call?
It goes beyond project management. It’s more than collaboration software. The need bridges the acronyms. ERP, CRM, SFA, SCM and the rest of the alphabet soup doesn’t lead to bottom line results for businesses. Rather, tools, processes and techniques that allow proactive and preventive actions with coworkers, suppliers and customers create profit.
What might it mean to be a “Joyent VC” in the TextDrive meaning of VC? How might that be used to benefit small businesses? What are the differences between installing a Joyent Connector and a “server appliance?” Remember the Cobalt Qube? What are its equivalents in today’s market?
I recently helped a client install a fully-managed and hosted VOIP system as part of a larger I.T. project. Rather than buying and managing Cisco switches, they have subscribed to a point-to-point T1 line, and the datacenter is hosting 100 telephones fully equipped with all the features of Cisco’s VoIP technology. How do we drop that service into a business along with Joyent, along with NetSuite, along with the ISP, hosting and other I.T. requirements that any growing company needs?
I don’t want to spend all of my time making the technology work, either. I want to help businesses (i.e. owners) get the benefits. This isn’t about selling gear at cost just to get paid for support, training and configuration time. Remember, we’re talking about businesses that may not realize that they need I.T. and phone accounts in the general ledger. Some of them track copier costs more closely than personal computer costs.
Perhaps this is a search for something that doesn’t exist. However, the first one to find it wins big. Enough. We’ll figure this out.
Below is a table that represents my best recollection and research concerning the various lifetime hosting arrangements provided by TextDrive. These are not meant to be binding or to put words in anyone’s mouth.
Disclaimer’s done. I also think there has been some shifting in the specs of the older arrangements as newer ones have been offered. Then, add a couple of these together and you get still another mix of specs. Finally, merge TextDrive into Joyent and a bit of additional updating happens. Here’s my take on the original offers, but watch for edits and updates:
Mo/Yr
Called
Price
Domains
Bandwidth
Space
db
05/04
VC200
$199
10
10GB
1GB
20
06/04
LHR1
$199
3
2GB
200MB
6
02/05
VCII
$399
15
20GB
1GB
20
09/05
VC3
$399
15
20GB
1GB
20
11/05
VC42
$399
10
10GB
2GB
20
Perhaps we’ll provide another table showing how each of these has been updated to newer specs.
EDIT 1:1LHR stands for Lifetime Hosting Redux and was briefly offered during June of 2004. That makes five offers of lifetime hosting—not four. 2VC4 is also known as The Mandelbrot.
EDIT 2: Corrected the date on the LHR from 2005 to 2004.
EDIT 3: On December 20, 2005, we got a spec for the VC accounts at TextDrive. These specs will henceforth be known as the Stairway to Heaven specs. Combine two or more and you’ll have an escalator.
In the discussion forums for TextDrive I mentioned that I’d be willing to work the mailroom for a company like Joyent/TextDrive. It’s true. There is simply no doubt in my mind that for the masses who try to configure their home wifi routers or move everything from the old PC to the new one, Joyent is a better way. For those who operate a small business and try to keep their copies of Outlook populated with data from Quickbooks Pro, Joyent is better.
Extend the notion to web sites, hosting, shared files and the need to keep regular backups and the Strongspace, TextDrive and Joyent approaches are far superior. Web-based applications will offer lower life-cycle costs and greater benefits than client-server apps installed on customer-owned (and administered) servers.
One of these days there is going to be a way to launch a company completely on line. Some blend of applications like NetSuite and Joyent and Strongspace is going to be installable with a web-based form that triggers all of the integration small businesses need so badly.
The talk about TextDrive and Joyent fuels the roaring fire that is AJAX and Ruby on Rails. Yet, it takes an application like this one by Andrew Sutherland to really demonstrate what a new direction web apps are taking. Click on an element. Notice the additional links. Expand the level of detail just under the title. Amazing.
Few things in the technology arena have interested me as much these past few months as the development of TextDrive. Watching and using their offers of lifetime hosting accounts, their team development and their handling of technology and projects—well, it’s all been quite fascinating. It’s amazing timing given the direction things are taking on the web.
Today, TextDrive is a Joyent company. The press release is here. If you are young and technically skilled, I doubt you’ll find many opportunities that are as expansive as what I see ahead for Joyent/TextDrive et al. If you’re old and technically inclined, crawl up in the stands and be a spectator. This is going to be a great show!
There’s something that is simply revolting about a group of people who so openly seek everything that’s pretentious. Once called yuppies, these social climbers use any and every means to try and raise your impression of them while tearing down others. Worse, they pass these habits along to their offspring. They are the difference in a life that is a rat race and a life that is genuine.
Mint is a software product designed to help you determine how the web views your web site. It goes beyond mere referrer logs and groups information into meaningful blocks so that future design decisions can be more appropriately tuned to your audience.
This morning I made the update from Mint v1.14 to v.1.23. It wasn’t exactly gene-splicing, but it also took some time, some concentration and some care. Mint allows other software developers to add something called Peppers. These are like extensions or plugins that capture or sort web traffic information into other views.
There is still a bit of a task to determine which Peppers have been updated for the latest version of Pepper. They lag behind by hours, days or weeks. Then, the installation of these Peppers involves copying exactly the right files and folders into precisely the right places at the appropriate time.
Everyone’s talking about RSS. Some mean Atom. Some mean 0.92. Some mean 2.0. Then, there’s the whole notion of feeding on these feeds with a feed reader.
Textpattern is wrestling with the proper production of feeds as a standard feature of the software.
I used the test files provided in the Textpattern support forum and subscribed to them using FeedDemon 1.6.0.11RC2. A screen in FeedDemon looks like this after the subscription.
What needs to happen now? Here’s a portion of an email discussing the subject:
It looks like, in the list, FeedDemon is displaying the exact contents of the feed items, without any HTML entity decoding. On the right hand side, it’s displaying the HTML source. I’ve no idea why, other than that the RSS spec in particular doesn’t explain how HTML should be encoded and decoded. The Atom feeds are definitely done right, so this could be a FD problem.
The bottom line boils down to whether or not the test files are somehow wrong or whether FeedDemon’s current release candidate is handling them wrong. If Nick reads this, perhaps he can take a look for the benefit of Textpattern and FeedDemon users everywhere. Better still, if you’re a RSS genius, give the folks at Textpattern and/or FeedDemon some help. Me? I’m just the messenger.
This led me to the conclusion that the religious right are the American equivalents of communists. They make us sound silly and stupid. Petty. Ridiculous. —Dave Winer
It’s time to write again.
I’ve been quiet lately. There have been too many things going on, but none are more important than the protection of the freedoms cited by the Founders. To have a member of the far left in this country insinuating that conservative people of faith are communists would be laughable were it not so sad.
He’s better than that—I think. Americans—of both parties—are better than that. Derision is not part of the solution to this country’s challenges.
Write what you believe, but let’s try to find some balance between merely criticizing our fellow citizens and proposing alternatives to what they espouse. We need ideas far more than we need venom. We need brilliance not braggadocio.
Imagine the advantages to space planners if they could see a nearly real-time map of where people congregate. MIT has provided just such a capability by mapping the users logged onto its wireless network. Uncertainty and speculation give way to time-of-day knowledge of where the concentrations of people are likely to be.
Why? A. is under indictment and removed from his position in government. B. continues to whine, manipulate and undermine the long-standing traditions of civility in the United States Senate.
Buried in the bowels and intricacies of CSS and XHTML, I’ve been learning – slowly. Sidetracked by a bit of client work, I keep my eye on things like openoffice.org, Google, AJAX and Ruby on Rails.
If such matters interest you, there’s a repository that seems to have tentacles in all those directions. It’s called TextDrive. Going beyond basic hosting, it’s an educational institution and a thriving community. My enthusiasm for what these folks are doing grows. While you’re at it, check out Strongspace as well.
For an insiders view, look here for the real upside of what’s going on.
How much bandwidth is required to stream a high definition movie that is two hours long to a home receiver that will play that movie on a 52 inch display?
Same question, but instead of streaming that movie, we want to download it in a minute.
The point is that our current notion of a domestic Wi-Fi cloud probably won’t meet many of the needs that we have. I remember 10Mbps Ethernet. I use 100Mbps Ethernet today, but my Wi-Fi throttles that to around 11Mbps or less.
Something tells me that really high definition video is going to require us to move 6 or 8 GB of data in a hurry.
Calculations if you have them, please!
* * * UPDATE * * * Okay, here goes.
First, let’s clear up the confusion that arises when telecommunication types talk to computer engineering types. For the purposes of this discussion and mathematical simplicity, we’re using the following (slightly inaccurate) conventions:
1 byte = 8 bits
1 gigabyte = 1×109 bytes = 8×109 bits
1 Gbps = 1×109 bits per second
Also, in light of the Blu-ray disc, we’re going to use 50GB as the capacity of a dual layer disc that holds 8 hours of high definition video with audio. In other words, that disc will hold approximately four movies. So, a two-hour high definition movie represents roughly 12.5 GB of data (or 100×109 bits).
To move that much data over the wires (or air?) and save it in a minute, we need a system with a throughput of 1.67Gbps. Contrast that with a cable modem speed of even 3Mbps, and you see that we need something that is over 550 times as fast as what is generally considered fast today.
An optical fiber in the telecommunications world that carries that much data that fast is called an OC-48. It will carry 2.488 Gbps. That’s the long-haul need. In the last mile and the local area network, you need that same 1.67Gbps. That means we’re looking at something beyond 10GigE to insure the kind of throughput required.
There aren’t many telecommunications carriers that can meet that requirement, much less ISP’s, regional phone companies or WiFi hotspots. Yet, does anyone doubt that we’d like to be able to move a DVD worth of information from place to place in a minute or less? Does anyone doubt that we want to do that from a laptop situated anywhere in the USA?
There is opportunity buried here somewhere. The news about things happening on the Internet is compelling. We’re nearing another transformation in the ways that people get and share information and entertainment.
For some this will mean investing in public companies or IPO’s. For others it will mean going to work at a new business or in a new industry. Startups will form.
Skeptics continue to ask who will pay for the Internet. The answer can be found by asking, “who paid for all of the big media coverage of the recent storm disasters?” Hint: the business of advertising is changing.
The key is sifting through the news to find the underlying opportunity.
Read with interest the news that San Francisco wants a wifi cloud. Lots of cities do. When it gets right down to it, though, which companies have the capability, financing and technical relationships to pull off something in such a tricky topographic region as San Francisco?
For a short list (i.e. 26 companies) that might make the cut, take a look at the list of companies that responded to SF’s Request for Information. That’s RFI, not RFP. As I understand municipal bidding, there’s a rather significant distinction. I suspect responses to the RFI may lead to an even shorter list of companies that are offered an RFP. (Just a hunch).
It’s also interesting to note that Cisco is in the hunt with a partner, but not alone, but HP is apparently there and ready to go to work.
Reading about Korea, I conclude that the USA needs a wifi cloud from coast to coast and north to south. Don’t make it some 300kbps nonsense, either. We need a plan for 10Mbps. Yeah, I know, it’s the physics. But, get the minds at Google and Level 3 together and the problem won’t be intractable.
Fine. Congrats all around. But I’ll bet those guys never had to move or change seven domains at three different web hosts, make eleven email accounts work and see to it that all seven sites were visible to the public.
Had they tried, they’d still be working on it, and their temperaments would be very dour by now. Not just dour, very dour.
* * * UPDATE 10-6-05 * * * Okay, the domains have all be relocated and are resolving at TextDrive. Email is (mostly) squared away. Now for the challenges of restoring web sites.
Time was you just called somebody on the phone when you had a problem. Talking a bit, your problem might be solved over the phone. Otherwise, dispatching began and help was on the way.
Rev. 2.0 of this phenomenon involved a call center. With a call center came two things to help the call center—not the customers. Hold queues lined your call up in a straight line, no talking. Voicemail said, “talk now, but make it snappy, we’re very busy.”
Rev. 3.0 emerged from the bowels of the world wide web. We have trouble tickets and we have a forum. Type your problems and perhaps some kind soul will be watching. If you’re lucky, the spectator will be someone who has experienced something similar or knows the answer to your problem. Otherwise, you wait.
I’m snarled in the tangles of three hosting companies, five forums, three trouble ticket systems and six domains with email addresses. I have successfully created a condition in which none of the email addresses will work, none of the hosts can send me email and from roughly 3a.m. this morning (we’re now at 1p.m.) the condition has only grown worse.
All is well with you. That’s great. The yuppie lifestyle is intact. You’ve kept up with—and even passed—the Jones family, in spite of their new BMW. You live in a place free of any possible adversity. That’s great.
Of course, just because you don’t depend on levees, don’t get too comfortable. Oh, and just because you don’t have to attach your bookshelves to the wall, don’t be complacent.
There’s a time, a place and a lifestyle that might surprise you. Yes, even you might be surprised at what’s required of you. Perhaps it’s a natural thing—earthquake, flood, tornado—you know the lot. Or, maybe the rolling blackouts roll over you for thirty days at a time. Imagine your lifestyle without power for thirty days.
Or, imagine what could happen when everything that can’t happen happens at once. Odd sequences of tornadoes in a six-state area accompanied by a terrorist attack on a scale never-before-seen on the west coast wouldn’t necessarily do it. What if we were also at war in three places simultaneously? What if there was a sudden run on the dollar due to years of trade imbalances? What if anarchy became common?
When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein tells the story of some rather bright guys who bet against some things occurring concurrently. Design for a number three catastrophe when you know number fives are possible, and you get trouble. Blunder a bit in your estimates, and trouble swamps you. Global currency collapse isn’t likely, except...what if your government gets so deep into debt and deficit spending that…nah, can’t happen.
There is a combination of events that cannot happen simultaneously. You believe they can’t. They can and they might.
From the third quarter’s newsletter of The W. Edwards Deming Institute, I’ve reprinted a letter shown on page two. Succinctly, it provides the thinking in American business then—and NOW. One sentence says more than any dozen of the bestselling business books of the last two years!
W. EDWARDS DEMING, PH.D
CONSULTANT IN STATISTICAL STUDIES
WASHINGTON 20016
4924 BUTTERWORTH PLACE
TEL. (202) EMERSON 3-8552
6 April 1981
Dear Sir,
Your article about Japan in TIME for 30 March 1981 is excellent, but the paragraph concerning my work is ridiculous and can do a lot of harm to American industry at the very time when they need guidance. Dr. Deming did not just give a lecture in 1950. He gave 35 lectures in the summer of 1950 to engineers and to top management. Six months later he was there again, and six months after that yet again. He has made 19 trips to Japan.
One trouble with American industry today is that top management supposes that one lecture or one day will do it. “Come, spend a day with us, and do for us what you did for Japan, that we too may be saved.” It is not so simple. Few people in top management in America understand their responsibilities and know that they must serve a life term on quality and productivity from now on, under competent leadership.
Hotels ought to carry edition numbers or copyright dates. I don’t buy many books on technology with copyright dates back three years or more. I don’t buy many first editions when a book is now published in its fifth edition.
Even hotels operated by fine chains need to let a customer know in advance if the hotel is getting a bit worn around the edges. A property shouldn’t qualify for a new edition if the lobby got a new rug. You don’t get a new copyright date until every room, every bathroom, every hallway and every public convenience has been updated.
That said, mold in a dated bathroom is unacceptable under any circumstances. Charging for Wi-Fi in the lobby is like charging for hot water in the rooms – don’t do it. If you’re wanting to compete with the lower-priced suites hotels that offer a free newspaper, Wi-Fi, free breakfast and nice office-oriented amenities in the room, then compete. Don’t nickle-and-dime!
Here’s the way it works currently at some Courtyards by Marriott. A weekend room rate might be $80. Breakfast costs $8.95 if you want to visit the buffet. Spend $95 per night and two people can go through the buffet line. By the way, don’t bring me a check for this meal with a spot for a gratuity glaring at me. I don’t fill my own plate, then tip someone for bringing me the check. The daily rate for wireless Internet access is $9.95, but only in the public areas. If you want to use the DSL lines provided in their office services area, they want a $10 deposit to loan you an ethernet cable. Internet access in the rooms is free, but only if you don’t need to borrow one of their ethernet cables for $10!
Some of this might be acceptable if you weren’t looking a little tired in spots, Mr. Marriott. Hit me with these sorts of surprises and an exterior door near my room that won’t function forcing a walk around the property just to get in, and, well—I become surly. Sorry, but I do. Fix it, please, and give us a copyright date or edition number for each of your properties. Thanks.
I feel a letter coming on. The air conditioner in this room makes it too damp to operate a computer (safely). The mold in the bathroom makes it a little hazardous to inhale. Let me get checked out of here and situated elsewhere, and I’ll write a letter that Marriott can use to launch a serious continual improvement effort.
What passes for high speed in this country is pathetically slow compared with Internet service in some other countries.
For instance, Verizon’s entry-level DSL service, at 768 kilobits per second for downloads and 128 kilobits per second for uploads, is considered high-speed here. But in Japan and Korea, families can buy moderately priced Internet service measured in the tens of megabits per second.
Until we learn to think of Internet access at speeds similar to 10Mbps, 100Mbps and gigabit Ethernet service, we’ll always lag behind the Asian providers of high-speed, low-cost service. When can we expect 10Gbps (i.e. Gig-E)?
Mistakes can be costly. Many mistakes result from a lack of proper attention and diligence. This is never so true as it is when a property owner discovers that purchased insurance does not cover a particular risk.
Examples include (but are not limited to) homeowner’s insurance that doesn’t cover damage due to flooding, earthquakes, a neighbor’s tree falling through your house, damage due to a city sewer problem, etc. That list truly can go on and on.
In the face of the very public (media) debate that will no doubt occupy vast blocks of time during the coming months, every property owner should sit down with a trusted insurance representative and evaluate each and every calamity that might happen along. The time and education you’ll receive will no doubt remove many of the surprises you might get.
We talked previously about several of the articles concerning the legal battles on the Gulf Coast. As things move from the ridiculous to the absurd, beware.
Or, as Mark Helprin wrote so well in this week’s Wall Street Journal (subscription may be required), perhaps we need to do something more:
Perhaps this and previous administrations have had an effective policy just too difficult to comprehend because they have ingeniously sheltered it under the pretense of their incompetence. But failing that, the legacy of this generation’s presidents will be promiscuous declarations and alliances, badly defined war aims, opportunities inexplicably forgone, ill-supported troops sent into the field, a country at risk without adequate civil protections, and a military shaped to fight neither the last war nor this one nor the next.
Mr. Helprin, a Journal contributing editor, is Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute and Distinguished Visiting Fellow of Hillsdale College. He is the author, most recently, of “Freddy and Fredericka” (Penguin, 2005).
Let me start by saying I’ve contributed to a charity that is providing help to victims of the hurricane. I also pay taxes which are clearly going to victims.
Now, there’s a possibility that insurance companies that I’ve invested (substantial) retirement funds into will be coerced or even ordered to pay sums of money they never agreed to pay. Insurance is a contract. Buyers and sellers of insurance know in advance what that contract covers.
Flood damage is caused by a flood. Wind damage is cause by the wind. Limits on liability exist. Exclusions exist. It is not a lack of compassion that makes me say, “stop there.” Here’s a quote from the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) that caught my eye:
Though home-insurance providers face little or no exposure to flood damage, some are calling for them to step in, given the widespread, costly scale of damage. Among them is Richard Scruggs, a well-known class-action attorney who made his name suing the tobacco and asbestos industries—and whose own beachfront house in Mississippi, which had flood insurance, was partly destroyed by Katrina.
Mr. Scruggs said he plans to urge Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood to try to override flood-exclusion clauses in homeowners’ policies in that state in the interest of public policy, a move that could force insurers to pay many billions more toward rebuilding costs. Through a spokesman, Mr. Hood said: “I’m reviewing these contracts to determine if there are unconscionable provisions.”
Two more articles containing similar illogical notions can be found at:
Technology frustrates as much as it helps. Yet, when it turns the corner, it can be fantastic.
After several days of a mysterious ftp problem, my ftp software simply worked today. This site is now (successfully) running Textpattern’s latest version.
Also, somewhat unexpectedly, I’ve now made Shaun Inman’s Mint work. I updated to version 1.06 and it appears to be functioning normally. A word or two of caution may be in order.
First, Mint doesn’t feel like a single product that you pay for, download and begin enjoying. Rather, it feels like a set of software. You have multiple downloads to do. You have files to edit. You have pages or templates in your weblog which need to be edited. Then, you have some installation steps that must be followed to the letter of the law. Otherwise, you might become frustrated.
Then, with all due care, you can begin tampering with something else called Pepper and the additional software features that other developers offer for Mint. All of that is still a bit fuzzy, as are some features within Mint involving searches and local searches. More when the fuzz falls off.
Updating the Mint application on my site has failed and no amount of troubleshooting has thus far solved the problem. I’ve removed the script lines from pages and deleted the code from my hosting account. It’s a $30.00 lesson learned.
I’m looking for a new ftp package. CuteFTP has suddenly stopped working since TextDrive moved their servers to San Diego. There’s no reason why it stopped working. I don’t toy or tamper with the accounts I have set up in CuteFTP. Rather, I set the configurations once, then I just use it.
Let me know if you’ve got a world class suggestion for a Windows-based ftp app.
TextDrive has another lifetime hosting offer. What this means is that you’ll pay a single fee and you’ll receive the listed specs for life. No more monthly or annual fees—ever. Click here or on the image above for details.
They’ve just moved their datacenter into one of Level 3’s Gateways. They’ve just populated it with Dell 2850 servers. It just gets better with age!
Oh, and they’re donating a bit of money from each subscription to the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
Those who love a city will rebuild it. History provides many examples, but none better than Nehemiah’s work to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem. Organizing, battling the politics, getting support, planning—it’s all there. From the time he heard the news that the walls were down to the time he told the king he wanted to rebuild them, Nehemiah planned. When the time came, he was prepared. Pick a translation you like and read it through. It’s a good story, but it’s a great lesson.
Intellectual consistency is not all that common. Causes we believe in strongly often cloud our ability to think critically. When that happens, we suspend critical thinking and intellectual consistency. Once our emotions take over, we’re in an area we don’t understand.
One commentator used the word perspective dozens of times last Friday. It was his attempt to deal with all of the emotions that were coming to him from “the field.” He was safe, dry, hydrated and well-fed in New York. Others were talking to him from devasting conditions. His attempt to gain perspective resulted in his own emotions ruling the moment.
Helplessness fosters a similar response. Viewing the media’s treatment of the plight of so many, we want to help. We see the ways. We have the ideas. Why don’t others see the same things. Conversely, those arriving first know the issues. They realize that all things we depend on are missing. There’s no food. There’s no water, except everywhere one looks. Cell phones don’t work. There’s no pathway to the disaster. Fuel is scarce. Debris is everywhere. Water impedes all progress. There are no computers, phones, cash registers or ATM’s.
Why doesn’t someone do something? Absent answers, blame begins. The sense of when the disaster happened is lost. Three days becomes five days in conversation. At this writing it’s been 6 days, 10 hours and 35 minutes since Hurricane Katrina made landfall south of New Orleans.
Moving as slowly as it did, the storm took another 15 to 20 hours to clear the area. Then, flooding began. Those who didn’t leave were in trouble.
As we seek to place blame on all the folks who might be blamed, let’s also decide who will be to blame for a bridge that will collapse next year; or, who will be to blame for an industrial accident we cannot now foresee. Who will be at fault for a massive traffic accident months from now?
Be assured we have just as much factual information for affixing blame for those future calamities as we now have for a disaster that is still unfolding!
You need a break. There’s simply too much to absorb channel surfing amongst the 24×7 news crowd. Here’s how to leave the funk and see a way out:
Michael Medved came over to Jasperwood tonight to sit out in the Target Gazebo for a couple of hours and chat over beers. Brilliant fellow. I mean, if there’s a lacuna in his intellectual database, it’s probably something like the Latin names of flora in pre-Cambrian reptile digestive systems. Conversation was a brisk gallop over 1,829 topics, and if you’re starved for Real Adult Conversation as I am, it’s like ending up at the Old Country Buffet after six years in Ethiopian desert. What a joy.
Hurricane Katrina made it’s Gulf Coast landfall on August 29, 2005, at 06:15a.m. CDT as a category four hurricane in Buras-Triumph, Louisiana.
Earlier a category five storm, its pressure dropped to as low as 902mbar.
The history of this storm and what it has left behind is still unfolding. Wikipedia has some of the best information. The story continues.
The clock is running since the Gulf landfall. Elapsed time is now showing 102.75 hours. That’s four days, six hours and forty five minutes.
Rescue efforts are continuing in New Orleans. Others in New Orleans have been rescued from their homes, but they are stranded at the Superdome or in front of the convention center or on an I-10 overpass. The U.S. Coast Guard is making some miraculous (televised) aerial rescues from helicopters.
A convoy of buses just rolled into New Orleans this morning. A convoy of military vehicles carrying food (MRE’s) and water rolled into New Orleans this morning.
The President has toured Biloxi this morning with Haley Barbour, Mississippi’s Governor, and Trent Lott, Mississippi’s Senior Senator, and others. There’s hope he’s headed to New Orleans.
We’re witnessing a need to completely rethink what it means to be prepared for a disaster—as individuals, as families, as neighborhoods, as communities, as cities, counties, states—as a nation.
Convoys of buses followed by convoys of trucks with pallets of food or water are one thing. Convoys of buses with an MRE and two bottles of water in every seat would be a different (better?) approach. Roll in, load 50, feed and hydrate them as they ride. Put a nurse on every bus in advance.
We must learn to think and think differently!
[Edit: Okay, okay. Busses is acceptable, but you prefer buses. They’ve been changed.]
For the mainstream media the first step in problem-solving involves finding someone to blame. Yet, in an honest search for accuracy, they could have uncovered this dramatic story which ran in National Geographic in October of 2004. Here’s the nub:
As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however—the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.
You really owe it to yourself to read the whole thing!
Ham radio once was, and probably still is, a tool for the masses when catastrophe strikes. Internet technology has similar potential, but it is only potential right now.
The number of hosts, companies and bandwidth users with the capacity to handle a step function in instantaneous bandwidth demand is quite small. Google comes to mind. Microsoft might be in the hunt. Is Yahoo there? Who else?
Here’s an example of what can happen. Imagine 1000 requests per second!
* * * UPDATE * * * Revealing is the following quote from one of the administrators over at TextDrive:
To put this in perspective, a mid-tier dot.com such as ESPN.com, Realtor.com get anywhere from 20 to 30 million page views per day. IIRC, last year Amazon.com was in the order of 80 million. This site, if we let it stay up and the hit rate was steady, would’ve gotten 86 million in 24 hours.
No regular host can survive that amount of traffic. The bandwidth costs alone would be ruinous. And, since this surge of traffic came with absolutely no warning, we couldn’t do anything ahead of time to stop it.
Use your best critical thinking to decide how to help with rescue and recovery in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. For one of the most comprehensive lists of possibilities, Instapundit is, as usual, a great place to start. Review Glenn’s suggestions by clicking here.
Engineers are meeting here in Memphis to develop the best ideas for solving problems in New Orleans. Let’s pray that they pick options that work quickly.
A great service that webloggers can provide is to serve as an information conduit among those who are seeking information about family members. With power out and all other manner of mayhem, people don’t know if their family members made it.
Soon, we’re going to see useful members of the media in the streets of New Orleans, Biloxi, Mobile, Gulfport and other communities. Useful will be defined by those who gather names from those on the street, and provide names from weblogs they’ve read. Useful will mean helpful and compassionate.
Obviously, victims may never see these listings, but the big media companies have communications in the midst of the catastrophe. Let’s put their pretty faces to work doing something fair, balanced and humane. Here’s one place to start. Let’s compile a more comprehensive list.
Closing, I give you a rant. Under present circumstances, looters come in two varieties. One is a street-thug with no morals, ethics, values or heart. He or she steals a television he can barely carry only to walk into three or four feet of water in a city that is dying or dead.
Shooting the looter on site borders on too merciful, but it’s not our way.
The second looter also lacks morals, ethics, values and heart. He or she has the authority to mark up gasoline at a BP Oil station in Atlanta, and stopped only after marking the gasoline up to more than $6.00 a gallon.
Again, it’s not our way, but chaining looters in the filthy flood water on Canal Street might make an example of them. But, it really isn’t our way.
Fox News continues to slip badly. Too focused on the pretty, energetic personalities, they are losing the opportunity to be a serious news organization. McNews is what I’m seeing.
In the midst of coastal devastation from Hurricane Katrina, a “breaking news bulletin” full of all the bombastic sound effects and throbbing music just showed waves crashing in—wait for it—wait—yes, Jackson, MS.
Katrina has clearly done damage. I’m relatively certain the Gulf Coast has not receded to Jackson.
The fine folks at TextDrive are using the weekend to move into Level 3’s colocation facility in San Diego. For a host, this involves the installation of new servers and connection to new sources of bandwidth. That work has been done over the past couple of weeks.
The weekend is all about moving information. Those who are good at it make it look easy—like professional golfers make their game look easy. Yet, the 1001 details make the tasks extremely complex. This post is a bit of a test to be certain that my installation of Textpattern on TextDrive is still happy.
By the way—to make a move like this happen, a bunch of very bright people spend big blocks of time doing and monitoring the work, only to need their best brain power late in the process when they are exhausted. At that point the risk of errors skyrockets. Think Apollo 13 without the risk of death!
Here’s a hearty thanks to all those folks for work completed thus far and the huge amount to come.
As long as a simplicity circle doesn’t become a track around which rats race, the concept sounds rather appealing. However, the real win in the whole notion goes something like this:
“I save half my pay,” she said. “So for every month I work, that’s one month I won’t have to work.’’—Ann Haebig
Just in time to see a new batch of website owners catch the web standards wave, A List Apart updates to version 4.0. In a further intersection of excellent things, TextDrive now hosts A List Apart.
Before I describe your problem, be assured that the solution is not in your public relations department. It isn’t in your communications efforts. The problem isn’t because your company is large. It isn’t because you are the sales leader in so many categories of products.
Your problems begin when a Walmart employee answers the phone and answers three questions. The first question asked at 5:00p.m. is, “what time does your automotive service department close?” The answer is 8:00p.m. The second question is, “do you have a set of four Michelin tires of a certain size?” The answer, “hold on, I’ll check…followed by a brief wait…and then, yes we do?” Finally, the third question was, “if we arrive in the next twenty minutes, can they be installed this evening?” Again an affirmative answer, “yes, but there might be an hour and half’s wait.” Assuring the associate that wouldn’t be a problem, we left for Walmart and dinner at a nearby restaurant during the wait.
Arriving at Walmart by 5:20p.m., we were told that the automotive service people stopped taking tire orders at 4:30p.m. Furthermore, there were only three of the tires we had inquired about. No, the missing tire had not been sold during our twenty minute drive.
This incident continued over another three days while two other Walmart stores gave us different answers by phone and in person. As a last effort prior to a vacation trip, I returned to the original store and inquired about the tires. I was told there were five in stock that had been there all week. It would take three hours because there were six cars ahead of mine.
Again, willing to have a late lunch at a nearby restaurant, I accepted that condition and put my car in your care. It was about 3:15p.m. Finally, I got my car back at 8:00p.m. and one of the windshield wiper blades had not been replaced, so I waited for that. To his credit the counter person who had been waiting with me was equally frustrated with the indifference of the mechanics doing the work. He offered a $15 discount on each tire. It was obvious that this was the only thing he was empowered to do.
Spend your time on EDI, on logistics on clever just-in-time inventory techniques if you choose. Do so at the very great risk that even less demanding customers will eventually become disillusioned with Walmart. The peril in that weighs far more than most other topics that might get your attention.
Once in a while things you like and admire cross paths. As a long-time shareholder in Level 3 Communications, I’ve followed the
company’s progress through the long build-out and boom period. I watched as the stock plummeted with the rest of the telecommunications industry.
This long article is going to call into question the issue of weblogs and scalability. It’s based on personal experience and flawed information flows. Yet, it’s going to raise the specter that shared hosting, years of writing and tools that backfire combine to make for a very fragile blogosphere.
Scalability is going to be an issue. A boom in weblogs began in 2002. Now, many weblogs have large numbers of entries, posts or articles. This begs questions of disk capacity, software performance, server performance and bandwidth impacts. In other words, questions of I.T. architecture, information architecture and user habits need to be understood and communicated effectively.
Instapundit has over 23,000 24,000 articles. This tiny weblog has between 4000 and 5000 articles. Together we have tens of thousands of readers. grins How do we optimize without stifling the desire to write? How do we write without bringing down a host?
The Questions and Issues
[An urgent request]Does anyone know how to set up an archive page using Textpattern so that the web host doesn’t get hammered each time the archive page is refreshed?
Is it the number of articles in a weblog or the total amount of text in the weblog that is most likely to put an undue load on a host?
Does anyone know which (pre-release) version of Textpattern is better to use to minimize the impact on the host?
Is there a way to know in advance how many inquiries to a database a weblog might make, or must you run your own server to get those test results?
Standards-based web design is important, but it isn’t sufficient. What are the essential pieces of knowledge required to be a writer on the web?
I’ve only spent $600 on a lifetime of hosting with TextDrive. I spent some more commissioning a designer. Now, what are the roles & responsibilities of the host?
What metrics should I be watching and where are they?
What is the role and what are the responsibilities of the customer? Who is the customer? What does he know? What does he need to know?
What are the responsibilities of plugins and plugin authors?
Was the situation you’re about to read about really a silver bullet or am I merely someone who know longer starts their air conditioner at 5:00p.m. thereby lowering the load on the generating plant?
When will Textpattern 1.0 be finished? When will the TextPanel control panel for TextDrive be available? [Hint: “soon” is not an answer!]
Current Condition
This weblog has been offline. It had caused service disruptions at the web host, TextDrive. Rejoining the blogosphere without an archive page may prevent further problems, but it’s very difficult to be sure.
I’ve been told that ignorance of all things XHTML, CSS, hosting, plugins, templates, forms, sections, articles—and that list goes on and on—is no excuse for having harmed the web host and its customers. However, no one can (or is willing to) take the time to spell out the minimum body of knowledge required to write a weblog, have it hosted and be a good (technical) citizen on the web.
The Background
This particular problem began back in February when I returned to the web with a new design I had commissioned using Textpattern. However, the problem was called to my attention on June 4, 2005. Here’s the email I received from TextDrive’s team:
6/4/2005 Steve: Please have a quick look at [a link went here] [a text file name went here] and let us know how you’re going to resolve that issue where you’re running 7,401,285 queries in less than 24 hours (Yes, that’s 7.4 Million). And #2 looks to be yours as well. More details to follow from one of the other staff, but whatever it is needs to stop. [name withheld]
Eight minutes after receiving that email, I responded this way:
6/4/2005 [name withheld]: I’m totally clueless. Obviously, I see my name in lines one and two of that text file, but I don’t have a clue what they mean. Is my weblog doing something behind the scenes that is causing that? Is there some setting in Textpattern that I’ve got wrong. Be assured I’m ready and willing to be cooperative, but I don’t know what to look at to fix the problem. If you can offer any further advice or pointers, I’ll take care of this immediately. Steve
A bit of explanation might help. I commissioned my present design. Perhaps every other weblog author has intimate knowledge of every detail of every feature within the weblog tools and templates they use. I do not.
About 18 minutes later, I got this reply from TextDrive:
6/4/2005 Steve: We’ll take a bit deeper look, and sorry if I was presumptuous, we may have pegged you for “Steve” and have the wrong one. Not sure one way or the other yet, but the top 2 listing a steve of some sort made me want to fire out a quick email just to see if you were aware of something, or had some plugins or such going amiss. We’ll see how things shake out and be in touch. [name withheld]
Then, roughly 9 minutes later, this came in from TextDrive:
6/4/2005 The query is 7401285 select realname from txp_users where name=’Steve’ [name withheld]
I took an hour. I dug around in my weblog, but wasn’t at all sure what I was looking for. Frankly, I was under the impression that something had changed in the last day or two (i.e. early June) that might have created the problem. I had no idea that the problem they were talking to me about had probably been going on since February. Here’s what I said to them:
6/4/2005 [name withheld]: Other than posting to Rodent Regatta (rodentregatta.com), I’ve not made any changes to it in a couple of months. No new versions of Txp. No new plugins. I use CuteFTP to access TextDrive and frequently update to the latest (SVN) version of Textpattern on rodentregatta.org. However, there are no plugins or anything else running there.
[Name withheld], I want nothing but the best for TextDrive, and if I’m doing something on my end to harm the business, please let me know. I assure you it will be out of ignorance and not out of any malicious intent. I go by “Steve.” My name is Steve Pilgrim and I have used spilgrim as email names and such. However, for logging into TextDrive, I think I’m logging in as [user id withheld].
I’ve just checked everything that is loading when my laptop boots up. I’ve run antivirus, spybot search & destroy and adaware. Clearly, I’m showing my ignorance, but I can’t find a thing that involves MySQL other than my weblogs. Tonight is a good night for me to work with anyone you suggest to get to the bottom of all this. So, let me know how you want to proceed. Steve
My goal was to be cooperative and disclose fully what I knew. I couldn’t imagine what had started causing the problem. I was looking any and everywhere. In hindsight—and by inference—I’ve been accused of saying I wasn’t running plugins or that I didn’t mention all of the plugins. Two things: 1) I said there were no plugins running at the dot org domain; 2) my colophon lists every plugin that was being used.
About three hours after the original June 4 email, I got this email:
6/4/2005 Steve: Like I somewhat suspected after hearing from you the first time, we really don’t think it’s you, as the query is looking for name=Steve, and yours is name=[user id withheld] and realname=Steve. I’ll keep you posted nonetheless, and don’t sweat it, we’ll track it down, and it doesn’t look like you. Sorry if I was a bit brusk in my initial conversation – no harm intended. That said, does rodentregatta really get traffic to do that #2 query 132K times in a day? [name withheld]
Perhaps I didn’t ask the right questions. Perhaps I didn’t understand the answers I was getting. Whatever the case, I heard nothing more and it concerned me. Attempting to be a “good shared host customer” I initiated additional discussion on June 14, 2005. Here’s what I said:
6/14/2005 at 11:02a.m. [name withheld]: I haven’t heard any more about this. I’m just curious as to whether the TextDrive staff has been able to find out what I might be doing that puts undue stress on the TextDrive servers. My situation is this: I use Textpattern to publish my weblog. I use FeedDemon to read RSS feeds. I have no scripts or custom code that I’m aware of. Is there something I need to do to stop “abusing” TextDrive? Am I still considered a “problem” customer? Steve
By late afternoon on June 14th, I received this response:
6/14/2005 at 4:17p.m. Steve: It was you and your archive page. We turned my attention to the other Steve after you said “However, there are no plugins or anything else running there” and I took your word for it. Throttling the other Steve didn’t do anything, so we ran a complete a complete trace and it was your rss_superarchive.
Your archive page was taking the normal 300,000 queries an hour to nearly 3 million and that was only with a few hits on it. And continuous blocks of [code blocks you’ve already seen] in your archive Page was just cooking the mysql server.
Now besides costing me thousands of dollars in direct man hours (because even today I had two working on it for the last 8 hours), the additional time supporting mysql problems on barclay, having lost a couple of clients and having things about our “mysql problems” out there … I don’t even want to think about it.
Regardless, it can’t happen again, and while not-knowing-better isn’t an excuse, I’ll go ahead and take it as one. You can read some numbers on the forum about it, it won’t identify you but I have to discuss it. The general rules apply even to plugins: if you’re experimenting, then do it somewhere else and push things that are solid up to the server. [name withheld]
Needless to say, I was charmed. The rest of the emails are mostly defensiveness on my part concerning the misreading of the dot org vs. dot com domain names. I won’t repeat them here. However, I never intended for TextDrive users to experience another 10 days of trouble after TextDrive’s initial email to me.
It also came as a surprise that TextDrive would use backdoor techniques to log into my copy of Textpattern, set themselves up as administrative users, rename my archive page and delete a plugin that was doing the harm. Please understand I had/have nothing to hide. I’m thrilled that they found the problem. I would have gladly done exactly what they asked of me, but they didn’t ask me to alter anything.
The Conclusion
If you’ve read this far, I want to be perfectly clear. I admire the initiative, determination and technical savvy of the folks at TextDrive. I’ve wrestled mightily with myself in the last week regarding whether or not I’m personally qualified to own a TextDrive account and be their customer. I continue to want only the best for the organization. They are young, aggressive, effective and will polish their skills over time.
What would be ideal at this point is to have some way to guage what we need to know to be effective customers of TextDrive or any other web host. Until that is specified, count on others to do things that are as harmful as what I did to TextDrive. It’s time to prevent those things!
Sometimes I’d like to just thumb my nose at the “risks” that are rampant in the world around me. However, it is an unfortunate fact that anyone can find a lawyer who is willing to sue anyone else for anything at any time. Be it something you do, something you say or something you write, someone’s willing to come after you. Jason Kottke discusses the EFF’s Legal Guide for Bloggers. It’s a tool that belongs in every blogger’s toolkit.
Yesterday saw a lot of news coverage of the deal Aruba Networks has struck with Microsoft. It appears Microsoft is replacing its old (1999) Aironet gear with a completely new technology. This is interesting stuff and probably an excellent model for anyone contemplating a serious, campus-wide wireless network.
Article [VI.]—In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Interpretation? If you live in California and you commit a crime and you’re crazy, you’ll definitely face a jury of your peers.
Bad bosses take credit for the work of others. Bad friends steal ideas and treat them as their own.
From a distance I’ve learned of two brides—once good friends—who were both planning October weddings. Bride A’s wedding was to be two weeks prior to Bride B’s. Bride A “put the word out” that certain colors were her selections for dresses. Bride B, though having somewhat similar tastes, made a decision about another color.
In less than twenty four hours Bride A announced that she had selected the same color as Bride B. Bride B was heartbroken.
People will forever disappoint us. Some people spend their time finding ways to needle others. It’s one of the tragedies of living in a society so obsessed with form over substance.
Two things came to my attention today. The first was an article that appeared in USA Today last week. Titled Tyson: ‘My whole life has been a waste’, the article laments the legacy that Mike Tyson has built to date. The second item involved the car chase that occupied much of Los Angeles today.
At one point news people were lamenting the suspect’s wasted situation. Their view said he was to commit suicide, be killed by police or spend the rest of his life in prison. No possibility existed for his life to ever mean anything again.
About the Tyson story, my friend Dan Miller asked the following questions:
Is it possible to break this cycle of self-destruction?
Can a person really draw a line in the sand and create a new start?
Are some people predestined to lives of low self-esteem, and the accompanying self-defeating actions – or can we all make the choices each day that set the stage for a positive future?
Is it possible to have tremendous disadvantages and still rise to health, wealth and success?
I plan to ask Dan for better answers than he gave in his most recent newsletter. Until those answers come, I want to share some thoughts.
We need to better understand the meaning of “a wasted life.” It’s not what so many people believe. John Piper’s book titled Don’t Waste Your Life offers this tip on the back cover:
I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider this story from the February 1998 Reader’s Digest: A couple ‘took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball and collect shells…’ Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: ‘Look, Lord. See my shells.’ That is a tragedy.
Making the rounds recently has been one of those emails you are to forward to everyone you know. It reads variously as Ten (or in several of the emails I got, fifteen) Things God Won’t Ask:
God won’t ask what kind of car you drove. He’ll ask how many people you drove who didn’t have transportation.
God won’t ask the square footage of your house, He’ll ask how many people you welcomed into your home.
God won’t ask about the clothes you had in your closet, He’ll ask how many you helped to clothe.
God won’t ask what your highest salary was. He’ll ask if you compromised your character to obtain it.
God won’t ask what your job title was. He’ll ask if you performed your job to the best of our ability.
God won’t ask how many friends you had. He’ll ask how many people to whom you were a friend.
God won’t ask in what neighborhood you lived, He’ll ask how you treated your neighbors.
God won’t ask about the color of your skin, He’ll ask about the content of your character.
God won’t ask why it took you so long to seek Salvation. He’ll lovingly take you to your mansion in heaven, and not to the gates of Hell.
God won’t have to ask how many people you forwarded this to, He already knows your decision.
When a pioneer family settled in the great unexplored West, they might go months without seeing others. Yet, they raised families. They grew. They lived. They loved. The African mother walking miles to get anything resembling fresh water for her children doesn’t know a life that is better than her’s. The soccer mom suffering from road rage and the fear that her son might not get to start in today’s game is certain no life is better (or more deserving) than her’s.
Piper concludes: “The wasted life is the life without a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples.” It’s rather easy to see that our station in life should not be the litmus test for determining whether our lives are wasted or of supreme service.
Believing it couldn’t get any better, I stopped following most coverage of the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz sting. However, this morning it remains in the news as defense attorneys prepare for their clients’ upcoming court appearances. With great appreciation to Redd Stewart and Pee Wee King for lyrics that simply fit:
I was dancing with my darling to the Tennessee Waltz
When an old friend I happened to see
I introduced him to my loved one
And while they were dancing
My friend stole my sweetheart from me
I remember the night and the Tennessee Waltz
Now I know just how much I have lost
Yes, I lost my little darling
The night they were playing
The beautiful Tennessee Waltz
Tennessee is taking a stab at corruption. You’ll find a lot of the news as it breaks at Mike Hollihan’s site.
This effort is long overdue and, as a property owner in Tennessee, I can only hope that e-Cycle changes its name and continues to go after other state and local officials who operate outside the boundaries of their elected position and mostly in a lawless way.
Arrests haven’t shaken my confidence at all. Arrests give me hope. What has shaken my confidence are the years of corruption that have gone uncontested. Let’s fix this!
Arizona IQ Test
By Craig J. Cantoni
HAALT Press
May 22, 2005
Are you smart enough to live in Arizona? To find out, answer the following five questions:
1. Who is at fault if your kids fail the AIMS test, which is a statewide test in Arizona that public school students have to pass in order to graduate?
a) You and your kids.
b) The government.
c) Rich people.
d) Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Enron and global warming.
2. What should be done about your kids failing?
a) You should make them study more.
b) They should get free tutors so that you can watch Oprah uninterrupted.
c) They should get free breakfast and lunch at school so that you don’t have to get up early and prepare their meals.
d) You should whine to local politicians and media until the state lowers the cutoff for a passing grade.
3. What should you do if your kids graduate from high school with poor reading and math skills?
a) You should accept responsibility for the problem.
b) You should demand that colleges lower their entrance requirements.
c) You should request that your kids get into college through affirmative action.
d) You should claim that the SAT is a biased test.
4. What will you do when your kids enter the work force and can’t find good-paying jobs?
a) Blame yourself.
b) Blame Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Enron and global warming.
c) Blame rich people.
d) Blame China and India.
5. Why are you and your kids overweight?
a) Because you consume at one sitting a gallon of Pepsi, a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, a bag of Cheetos and a bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
b) Because of Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Enron and global warming.
c) Because of bad genes.
d) Because of suburban sprawl.
Congratulations! If you did not select answer “a” for each of the above questions, you are smart enough to live in Arizona. You will fit right in with the Arizona parents who got the state to lower the passing grade on the already dumbed-down AIMS test for reading and math to 59 percent and 60 percent, respectively.
Thanks to you, your kids will end up working at Wal-Mart and McDonald’s, and the nation will eventually lose its technological edge to China and India.
Gotta run now. Oprah is on and the Kentucky Fried Chicken is getting cold.
* * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (www.haalt.org). His new book, Breaking from the Herd: Political Essays for Independent Thinkers by a Maverick Columnist, can be purchased for $18.95 at retail or $10 from him. He can be reached at haalt1@aol.com
Tourist traps mean different things to different people. For some, they are treasure troves of trinkets and tribal lore. All alliteration aside, most people prefer to avoid the place known as a tourist trap.
Historic downtown Memphis, Tennessee is a place that has some tourist traps and some remarkable places to visit. Short on recollection of the latter, I’ll mention a place that has the potential to go either way. Last night it was the former.
Type “the peabody” into Google and your first link will take you to one of Memphis’s grand ole hotels. Rennovated and operated by a local family, this fine old place is full of the tales of the past. It’s beautiful, but attempts to preserve it as designed have left it looking a bit tired and worn in some areas.
Attempts to add modern expansion to it have resulted in the worst kind of disasters in space planning, customer convenience, parking and traffic flow. Park your car in one of the first available spots for “self-parking” and you’ll hike from somewhere in North Mississippi to the lobby. Forget to prepay for parking and you’ll wind up in a line of cars idling while owners exit their vehicles to search for one of the machines that takes money and validates your parking receipt.
If the place is busy – as it was last night – no one is in charge. Bellhops are feuding with valet parking attendants. “Not my job” can be heard often. The concierge desk is unmanned. Curbside luggage handlers are deciding what kind of item they will and won’t handle based on their own interpretations of “liability.”
One guest continually referred to the concierge as the connoisseur. Were it not for those moments of hilarity, I’d have made quite the scene. As it was, I exited with the full assurance that the Peabody’s ducks – look it up – will forever get better treatment than customers, guests and those who attend events there.
That is, until someone realizes that the difference between a fine hotel and a tourist trap has far more to do with substance than image.
Long-time readers know that Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett’s company, has been an interest of mine for many years. Some of you will recall that I repeated an often cited statement that, “a careful reading and rereading of Warren Buffett’s letters to shareholders from 1977 to the present provides a better education than two years in a top business school.”
To further that education Charles T. Munger has collaborated with Peter Kaufman to produce a masterpiece. It’s a book and it’s called Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. Part of it is biography. Part of it is philosophy. Mostly, it is a book about the kind of knowledge one should accumulate to succeed in life. Mr. Munger is Berkshire Hathaway’s Vice Chairman of many years.
For those who are designers and look this way from time to time, you’ll find this is a book unlike any other you’ll pick up in the next year or two. From the book jacket, to the cover, to the illustrations inside, it is one of the great design accomplishments in publishing. If you’re serious about owning books that last for generations, this one is worth adding to your collection.
If you own a business, you need this. If you have a family, you need this. If you believe every initiative you hear about outside of those supported by your political party is nonsense, you need this. If you walk American soil, earn income on American soil or spend even a single week of each year on American soil, you need this.
Deep in study recently, several varied topics have captured my attention. They are varied, disconnected and—at first glance—unrelated. Upon closer examination, it seems there’s a thread of connectivity among them all. Enjoy!
Watch batteries are $3.04 at Walmart after a 9.25% local and state sales tax. The kiosk in the mall wants $14.95 plus tax. The jewelry store wants $24.95 and two days. Which supplier is more competitive?
At the Berkshire Hathaway Annual meeting Charles Munger said, “We are living at (or very near) the apex of a great civilization.” Are we continuing to get better or about to decline?
Social Security ideas are everywhere. Give us options or give us $2000 at birth and each year until we’re 18 years old; or, do away with the 12.4% tax and leave financial security to personal responsibility!
Tom Friedman has written another book. Talking about outsourcing recently, he suggested a national science and math initiative aimed at energy independence. Comparable to our moon shot, he believes it reenergizes the interest of youth in science and math. Taken with a recent comment by Bill Gates in which he said, “America’s high schools are obsolete,” Friedman might be onto something. That is, unless you are among those who believe that if anyone ever had a bad idea, every idea they have from that point forward is bad.
It’s past time that we privatize the Post Office by auctioning its primary regional distribution operations to FedEx, UPS, DHL and others. We’ll improve the government and the companies in the process.
General Motors has approximately $1600 of cost in every vehicle it produces due to healthcare costs. Another Tom Friedman prediction is that China or Japan will wind up owning all of the General Motors manufacturing operations. Remember when General Motors could have written a check for Toyota?
Six Sigma education in this country is fragmented among many suppliers. Smarter Solutions in Austin, TX is as good as they come. Forrest W. Breyfogle, III is the name behind the business. I recently read another of his books titled Lean Six Sigma in Sickness and in Health. As I read it occurred to me that if every unemployed I.T. worker pursued a Green Belt, Black Belt or Master Black Belt from a proper six sigma training authority, this country could insure its global competitiveness for decades to come. Now, how to capitalize on the idea?
Golfers, there’s a new Dan Jenkins book. It’s as profane as ever, but genuinely accurate in its portrayal of the most avid golfers I’ve known. Forrest Breyfogle has also addressed the golfer’s desire to get better.
Did you ever feel as if you had found the great unifying theory of how to improve anything? Dr. Deming did.
True to the materialistic rat race for power, prestige and position, an analog may exist in the animal kingdom. On this earth rats may indeed prevail – figuratively and literally. In something called eternity, the figurative rats face a life of warmth or one of extreme heat, based upon a decision they can make right now.
For those with more money than good ideas, there’s always been Neiman Marcus. All signs indicate the company will soon be under new ownership.
If your faux-pearl encrusted mermaid suit is looking a little worn or there’s just no more waiting for those his and hers bowling alleys, Neiman Marcus can help you out.
No, I cannot solve the problem you created over the last two years in ten minutes. No, your impatience doesn’t intimidate me. No, you don’t have (self-diagnosed) adult ADD—you are simply rude or don’t understand the skill of listening. No, the fact that you think you are more important than anyone else doesn’t impress me.
There is no instant pudding when it comes to improving your business operations. There are incredible results available to you as a result of sensibly applied methods. These methods require that you learn and practice some new approaches. They require you to focus—yes, for more than one hour—and think unemotionally about your business.
Power, prestige and position are your domain. Performance, facts and analytics are mine. One runs right down the middle in the rat race. The other is a ninety degree that takes you off the rat race course quickly. You choose.
What’s the point? The software companies are consolidating, and the pace will quicken. If you assume that bandwidth and storage costs are approaching zero as incremental costs of doing business, you come to some interesting conclusions about what might be next. With a long-haul bandwidth provider sitting on a global network of fiber optics and (at least) six or eight empty conduits, but trading at two bucks a share, you get some perspective on bandwidth prices. Then, you see a major technology company that has already concluded that bandwidth and storage costs approach zero. They’ll definitely want more of both.
Finally, if you can’t make it all work together, you’ll have to find someone who can show you how to transform the operations of your business around the notions of convergence and consolidation. Pick the wrong player and cheap bandwidth, great software, web services galore and your position in the market will be undermined by those who don’t blunder.
This is absolutely a time when every business should be asking (and answering quickly), “Do we know and have what it takes to compete in a world of ubiquitous technology?” If you can’t answer that question, be assured it is getting answered as we speak in Bangalore, Guangzhou, Tianjin and Shenzhen.
In another magnificent act of stupidity your government (and mine) has found a way to protect us from ourselves. Craig Cantoni is all over it!
A life is worth $9.8 million but not $10
By Craig J. Cantoni
April 11, 2005
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has just announced that tire sensors will be required on vehicles beginning in 2008. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently issued a report showing that car ownership costs are the second highest household expense in the U.S., second only to housing costs and three times as much as medical costs.
Maybe the two agencies should talk to each other. That way, the NHTSA would know how its regulations have increased the cost of car ownership over the years, one regulation at a time.
The establishment media could help. Instead of reporting that the U.S. has a medical cost crisis, they could start reporting that the nation has a car cost crisis. At the same time, they could change the way that they cover new safety regulations.
The current way is to report the cost of a new regulation and the estimated lives that it will save. For example, in reporting on the tire sensor regulation, the media said that the cost of a dashboard warning light for low tire pressure would average only $59 per vehicle and would save 120 lives a year. No mention was made of the cost per life saved.
After conducting five minutes of Internet research and using fourth-grade math, I calculated the cost. Apparently, reporters either don’t think that readers are worth five minutes of research or can’t do fourth-grade math.
By the time that all vehicles are equipped with the tire sensors and the first 120 lives are saved, the cost will be $13 billion, or $108 million per life, based on the NHTSA estimates. After that, the annual marginal cost will be $9.8 million per life.
Of course, these costs are accurate only if the NHTSA estimates are accurate. Unlike the media, I don’t accept the NHTSA numbers at face value.
First, it is doubtful that the government really knows how many deaths are caused by low tire pressure. We do know, however, that safety advocates have a record of exaggerating dangers and underestimating the cost of safety regulations. Second, the government’s cost estimates don’t include the cost of repairing the sensors when they inevitably malfunction, or the cost of lawsuits when trial lawyers claim that deaths were caused by malfunctions. Third, it is doubtful that the government knows how many drivers will ignore a dashboard warning light and drive with low tire pressure.
On the last point, I have two cars with dashboard warning lights that are always blinking red. Both are giving a false indication that there is something wrong with the emission control system. I have fixed the ersatz problem by placing black electrical tape over the lights.
This is not to suggest that I would ignore low tire pressure. I check my tires every two weeks, adding air when necessary with an air compressor that cost $120. My “tire sensor” is a hand-held digital pressure gauge that cost $10, or 17 percent of the cost of a government-mandated tire sensor. And it can be used on more than one car.
Evidently, many people don’t think that their life is worth the $10 cost of a tire gauge. But our compassionate, munificent government thinks that their life is worth $9.8 million to the rest of us.
* * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (haalt.org). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com or haalt1@aol.com
The three-point shot with time running out is exciting. The Hail Mary pass on a cool November Saturday afternoon ranks up there. Oh, and there’s not much like an 11-year old’s first soccer goal.
But, for sheer thrills, the roars in Augusta, GA in April are completely infectious. Filtered by pine needles, the sounds tell the story to those four holes away. Those are the sounds of an elite performance in front an august crowd in a treasured setting.
Augusta National Golf Club, which openly and proudly discriminates against women, will produce its Masters Golf Tournament with considerable help from the masters of corporate America.
A bit later, you added:
The harm to stockholders pales beside the harm to working women.
Ms. Burk, should you ever find yourself reading this, get a clue. Yes, get a clue. You’re doing nothing to help the world-wide cause of human or women’s rights. You’re grandstanding. You’re disenchanted with not being part of the crowd at Augusta. You’re clueless about where women need your brand of activism. Here’s one example from the streets of Mecca:
Finally, someone managed to open the door and hundreds of terrified girls rushed into the street to escape the suffocating smoke and encroaching flame. In their hurry to escape, however, they did not have time to go to their rooms to get the obligatory head coverings they needed to venture out-of-doors. A score of Muslim religious policemen (called Mutawas), outraged at seeing bare-headed girls swarming openly in a public street, converged on the scene with one intent—to guard the decency of the community by forcing the girls back into the burning building!
That’s the mildest thing I could quote from Secrets of the Koran. I suggest to you, Ms. Burk—and others who lament the “plight” of women in America—that a brief search will uncover far greater harm to women in unimaginable circumstances far from Augusta, Georgia. Please, just get a clue!
[Please note: Ms. Burk, chair of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, is the author of Cult of Power, published this week by Scribner.] How timely.
There’s a discussion going on at Jason Kottke’s web site. He has asked, and others are pondering, criteria such as fast, cheap and good in any design effort. Conventional wisdom says you can have two, but not all three.
We see the selection of only two of these in every walk of life. We see it in politics. We see it in product compromises. We see people who make this trade-off decision every day of their lives.
Follow the discussion and you’ll learn two things. You’ll learn of examples where this logic is applied. You’ll also learn how quickly people are to accept that only two choices are available.
With the benefit of hindsight, there’s a more important question: has any product, service, project or effort fulfilled all three of these?
For a long time the “rat race”—as defined by me—involved the panic-stricken looks on people’s faces as they drove for ever greater material gains. Conspicuous consumption was a particularly annoying arms race that neighbors, church members, coworkers and associates engaged in as if “it” mattered. Deeply entrenched in the battles, these people only look puzzled when questioned about why they think their choices are necessities.
Today, I see yet another dimension to the rat race. Unfortunately, it means one of my favorite writers is taking a break. After a few weeks of talking heads talking simultaneously about rights, wrongs…wait, they only taked about rights. No one ever spoke up to say, “that which is legal may still be wrong; those things labeled rights may involve thoughts, deeds or words to be left alone.” Now, James Lileks brings the muddle of addled thinking into sharp focus. Purpose-driven doesn’t begin to adequately describe the depth of his commitment, insight and influence.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
It’s time to make a difference. There’s not a great need for another participant in the software industry. There’s not a great need for another company providing widgets that feed conspicuous consumption. There’s no need at all for any more lawyers.
Pave a path out of the rat race and it will be well-traveled!
DISCLAIMER: I believe that—more often than not—lawyers earn money by introducing confusion where there was none.
Should the manufacturer of a fence used to hold pets without food or water be held liable for the fence owner’s abuses? Should the manufacturer of a pickup truck be held liable in a case where one person drags another to his death? Should the manufacturer of a pot or pan be held liable when someone uses the implement to cook up an illegal substance? Should one who makes a router be held accountable for illegal file swapping or downloading?
Grokster is in no more libelous a position than the installer of the ethernet cables connecting a computer to a network gateway.
Grok – to understand profoundly through intuition or empathy.
My friend and fellow critical thinker, Craig Cantoni, does a thorough and thoroughly entertaining analysis of the way journalists in some cities are promoting the biotech frenzy. He’s guarding our dollars again, and I appreciate it!
Journalism and the Biotech Feeding Frenzy
By Craig J. Cantoni
March 24, 2005
The Arizona Republic has been advocating huge public investments in biotech research, due to a belief that such investments are a way for Arizona to gain economically from the coming biotech revolution. Other big-city dailies across the nation have advocated the same thing for their hometowns.
This raises two questions: First, are the investments a smart and proper use of public money? Second, is it the proper role of journalism to be an advocate for such investments instead of being neutral and presenting both the pros and cons of this use of public money?
Let’s start with the proper role of journalism.
Last Sunday’s edition of The Arizona Republic devoted six pages to a new biotech research center that was built with public money in Phoenix. Three of the pages were in the news section, and three were in the opinions section.
In a blurring of news and opinion, there was no difference between the coverage in the news section and the editorials in the opinions section. Both sections quoted people and organizations that have a vested interest in the public investments, and both sections steered clear of people, studies and statistics that question the wisdom of the investments.
Such one-sided coverage plays into the hands of critics on the right who say that the mainstream press is losing market share because it has a big-government agenda and can’t be trusted to report the news objectively. My view is that newspapers should be a watchdog over the public purse and should have a healthy skepticism about government proposals to take money from the purse, especially for the purposes of industrial planning and economic development.
Let’s turn to the question of whether public investment in biotech is a smart and proper use of public money. I’ll skip the “proper” part of the question, because that comes down to a philosophical, ideological, constitutional and moral issue of whether the government should have the power to forcibly take money from citizens for what is essentially a modern form of mercantilism.
To determine if it is a smart investment to spend public money on biotech research, we first need to know the following:
The expected rate of return on the invested money.
The historical return on investment of both public and private capital invested in biotech research.
The success of such investments in other cities and states.
The economic opportunities that were lost by taking capital out of the private sector.
The competition faced by cities and states in biotech, and whether, instead of investing in biotech, they would be better off playing to their natural competitive advantages, coupled with removing tax and regulatory barriers to economic growth.
Amazingly, to the best of my knowledge, neither the local government nor the press has provided the foregoing information. Worse, with respect to No. 1, the local press did not challenge a specious claim by the head of Phoenix’s new research center that there has already been a sizable return on investment. How did he calculate the ROI? He included federal research grants in the center’s revenue. In other words, if money is taken from taxpayers twice – once to build and operate the research center, and once to fund research grants – the center is generating a profit. In reality, taxpayers have experienced a loss.
It’s not as if the information listed above is difficult to find. I found it in one hour by doing two things: one, typing various city names into an Internet search engine, along with the words “biotech research;” and two, sending an e-mail to contacts familiar with public policy issues, asking them if they knew of any authoritative studies on the subject of publicly-funded biotech research.
Here’s what I discovered from my city-by-city search:
That scores of cities are pinning their hopes on publicly-funded biotech research but have not provided the information listed in Nos. 1-5 above.
That scores of big-city newspaper are advocating biotech research as an economic elixir but have not provided the information listed in Nos. 1-5 above.
Here’s what I discovered from authoritative studies by the Cato Institute, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and others:
That there is now more biotech research capacity in the nation than the number of scientists needed to fill the capacity, a situation that is similar to the excess convention center capacity in the nation, due to cities exaggerating the economic benefits of the centers and racing each other to see who can build the biggest and fanciest facilities.
That advocates of publicly-funded research centers have exaggerated the returns on investment.
That privately-funded research centers have higher returns on investment than publicly-funded research centers.
That the research centers are based on the idea of cluster-based economic development, an idea that has dubious merit.
That politicians are in a bidding war of financial subsidies for a small number of biotech companies, thus driving up the value of the companies beyond their true economic value.
That a smart strategy for a city or state is to reap the benefits of biotech research while letting other cities and states incur the cost of the research, by instituting tax and regulatory policies that attract biotech companies (and other companies).
In closing, it would seem that before hundreds of millions of dollars of public money are spent, the government and the press should at least do an hour of research and report the results.
* * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (www.haalt.org). His new book will be published in a couple of months (Breaking from the Herd: Political Essays for Independent Thinkers by a Maverick Columnist). He can be reached at either ccan2@aol.com or haalt1@aol.com.
With any important idea, something serves as a catalyst. In the field of organizational improvement and development, the best way to fuel interest is with anecdotes. Tom Peters mastered that skill in print and on stage. Some books are best at “proving the need.” An executive may not be driven to pursue quality by reading Out of the Crisis, but Customers for Life might motivate. The difference—the anecdotes!
Michael Crichton has a similar ability to create interest in a field of study by telling the story. He did it with Airframe. He did it with Prey.
Now, State of Fear uses a story to teach some uncommon wisdom about environmental science and politics. There are better novels. However, for those who believe everything you see, hear or read in the mainstream media, this book is an eye-opener. The theories of global warming and the sciences which underpin them are explored carefully. Remember, Michael Crichton writes novels, but the footnotes in his novels are nonfiction. The sources of data and the bibliography are also real sources for beginning a study of global warming that is built on scientific truth, facts and the scientific method. All else is propaganda!
Ten days of immersion in web services and managed service models has me wondering if anyone will figure out how to return to the feature-function-benefit school of selling. I’ve seen accounting and ERP products offered as managed services. I’ve seen complete voice-over-IP phone solutions that just happen to blend email, messaging, digitized voicemail, telephony and a host of other things that only a technologist can imagine doing with a phone. Each supplier represents his or her product as the one with the faster, bigger or better technology. Sadly, not one has sought to understand the problem their product might solve, but they certainly love to hear themselves.
Why we perpetuate bad ideas just because we embraced them once is beyond me. The government has no justification for subsidizing telecommunications as they once did. Instead, times have changed. Let the market prevail.
There’s an alternative to traditional telecommunications technologies that were difficult to get into rural parts of this country. That alternative doesn’t require a special subsidy(USF). Just get out.
You can read more about it if things like VOIP interest you.
Do you relate your own tax bill to the budgets provided by city, county, state and Federal agencies? Do you understand the correlation between government spending, budgets and the amount of money in your paycheck? Craig Cantoni does!
Sixty-two percent of federal budget is theft
By Craig J. Cantoni
March 16, 2005
President Bush’s proposed federal budget for fiscal 2006 is $2.479 trillion, or a whopping $21,600 per household. According to my research, at least $1.537 trillion of that, or 62 percent, is money that is taken from some people for the benefit of other people (theft) instead of for the true common good. The $1.537 trillion of theft comes to an astonishing $13,392 per household.
These figures do not include state and local spending, which, in my hometown of Scottsdale, Arizona, averages $8,608 per household. Nor do the figures include the indirect cost of regulations, which reliable sources estimate to be $8,000 per household. When total federal spending is added to state and local spending, the total direct cost of government is $30,208 per Scottsdale household. The cost is higher in higher-cost parts of the country.
It took a half-day of research to come up with the figure of 62 percent for the amount of theft in the federal budget. It took that long because, to my knowledge, no federal agency, think tank, economist, or media outlet has analyzed the federal budget from the perspective of theft. The standard analysis is to separate discretionary spending from mandatory spending, or in some cases, to calculate the amount of “transfer payments,” which is an establishment euphemism for “theft.” Unfortunately, the standard method of calculating transfer payments does not include all forms of theft. As a result, transfer payments are estimated to be 40 percent of the federal budget, or 22 percentage points lower than my calculation of theft.
An aside: Transfer payments were only two percent of the federal budget 100 years ago. Unless spending on Social Security and Medicare is curtailed, transfer payments will account for over 60 percent of the federal budget in 20 years
Some libertarians say that all taxes are theft, since they are taken from citizens at the point of a gun and through the tyranny of the majority. And some left-liberals say that taxes for social programs are not theft, because they benefit the disadvantaged and help to achieve social justice. I disagree with both.
I’ve written in-depth philosophical essays on government theft and on moral alternatives to helping the poor. Moreover, there is a chapter on these subjects in my upcoming book (Breaking from the Herd: Political Essays for Independent Thinkers by a Maverick Columnist). But for the purposes of my analysis of the federal budget, I defined “theft” in brief as follows: Theft is the taking of money from some citizens for the direct benefit of other citizens instead of for the benefit of everyone equally or as equally as practical.
To take an example using that definition, taxes for national defense and homeland security are not theft, because they benefit all citizens equally or as equally as practical. Of course, a considerable amount of spending on national defense and homeland security is distributed to politically-favored groups, locales and companies in the form of pork-barrel spending, but it was beyond the scope of my analysis to uncover such waste.
To take another example, I did not count the budgets of such agencies as the Federal Aviation Administration as theft, although I believe that the FAA and others should be privatized. The FAA is financed largely through user fees, and the air traffic control system benefits all Americans equally or as equally as practical.
On the other hand, I counted Social Security and Medicare payments as theft, because current workers and future workers (today’s children) pay the bills of current retirees. It certainly does not benefit my 14-year-old son to be stuck with the medical and retirement bills of my generation
A partial list of the budget items that I counted as theft is below. Please note that the focus of my analysis was on theft, not on whether an agency or program is constitutional, necessary or should be provided by the private sector. Clearly, much of what is done by the Department of Education and Department of Commerce is unconstitutional, much of what is done by Health and Human Services should be done by private charity, and much of what is done by NASA and the National Science Foundation should be done by private industry. But those are subjects for another time and place.
In closing, here is the partial list:
PARTIAL LIST OF THEFT IN THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT BUDGET,
FISCAL YEAR 2006
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
$176 billion in farm assistance
$359 million in loans to companies that install broadband in rural areas
$5.5 billion for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children
214 million for USDA-financed multifamily housing
33.1 billion for the Food Stamp Program
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
$3.7 billion for the Strengthening America’s Communities Grant Program, including the Minority Business Development Agency the Advisory Commission on Asians and Pacific Islanders, and the International Trade Administration
$47 million for the Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
$13.3 billion in Title I spending
$1.1 billion for Reading First and Early Reading First
$412 million to help states test students under No Child Left Behind
$500 million for Teacher Incentive Fund
$2.9 billion for Teacher Quality States Grant program
$40 million for the Adjunct Teacher Corps
$50 million for the Choice Incentive Fund
$219 million for Charter Schools Grants
$37 million for Credit Enhancement for Charter School Facilities
$1.2 billion for High School Intervention Initiative
$250 million for High School Assessments
$175 million for Striving Readers program
$269 million for Math-Science Partnerships
$12 million for State Scholars Program
$12.2 billion for all IDEA programs
$4.3 billion to retire Pell Grant shortfall
$17.9 billion in Pell Grants
$125 million to improve access to community colleges
$299 million for Historically Black Colleges and Graduate Institutions
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
$56 million for Nuclear Power Initiative 2010 (public-private partnerships)
$286 million for President’s Coal Research Initiative
$1.2 billion Hydrogen Fuel Initiative
$3.6 billion in tax incentives for renewable energy and hybrid and fuel cell vehicles
$96 million to modernize electric transmission and distribution systems
$230 million for the Weatherization Assistance Program
HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
$67.2 billion in discretionary spending and $642 billion in mandatory spending, for Medicare, Medicaid, State Children’s Health Insurance Program, health information technology and other programs
DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT
$161.5 million for the American Dream Down-payment Initiative
$40 million for housing counseling
$2.5 billion for the Single Family Home Ownership Tax Credit
$4 billion for homeless programs and grants
Unspecified amount for Housing Opportunities for Persons with Aids (HOPWA)
$74 million for Prisoner Re-entry Initiative
$20.8 billion in rental assistance
$5.7 billion for public housing
$583 million for Native American Block Grant
DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
$4 billion for job training
SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
The entire budget of $593 million is theft
SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
$9.5 billion in discretionary spending and $564 billion in mandatory spending
THE CORPORATION FOR NATIONAL AND COMMUNITY SERVICE
The entire budget of $921 million is theft
NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS
The entire budget of $121 million is theft
NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES
The entire budget of $138 million is theft
REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AGENCIES
The entire budget of $78 million is theft
* * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (www.haalt.org). He can be reached at either ccan2@aol.com or haalt1@aol.com.
This business alert from the Wall Street Journal hit my email about 11:30 a.m. today:
Ebbers was found guilty on all counts for his role in the $11 billion accounting fraud that brought down WorldCom. The former CEO could spend the rest of his life in prison.
In no investment have I ever lost as much money as with WorldCom. When you heap a fraud of this magnitude upon the difficulties created by failing to merge and integrate a hundred or more software systems, you don’t get much good.
I don’t wish a long prison stay for this 63 year-old, because the lost pride and the lost riches have clearly taken their toll. However, something must be done to discourage those who haven’t yet achieved real riches from using this path.
* * * UPDATE * * * By 1:30 p.m. the Wall Street Journal had sent this:
Securities regulators sued Joseph P. Nacchio, the former chief executive of Qwest Communications, and six other former executives, accusing them of engaging in a “massive financial fraud.”
Memphis can be a muddy little river town at times. It comes complete with all the corruption, scandal and fly-coated filth one might expect. As instruments of the politicians in this town, the local media have long hedged any inclination toward serious, investigative reporting—particularly of politics. It’s been this way for decades. With the mayor’s recently announced indiscretions comes a new low in how the local media sees things. Yet, we remain proud of our new basketball arena and the one we’ve left sitting mostly empty.
Craig Cantoni is now able to predict his local newspaper’s “slant” before reading it. The article he discusses hits close to home even though it is fifteen hundred miles away. Our local property assessor—believing that the “housing bubble” grants expansive powers to government—has just sent out new assessments that move already inflated housing prices up another twenty percent in a single year.
On a limb over Republic housing story
By Craig J. Cantoni
March 14, 2005
As I’ve done before, I’m going to crawl out on a limb and predict what an Arizona Republic story says and doesn’t say. Then I’ll read the story and let you know if I was right or wrong.
The story in question was a lead story in yesterday’s edition on the lack of affordable housing in metro Phoenix, due to the recent run up (bubble?) in housing prices. Because of a busy Sunday, I didn’t read the newspaper yesterday. I only glanced at the front-page headlines.
I predict that the story will follow the standard newsroom formula and state that public employees can’t afford to live in the communities where they work. It will make the specious claim that living where one works is an important public policy issue that the government should address, it will spotlight a public school teacher who says that she doesn’t make enough money, and it will spotlight a firefighter, police officer or other public employee who says the same thing. In doing so, the newspaper will plant a seed that teachers and other public employees should get a raise or some sort of housing subsidy.
The story will include sob stories about working people in the private sector who have to commute long distances to work in high-priced suburbs for low wages.
And the story will give statistics showing how housing prices have risen faster than other necessities of life.
Here’s what the story will not say:
In keeping with a gloom-and-doom theme, it will not say that only 37 percent of housing was occupied by owners 100 years ago, versus 66 percent today. Nor will it say that half of households consisted of at least six people living together 100 years ago, versus 10 percent of households that have at least six people living together today.
The story will not say that modern homes have amenities that were unheard of years ago. For example, as recently as 1950, only 50 percent of homes had central heat, only 47 percent had washing machines, only 76 percent had flush toilets, and none had air conditioning.
The story will not say that when pay, benefits and hours are considered, teachers receive more remuneration than workers in other occupations requiring similar skills and education. (I published an article with the facts on teacher pay in June, 2003, based on my primary research. USA Today ran a similar story a week later.)
It will not say that firefighters in my hometown of Scottsdale pay nothing for medical coverage and are eligible for a pension plan in addition to a 401(k) plan. To compare, only about half of private-sector workers have any type of company-paid retirement plan, and the vast majority pay $500 a month or more in health care premiums.
It will not say anything about the expensive cars, trucks and SUVs parked behind firehouses and in faculty parking lots at area schools.
It will not say anything about how tax policies and zoning regulations affect home prices.
It will not say that when my poor grandparents immigrated to this country in the early 20th century, they could afford a two-flat, because tax rates were about a third of today’s confiscatory levels. (My aunt and uncle lived downstairs and raised five kids in a two-bedroom, one-bath flat. That would be considered substandard housing today for people on public assistance.) My grandparents could afford the two-flat even though the average income in inflation-adjusted dollars back then was only about one-fourth of today’s average income.
It will not say that the Arizona Republic has advocated that $4 billion be spent on light rail, downtown development and publicly-financed sports stadiums, hotels and research centers. That is equivalent to the annual income of nearly 100,000 households or to 20,000 homes priced at $200,000.
It will not put the housing situation in perspective by comparing local housing to housing in other countries. It will not point out, for example, that the average home size in the workers’ paradise of France is about 500 sq. ft., and that the French social welfare state has produced double-digit unemployment. Nor will it compare local housing to Mexico, where some Mexicans actually live in garbage dumps, where the average daily wage is four dollars, and where a lack of property rights has kept people poor.
And last, it will not delve into the personal lives of the people highlighted in the article to find out if they have made bad choices in life or if they have squandered money on gambling, drinking, expensive cars, cell phones, big-screen TVs, and cable TV.
Okay, time for me to read the paper. I’ll return momentarily.
[Ten minutes later] It’s worse than I thought. Not only did the story in the news section follow the standard formula as I predicted, but the opinions section had five editorials that followed the same formula.
In retrospect, I was never in danger of falling off the limb.
* * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (www.haalt.org). He can be reached at either ccan2@aol.com or haalt1@aol.com.
From the time this weblog began (January, 2002) I’ve been thinking about terms. Words have meaning. When two people communicate, their different definitions of words confuse the communication. If they have the patience to really understand one another, those differences get resolved so that they can communicate effectively.
In the practice of strategy and process improvement, facts are important. They are seldom in dispute. Once the facts are understood, a basis for proceeding gets just a little easier. The terms used to describe a process and its subsequent improvements have to be well-defined and understood.
That brings us to the ongoing debate between mainstream media (aka professional journalists, MSM, etc.) and those who write weblogs. Apple—and now the court—says a reporter who collects information and writes about it in a weblog should be forced to reveal the sources of the information. Traditional (MSM) journalists are “protected” from having to reveal their sources.
All of this gets tremendously fuzzy if a crime is committed. As one judge opined, “Why isn’t a journalist an equivalent of a fence for stolen property?” My opinion may change, but for now, I think the notion of “protected sources” needs to be re-examined more than the notion of whether newspaper writers and weblog writers are equals.
Opinions clearly influence reporters, writers, journalists—whatever. Once the facts are presented, few reporters can resist some editorial remark about them. Face reporters with a first amendment issue and they close ranks quickly. It’s time to question whether or not there are any circumstances under which a reporter should be compelled to reveal sources. What are the precedents?
Craig Cantoni clearly assesses the slanted disinformation provided in two recent op-ed pieces about the state of public education. As usual, it’s a critical thinker’s treasure.
Teacher union and advocacy group in disingenuousness contest
By Craig J. Cantoni
March 8, 2005
The Arizona Education Association (a teacher union) and the Children’s Action Alliance (a left-liberal advocacy group) had a contest in The Arizona Republic yesterday to see who could be the most disingenuous and spread the most disinformation. You be the judge and pick the winner.
Carol Kamin, the CEO of the Children’s Action Alliance, wrote an op-ed on “early childhood education.” Andrew Morrill, the president of the teacher union, wrote a companion op-ed on two voucher bills being considered in the Arizona legislature. Let’s begin with Morrill’s disinformation.
Morrill claimed that if the bills become law, “parents who intend to send their children to private schools from the very beginning come away with $49,500 plus inflation at the taxpayer’s expense.” Morrill didn’t say that the $49,500 belongs to private school parents to begin with, not to the state. Moreover, the amount represents only 26 percent of what they pay in education taxes.
Let me explain: The government takes $190,000 from the heads of the average household in Arizona over their adult lives. If it returns $49,500 of that amount, or 26 percent, to private school parents, that still leaves a whopping $140,000 that private school parents contribute to the coffers of public education and to Morrill’s union members.
Let’s look now at the contribution of public school parents with two children in government schools. It will cost the government schools $216,000 to educate the two children. Since the parents will contribute $190,000 in public education taxes over their adult lives, that leaves a deficit of $26,000 that has to be picked up by other taxpayers.
Here is a multiple-choice math question for Morrill: Who is contributing more to public education? a) private school parents, or b) public school parents.
Morrill said nothing about the United States being the only Western democracy that forces parochial parents to pay double for education in order to exercise their right of religious freedom. For example, in addition to the $190,000 that my wife and I will pay in public education taxes, we will pay about $60,000 to give our son 12 years of Catholic education. By comparison, it would cost public schools $9,000 a year, or $108,000, to give our son 12 years of inferior education.
Morrill said that “Catholic schools turn away nearly two out of three applicants.” He didn’t say that the statistic applies to Catholic college prep schools, not elementary schools. Nor did he say that Catholic schools accept non-Catholic students whose parents are fed up with public schools, and that an adequate number of Catholic schools would be built to meet the demand if parents didn’t have to sacrifice dearly to pay public education taxes in addition to parochial tuition. Of course, he also was silent about the fact that one of the reasons that the public education movement was begun in the mid-nineteenth century was to stop the growth of parochial schools and to teach Catholics the St. James Bible.
Let’s turn to Kamin’s disinformation.
In writing about the glories of “free” preschool, Kamin conveniently said nothing about the billions already wasted on such programs and the fact that preschool will not address the root causes of poor academic achievement, especially among Hispanics and blacks.
One of the best scholarly studies on the subject is the book, No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom. One chapter is entitled, “The Sad Story of Head Start.” And what a sad story it is.
The authors say that since 1965, 20 million children have gone through Head Start, at a cost of $60 billion. Currently, nearly one million children are in Head Start, at a per-child cost of $6,600. Incidentally, that is twice what my wife and I pay in parochial school tuition for our eighth-grade son.
The authors then discuss the “dismal results” of Head Start, detailing how the modest benefits of Head Start fade away in elementary school. This follows chapter after chapter showing conclusively that two of the root causes of poor academic achievement are the increase in single-parent families since the advent of the Great Society program in 1965 and the culture of low expectations among blacks and Hispanics, a culture that is the opposite of the culture among Asians.
Kamin does not explain how free babysitting, er, preschool, will decrease the number of single-parent families and turn the culture around.
So what is your vote? Who was the most disingenuous, Kamin or Morrill? I say it was a tie.
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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (www.haalt.org). He can be reached at either ccan2@aol.com or haalt1@aol.com.
The beauty of one lesson from Warren Buffett is that it keeps on giving. It makes you want to learn more, and he tells you how to go about that.
The 2004 annual report and letter to shareholders is different only in that it provides a greater incentive to dig deeper. Take these topics for instance: (Note: the first two are pdf files.)
What were the titles of the eighteen (recommended) books sold at last year’s annual meeting?
What are the three reasons most investors suffer results “ranging from mediocre to disastrous?”
What’s the second largest real estate broker in the country?
Why is a $20,000 hiring decision a $3 million business decision?
Why would Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger applaud a business manager who is reducing his sales volume?
The World Trade Center disaster cost the insurance industry an estimated $35 billion. What would happen if the insurance industry faced a $100 billion event? (Hint: “At bottom, any insurance policy is a promise, and as everyone knows, promises vary enormously in their quality.”)
“Like Hell, derivative trading is easy to enter but difficult to leave. (Other similarities come to mind as well.)”
Are women wearing more or less underwear these days?
What company leads the world in training pilots and who is their number one customer?
Why did Berkshire Hathaway own approximately $21.4 billion of foreign exchange contracts at the end of 2004?
How do the budget deficit and the current account deficit differ?
”...lemmings as a class may be derided but never does an individual lemming get criticized.”
What should you read if you want to keep abreast of trade and currency matters?
“Self-interest inevitably blurs introspection.”
Options expensing is scheduled to become mandatory on June 15th. What should you expect between now and then?
What book has Warren Buffett asked to be added to this year’s list of annual meeting titles?
Stay tuned for some answers to these questions. In the meantime, please understand why any person participating in the business world today should pay any attention to this stuff:
“I do this in the spirit of the farmer who enters his hen house with an ostrich egg and admonishes the flock: ‘I don’t like to complain, girls, but this is just a small sample of what the competition is doing.’”
Now, get busy. It’s free. It’s fun. It’s enriching.
Others have said that a thorough reading and re-reading of Warren Buffett’s letters to shareholders from 1977 to now is a better education than two years in business school.
Tomorrow, at 9:00a.m. EST, we get another instalment in this great body of work. The annual report (and letter) for Berkshire Hathaway is due to be posted on the web. You can find it by visiting the company’s web site here.
For the techies in the crowd, you should know that Bill Gates has joined Berkshire’s board. A Saturday morning, a hot pot of coffee, a notebook and good pen and a new annual report. Priceless.
Politically, I care little for the Social Security system. I understand the historical context of its founding. I understand the “benefits” of its initial ten years.
Philosophically, I believe the lower taxes a person has, the more good results. Families, churches, charities and society as a whole benefit when a person has a lower tax burden and can provide for his or her own needs.
Financially, I’m in a tiny group of people who continue to believe that conservatives are missing an excellent opportunity to discuss a five-to-twenty-five year plan for eliminating Social Security altogether. Such a plan removes a burden from families, from employers and from government. Remember, I’m speaking of a way to accomplish this financially—not politically.
Methodically, I’m in the small group of people who believe that solvency and private accounts are two completely separate matters when dealing with Social Security. Private accounts are the method that each of us should have in place to provide for retirement, disability and life’s unforeseen emergencies. As for raising the retirement age, raising the cap, raising the tax rate—well, these are all tax increases.
For one who can envision doing away with the program altogether, any alternative that increases the tax is like trying to remove a wart by cutting off a limb.
Yesterday’s discussion of RFID was intentionally written to counter Walmart’s cheerleading. There is no doubt that the 3000 people attending this RFID conference are largely there because of the impact that Walmart has made on its suppliers.
That’s enough to build an entire industry focusing RFID on supply-chain work. It doesn’t mean that there is an easy return on investment for the suppliers. They do things to come into compliance with Walmart’s requests, regardless of whether they can see the ROI.
No one wants to be left out. A sale to Walmart is the biggest sale many of these suppliers will ever make. Nevermind what it costs them to adequately serve the customer.
TextDrive is a hosting company formed in 2004 by Dean Allen. Recently, TextDrive has been offering hosting accounts for life to a limited number of participants. This morning, Dean announced that there were only 33 spots remaining in this current offer.
For $399 you get the following:
1GB of server space
20GB of bandwidth per month
up to 15 top-level domains (with unlimited aliases)
* * * UPDATE * * * They sold out. Whether 100, 200 or 500 customers bought this deal, TextDrive has broken the code when it comes to raising the capital required for capital improvements and expansion. Operating revenues come from those who choose to pay for their services as they use it. It’s quite the ingenious technique for financing.
RFID just can’t seem to get over the hump. Unfortunately, it’s not entirely clear what the “hump” might be. Some business owners dream of a day with no physical inventories. I don’t mean no physical goods; I mean no counting of those physical goods on a monthly, annual or other cycle. Wouldn’t it be great to send a signal out to the warehouse saying, “all you RFID tags out there, sound off.” With that your physical inventory would be taken in the time it takes the electrons to stream back to their aggregation point.
Reality is much different today. RFID seems to be making some inroads with manufacturers. After all, tagging the same size box with the same type of tag on a conveyor you control is rather easy. Enter a UPS or FedEx sort facility or a Walmart warehouse and the challenges multiply.
In these scenarios, we’re asking RFID for ubiquity. No matter the shape of the container and no matter where and how the label was produced, we want RFID to work one hundred percent of the time. It doesn’t. It looks as if it won’t for some time to come.
With read rates of tradiitional barcodes approaching 100%, RFID technology is going to have to change dramatically in performance and price to make the impact on general distribution. In the meantime, we can keep going to conferences and hoping for a breakthrough.
Wasn’t no copperhead, wasn’t no cottonmouth
Just a garden snake that brought us all down
It didn’t look deadly, didn’t look venomous
Wrapped around that tree so lovely and sensuous
There’s vices and voodoo always enticing you
From the day that you’re born ‘til the day you leave this world
The devil’s got a line for you for sure and 10,000 lures
You may think I’m preaching, even evangelizing
But what he’s throwing out can be so tantalizing
He’s a master of disguise, he’ll reel you in with power
Roaming to and fro seeking whom he may devour
He knows every weakness, knows just when to strike
You know he was an angel once and he knows what you like
For you it might be money, for me it might be fame
Better cover up your ears now when he whispers your name
Before I end this song, before the music’s through
Oh I’d like to share a good word or two
There’s 10,000 angels watching over you
From the day that you’re born ‘til the day you leave this world
Three rusty nails, that’s the cure for 10,000 lures
I’m told that any product or service launched today requires buzz. With buzz comes the risk of someone co-opting—no, stealing—your idea. Some forms of buzz simply amount to renaming something that already existed, which brings us to podcasting.
Much like my first exposure to the world wide web, I think I first began to grasp the notion of mp3 files when Napster was all the rage. You know, back before people realized it was wrong for me to put my entire audio collection out there for anyone to download.
As an audiophile, the whole phenomenon of downloading digitized music was of interest. When Apple released the first iPod, there was great unrest amongst the record players. That’s the group who spends tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars to play vinyl disks on equipment that can find even microscopic dust in grooves. No digitized music has ever sounded sweet to the avowed vinyl fan. He’s far more concerned about preventing his vinyl from warping than whether or not he can digitize it.
The next time music downloads crossed my mind involved the announcements of iTunes and Walmart’s music downloads. Suddenly, there was a way to legalize what Napster had been doing. Now I think, even Napster is reincarnated.
Comingled with those announcements were a series of press briefings and analysts conferences about bandwidth. Level 3 Communications would mention the costs of moving a compact disk of information from coast to coast. You could fly it. You could mail it. You could transmit if over dial-up. With a global IP network made up of many conduits and the latest fiber optics, Level 3 could move that cd of info quicker and at lower cost than anyone. After all, we either create, store or move information. Level 3 wants to be in the moving business.
Two other events then coincided within a few weeks or months of each other. I became aware of Chris Lydon’s work to put interviews on line. About the time I was pondering that capability, a friend and I were considering putting talk show-styled interviews with business owners on cd’s as promotional pieces. Long story—brief idea—not much buzz.
Other than the regular receipt of Stereophile magazine and playing my own cd’s, all of this left my radar screen for a while. I dismissed mp3 files as having lower overall sound quality than cd’s or vinyl. I dismissed a lot of the digital work with my music collection as tasks that ultimately would undermine the sound quality. Did I mention that speaker wire can be as large as a garden hose for some audiophiles?
The next time mp3 files made an impression on me involved the study of the Book of Revelation. A men’s Bible study group I’ve attended from time to time was launching the study. I learned that the church had been putting the pastor’s sermons on line for download. Visiting their web site, I could see the listing of messages that was available. Then, lo and behold, there were the weekly studies of Revelation—on line and ready for download. The same day I saw this, I ran into another member of the group who was trying to find out where he could buy something called an iPod; “everybody’s doing this. It’s like being able to Tivo the 6:15 a.m. studies.” The church was podcasting and didn’t even know it.
Today, I was spurred to write this because someone whined about having an idea stolen. His buzz outran his ability to keep up with it. Others have actually formed a company and gone into the business of “commercializing” or profiting from podcasting. Digging into the subject a bit more, I started reading the things that would tell me how simple mp3 downloads to computers or mp3 players differ from podcasting.
The short answer is they don’t. At least they don’t differ very much. It seems that podcasting largely adds one other piece to the technologies involved in downloading digitized information. The information syndication format known as RSS is a way to aggregate weblog posts, mainstream media articles and other sources of information into a personalized newspaper. Everything is brought together into a piece of software known as a news reader or aggregator. There, without having to visit every one of your favorite sites, you can see recently updated information in a way that you have organized to your own tastes.
Now, that same technique—RSS—permits attachments that can be digitized audio (and one day video) files. In other words, instead of having to visit the church’s web site to get yesterday’s study of Revelation, I subscribe to their RSS feed and it automatically synch’s to my computer, my mp3 player or whatever the device might be. In this specific example, the church does not (yet) offer those files via RSS subscription, but you get the idea.
With Odeo presenting at TED today, and Apple announcing new audio players every sixty days and content from over seven million weblogs exploding, podcasting is buzzing. As an old audiophile, I remain concerned about the quality of my music. As an old student, I’m thrilled at the possibility of being able to subscribe to topics of interest and have them synch to my listening device for on-the-go instruction.
Today is the day that podcasting ceased to be a buzzword for me and began to shape the way I see audio and video of tomorrow. Stay tuned.
* * * UPDATE * * * Reading out of order today, I’m late getting to Lileks. Here’s the teaser:
Let me speak for millions here who just want to listen to music: I don’t care about Ogg Vorbis. If Ogg Vorbis came to my house and waved tentacles at me demanding in a slobbery moan that I kneel and submit, I would shoot it. I don’t know what it is and I don’t care.
Ogg Vorbis may be the audiophile’s answer to digitized music. In time we’ll know.
“It makes us look like bad people, but we’re really just a bunch of kids who never had a chance to grow up.”—Brian Welch
Any image can be remade. Any life can be transformed. Transformation goes well beyond an image make-over. There’s a line that’s been drawn. Cross it and your life will be transformed.
Gripe or whine if you must. There’s a future in providing information, services, good writing and design on a micropayments basis. The kinks will get untangled in time. If you don’t agree, then consider this a donation to someone doing something you always wanted to do.
In May of 2004 I made one of the great investments we get to make in a lifetime. Today, that investment effectively doubled in value.
Rather than gloat about my little tale of good fortune, I’m making you aware of a similar opportunity. It’s a web hosting account for life if you take the folks at TextDrive up on their offer.
The world is full of people seeking power, prestige and position over others. Obvious in their words, their manners and their unwillingness to listen, these are the ones leading “lives of quiet desperation.” If only those with all the answers understood how little they really know!
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.—Thomas Merton
Religion, not faith, will be a part of every Presidential race from now on. Candidates are likely to select ministers and organizations they can use as instruments of influence. This isn’t new.
What’s new is the degree to which it will be used disingenuously. Rather than saying, “they believe as I do,” or, “I believe as they do,” we’re going to see religious figures used as pawns of manipulation. To sort through this mess, interviewers are going to have to become much more adept at questions that will reveal what a candidate really believes.
Do they hold with the views of a given organization or have they merely aligned themselves with it for campaign purposes?
Have you always been or have you only recently become a person of faith?
Since your dramatic conversion experience on the road to the New Hampshire primary last week…
Rumors abound that members of the Democratic Party are beginning to see the wisdom in presenting a clearer “values statement” to the public. To this end, there seems to be early indication of the political left and right conscripting the religious left and right.
Howard Dean vs. Ken Mehlman. Jim Wallis vs. Jerry Falwell. Hillary Clinton(?) vs. Rudy Giuliani(?). Imagine how confusing it’s going to become to determine what someone really believes. If advertising works—and I’m told it does—the power of religious figures and organizations to influence elections has only begun.
What we’ve called a “culture war” is about to become a full-fledged war for (or over) the beliefs of a nation.
Computer programmers need business people to set their directions, monitor their progress and remove them from the mire. They don’t believe this, but it’s true. For too many years, I’ve witnessed projects—some of which should never have been launched—stuck in endless loops of missed due dates and fuzzy status reports.
Because they are smarter than everyone else and they believe they hold the keys to the kingdom, or at least the backdoor bypass to all the security in your software, programmers often miss the point. Software is a capitalist tool. It isn’t a hobby unless you are pursuing it on your own time. It’s a vehicle for helping a business do things more effectively.
Unless this happens:
The first program I spotted was Adobe Acrobat 5, which I don’t need any more because I now have Acrobat 6. But when I tried to remove Acrobat 5 (using Windows’s Add/Remove Programs program), a message said, “The system indicates that the following shared file is no longer used by any programs and may be deleted: C:/program Files/Dell/ShareDLL/djbsdk.dll. If any programs are still using this file and it is removed those programs may not function. Do you want to remove the shared file? Yes/No.” WHAT THE…!?!? Like I’m supposed to know if some other program is going to need C:/program Files/Dell/ShareDLL/djbsdk.dll?
Of course, you already know the answer. Microsoft doesn’t improve this kind of thing because it doesn’t have to. It’s got a bad case of a little thing called Monopoly Complacence.
Few companies can boast a circulation for their internal newsletter that rivals the circulation of a daily newspaper. Few weblogs get readership beyond the family, neighbors and a groupie or two.
That isn’t stopping an explosion in the numbers of weblogs and the weblog tools behind them. This study titled Weblog Tools Market—Update February 2005 provides the details. Notice where each weblog tool stands and how fast it is moving. Elise Bauer has done a fantastic and thorough job of assembling the data that tells the story. It is a continuation of work begun in August, 2004.
One clear message to tool developers: it’s a crowded field already. All of the things required to retain and grow a customer base in a competitive market simply must be in place. If you want to take share from others, what’s the value proposition?
A lot has been going on the past week and a half or so. It seems that this must be one of the busiest times of the year for conferences. Flashing ever so briefly across my radar are the following:
Along with these events and all of their announcements, there’s a new Six Apart web site”. There’s talk of a new browser from Microsoft. Will it deal strictly with security or will it address the stuff people have clamored for?
During the late 1990’s people began to refer to the “new” economy. Rather quickly it became obvious that there was not a new economy, but the same capitalistic system we had nurtured for a couple of centuries.
With some of the recent reporting by weblogs on national and international events, the talk of “new” journalism has been making the rounds. The fact is that journalistic principles have not changed. The media types that require journalists have changed and expanded.
An email from the Wall Street Journal this morning produced this:
Verizon agreed to acquire MCI for $6.75 billion in cash, shares and dividends, marking the end of the nation’s last independent long-distance giant.
The worst investments I ever made involved the telecommunications industry. The worst treatment as a customer I ever received involved the telecommunications industry.
Unfortunately, the call center which sits behind so many organizations is actually a creation of the telecommunications industry. Consequently, we have the worst providers of service in the entire world shaping the practices of countless other companies.
The telecommunications industry proves conclusively that the size of the organization doesn’t equate to knowing what they’re doing!
What experience are cellular companies trying to provide in their retail stores? Do they want you to feel as though you’re at Circuit City or Best Buy? Are they imitating grocery stores? Do they really want to behave like a car dealer? Are they trying to act like the private banker?
At some point they treat you like they are the FBI, and they have the right to dig into everything about you. I’ve got news for them—you sell cellular telephones. That’s it. Quit acting as if you hold launch codes behind your counters.
I use Sprint. For national travel, I’ve been happy with Sprint. However, happiness equates to not thinking about Sprint. When I have to think about dealing with a cellular company, I get rashes. Yesterday, I went to three different Sprint stores. I got three different interpretations of whether I was eligible—as an existing customer—for certain promotions that are being run.
In every case I had a sales rep from “the floor” who needed to check with his manager to determine whether or not I was eligible. If I use the six opinions I got, I conclude the cellular companies have no clue about the old adage that it’s far cheaper to sell to an existing customer than to get a new one.
At one location I pre-registered at the front door where my name was typed into a computer and then appeared on a public monitor that was four feet across. “Now serving number 54,”—just like the tire dealer. It’s Saturday and I’ve yet to be served.
Talk to the 151,000 employees. Talk to the ones who were fired. These people have answers for the Board, for the new CEO and for their co-workers.
Over-engineer everything as in the past. It wasn’t so bad when HP was known as just a bunch of engineers who didn’t know how to market anything!
Analyze specific statistics for the last thirty days of calls to any foreign call center. Examine carefully each customer’s experience. How many buttons did they have to push? How long did they wait to talk to someone? How many times and how long were they put on hold? How many times did they have to have something repeated?
Strengthen your joint design/development work with Apple. Determine why Palm languishes and your calculators and handheld devices are no longer the pride of the company. Resume work on handhelds independent of industry standards. Make HP the standard.
Become a resource for desktop Linux. Talk to Novell. Talk to Apple. Decide how HP can get out of me-too products in the PC industry.
Assess the impact of the Agilent spin-off before doing anything. Agilent was the largest IPO in Silicon Valley’s history when it went public in 1999. The technologies in that company put HP on the map.
Manage with facts. Don’t assume your focus should be on Dell.
Drop any product which isn’t #1 or #2 in its field and simplify each product line. More than good-better-best confuses customers.
Posting an essay called The Self-Esteem Myth, Al Mohler discusses the following:
The idea that self-esteem is an essential part of a healthy personality is now virtually institutionalized in American culture.
He goes on to explain the findings of a study published in the January 2005 issue of Scientific American. Basically, the study—and Mohler—fully discredit the notion that all of one’s ills are attributable to low self-esteem.
Carly Fiorina has resigned from HP. Some reports say she stepped down, while others indicate she might have been helped down from her perch high atop HP.
This follows a feud with heirs of HP’s founders, a lackluster acquisition of Compaq, countless service problems and Carol Loomis’s masterpiece in Fortune. Now a dispute with the Board apparently leads to this. We can only hope this marks the point at which the company begins revising The HP Way.
UPDATE: HP closed up $1.39 at $21.53. Dell closed down $0.03 at $40.99. IBM closed down $1.43 at $92.70. The companies’ P/E ratios using the last twelve months of earnings and their annual sales are:
HP – 18.72; $79.90B
Dell – 33.88; $47.26B
IBM – 18.72; $96.50B
HP and IBM pay dividends. Dell does not. We’ll see how things look over the next five or ten years.
Mooing in unison about Social Security
By Craig J. Cantoni
February 7, 2005
They can be seen at all hours of the day at the casinos on the Indian reservation near my house in Scottsdale, Arizona. They can be seen making left turns from the right-turn lane and driving 20 mph slower than the speed limit in their Cadillacs, Buicks and motor homes. They can be seen waiting in line at the nearby Pancake House for a breakfast of three eggs, three pancakes and sausage.
It’s not just the sunbelt where they can be seen. They can be seen driving 90 miles east from Erie and 60 miles southeast from Buffalo to gamble at the Indian casino in western New York State near the hometown of my in-laws. And, when I lived in New Jersey for 10 years, bus load after bus load of them could be seen on the New Jersey Turnpike, heading for the casinos in Atlantic City.
Who are they? They are the elderly. According to the conventional wisdom, they are the people who would be living in poverty if it were not for Social Security.
When the press and politicians from both parties begin mooing in unison about something, it is a safe bet that they are regurgitating what they’ve heard instead of checking the facts. Lately, they have been mooing that Social Security had been responsible for lifting the elderly out of poverty after its enactment in 1935, and that without the program, most of today’s elderly would be living in poverty.
Ted Kennedy has said that, the Bush administration has said that, the New York Times has said that, the Arizona Republic has said that, liberal pundit Mark Shields has said that, and conservative pundit David Brooks has said that.
But is it true?
Since pebbles of truth usually can be found in an avalanche of propaganda, let me answer the question by separating the truth from the propaganda.
First, it’s important to recognize that “poverty” is an arbitrary classification that does not take into consideration improvements in the standard of living. Thanks to capitalism and the Industrial Revolution, today’s poor have a much higher standard of living than aristocrats 200 years ago. A king in 1805 could not buy an aspirin for his headache, penicillin for a fatal infection, vaccines for polio and smallpox, central heat, a television or even an antiperspirant.
But accepting the government’s definition of poverty, is it true that most seniors would be living in poverty without Social Security?
The conventional method of determining how many seniors would be living in poverty is to subtract Social Security payments from the income of the elderly. By that method, half of seniors would be living in poverty if it were not for Social Security.
There is a serious flaw in the method, however. According to Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute, the method does not take into consideration the amount of personal savings that seniors would have accumulated if they had not been forced to pay into Social Security (and Medicare) over their working lives and had not been given the expectation when younger that the government would provide a safety net for them in old age.
It is impossible to determine what the savings rate would have been without Social Security, but history provides some clues. We know, for example, that the rate of voluntary savings was higher before Social Security was enacted. According to the Concord Coalition, between 1870 and 1930 the United States had the highest average net savings rate of the top seven industrialized countries. It now has the lowest.
We also know that China and other developing countries have a savings rate that is much higher than ours, although their per-capita income is but a fraction of ours. And we know that because the total tax rate 100 years ago was about a third of today’s, workers could save a higher portion of their income back then.
There are other clues, mostly anecdotal. One clue is the demise of bromides about the importance of saving. Today, we rarely hear bromides that were popular during my grandparents’ generation, such as: “A penny saved is a penny earned.” “Waste not, want not.” “A fool and his money are soon parted.”
Another clue comes from my family but can be found in other families as well. My grandparents lived below their modest means and saved money for old age without the government’s help, although they immigrated to America poor and unskilled. For example, my mother was orphaned as a young child and raised by her immigrant aunt. The aunt pinched pennies all of her life, invested the savings in blue-chip stock, and bequeathed the sizable nest egg to my mother, who, in turn, wants to bequeath the now larger nest egg to her grandson. Such wealth is not included in income statistics.
Another change between today and yesteryear is that most seniors now live in their own homes, not with their children and grandchildren, as in the past. I’ll let sociologists debate whether this is good or bad for society, but it suggests that the elderly of today have considerable assets that don’t show up in income statistics. It also suggests that the elderly of yesteryear may not have been as destitute as income statistics alone would indicate.
The elderly of yesteryear not only relied on families more extensively than today but also on mutual-aid societies and charities. Sociologists, historians and economists disagree on the adequacy of such voluntary arrangements, but an interesting book on the subject is “The Tragedy of American Compassion” (1992), by Marvin Olasky, whose hypothesis is that the voluntary compassion of the past was more compassionate and effective than the involuntary “compassion” of today.
It is true that the elderly suffered during the Great Depression, but it is also true that FDR’s economic policies protracted the depression. Besides, it was not necessary to socialize everyone’s retirement in order to address a temporary problem that didn’t affect everyone. Social Security collectivization is akin to putting all Americans on the food stamp program because some Americans do not have the wherewithal to buy food, or forcing all Americans to live in public housing because some Americans can’t afford their own homes.
Many economists say that the elderly are the wealthiest group of Americans and that children are the poorest. Yet for every dollar the government spends on children, eight dollars is spent by the government on the elderly. Worse, Social Security and Medicare have become pyramid schemes in which the future income of today’s children is transferred to today’s elderly.
Still worse is how Social Security and other entitlements have changed the American culture and political system in profound ways—from individualism to collectivism, from self-reliance to government reliance, and from national and personal savings to national and personal debt. For more on this perspective and for a little-known history of Social Security, the link below will take you to a 100-page essay from the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, entitled, “The Revolution of 1935: The Secret History of Social Security.” The Introduction alone is worth reading.
http://www.mises.org/journals/essays/bresiger.pdf
When all of the foregoing facts are considered, it is a safe assumption that if Social Security didn’t exist, the number of seniors living in poverty would be far less than 50 percent, perhaps as low as the poverty rate for all other Americans. Whatever the percentage, the issue of Social Security reform would put in a different context if politicians and the press stopped mooing in unison and started to present the whole truth to the American people.
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (www.haalt.org). He can be reached at either haalt1@aol.com or ccan2@aol.com.
On January 24, 2005, Mark Helprin wrote another piece for OpinionJournal.com. Mark is one of the great minds of this generation. His essay was titled Our Blindness. His point was easily made and easy to see:
Our own absorbing passions, which are remarkably similar, have blinded us in the same way. We have yet to find a serviceable framework for the application of our military power in the war on terrorism; in view of potential catastrophes of which we have a great deal of forewarning, we have yet to provide adequately for what used to be called civil defense; and we have no policy in regard to China’s steady cultivation of power that soon will vie with our own. Though any one of these things is capable of dominating the coming century, not one has been properly addressed.
Uneven and ineffective application of military power, vulnerability to mass terrorism and natural epidemics, blindness to the rise of a great competitor: matters like these, that may seem remote and abstract, are seldom as remote and abstract as they seem. A hundred years ago, our predecessors, unable to sense what had already begun, did not know the price they would pay as the century wore on. But, as the century wore on, that price was exacted without mercy.
The Wall Street Journal lists eleven of the Super Bowl ads as contenders for “best ad.” It lists five ads as contenders for the worst ad. People have been voting since the wee hours this morning.
The Budweiser Veterans ad has received 37% of the “best ad” votes. The GoDaddy.com ad has received 32% of the “worst ad” votes and leads its nearest competitor by seven percentage points.
Without speaking a word of disrespect, FOX-Sports has successfully reminded CBS of all the people who fought, are fighting and will fight to make certain CBS has the right to air its counter-cultural nonsense.
Given such a reminder, one wonders if CBS really believes that taking the low road is the right choice given the price that has been paid.
I encourage you to start at the beginning and get caught up. You’ll find an interesting story behind Super Bowl advertising that is getting much attention.
Most estimates indicate that IP traffic continues to grow at rates exceeding 50% per year. Yet, we have the following situations unfolding as we speak:
Carl Icahn owns around 65% of XO Communications with no clear game plan announced. The company currently operates as a traditional CLEC.
SBC is buying AT&T for around $16 billion.
Qwest is negotiating to buy MCI for around $6.3 billion, but has $17.2 billion of debt already.
RCNC went bankrupt.
David McCourt has resigned from boards at Level 3 and CTE.
Level 3 trades at $2.97 from a high of $130 with over 100% share dilution.
Vonage and Skype continue to make inroads at the consumer level.
Cisco continues to preach VoIP.
1.5Mbps costs an American consumer about $45 per month.
Leucadia/WilTel are private and quiet at the moment.
MCI holds the tattered remains of what was once at $180 billion combination of Worldcom and MCI.
To the list that includes Dan Rather and Jayson Blair, let’s go ahead and add Eason Jordan. Add him to the list and ask questions later. That seems to be the technique he uses when he shoots his mouth off. Follow the link and the ones you find there. You’ll get the picture.
“Blowback” is a term I had not associated with geopolitical events and military operations. This morning’s trolling uncovered an article from the Rocky Mountain News that brings that term to the fore.
The premise is that we have no way to know what the unintended consequences of our actions might be. With hindsight, we begin speculating about why events unfold as they do. Was it Islam? Was it putting military bases in Saudi Arabia? Was it past support rethought and removed? Was it some other specific element of foreign policy? Was it envy? Speculations fuel many a latenight debate.
However, it was completely predictable what type of blowback might result from Churchill’s drivel. Any patriotic American readily sees that Chalmers Johnson also arrives at flawed conclusions about root causes. It is really tough to see through lenses so frosted by partisanship. Yet, we give these people voice and protect them with the rest of our citizenry.
Google announced blow-the-doors-off numbers today. For the year the company posted $3.189 billion in sales. That was more than double the prior year. Against those sales, they recorded a net profit of $399 million. That was almost four times the prior year’s profit.
Google employs just over 3000 people and has approximately 286 million shares outstanding. Profitability amounted to $1.46 per share and $133,000 per employee.
At a market price of about $191.90 per share, the whole company is valued at $54.6 billion. Invest your $192 expecting a five percent annual return, and the company is going to have to post earnings of $9.60 per share. They are on their way, but with a P/E of 230.37, well that’s a 1999 multiple!
For perspective consider that Berkshire Hathaway earned $4,134.48 per share during 2003 with a current share price of $90,850. That’s a P/E of only 21.97 by comparison. Invest your $91,000 and, to get a five percent return, the company has to earn only $4550 per share. Sometime in March we’ll know how they did against that target.
Liberals—without dismal news from Iraq—have decided to whine about Social Security reform. With Iraqis dancing at polling places and celebrating one of the highest turnout percentages in the history of elections, the liberals have to find their own visions of gloom and doom somewhere else. It’s almost beyond comprehension how badly they hate liberty.
Big media is still in shock that the vast majority of their news reports from Iraq have had to be positive this weekend. Try as they might, they’ve been unable to find a downside to the story of a totalitarian government turning to democracy in the span of twenty four months. Worse, they have completely missed the fact that this is the first free election in the history of Mesopotamia.
Sometimes the urge to say, “just shut up,” seems so appropriate. Give it a couple of days (or less) and they’ll concoct something to lament. Of this, you can be sure! By the way, there’s a 6.2 percent solution to the Social Security problem.
As you think about what’s going right and what’s going wrong in the election process in Iraq, please keep in mind that no election is ever “perfect.” As you listen to the debate about our role(s) in Iraq, remember what liberty has meant to you and your family.
If you haven’t stumbled across it already, be aware that a conference for Christian webloggers is gaining momentum. With limited initial discussion, there are now many details set. It’s called GodBlogCon I.
We will witness an election on Sunday. The world’s media will be there focused with a precision unlike we have ever seen. They will do human interest stories. They will do stories that tug at the heartstrings. They will connect dots that have no connection at all.
The Iraqi people deserve better, but the world’s media are the best we have to offer. With all the intense focus will come all manner of unrelated speculation and opinion and media bias. The Iraqi people deserve better. Here’s how one great dad, put it:
...haven’t the time or inclination to argue with people who think “No WMD!” is the argument equivalent of a spreading a full house on the green felt table. It may seem so, but unfortunately we’re playing chess.
Those elite members of the media will cover themselves with the contraction. Mr. Lileks describes it as the DB. He’s right. They’ll toss you a bone, then toss you a knife:
“The election went as planned in 95 percent of the country, but violence marred polling in the disputed Sunny D Triangle, where insurgents opposed to Tropicana Juice fired automatic weapons into an juice concentrate factory.”
A bit of perspective on this whole thing will serve everyone well. The things we measure in days and weeks, the Iraqi’s measure in centuries. An election without the winner declared in advance hasn’t been held in very many of those centuries.
It’s not often that I read something and say to myself, “that’s exactly right.” More likely, it’s, “I agree with most of that and like what he or she had to say.”
However, George Will has just about captured precisely the right set of considerations for the recent meeting at Hahvad. Perhaps there’s a red state or blue state residing inside his remarks, but I doubt it. Referring to Hahvad’s President, Will said this:
He thought he was speaking in a place that encourages uncircumscribed intellectual explorations. He was not. He was on a university campus.
Hugh Hewitt has been spending some time with the “traditional” media recently. After all, there’s a Blog to flog. With every moment spent there the distinctions between traditional news reporting and blogging becomes more evident. Conciliatory comes to mind as the description for how bloggers are viewed. Here’s an excerpt from his description of the experience:
So I find myself slipping into deep Noah mode: When interacting with my colleagues in broadcast, I will answer their questions and tell them that the flood is not just coming but has begun. But I do not expect they will believe me.
Keeping bookmarks, RSS feeds and blogrolls synchronized with one another and categorized correctly is a challenge. Wishing for a single (web-based) application for managing all three of these, I learned today about a solution that has genuine merit.
If you have a similar interest or need, you might enjoy this entry, which offers enough detail to whet the appetite.
Lest ye think I would lead thee astray, I want to assure you that my guesstimate of last Friday as a target day for the release of Textpattern 1.0 was a somewhat informed guess. I had read what I thought was a conservative estimate based upon a recently missed target or two.
To my knowledge, said software still hasn’t shipped. I’m sure it has become a much bigger job to finish the caligraphy in all the user manuals, duplicate all those CD’s, print the boxes and, we all know that shrink-wrapping takes time.
Well, once again I’ve been the skunk at the party. This time, as I will describe momentarily, I made a stink at an education conference hosted by a respected conservative organization that believes in limited government and personal responsibility. Most times, I make a stink at meetings of left-liberals.
By “stink,” I mean asking questions that make audiences angry or uncomfortable, by revealing their intellectual inconsistencies, hypocrisy and self-interest. The only time I’m not a skunk is when I attend gatherings of classical liberals or small “L” libertarians—not because I agree with all of their positions, but because they have the most intellectual consistency and the least hypocrisy and self-interest. And, thankfully, they are very quick to point out when I exhibit intellectual inconsistency, hypocrisy and self-interest—traits that I dislike more in myself than in others.
Anyway, most of the education conference was free of inconsistency, hypocrisy and self-interest. The speakers, panelists and audience spoke about how school choice (vouchers) would improve the academic achievement of American students, especially in math and science, and advance the cause of liberty. They also spoke about the subtle racism of low expectations for minorities in public schools. The positions of the majority of the attendees were not only aligned with the host organization’s mission of limited government and personal responsibility, but also aligned with my own beliefs and values.
I didn’t raise my skunk tail until four hours into the meeting, at the lunch break, which is a rude time to be odoriferous.
The stench was triggered by some of the participants deploring American scores in math and science, and the paucity of students who become engineers and scientists. I responded with comments that I thought were odor-free, but to my surprise, made the others hold their noses and walk away, as if I had emitted a green cloud.
What did I say? I said that incentives matter, which is something that I mistakenly thought would not be controversial with conservatives. I explained that my research shows that the best and brightest American students have been going, in rapidly increasing numbers over the last 35 years, into financial professions and into occupations that are joined at the hip with the regulatory state, such as lawyers, tax accountants and regulatory experts—occupations that don’t require a knowledge of calculus or physics to earn a six-figure income. Why should the best and brightest put on steel-toed shoes and become engineers in factories, I asked, if they can earn more money wearing Gucci loafers while pushing paper in an office, especially if that’s how mom and dad make their money?
Why would that be a malodorous comment? Looking back on it, I believe it was malodorous because the majority of the attendees were lawyers, accountants, regulatory experts, financial professionals and scholars at think tanks. I met only one attendee who was an engineer, which is about how many engineers I meet at other large gatherings of the best, brightest and wealthiest Americans.
It’s somewhat hypocritical for non-engineers and nonscientists to preach about others not going into science and engineering when they haven’t done so themselves or encouraged their kids to do so. And it’s very hypocritical for conservatives to rant about the burgeoning regulatory state and at the same time to earn a six-figure income by being a regulatory expert.
My smelliest remarks came after lunch, in response to the remarks of a speaker and panelist of Puerto Rican ancestry, which she wore on her sleeve, as if she wanted to be judged by her race and not by what she had to say.
The young woman’s initial comments were fine, especially about believing in school choice. But then she said that she headed an activist Hispanic organization that accepts government funding and that teaches Hispanics to pursue their “rights” and “entitlements” under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program.
To put her remarks and my subsequent comments into perspective, NCLB is not only unconstitutional but is also a very expensive program. Among other “rights” and “entitlements,” students can get free tutors if they don’t do well academically. The cost of NCLB is in addition to the $104,000 that it costs to educate a child for 12 years in Arizona. Without NCLB, an immigrant family of four children is already receiving $416,000 in education benefits, which, for some reason, are never classified as welfare, although that’s what it is when people receive more education benefits than they pay in education taxes.
It’s also relevant that I lived in the barrio for five years, was a leader in civil rights in the early 1970s and, unlike many conservatives, including some at the conference, favor immigration. But I don’t believe in coddling or patronizing so-called minorities, because that is a form of the subtle racism of low expectations.
Given that background, let me describe how I stunk up the room. Since the speaker’s remarks about rights and entitlements seemed to be at odds with the host organization’s mission of personal responsibility and limited government, I asked her if she saw a contradiction between saying that she was for choice and advocating for NCLB and its higher taxes and increased regulations.
The audience gasped and held their noses.
She responded with a platitude about choice, to which I responded that other people are not given a choice about their money being taken to fund NCLB for her racial constituency.
The audience grabbed their gas masks.
I believe that my comments were particularly offensive to the white audience, because I had directed them at a minority woman and gone against the subtle racism of low expectations. If the comments had been directed at a white man, the gas masks would have stayed in their bags.
In closing, a piece of advice: Don’t invite skunks to your party if intellectual inconsistency, hypocrisy, self-interest and racial coddling are going to be served.
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (www.haalt.org). He can be reached at either ccan2@aol.com or haalt1@aol.com.
Red states and blue states symbolize a profound difference in the interpretation of what America has been and what it should be. People contest the election and argue about whether:
we were on the wrong track, but things are getting better
we are on the wrong track and things are getting worse
we were on the right track, but now we need a course correction
The debate has been raging for some time. One group thinks we should work toward what the Founders had in mind. Another group believes we cannot know what the Founders had in mind. Still others think the Founders’ views were clear, but we lost that vision long ago.
Two people on very different ends of the political spectrum used the following terms to describe what they see:
Include God or exclude God—tolerate or enforce—liberate or let live—foreign or domestic—fight or flee—love or hate; these underpin our every difference.
President Bush was re-elected this past November and was sworn into office for another four years yesterday. His views of the world, America’s values and our role in the world are clear and clearly communicated. Some people like that and others do not.
Take a look at two different views – first, this one, then, this one – (would you call these interpretations?) of the second inaugural address.
Some people are continuing to struggle with how the majority in this country see things and how they vote. They have problems with America being the strongest nation. To those who prefer that America stand down from its position of strength, I’d suggest a careful reading of each line in the speech – not the lines between the lines. Read the lines all of us can see. Tell me which line (or lines) is not factual or true or an optimistic view of our role in the world.
There’s at least a rumor that sometime tomorrow Textpattern’s version 1.0 will be released. If not then, it’s not far off.
Today, at my local bookstore, I found three copies of Hugh Hewitt’s new book called Blog hidden behind a biography of Ronald Reagan. Blog is at your bookstore. You might have to uncover it.
So, how do you start a weblog? There are plenty of alternatives, but I’d suggest two things:
Buy a copy of Hugh Hewitt’s book and start reading it.
Watch for Textpattern 1.0 and download it when it’s available.
Do these two things in the next couple of weeks and you’ll be ahead of the masses who will do something similar in the next 24 months.
We live in an era of great uncertainty. The risks are higher than ever before. Risks are about probabilities. We’ve dealt with those throughout history. What makes this era so different is the set of events which – given the right set of circumstances – could happen which have never happened before.
This country sits on a record level of debt as do its citizens. Long standing industries have now moved to other nations. Rates of personal bankruptcy set new records each year. Our trade and budget deficits soar. Our currency is shrinking in value.
Today, warnings he has given before were the topic of an interview with Warren Buffett. If you have not done some serious reading and study in this area, I’d encourage you to understand what he said today and where the mindset that influences is remarks began.
I learned the best system for personal productivity and organization in 1976 from an expert in inventory control and replenishment. While unrelated to his automated replenishment savvy, his method for staying personally organized was flawless, and not one electron was energized to make it happen. It was and remains a paper system.
Getting Things Done by David Allen explains a system that is analogous to the one I learned. There is also a weblog called 43 Folders which amplifies this and other techniques for personal organization and priority setting. Merlin Mann who writes the weblog recently suggested the Hipster PDA as an alternative to your $400 electron eater. Click on the photo and read the comments.
Is It Urgent or Important?
We look cool or connected or important when we punch, poke and tap our electronics, but how effective are we? How certain are we that we have not fallen into the trap of the Tyranny of the Urgent? (Buy five and give four away.) The urgent is seldom our most important priority.
Moleskine notebooks have been mentioned here a few times. Surprise yourself this year by thinking outside the (PC) box. Before you cast off any paper solution as silly, wasteful or unworkable, do some reading. Make sure you realize just how effective some tried-and-true techniques can be.
Go back to some simple tools that lend themselves to thinking about your priorities rather than thinking about your technology. You’ll be glad you did. It’s 2005: the year of the text.
A Note About Amazon
Amazon needs to facilitate their partnership with webloggers. It was once easy to post a simple, small image of a book cover along with a link to that book’s page at Amazon. As a member of Amazon Associates Central, you might record a few cents of income each month when others bought the books using your link.
Now you get non-validating, grotesque images as long as a grocery receipt. Ah, you doubt me? Examine this carefully immediately after memorizing the periodic table:http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/ref=sc_fe_c_4_3435371_3/103-7479907-4810204?%5Fencoding=UTF8&node=12920511&no=3435371&me=A36L942TSJ2AJA
I like Amazon and buy things there. I just wish they’d enhance their affiliate program and the ease with which we can link to books and products. There is no reason we should not be able to generate a personalized link to any book just by clicking on the proper button while logged in. The link and the image should be well-formed. They should not look like they were intended for Crazy Al’s Used Car Lot.
Perhaps I’m merely assuming that Amazon wants to get things done.
You well-wishers have made my day. Thanks for a nice return to the weblogging world. Oh, and those comments about links not being as visible as you’d like, those have been duly noted.
Though I haven’t been writing here, I haven’t completely lost touch. It seems that during my hiatus, we re-elected a President. Now some folks want us to wear bracelets to show our loyalties. Thank you, no, none for me. What did we learn about our Democratic Republic? We learned Ohio is the new Florida.
I’m back! Prowl around these pages. You’ll find all the old stuff and some new. As always, we appreciate any comment that helps us make this site better for you.
Pay particular attention to the Colophon and About pages. There are some changes explained and some talented people credited there. There’s also a hearty thank you to one enormously talented Andy McCulloch.
The rat race knows no boundaries or borders. Bringing this to you is a truly international effort. Acknowledging all who have taught me along the way creates a list too long to post.
However, there are those who deserve a special note of thanks:
from London – Andy McCulloch is simply an amazing designer. His mastery of Textpattern and all of its underpinnings is nothing short of astounding. Andy’s site is called Branchleft. Everything you see here resulted from Andy’s (intuitive and accurate) interpretation and translation of my rambling about what I wanted.
from Boston – Daniel Bulli adapted a couple of javascripts that make images fade and randomly display. His site is an outstanding piece of work and a great source of knowledge when you want to understand how various design techniques were achieved.
from Bagnols sur Cèze – Dean Allen is the horsepower behind Textpattern. He writes Textism. When I began to search for an alternative to Movable Type, Textpattern emerged as the right choice.
from Dallas – Dean Allen also brings us TextDrive. The technical savvy behind TextDrive is without peer in the hosting world.
from Toronto – Ramanan Sivaranjan created the script that imported Movable Type entries into Textpattern. It’s an amazing piece of work and widely-used. It’s even more widely-admired!
from Paris – Benoit Pepermans has written plugins for Textpattern. We use two of his on this site. fla_altstyle_link and fla_style_switcher assist with the style switching duties.
from Sydney – Alex Shiels wrote zem_contact which provides our contact form.
from New York – Matthew Moss provided a plugin called mdm_if_category.
from Stockholm – Henrik Jönsson’s plugin is called ob1_if_section.
from San Francisco – Chris Pederick wrote a web developer plugin for Firefox. Without Firefox and Chris’s plugin, this weblog might not have come out of hibernation. No single tool or piece of information has done more to help me understand how site’s are designed and constructed.
From California, Florida and Missouri come people who have helped tremendously. Since beginning this weblog in 2002, Dane Carlson has dropped by from time to time to provide invaluable advice. Stacy Tabb of Sekimori fame provided the design for Rev. 2.0 of the Regatta. It’s a big step to leave behind her work and the traffic that results from the Sekimori and Movable Type links. Shirley Kaiser has an incredible site called Brainstorms & Raves. Shirley did a great job of teaching me an approach to learning XHTML and CSS.
Most recently, during the search for a new weblogging tool, Shelley Powers provided both the encouragement and the cautions as I evaluated WordPress. Stay tuned as Shelley continues her own project called Wordform. Last, but certainly not least, coming to you from Burr Ridge, IL, is Jenny Levine. In one of my most confused states after loading Radio in 2002, Jenny’s documentation and emails showed the way.
If I’ve missed anyone it’s due to a flawed memory and not a lack of appreciation. Support forums, emails and comments in weblog entries have been constant sources of encouragement and information. If you feel you were omitted, let us know.
This is a personal site written by Steve Pilgrim. Living in Memphis, TN I'm a business executive interested in improving business operations by reducing variation. However, I'm also very concerned about the human condition, our debt, our conspicuous consumption and our endless attempts to get ahead of one another.
Rodent Regatta is about finding significance in life and work. For too many life has become a rat race. When you win you're simply the number one rat. There's got to be something more!
Life and work need to be better for people. We shouldn't drive to work, open the back door of the car, hang our dreams inside and go to offices or cubicles to work at things we hate or don't really care about; only to return to our cars, grab our dreams and think about them all the way home. Arriving home too tired to do anything about our dreams, we collapse into a chair and dread the new day tomorrow.
We'll write about the things that might make your particular rat race a bit more tolerable. Topics span a huge spectrum:
I'm a patriotic American who believes our government needs to be smaller. You'll read perspectives on politics, government and what our Founders intended.
I'm a person of Christian faith. You'll see me "coping" with my own challenges here, and hopefully you'll get a sense of how faith plays a part.
I believe most mainstream media are biased sources for information. We deserve better. Weblogs are (at a minimum) a new form of personal journalism. We'll talk about the critical thinking necessary to get useful information.
Technology has been important to me for many years. It's the career I've chosen. We'll cover a wide variety of topics - from Wi-Fi to bandwidth to software to how to manage information technology and more.
I love music, the arts, audio systems and literature. You'll see song lyrics as well as poetry from time to time.
There will be book reviews. I read a lot.
As a value investor, I'll occasionally write about Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway and other individuals and companies that pursue that school of thought.
For 2005, we'll cover all of the above, plus:
Litigation (tort) reform.
Shrinking the Federal government.
Achieving energy independence.
Quality, customer service and continual improvement of processes leading to excellence.
Great design
Health care reform.
The mounting evidence that having defeated communism, our nation's next "ism" is going to be "Islamism."
Photography will get more attention in 2005. It's possible you'll see a gallery or two.
Quality, Customer Service and Improvement
I'll never forget the first time I heard Tom Peters speak. I was watching a video of one of his "performances" in the training room of a business I co-owned at the time. It changed my outlook on my role and the possibilities for that business and all the others I've come in contact with since that time. In the late 1980's I became deeply involved in the methods that companies could employ to find excellence in their operations and their service to customers. In 1991 I attended Philip Crosby's Quality College. I began to learn about W. Edwards Deming, statistical process control, Donald Wheeler, Six Sigma, operations research and process reengineering. That has been the focus of my working life for the decade and a half. Those topics are bound to find their way into much of what you see here.
The Tools of Weblogging
Dan Bricklin's influence on my web interests has been paramount. From the earliest search for a tool to use to do a simple web site, I found Dave Winer, scripting.com and Radio. From these people and sites I've learned of many more. I'm interested in some of them because they taught me about weblogs and Radio in particular. I'm interested in others because they write so well about something I'm interested in.
Late in 2002, I switched to Movable Type to write and edit this weblog. Sekimori Design deserves all the credit for helping me get started with Movable Type and making this weblog look the way it does.
Beginning in January of 2002, I wanted to write to focus my thoughts about 9-11-2001.
to learn the hands-on stuff associated with web sites, HTML, web services, XML and the future of computing
to have a place to post my thoughts and document my thinking
to have a way to influence change - this will come with readership, but Dan Bricklin's essay about pampleteers sums it up
to see if there is money to be made in writing, weblogging or providing assistance to others who need tools for collaboration
to journalize my interests
Most of all I want to write a weblog in order to learn! I'm learning something more about software, web services, web design and what it takes to build truly collaborative tools, systems and thinking.
The Meaning of Life
On May 8, 2002, I responded to a question I read at Scripting News. Without much time or attention, I wrote this entry and titled it. Before I knew it, it had put my weblog "on the map." It wasn't a big dot on the map, but what I had to say was getting read. Here's how that went:
Dave asks: Is business the purpose of our civilization, or does civilization have some other purpose that business supports? Do our lives have any meaning beyond that which we produce for sale, and that which we purchase for consumption? Who is really qualified to answer such questions for other than themselves?
G.K. Chesterton said, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience." Victor Frankl wrote Man's Search for Meaning to explain meaning when you become a number. His dehumanizing experience at Auschwitz gave him the answers.
Does the woman living in a cave in Afghanistan and sleeping in the dirt have the same life purpose as the woman who woke up in a 10,000 square foot home in the American suburbs, drove her SUV to drop her kids at private school, grabbed a $3.85 cup of coffee at the drive-thru window and rushed to her desk to work at 'getting more' today? Is daily survival a different life purpose from daily achievement or daily accumulation? Should the person waking to a shopping list for a week's worth of groceries have the same life meaning as the person who awoke hungry, but driven to find sustenance before dark?
Different people must answer Dave's questions in different ways. Influences often drive how we answer the question. Sometimes the answer feels different on different days. The fact is a life of simply earning more, buying more or selling more can get pretty futile.
Surely, at the end of our days, there should be more than the toys, the comfort and the luxury that we've accumulated for ourselves and those we care about. I cannot compartmentalize my life in such a way that 'the getting' is what I do on the job and life's meaning is something that happens at a different place, with other people or at a different time.
Regardless of religious background or persuasion, people need a plan, a place and a purpose. More often than not those are found in some area of service. I find that the periods in my life where I have not been serving others are the most miserable periods I've faced.
If civilization is to be defined as 'life as we know it,' then business, in all its forms, is a part of that. To say that our civilization has business as its purpose seems to fall short of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' It also falls short of any greater meaning that those who see themselves as spiritual beings might seek.
I'm reminded of the wealthy Texas oil baron who died somewhat unexpectedly in his 60's. Some weeks following the funeral, one sincere old friend asked his youthful widow, "how much did he leave?" Her reply was quick, "all of it." You just don't see any Wells Fargo trucks in funeral processions!
There's got to be something more!
Were It Not For Grace
If a single song can explain my own
journey, my struggles in life, the attempt to find meaning and hold onto significance, this is it:
Were It Not For Grace
by Hamilton McHugh
Time measured out my days; Life carried me along
In my soul I yearned to follow God,
but knew I'd never be so strong.
I looked hard at this world to learn how heaven could be gained.
Just to end where I began; where human effort is all in vain.
Were it not for Grace, I can tell you where I'd be.
Wandering down some pointless road to nowhere
With my salvation up to me.
I know how that would go, the battles I would face.
Forever running, but losing the race;
Were it not for Grace.
So here is all my praise; expressed with all my heart.
Offered to a Friend, who took my place,
And ran a course I could not start.
And when He saw in full, just how much this love would cost,
He still went the final mile between me and heaven so I would not be lost.
Were it not for Grace, I can tell you where I'd be.
Wandering down some pointless road to nowhere
With my salvation up to me.
And, I know how that would go, the battle I would face.
Forever running, but losing the race;
Were it not for Grace.
Forever running, but losing the race;
Were it not for Grace.
A lot is happening behind the scenes, but this site is still on hiatus. More when it’s time to go public. It could be a day, a week, a month or a year.
Since around midnight last night, I’ve been without Internet service. Thank you Road Runner. This comes on top of all the frustrations of the past two weeks – Firefox problems, syndication problems, blockquote and code problems, etc.
This weblog has too many problems and they are mounting. I get valuable advice from readers. Unfortunately, I find myself not knowing enough to even understand the advice I’m getting.
Asa pointed me toward the DOM extension for Firefox. When I tried to take a look at it, I got an error. Truth be told, I have no idea what a DOM is, does or should mean to me. Only after I understand some of that could I begin to grasp how a DOM inspector might help me.
I know this sounds like I’m being ungrateful to Asa and others who have offered help. That’s not my intent at all. Rather, my lack of knowledge makes me unworthy of the help extended. I’ve simply got to study harder and in a more effective way.
Some changes are needed…
I’ve got to decide once and for all which CMS tool I’m going to use in the future. Is it going to be Movable Type, WordPress or Textpattern?
I’ve got to resolve things like why my comments and trackbacks point to one domain and my weblog points to another. I’ve got to figure out what’s really wrong with my copy of Firefox on this computer. I’ve got to learn how RDF, RSS 2.0 and Atom are supposed to be formatted and where/how one learns the way to ”write” those feeds. Each of them ought to be capable of providing a complete entry in whatever news reader people are using to subscribe. Mine don’t include extended entries from Movable Type.
I have a design in mind with a four-style switcher. I have a new logo in mind. I know how I want to write. I know that I always want to be able to post some XHTML or CSS code and have it fit on the screen, be legible and be understandable. I want to properly format blockquotes with CSS. Right now I can’t even spell MySQL and PHP, but I have a web site and multiple hosting accounts that depend on my use of those tools.
This weblog has become the rat race it seeks to avoid. It just seems as though it’s the right time to take a break, get some fundamental knowledge somewhere and return with a fresh design, a fresh CMS tool and a fresh outlook on how to make this all worthwhile. It’s the only way I can make this of real value to those who read here.
This past couple of weeks have made me realize that I don’t have the skills or know-how to do a site redesign that comes anywhere close to those that I most admire. I’ll probably have to seek out one of the top designers and get them to help me achieve what I want to with this weblog and the porting of it to a new design.
So, where does this leave us? I’m going to contemplate the notion of backing away from this for a while. I need to learn XHTML, tags, CSS, how to use editing tools for text and code and images, etc. I need to improve my understanding of the terminology that web people toss around. I need to learn a CMS tool so that a simple blockquote doesn’t taint my entire site.
How long will I be away from here? I’ll likely continue to read web sites while I’m away. I might drop a post onto this existing site from time to time. To learn XHTML and CSS, select a CMS tool, find a designer, do the redesign, port this weblog to the new one, understand syndication feeds, master some tools…it could be a month, a quarter or a year. Having done this the way I have for almost three years, I’m not optimistic that I have the intellect to make it all happen quickly.
Programmers use different standards for quality from those I’m accustomed to. I’ve got to understand why that is and get comfortable with the fact that there are thirty ways to do everything on the Internet, and all the standards-based gurus have different opinions about which ways are ”right.”
Be assured, it’s my intent to return to regular posting when I feel I have something to offer again. Troubleshooting code is NOT why I have a weblog, but it’s a skill that simply must be developed if one is to have a web site that is as feature-rich as many are. Call it designer. Call it developer. Whatever it’s called, I’ve got to become more of a coder to manage a weblog well.
We’ll see how my thoughts evolve over the next few days, but know that posting here is going to be infrequent for a while. I’ll be reading what you write and admiring the savvy so many of you have that allows for great writing and amazing web site designs. When I return, perhaps I can even contribute a little.
Okay. Vertical stripes have returned in IE6. Mick put his finger on the problem, and Susan confirmed it. But, I didn’t really solve it, because I can’t figure out what caused it. All I did was take the two major entries below which contain blockquotes with code in them and added the small tags so that anything that was too wide would “shrink.”
I’m using the Movable Type text entry box to post all of these. I don’t know how something became too wide, but Mick was certainly correct in that assessment.
For those who are inquiring as to what the problems are with this site. There are several/many. However, the most obvious at this point is the failure of the vertical stripes to show up as they have for many months. The most obvious examples start with the correct look from yesterday, and it is followed by the improper rendering that is currently happening in Firefox and IE6:
Why are there so many gaps in these posts of code? Why doesn’t Movable Type correctly show the in the code? How is it that everybody else knows exactly how to put code in blockquotes to describe what they are doing and get help?
I’m nearing the end of my blogging career. This stuff simply doesn’t work.
Now this site’s vertical lines are starting to disappear in IE6 just as they did in Firefox. I have no explanation at all for what’s causing this. It seems that the time to either abandon weblogging or move to something more stable has come again.
After a great deal of trial-and-error, I’m still baffled by where to look, what to do and how to go about solving my syndication mess. All of these feeds validate using the Feed Validator. However, only the RSS 2.0 feed provides both the entry and the extended entry. What do I need to change in the Atom and RDF feeds to make them include extended entries from Movable Type?
All of this junk is so bizarre. Some lines are indented. Others are not. Some people have empty lines in the middle of their feeds, but many do not. New lines of code actually start on new lines in the feeds some people publish. Other times a brand new tag/line/whatever simply starts at the end of the previous line. Hah – and people say, “just use Notepad and ‘knock out’ a quick syndication feed.” So smug. Sometimes people have encode lines, but others do not. There is absolutely nothing uniform, consistent or predictable about how you’re supposed to do this.
Still modifying and doing trial-and-error work on all the syndication feeds. It really is a shame that the only tips for creating and offering these feeds is written by programmers for programmers.
Unfortunately, it is only a concern for readers that makes me obsess over them. I don’t use them at all, but I know others do.
When the Internet matures a bit, some will realize that this stuff ought to be available for people who have other interests besides code-for-the-sake-of-code.
* * * UPDATE * * * Unfortunately, the RSS 2.0 feed seems to be the only one that is providing the complete entries. The Atom and RDF feeds are displaying only the entry body, not the extended entry. Why?
I’ve spent some time again today editing the templates that create RSS, RDF and Atom feeds for this web site.
My hope is that you can still see the feeds in your news aggregators. I’m also of the opinion that you can now read my entire entry if you subscribe to my RSS 2.0 feed. The RDF feed provides only entry titles. The Atom feed seems to provide only the first part of any entry that has an extended entry.
Anyhow, your comments, suggestions and complaints are always welcome.
* * UPDATE * * * For those of you who prefer to subscribe to Atom feeds, I can only apologize for the lack of complete entries. I’ve looked, but cannot find the solution to the problem of my extended entries not showing up in the feed. If you know how to fix this, please let me know. Thanks!
The following letter ran in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. subscription may be required
Strength at Home By BEN STEIN August 18, 2004; Page A10
(This is a letter I wrote to the newsletter of an Army unit called The Strykers, stationed in Iraq out of Ft. Lewis, Wash. The editor asked me what I would say to make the wives feel appreciated while their husbands are in Iraq. This is what I wrote to one soldier’s wife.)
Dear Karen,
I have a great life. I have a wife I adore, a son who is a lazy teenager but I adore him, too. We live in a house with two dogs and four cats. We live in peace. We can worship as we please. We can say what we want. We can walk the streets in safety. We can vote. We can work wherever we want and buy whatever we want. When we sleep, we sleep in peace. When we wake up, it is to the sounds of birds.
All of this, every bit of it, is thanks to your husband, his brave fellow soldiers, and to the wives who keep the home fires burning while the soldiers are away protecting my family and 140 million other families. They protect Republicans and Democrats, Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists. They protect white, black, yellow, brown and everyone in between. They protect gays and straights, rich and poor.
And none of it could happen without…
...the Army wives, Marine wives, Navy wives, Air Force wives—or husbands—who go to sleep tired and lonely, wake up tired and lonely, and go through the day with a smile on their faces. They feed the kids, put up with the teenagers’ surliness, the bills that never stop piling up, the desperate hours when the plumbing breaks and there is no husband to fix it, and the even more desperate hours after the kids have gone to bed, the dishes have been done, the bills have been paid, and the wives realize that they will be sleeping alone—again, for the 300th night in a row.
The wives keep up the fight even when they have to move every couple of years, even when their checks are late, even when they have to make a whole new set of friends every time they move.
And they keep up the fight to keep the family whole even when they feel a lump of dread every time they turn on the news, every time they switch on the computer, every time the phone rings and every time—worst of all—the doorbell rings. Every one of those events—which might mean a baseball score or a weather forecast or a FedEx man to me and my wife—might mean the news that the man they love, the man they have married for better or worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, is now parted from them forever.
These women will never be on the cover of People. They will never be on the tabloid shows on TV about movie stars. But they are the power and the strength that keep America going. Without them, we are nothing at all. With them, we can do everything.
They are the glue that holds the nation together, stronger than politicians, stronger than talking heads, stronger than al Qaeda.
They deserve all the honor and love a nation can give. They have my prayers, and my wife’s, every morning and every night.
Love, and I do mean Love, Ben.
Mr. Stein, a television personality and writer, is co-author with Phil DeMuth of ”Can America Survive,” forthcoming from Hay House.
There once was a small effort to promote pay-at-the-pump insurance for automobiles. The theory was that by adding the price of insurance to every gallon of gas, you’d wind up with a plan that was far easier to administer and truly matched the coverage to the amount of driving. There were many details. It never happened.
Now, we’ve got another notion about how car insurance might one day be priced and managed. They’re calling this one pay-as-you-drive.
Insurance is defined as, ”insurance protecting against all or part of an individual’s legal liability for damage done (as by his or her automobile) to the property of another.” It’s usually expected that a given form of coverage is priced based upon a specific risk or set of risks and the history of statistics and probabilities that describe various insured events.
A box in the trunk or under the hood doesn’t spread risk across a group or statistical population. Instead, each individual carries the risk. I dunno. This one could be a recipe for profiteering. One bout of road rage and next month’s premium sky rockets. Take a month-long vacation to Fiji and the premium goes to zero. I really dunno.
Two people who write things that make you think believe it’s time to learn a trade. Another person who has a lot of influence in the USA and the world believes that our currency could really see some hard times ahead.
Others lament the offshoring of manufacturing, programming and customer service call centers. More jobs are likely to take that route before returning here.
I believe several things about offshoring. First, it is not nearly as harmful to the macro economy as some say it is. Second, many offshoring decisions have not been carefully considered, and customers will suffer or hidden costs will soar. Finally, there are steps that can be taken to improve operations right here at home. Those steps can narrow – if not eliminate – the gap between the offshoring choice and the current situation.
While it’s not a trade, helping companies improve their operations will be a growth industry during the coming twenty years. While I might be better off as an electrician or a gunsmith, we’ll continue to help companies far and wide with their internal and external business processes and operational choices. What’s your trade?
It’s time to return to sending amateur athletes to the Olympics. I don’t care what the Chinese do. It makes no difference that the Russians might not be amateurs.
The USA will be better served by sending amateur athletes to pursue medals. Professionals simply don’t have the desire, drive and determination required to make their best showing.
Books are too expensive. Both of Eric Meyer’s books list for $45.00 each. Fortunately, I don’t pay that, but they’re steep nonetheless.
I’m hoping that by reading book 1 and book 2, I can figure out how to do some of my own redesign work. I know, I know – not a chance – but hope springs eternal.
Remember, I have no idea at all why you are visiting Rodent Regatta, but if you leave a trackback or a comment, the link will be via stevepilgrim.com. And, in spite of that, I’m going to learn CSS. Stop laughing, you’ll hurt my feelings!
Anyhow, I bought some things that are likely to go back to the store, but I want to determine whether they are worth owning permanently or not.
I’ve spent enough on design fees, consultation, software, training courses and books that you’d think pretty soon this $5000.00 education would begin to pay off in some semblance of a style sheet and a weblog that validates. That must be the four-year program, though.
Unpatriotic gigolos and public education
By Craig J. Cantoni
August 18, 2004
The government of the United States has become a government of unpatriotic gigolos. Congress and the President not only screw us out of our money while pretending to care about us, but they also commit one of the most unpatriotic acts possible: They brazenly violate the supreme law of the land, the Constitution, a document that embodies the very essence of the nation. Their actions are worse than spitting on the flag.
At the same time, the political institution of the Supreme Court ignores the lawbreaking, government schools encourage it, and anyone who has the temerity to call it lawbreaking is labeled as a crackpot by the establishment media. As a result, most Americans are unaware that they are being screwed and that the Constitution is being violated.
Take public education.
The federal government clearly has no constitutional authority to issue diktats to the states about local public schools, but that hasn’t stopped Congress and the President from expanding the authority of the federal government over local schools.
In 1965, the United States government spent about $25 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars to fund the education programs of various federal departments. Today, it spends over $108 billion, including $63 billion for the Department of Education, which has seen its budget increase 35 percent over the last four years, due to the generosity and compassionate conservatism of President Bush.
What a guy!
To put the $108 billion in perspective, it is equal to the annual income of 2.7 million families.
A big chunk of the $108 billion pays the office overhead and salaries of federal bureaucrats, and much of the remainder is sent back to the states with expensive strings attached to it. Under the guise of helping families, politicians take money from families, send the money to Washington, and then buy votes by returning what is left to the families from whence it came. In short, taxpayers are paying government gigolos to screw them and the nation.
The 400 percent increase in federal education spending since 1965 is in addition to the 300 percent increase in per-pupil spending in real terms at the state and local levels over the same period.
Although the spending has done little to improve education, the Supreme Gigolo, President Bush, has come up with a new program, No Child Left Behind. Like the supreme gigolos who came before him, he promises that his program will be different.
”This time,” Bush whispers lovingly in the public’s ear, ”the money comes with accountability and standards.”
”Oooo!” the public coos in response. ”You’re such a compassionate conservative and such a hunk in your leather flying jacket. Here, take my money.”
The President, Congress, the establishment media and the clueless public do not care that the transaction is illicit—that it is a violation of the supreme law of the land. Given a choice between the law and lust, they pick lust.
Tellingly, no big-city daily has run a front-page headline such as this: ”Bush breaks law with No Child Left Behind!”
Since the man in the leather flying jacket thinks of himself as a patriot, it must be patriotic to ignore the Constitution. Maybe taxpayers should follow his lead and show their patriotism by ignoring the 16th Amendment and not pay income taxes.
Of course, that would upset blubberous Senator Ted Kennedy, another patriot who ignores the Constitution. His state of Massachusetts was given $2 million in federal education money for the New Bedford Whaling Museum. No, the money didn’t come from the No Whale Left Behind program. It came from the Historic Whaling and Trading program, which ”supports culturally based educational activities, internships, apprenticeship programs, and exchanges for Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and children and families of Massachusetts.”
In other words, if your forebears made their living from catching salmon in the Salmon River, your family has to subsidize a museum honoring whaling families, because whaling is important to public education but salmon fishing is not.
Thar she blows! Is it a whale? No, it’s Ted Kennedy swimming near Chappaquiddick Island, carrying a satchel of public money.
Not surprisingly, the government takeover of education began in Massachusetts. In 1647, colonial Massachusetts enacted the Old Deluder Satan Act, which mandated that children of the colony be sufficiently literate to read the Bible and thus not succumb to the temptations of Satan. Then in the early 1800s, Horace Mann and others led a movement in Massachusetts and other states for ”free” government schools. Their objectives included making the nation homogenous (i.e., having White-Anglo-Saxon values), stopping the growth of ”Papist” Catholic schools, and teaching the Protestant Bible to Catholics.
The legacy of discrimination against Catholics continues today, with parochial school parents being forced to pay double for education—once in public school taxes and once in private tuition—in order to exercise their right of religious freedom. Of course, the self-serving public education establishment and greedy public school parents think that taking money from parochial school parents for no services rendered is a dandy idea. After all, it’s for the public good and not for their own good. Wink-wink.
The federal government’s role in education began in 1867 with a federal department that had the narrow mission of ”getting information on what works in education to teachers and education policymakers.” In 1890, the federal mission was expanded to include financial support to land-grant colleges. In 1917, it was expanded again to include responsibilities for vocational education. In the 1940s and 1950s, the mission ballooned with the GI Bill and with laws authorizing the federal government to compensate school districts for lost tax revenue due to federal facilities being within their boundaries.
In reaction to the Soviet Union launching Sputnik, the National Defense Education Act was passed in 1958 to provide fellowships, grants and loans to college students to study math and science. In 1965, as part of President Johnson’s Great Society, Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which has become one of the largest federal programs.
In 1979, the Department of Education Organization Act was signed, establishing a separate Department of Education. In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education published A Nation at Risk, which detailed the abysmal state of public education
After 18 years of poor returns from the billions spent on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, common sense would have led politicians, the press and the public to conclude that government control of K-12 education was the problem, not the solution, for what ailed American schools. Instead, they came to the opposite conclusion.
In 1984, because of the national uproar over A Nation at Risk, the Republican Party dropped its plank for the elimination of the Department of Education. Given a choice between following the Constitution and getting reelected, Republicans chose getting reelected—a path of political expediency over principle that they have been following ever since.
Now, 20 years later, as further proof of the maxim that government bureaucracies grow until they devour the entire public treasury, No Child Left Behind is gorging itself on your hard-earned money.
If taken literally, the program will certainly bankrupt the public treasury, for it is impossible, regardless of how much money is spent, for many children not to be left behind, especially gang-bangers and disruptive delinquents who are going to drop out of school someday and who would improve the education of their classmates if they dropped out sooner rather than later.
To the unpatriotic gigolos at the head of our government, per-pupil spending of $12,000 in such districts as St. Louis, Missouri, and Newark, New Jersey, is not enough. It is not enough for responsible parents to subsidize irresponsible ones to the tune of $144,000 per child for 12 years of education, or $576,000 for a family of four. Now, thanks to No Child Left Behind, responsible parents will be paying for private tutors and after-hours programs for the children of irresponsible parents. Only government gigolos understand how screwing responsible parents will stop irresponsible parents from being irresponsible.
In closing, a question: Why do Americans keep paying the unpatriotic gigolos to screw them and the nation?
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com. Some of the information for this article came from an outstanding Cato Institute report, ”A Lesson in Waste: Where Does All the Federal Education Money Go?” It can be found at http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-518es.html
As of the end of June, here’s a list of the public companies in which Berkshire Hathaway had major holdings. The point of this was going to be to discuss the notion of holding over $25 billion in common stocks.
It was going to be such a simple matter to simply clip a portion of a text document that was filed with the government and post it here. Hours later, I’m too frustrated to focus on the content.
I asked about drop shadows on images earlier this week. I’ve just about concluded that the answer is to set up a div or id or class or something in CSS that is specifically for images. It will include the drop shadow effect. Don’t ask me how to do it, but I’m under the impression it’s the ”right” way.
Today, I’ve got another simply question. How do you copy and paste a table of information from a text document into a weblog entry? An image of the table I’m talking about can be seen here. Had I wanted to ”quote” that table here, how was I to do it? Did I need to have the foresight when the original style sheet was created, so that another div or class or id was waiting for me to use it on a table of common stocks?
Am I supposed to truly turn it into an XHTML table with a header row and table rows? That takes forever! What’s the proper way to handle this sort of thing? If there can be so many opinions about how to represent an address in XHTML, there must be a thousand opinions about tables that are really tables.
Just the act of creating a thumbnail in the two different programs required to do that work, followed by uploading the larger image and the thumbnail…well, it is all very involved and tedious. Surely, the experts have got a streamlined way to copy and paste a portion of a text document without going through what I’ve had to go through.
Most politicians of both parties don’t know algebra, probably because most went to public school and are lawyers. And given the fact that reporters never point out that politicians don’t know algebra, they must not know it either.
For example, in speaking recently to a group of greedy seniors, Senator John Kerry said that he was going to give them free medicine and provide them with options for obtaining the free medicine that President Bush didn’t give them. Of course, he is not going to give an option to taxpayers, including future generations, of not picking up the tab.
Not knowing algebra and being a liberal, Kerry doesn’t understand the following equation and sees only the left side of it:
e = t
In the above, ”e” represents the entitlements received by special-interest groups and ”t” represents the taxes levied to pay the entitlements. Like all Democrats and an increasing number of Republicans, Kerry only speaks about the left side of the equation, thus leaving the impression that entitlements are free.
In the case of Medicare, the taxes are imposed on both current taxpayers, or adults, plus future taxpayers, or today’s children. Thus, if ”a” represents adults and ”c” represents children, the equation becomes:
e = (t)(a) + (t)(c)
But the above isn’t complete, as it doesn’t reflect the costs that are in addition to the entitlements. There are the legions (l) of government bureaucrats needed to administer the entitlements, private-sector (p) money spent on complying with the diktats of the government bureaucrats, the dues (d) that go to lobbying groups like AARP, the unclean (u) campaign contributions given to politicians to encourage them to steal other people’s money, the rent-seekers® in private industry who earn handsome incomes interpreting regulations, and the damage done to the moral fiber of the nation (n) in allowing neighbors to steal from neighbors.
The equation becomes:
e + l + p + d + u + r + n = (t)(a) + (t)(c)
Rearranging the letters to make the equation easy to remember, it becomes:
p + l + u + n + d + e + r = (t)(a) + (t)(c)
Or this shorthand:
plunder = (t)(a) + (t)(c)
Or this sentence:
Plunder equals taxes levied against adults and children for other people’s entitlements.
Now we know why kids don’t learn the algebra of entitlements in government schools—so they will grow up and elect politicians who don’t know the algebra of entitlements.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
Almost two weeks ago, I thought version 1.0 of Textpattern was about a week away. I was mistaken. I think my interpretation of a Textpattern support forum led to the mistaken notion. For those who read here believing you are seeing credible information, I’m correcting that entry with this one. I’m not sure anyone knows when version 1.0 of Textpattern will be released.
Screw everyone but the Amish
By Craig J. Cantoni
August 10, 2004
How does the government recognize and reward citizens who are model parents, spouses and citizens? It screws them.
For example, the government screws all of the many Americans who believe that they have a responsibility to themselves, their families and society to live below their means and save for retirement so that they don’t become a burden on anyone else or society. It also screws all of the many Americans who believe that they have a responsibility to take care of their elderly parents if they can no longer take care of themselves. And it screws all of the many Americans who believe that it is their responsibility to see that their children are educated, just as they believe it is their responsibility to see that they are fed, sheltered and clothed.
How does the government screw them?
By forcing them to participate in the Ponzi schemes of Social Security and Medicare, and to follow laws and regulations regarding K-12 education that harm their children. In essence, the government says, ”To recognize and reward you for being responsible citizens, we’re going to take your money, put it in the collective, and then pretend to be magnanimous by doing less for you than what you would have done for yourself with the same money.”
I exaggerate. The government doesn’t screw all of the many Americans who take responsibility for their own retirement, health care and education. An exception is the self-employed Amish, who are excluded from paying into, and participating in, Social Security and Medicare. The Amish also are allowed to educate their children for only eight years in one-room Amish schoolhouses, where the children are taught by Amish teachers who have only eight years of schooling and are not state certified teachers or members of a leftist teacher union. Interestingly, the students usually perform better than local public school students on standardized tests. And they certainly ”outperform” public schoolers in values and skills not taught in public school.
Why does the government engage in a double standard and screw all responsible Americans but the Amish? Because of convoluted logic.
The Amish are excluded from Social Security and Medicare due to the IRS deciding that since they take care of their own, the Amish don’t need the help of the state. And they are excluded from compulsory high school and other education regulations due to the Supreme Court deciding in 1972 that since they train their children to be homemakers, farmers and craftsmen, the Amish don’t need to attend high school.
These decisions are not convoluted, for it is entirely logical for the government to exclude people and groups from the coercion of the collective who take care of their own and teach their children to lead productive lives. However, it is illogical for the government to let the Amish escape from coerced collectivism but not all of the other people who take care of their own and teach their children to lead productive lives.
After all, there are plenty of non-Amish individuals, religions and organizations that take care of their own and teach their own, albeit far fewer than there used to be before the government began doing what people used to do for themselves.
Before the advent of the New Deal, the War on Poverty, the Great Society and compassionate conservatism, almost all Americans took care of themselves or were helped by neighbors, churches and mutual aid societies. After the advent of these programs, about 40 percent of Americans have become dependent on the government, with such dire consequences for society as skyrocketing numbers of out-of-wedlock births, single-parent families, obese ”poor” people, and other social pathologies. Now, because of our munificent government, Americans are immorally sending $40 trillion in unpaid entitlement bills to future generations instead of taking care of themselves and their children. Screwing other people has become a national pastime, thanks to the government being a role model for screwing.
In 1900, transfer payments were only two percent of government spending. Today, because of entitlements and welfare, transfer payments are 40 percent of government spending and growing. These payments do not include the $500 billion spent on public education, much of which is transferred from people without kids in public school to people with kids in public school.
Contrary to what Americans have been led to believe, all Americans do not need four years of high school to be productive members of society and support themselves and their families. Like the Amish, there are many young people who don’t plan on attending college, who don’t need algebra and science, and who would be better off skipping high school and learning a trade or taking the $40,000 that a high school education costs and starting a business.
Is it better for someone to graduate from high school and work in a call center, or for someone to skip high school and learn a trade or start a business? Judging from the intelligence, skills, hard work and business savvy of the Amish I visited this summer, that question isn’t as black and white as the government and the education establishment want us to believe.
But to the government, one size fits all. Thus, other than the Amish, it screws all Americans equally through coercive collectivism, whether or not they deserve to be screwed.
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of being screwed.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
Visiting Chris Pederick’s site this evening, I found two entries that begin to answer some of my questions. The first points to a toolbar for IE6 that mimics many of the features in Chris’s own Web Developer Extension for Firefox. That was a link to molly.com.
Still no word on what’s gone wrong or how to fix my copy of Firefox, but we’ll continue to seek ways to overcome the trouble. I’m also beginning to get my head around answers to some of the questions I posed earlier today. Stay tuned this week!
Are you better off with images that include the drop shadow, or should you use any of the various CSS Drop Shadow techniques to apply drop shadows to an entire group of block elements?
Let’s take an example. Look at this site, and notice the thumbnails of screenshots. Those thumbnails include the drop shadow within the image. When you click on a thumbnail, you see the drop shadow as part of the larger image. [Note: This also brings to mind a question about the ”best way” to handle the posting of thumbnails and larger images. Does a well-managed site include a style guide for the size of the thumbnail and the size of the larger image? >From one article or entry to the next, how do you recall what size your thumbnails have been in the past?]
Back to the topic at hand. If there is a way to apply a CSS-based drop shadow, why wouldn’t it be applied to images? Surely images that include drop shadows are larger files than those that don’t. Why wouldn’t the CSS drop shadow technique be assigned to a block element?
Is one way preferred over the other?
Here’s another tangential question: is there an inexpensive tool in the Windows world that accomplishes what ImageWell accomplishes for Macintosh users?
I’ve recently fought a couple of technical battles that didn’t end well. As one who has worked in the ”quality” field for many years, I’m not satisfied to pass over these failed attempts by merely deriding the technologies and the tools. I simply had to bail out in order to get onto other productive tasks.
Be assured, with some help, we’ll get this stuff figured out. While there may not be ”one best way,” there are ways to solve the problems. Many choices and decisions are ahead, but here are some things we’ll focus on:
”Correcting” RSS feeds – The goal is to get the proper mix of feeds in the best formats available. I don’t mean rdf, RSS 2.0 and Atom. I want to understand specifically how each of these syndication feeds can be built from scratch to validate and provide the proper amount of information.
Firefox – There are two issues here. I get odd results using Firefox. I cannot pinpoint anything that’s wrong with my computer or the installation of Windows XP Pro. The second problem is the (suddenly) failed rendering of this site in Firefox.
Planning – This site is going to get redesigned and possibly moved to a new content management system. I’ve got lots of things I want the new site to do. This may take some time, but I’ve got to figure out how to capture the details and put them in a sequence that insures they do not get overlooked as the redesign is started. Yes, there will be a new logo, but details are not finalized yet.
Having just bailed out of all efforts to make Firefox work, I’m tempted (and struggling to resist the temptation) by this excellent entry and comments at Douglas Bowman’s site. Most, if not all, of the discussion relates to the Macintosh. (I plan to join that happy band of users in the near future). However, much of it would be suited to any user of Firefox on any platform.
I continue to puzzle over ”what changed” that made this site suddenly stop rendering correctly in Firefox. For a long time it was fine. Now it is not and nothing has been (intentionally) changed in my code or CSS. While I wish all the Firefox users were seeing Rodent Regatta as it was intended to be seen, I have no idea how to return to that look. Something was altered, literally, overnight. At 10:30 or 11:00p.m. on Tuesday night, it worked. On Wednesday morning about 8:00a.m., it did not. I’m not content with ”things are sometimes just weird in…XHTML or CSS or browsers or whatever.” There’s some logical explanation for what is different and how it came to be different.
One of the things I miss most about Firefox is the web developer toolbar extension. I didn’t realize how dependent upon it I was becoming. In the struggle to learn CSS, XHTML, standards, etc., it’s an incredible resource.
In the last thirteen or so hours since we announced version 0.0.2, many people have reported bugs which we are trying diligently to fix. Designed primarily for a 12 inch wheel, we are learning that slight variations in size exist for many users. Future versions will address this need.
[If you have no idea what we’re talking about here, you might put your tongue in your cheek and read a bit more here. This is the last time we’ll give you a hint, because…well, because making things easy is not what the open source movement is about.]
It seems the market is ready for a pre-release version of an open source automobile. Version 0.0.2 involves a steering wheel cover which will be standard on our open source car. With no more (qualified) developers than we have on board at the present time, we’re not sure when you might actually have a steering wheel for the cover, or tires, or an ignition switch, but many open source fans have been quoted as saying in breathless tones, ”Wow, you should see this, it’s simply unbelievably great and so much better than having to buy a steering wheel cover for that silly $85,000 BMW. With the announcement of version 0.0.2, we understand that BMW is really scrambling to figure out how they’ll keep up. After seeing the steering wheel cover, we know why!”
To those who tried to assist with Firefox, I continue to say, ”thanks!” Why it sort of worked, then stopped rendering properly, then headed steadily downhill is something I may never figure out. Apparently, software is like that and software people know it. All manner and fashion of suggestions have come in pointing at anything but the application called Firefox. Ignorant user. Wacko CSS. You must have changed something in Movable Type. Delete your profile. Have you considered reformatting your hard drive? Delete Firefox and reinstall it – five times! Try these five edits of the registry, but be aware that they may cause some systems to fail. Which systems? Well, we don’t know how to predict which systems. I see; well, thanks, but no!
Before it grows dark, Firefox will be in my forgettable past. I’m thinking that I have one of the computer/OS/registry/version combinations where Firefox simply cannot be made to work. For those who want to compare, my combo is P4-2.4Ghz,1GB/XP Pro SP1/who knows/who cares.
I’ve spent enough time looking for userChrome and userContent because they don’t install as part of the default. Adding them does no good.
I’ve spent enough time going to Start-Programs-Mozilla Firefox only to find there is no profile manager. When someone advocates getting rid of the existing profile and setting up another, I’ve got news. First, I deleted everything before my most recent install of Firefox. I also cleaned the registry. Yes, the app data-mozilla folder was deleted.
Simply going over there now and deleting the default profile, also removes all the extensions, bookmarks, etc. That’s where I started this morning and it’s no different from doing a complete reinstallation to get that stuff squared away.
For those enamored with computers, software, browsers and tinkering endless, I say, ”Enjoy Firefox.” For those plagued with a computer combination that is intolerant of Firefox in its pre-release version, save yourself. Don’t bother. Leave it alone. You can find better ways to waste time.
Perhaps when the product really has some market share and is installable by those who don’t live and breathe bits and bytes…well, we’ll see.
Way too much of my day has been spent uninstalling Firefox, cleaning up the registry for any mention of Firefox, saving bookmarks, noting which extensions I was using, then installing a new, fresh version and testing. I was finally prompted to do this after a rather odd rendering of my own weblog wouldn’t correct itself. My past problems with Firefox have been well-documented and some great tips have been offered by Firefox enthusiasts.
As nearly as I can tell, none of my problems have been corrected by the fresh installation, but I’m continuing to do some testing to be sure. The latest puzzling problem is brand new as of this morning. Here is a cropped screenprint of my weblog as it looks in IE6. Here’s the way it has looked (all morning) on my computer in Firefox.
Notice that the vertical stripes don’t show in Firefox and the width of each entry is wider than the entry and day separators. I don’t know if other Firefox users are seeing it this way or not.
Can anyone tell me what is causing this difference? Nothing about my Movable Type templates or my stylesheet changed in the last 24 hours. Opera renders my site properly. What’s going on?
My friend, Craig Cantoni, and I share some notions about immigration. We’re both for it. Neither of us is for the precise way it is being handled today.
I’m pro-immigration, but I’m not for illegal immigration. I’m not for providing the full rights and privileges of U.S. citizenship to illegal immigrants. I believe drivers’ licenses should go to U.S. citizens. I believe U.S. citizenship tests should be offered in English. I believe that people who want to make America their homes should understand that America existed before they did. We have ways that things can be changed, but we also have rules that come with being an American citizen.
Here’s how Craig puts it:
Dear Thinkers:
I’ve always believed that Latin American immigrants are similar to Italian immigrants of the early 20th century and, to the dismay of conservative friends, have been pro-immigration, minus the welfare state. After reading the article from City Journal found at the address below, I’m hanging on by my fingertips to my pro-immigration beliefs. Highly politically incorrect, the article goes where your local newspaper fears to tread and shows how gang affiliation and aversion to education permeates a considerable segment of Latin American culture and persists for generations. If the article is accurate, then President Bush will bankrupt the nation with his ”Leave no child behind” program, for no amount of money can counter such cultural influences.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_3_immigrant_gang.html
Regards,
Craig J. Cantoni
Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT) Because stealing is wrong, especially by the government
I guess if you believe that terrorists might use limousines to gain access to the private, underground or other areas of closest proximity to buildings, then the verbal haranguing of a couple of taxi and limo inspectors by a belligerent elderly man might not be the best choice at the moment.
Today, I wrote the following note to the Treasurer of the Democratic National Comittee. It was prompted by my reaction to an article he posted today.
August 11, 2004
Mr. Tobias:
I began reading your work in the mid-1970’s. I have a hardback copy of The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need. You helped me set the proper financial course during my first years out of college. I have provided recent editions of the book to my three daughters. I’ve been a ”fan” a long time.
Today, I am making the decision to discontinue the quickbrowse subscription to your daily articles. Over time, you and I have changed. You have become as shameless as many other ultra-liberal democrats. Today’s article (8-11-2004) called ”Pray For Us” is the final evidence I need to know that what I say is true.
Once you and your party have decided to stoop so low just ”to win,” many people will no longer consider you worthy to engage in the debates about the greater ideas. It’s a shame you’ve decided to waste such a keen intellect on the petty (and demeaning) message you provided today. You have far better and far more to offer this country.
Know that my ire is not over politics. Had you made today’s remarks about my local sanitation worker, I would feel the same way. You crossed a line. It is terribly unfortunate.
I wish you well and thank you for the many years of financial savvy you have provided.
If you’re slogging through the effort to learn CSS/ XHTML/web design/standards…you know, all that…the treasure chest at the end of the rainbow exists at Paul Scriven’s site.
Me? I’m still arguing with myself about whether there is any chance at all that I can upgrade this site to MT 3.0/3.1 without rendering it invisible for weeks.
I came within a heartbeat of buying a new calculator today. My better judgment sent me to the computer for a quick search. After reading reviews here, here and here, I’m glad I waited. It seems HP has lost their touch with calculators. What an incredibly unfortunate decline of a product that engineers everywhere cherished.
For those needing scientific and statistical processing in a handheld, here’s a future product that holds promise. Better yet, if someone can figure out how to make HP calculators with a comparable quality to the HP 35, 45, 25c and 41CV, people are still willing to pay the $395 for a product with the outstanding quality, manuals, accessories and packaging that made HP calculators cult items.
Pontificating about intelligence restructuring
By Craig J. Cantoni
August 5, 2004
Not being an expert in subjects has not stopped me and other big-mouthed pundits from pontificating about them. For once, I’m going to pontificate about a subject in which I have expertise—30 years of expertise to be exact.
The subject is the 9/11 Commission’s recommended restructuring of national intelligence. My expertise is not in national intelligence, but it is in making large, complex organizations more effective. Here, free of charge, is what I’ve learned over the years:
- When departments, or stovepipes, within a large organization are not communicating, cooperating and coordinating effectively with each other, tinkering with the organization structure is almost always the wrong solution.
– Likewise, establishing a new layer of management or ”assistant to” and ”coordinator” positions is almost always the wrong solution.
– Investing in an expensive computer system is almost always the wrong solution.
– Having the problems ”solved” by top management or committees of high-level people with no front-line experience in how work gets done lower in the organization is almost always the wrong solution.
-Having the problems ”solved” by attorneys and other narrow staff specialists who have worked at the top of the organization all their careers without any operational experience in the ”real” work of the organization is almost always the wrong solution.
So what is the right solution? The right solution is for cross-departmental teams of lower-level employees to identify, prioritize and solve the interdepartmental problems, and then to establish fluid processes and mechanisms that will enable them to communicate, coordinate and cooperate with each other across departmental boundaries without having to crawl up their stovepipe for approval, and without worrying about violating their job descriptions and getting in trouble with the head of their stovepipe or with the personnel department.
The role of top management is to support, encourage, reward and exemplify such cross-departmental teamwork, and to establish pay and promotion systems that incentivize employees to operate in the best interest of the entire organization and not in the parochial interest of their own department.
The 9/11 Commission and Congress, where most of the Members are attorneys, have it exactly backwards. They have recommended a super-coordinator position of Intelligence Czar, whose responsibilities and authority viz a viz the FBI, CIA and Military Intelligence will be even less clear than those of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and even more removed from employees on the firing line than the current directors of those agencies.
Incidentally, there is now an Assistant to the President for Homeland Security. In other words, Tom Ridge, who supposedly reports to the President on matters of homeland security, has a counterpart who reports to the President on matters of homeland security. I kid you not. It is unfathomable how this bizarre setup improves communication, cooperation and communication between the various agencies and departments that are responsible for homeland security.
The reason for the extra homeland security position might be the fact that Ridge (and other cabinet members) spend most of their time appearing before congressional committees, the number of which has skyrocketed over the years, due to self-serving Members wanting the status, power and publicity of serving as committee chairs. Since taking office, Ridge has had to appear before 130 committees. By contrast, Osama bin Laden does not have to appear before any committees to plan direct and coordinate his evil work.
All of this would be funny if it were not so serious. When The Decline and Fall of the American Empire is written 100 years from now, one of the later chapters will be about the lawyers in Congress who restructured American intelligence.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and president of Capstone Consulting Group of Scottsdale. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
Guessing or gambling in futures contracts is not something I’m qualified to do. However, I invest with someone who knows that business well. He has now raised his bet against the future strength of the dollar to $19 billion. You can read what Reuters is reporting here. The back-drop for all of this is best understood by reading Bloomberg’s news release.
Also, note that this comes in the face of oil prices approaching $45 a barrel. As a nation, we are in debt. As individuals, many are in debt. A higher percentage of our cars are gas guzzlers, and we live in homes that are palaces by global standards. Not knowing what else to do, many executives are outsourcing service and production work to other countries in their endless search for quick fixes and short-term profits. Some of these events, taken to the next level, will converge to form a ”perfect storm” of economic impacts that could make each of the next twenty years resemble the meltdown of 2000.
Even though some 1200 to 1500 A-shares of Berkshire Hathaway will be sold over the next two years, I’m standing by my investment and adding to it when (and if) it goes ”on sale.”
This morning I upgraded my copy of Firefox from version 0.92 to 0.93. The upgrade went fine. However, all of my past annoyances remain. I’m updating the list in bullet form here:
clicking a link in an email message triggers a dialog box titled ”Locate Link Browser,” even though the link I click on has already launched another copy of Firefox and taken me to the link URL.
Firefox often just locks up and stops responding
If I post an extended entry in Movable Type and want to use the editing icons (b, i, u and URL), they don’t work. Instead, they paste the link I’m trying to add in the entry body rather than in the extended entry.
pdf files open, but they’ll lock up Firefox
the feature called ”clear search history” in the Google toolbar for Firefox won’t delete the last search item; it has to be deleted separately
my scrollpad still won’t scroll; the scrollpad works like a mousewheel when I’m using IE6
favicons stop displaying fairly often
instead of properly displaying some web sites, I often see the broken QuickTime logo instead; I think this has something to do with the way some sites are built for IE viewing, but it may be a Firefox failure as well
Why don’t left-liberals have epiphanies?
By Craig J. Cantoni
August 4, 2004
Many people are libertarians and classical liberals because they had an epiphany at some point in their lives about the danger of concentrated state power, central planning and socialism, often from reading such novels as Atlas Shrugged and such economic treatises as The Road to Serfdom.
My epiphany began as a kid from reading every history book I could find on the evils of the Third Reich, which, as I came to understand, was exactly like the Soviet Union in terms of putting the interests of the state before the rights of the individual. The totalitarianism of both the Third Reich and the Soviet Union sprang from poisonous cultures that had a long history of squelching individualism.for the ”greater good” of society.
Now, 40 years later…
...I’m wondering why left-liberals do not have similar epiphanies. Why do they and their allies in academia and Hollywood demonize Hitler and fascism so much more than Stalin and communism? And why are there so many more popular books and movies about the horrors of Hitler and fascism than about the horrors of Stalin and communism?
Whatever the reasons, the result is that left-liberals only get it partially right. To their credit, they respect civil liberties. To their discredit, they espouse group rights based on class and race, they enact speech codes and restrictions on political speech, they restrict the right of free association, they believe that an individual’s money belongs to the collective to be redistributed for the ”greater good” of society, they see nothing wrong with the government and unionized teachers having a monopoly on K-12 classroom thought, they have utopian notions about what people should drive and where they should live, and they disparage capitalism, which is nothing more than the manifestation of economic freedom.
In short, left-liberals believe that the individual is secondary to the state and society. They believe this because they have not had an epiphany about the nexus between socialism and fascism. And they have not had an epiphany, I believe, because Hollywood and academia have not demonized socialism to the same extent that fascism has been demonized.
Such thoughts are on my mind for two reasons. First, I am reading an excellent new book about Stalin and the Bolshevik Revolution: Stalin: The Court of the Red TSAR, by Simon Sebag Montefiore. Second, for about the tenth time, I recently watched the classic movie Judgment at Nuremberg, starring Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Maximilian Schell, Judy Garland, and Montgomery Clift. Clift felt so strongly about the importance of the movie that he acted in it without recompense—and, in my opinion, gave one of the best performances in the history of cinema.
The movie is a fictional account of German judges being judged by an American tribunal for following Nazi law and holding sham trials. I know of no comparable film that dramatizes how Soviet judges followed the diktats of Stalin and held sham trials. Nor do I know of any left-liberal actor who has starred without recompense in a movie that shows the horrors of Bolshevism.
Of course, there were never Nuremberg-like trials of Stalin’s evil cabal after the Second World War. To the contrary, in an ugly display of hypocrisy and double-standards, Soviets were allowed by the United States and the other allies to join them in sitting in judgment of the Nazis for crimes against humanity that rivaled the crimes against humanity committed by the Soviets.
I understand the political reasons at the time for the hypocrisy and double standards, but I do not understand why the hypocrisy and double standards continue today in the unequal treatment by Hollywood, the publishing industry and academia of the two equally evil ideologies.
Yes, equally evil.
Stalin and his henchmen killed as many of their fellow citizens as Hitler and his henchmen. The difference was that Stalin’s genocide was based on class while Hitler’s was based on race. Ironically, many of the perpetrators in the Politburo and Congress of Soviets were Jews, while most of the victims in the Third Reich were Jews—a fact that some people stretch to explain why Hollywood has demonized fascism more than communism.
In any event, images are permanently etched in American minds of the unspeakable horrors of Nazi concentration camps. I still remember horrific documentaries that were shown in Catholic elementary school in the 1950s of the concentration camps being liberated and the piles of bodies, spectacles, gold fillings and hair. (No mention was made by the nuns of the Vatican’s Concordant with the Third Reich.) The images have been refreshed by such fairly recent documentaries as Shoa and by such powerful movies on the Holocaust as Schindler’s List, Sophie’s Choice and The Pianist.
Speaking of the The Pianist, it shows, through the masterful direction of Roman Polanski, the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto by Nazi troops. But to the best of my knowledge of movies, there is not a similar American movie that details the complicity of the Soviets in the quelling of the Warsaw Uprising. Soviet troops were close enough to Warsaw to come to the aid of the city, but Stalin chose to let the Nazis do the dirty work that he would have to do later to subjugate Warsaw and Poland.
Tellingly, there is a paucity of movies about Stalin and a plethora of movies about Hitler. For example, I recently went to Hollywood Video to rent the movie Stalin, one of the few movies about the Bolshevik dictator, starring Robert Duvall. The store did not carry the movie.
There were only two movies at Hollywood Video on the Bolshevik Revolution, Doctor Zchivago (1965) and Reds (1981), neither of which glorifies communism but both of which gloss over Bolshevik atrocities.
The same is true for the movie Stalin. Having seen it before, I know that it touches on Stalin’s genocide, but unlike movies about Hitler’s genocide, it does not show graphic reenactments or actual footage of the genocide. For example, it does not show millions of peasants being sent to Siberian concentration camps for the ”crime” of owning land and wanting to keep some of the fruits of their labor. Nor does it show women and children dying ghastly deaths from starvation, unlike movies on the Holocaust that show women and children being gassed in the ”showers.”
In a similar vein, there is a Holocaust museum and memorial on the Capitol Mall but not a museum and memorial dedicated to the hundred-million or so who have been slaughtered in the name of communism.
Even current political language and labels perpetuate the unbalanced view of the Left and Right. For example, the epithet ”right-wing extremist” is used far more in the mainstream media to describe conservatives than the epithet ”left-wing extremist” is used to describe liberals—as if left-wing extremism is somehow morally superior to right-wing extremism.
A similar phenomenon (propaganda?) has occurred with respect to the portrayal of Israel by Hollywood and academia. In such movies as A Woman Called Golda (1982), early Zionists, many of whom were Bolsheviks, were shown as beleaguered heroes standing for democracy against Arab barbarians. The portrayals conveniently overlooked the sordid history of the Balfour Declaration, the fact that Jews and Moslems were living in relative harmony in Palestine before Britain and France began carving up the Middle East after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and how American Jews hypocritically went against their commendable belief in the separation of church and state by influencing American foreign policy to support the religious state of Israel.
The adjective ”left-wing” was not used by left-liberals to describe the early Zionists, even as they formed collective communes. Today, however, as left-liberals have come to see the Israeli government as increasingly capitalistic and militaristic, they use the adjective ”right-wing” with regularity to describe it.
In summary, left-liberals do not have epiphanies about the evils of leftism for one reason: They believe their own propaganda.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
Microsoft has released the Service Pack 2 for Windows XP to manufacturing. This article from Computerworld explains some of the particulars. I use a cable modem that reliably provides approximately 2.2Mbps of download speed. That’s the typical throughput on a line that is rated at a theoretical 3.0Mbps.
Assuming 8 bits to the Byte, and assuming the typical download from Microsoft will be 100MB, let’s look at some realistic download times. There’s always going to be a contradictory use of terminology between the computer folks and the telephone folks. But, assuming Microsoft is on the computer side of the house, they want to send 100MB or 100×1,048,576 bytes of information. At 8 bits to the byte, this works out to 100×1,048,576×8 = 838,860,800 bits.
Now, the telephone folks are going to allow me to download that at 2.2Mbps. What they mean is 2.2×1,000,000×8 = 17,600,000 bits per second.
So, my download is probably going to take 838,860,800 / 17,600,000 = 47.66 seconds. Slow that download speed to 500Kbps and it’s going to take about 3.5 minutes. That’s the download time. Installation and configuration and testing will take some more time.
Multiply any of these numbers by the number of users of Windows XP and you begin to see what’s going to happen to the Internet, bandwidth and computer users for a few days.
The news today noted that the men arrested at the Albany mosque were fingered by some documents found at Al-Ansar sites in Iraq, of all places. Iraq! Imagine that. I would sleep better if I could snort sure, its a plant and tell myself that its all made up, its all a joke, a phony show designed to make us look the other way while a cackling cabal of Masons and Zionists figure out how much arsenic they can put in the water next year. (Arsenic: the fluoride of the left.) But no. I am one of those sad little pinheads who think its really one war, one foe, with a thousand fronts. And I want us to win.
If you bridle at the terms us and win you really are reading the wrong website.
MCI posted a loss for the quarter and announced a dividend. Apparently, while they were hiding from their creditors in the bankruptcy court, the coffers filled up.
This is the industry that gave you ”slamming.” That’s the practice – less prevalent now – of changing your long distance service without your knowledge. I’ve now dealt with three different telecommunications companies in various reseller roles. Not one of them has been able to honestly calculate and pay the referral fees they claimed they would pay. In two different companies, the commission rates they agreed to pay were altered because they changed the terms on the customers’ contracts. The appearance is that they simply did not want to pay what they agreed to pay.
We’ve got a long way to go before reliable, ethical and revolutionary IP communications technologies are available end-to-end from a top-performing company. The mystery in all of this is why some industries just seem to attract and retain the unethical types.
David Pogue sends me an email every week. He writes for the New York Times, and one of his articles gets emailed to those who have chosen to subscribe to his (free) email.
The title of this week’s article is Judging a Phone by Its Carrier. Here’s what he had to say:
As I flew back from a trip to California last night, I tried to analyze why I felt so wiped out. Then it hit me: speaking engagements, trade shows, meetings and family vacations have taken me away from home 11 times since June. (Out of 22 flights, moreover, four of them turned into all-day stranded-at-airport nightmares. When one particular flight was canceled, in fact, the employees were so hostile and noncommunicative, I’ve sworn to change the airline’s name in my Rolodex program from Spirit to AvoidIt.)
But I digress.
Anyway, the bright side is that all of this traveling was a perfect opportunity to test the two cellphones I reviewed today and last week in the ”State of the Art” column. Each is a ”communicator”-a cellphone with built-in camera, thumb keyboards, Web browsing and so on. All those layovers, cab rides and airport shuttles were great opportunities to test these phones under a wide variety of conditions.
As it happens, both of these phones-the HP 6315 PocketPC and the Sidekick II-are offered exclusively by T-Mobile. As it also happens, both phones often said ”No Service,” or displayed very weak signal bars, in a few situations where my own Verizon Wireless phone was going strong. (For example, T-Mobile phones say ”No Service” in my home in the New York suburbs. Bummer-I really liked that Sidekick II.)
Now, T-Mobile, in my experience, isn’t noticeably worse than Cingular, AT&T or Sprint; the phenomenon I’m describing is a testimony to the superiority of Verizon’s national range. In four years of writing cellphone reviews for the Times, I’ve often found myself carrying phones from several different companies-and where there’s a difference in reception, Verizon nearly always wins. (Consumer Reports’s much more scientific testing arrived at the same results.) Which made me realize three things.
First, I can’t believe the gall of AT&T Wireless’s new newspaper ads. They show a full-strength, all-bars signal indicator along with claims that suggest that AT&T has the best cellular coverage in this country. In my experience, that’s pure wishful thinking.
Second, tech reviewers seem to ignore the fact that the carrier you choose may actually be more important to your happiness than the phone you choose. Coverage, pricing and customer service will probably mean a lot more than this bell or that whistle. Every phone review ought to include this warning in bold red type: ”NOTE: You’re not just buying a phone; you’re buying a carrier.”
Finally, it’s too bad you can’t get the best phones with the best coverage. I love the signal coverage of Verizon Wireless, but man, are its phones boring.
For example, my Toyota Prius has a microphone built into the rear-view mirror, a ”Make a call” button on the steering wheel, and Bluetooth circuitry that lets you make calls without even removing the cellphone from your pocket or purse. But you can use this feature only if your cellphone has Bluetooth-and at this moment, Verizon doesn’t offer a single Bluetooth model.
Verizon doesn’t offer any phones that capture video, either. And it took until last month for Verizon to offer the Treo 600 smartphone, only about a year after the other carriers.
Sprint offers at least two videophones, not to mention the only TV phone. T-Mobile offers the cool communicators I just reviewed. Cingular has a phone with built-in radio and MP3 player. AT&T offers five Bluetooth phones and four BlackBerry models.
So I asked a Verizon spokesperson: What does Verizon have against high tech?
She emphatically disagreed with my ”good coverage, boring phones” premise. She said that Verizon simply tests its phones much more thoroughly than the other carriers, who may actually be trying to compensate for their smaller networks by offering trendier phones. And she pointed out that Verizon will finally offer its first Bluetooth phone-with a 1.2-megapixel camera and video capture, no less-on August 11 (called the Motorola 710).
I may just have to upgrade.
But if I had to choose between a cool phone and a boring one that works almost anywhere, in the end, I’d pick the coverage. Verizon had me from ”Hello. Can you hear me now?”
Craig Cantoni’s regular opponent in point-counterpoint columns for the Arizona Republic is quitting the column. Craig’s last faceoff with him ran on August 4th.
John is the winner
By Craig J. Cantoni
As my worthy opponent leaves the space next door, I want to wish John well in his new assignment of public school principal. I also want to concede that he and his fellow liberals have won the political debate in America.
Congratulations, John.
Much of the world has come to understand that central control and collectivism hurts people, especially the poor. Yet the United States continues on a path of centralization and collectivism, thanks to liberals like John and their big-government allies in the Republican Party.
Take ”transfer payments,” which is a euphemism for ”theft.”
In 1900, almost all government expenditures were for the common good—for government services like national defense that benefit all citizens. Back then, transfer payments, which benefit some citizens at the expense of others, were only two percent of government spending. Today, they are over 40 percent and growing.
In 1900, total government expenditures were 8.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Today, they are about four times higher. A century ago, 60 percent of government spending was at the local and state levels. Now, federal spending is twice as much as local and state spending combined, costing each household a whopping $23,000 per year.
In 1914, the year after the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, the income tax per capita was $69 in today’s dollars, versus $2,500 today. Less than one percent of the population had to file a tax return in 1914, versus 45 percent today. There were 4,000 IRS employees and four pages of IRS forms in 1914, versus 100,000 employees and over 4,000 pages today.
Politicians bray about the small percentage of jobs outsourced to other countries but are silent about the millions of jobs ”outsourced” to the government. There are now almost twice as many wealth-consuming public-sector employees as wealth-producing manufacturing employees.
Health care is increasingly unaffordable, due to the government destroying a consumer market in health care 60 years ago. Now, economic illiterates want to make health care ”free” and thus more expensive.
As a result of our spending binge, the U.S. is a debtor nation, capital is fleeing to other countries, and we are sticking future generations with a $40 trillion entitlement bill.
Big-government Republicans and liberals like John have won, but the nation has lost. At the risk of sounding like a sore loser, I take back my congratulations.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, public speaker and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
CRN is reporting that Microsoft’s upcoming Service Pack 2 for Windows XP may break the company’s own CRM solution. Rest assured there will be procedures, processes and workarounds you can do to get things back in order. As always, running a secure Microsoft computer only requires a little more time and money.
Dan Cederholm produces entries at SimpleBits every so often called SimpleQuizzes. The latest one, Part XVII: Addresses, is produced by Dave Shea and asks how a multi-line address should be marked up. As of this writing, I see 122 comments/responses.
Picking from a stylesheet provider’s list of options yields a design that looks fine. The only problem is that you are likely to encounter that design at another site.
Alex King has led the way in producing templates/designs for WordPress users. At this site you can preview the designs much as you would at the CSS Zen Garden. Simply scroll down the sidebar until you see the list of styles. Pick one and the style switcher will render the site accordingly.
I can admire these, but I certainly can’t produce one!
Francey Designs has produced a new design for a site called Second Symphony. All the right pieces are in place: XHTML, CSS, PHP, Movable Type, etc. It’s great looking, too!
This set of support forum entries contains a hint that we might see Textpattern 1.0 sometime before next week. From the current gamma 1.19 to a version 1.0, we might see some truly sensational features. Stay tuned. It’s probably going to give us a lot more to learn.
In the two and a half years that I’ve been writing a weblog, I have never set one up from scratch by myself. I’ve always had help. Tonight, I faced the fact that in that same period of time there are quite a number of people who have had three or four (or more) weblogs and weblog designs running on different weblog tools.
I’m still trying to figure out what to put on a Notepad page to make a vertical line appear on a web page. I’m still not sure how the width of a weblog’s text is established. I couldn’t move a sidebar from the right side of a weblog to the left side if my life depended upon it.
It’s been terribly frustrating. I want to comply with standards, but I can’t figure out my RSS/Atom/RDF files. I want to use CSS, but I can’t determine how to right or left justify information. I’ve never edited a digital photograph. I’ve never used Photoshop to accomplish anything.
In spite of all the reading, all the books bought and all the sites visited, I’m no closer to figuring out why my comments show one domain while my weblog shows another. I’m no closer to understanding why a link inside a comment opens in a window that cannot be resized or navigated.
Sometimes it makes me wonder if I’ve learned anything at all. How is it that other people have mastered four or five weblog tools, developed complete designs and made all of it validate? My approach must be wrong, because I’m not getting anywhere.
Dan Rubin is planning a redesign of SuperfluousBanter and a new set of contributions to the web design community. Dan’s one of the people in my top 10 designers list (which has 30 names in it).
There is a wealth of information and instruction in Mike Davidson’s latest entry and the comments that follow.
I’m still arguing with myself about the notion of trying to modify my site design myself vs. sticking by a tried-and-true designer. If I don’t do it myself, I fear I’ll never learn this stuff. If I do try to do the work myself, I expect there to be long outages and flaws as I go through the trial-and-error of figuring things out.
If I didn’t have such an interest in standards-based design, the choice would be clear. I do and it isn’t.
Winer continues to distort and listen to distortions. He continues to cite big-media companies, apparently assuming they report accurately. Just because the information on a computer was three years old, that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t ”new” information in our search for terrorists, their planning methods and their targets. As he would say in his most condescending tone, ”Dave, you’re better than this.”
It would be no different from discovering offensive information on one of Winer’s old computers. It might be old information on the computer, but it would be new information to those who have just learned of it. It would shed (new) light on what kind of threat was posed. That’s an example of how we are piecing together the way terrorists work. The information Dave and others are calling ”old” was discovered last week!
I’ve wrestled with what to say about this. While completely counter-productive to try and reason with people like Mr. Winer, I have concluded that offering no response would be unpatriotic. The cynicism (at best) and hatefulness (at worst) which motivates such comments by Howard Dean and Dave Winer should not go unchallenged. Yes, I know there’s a first amendment.
It’s that first amendment that allows me the freedom to say that their comments are moronic, motivated solely by a desire to ”win” and the frustration of not getting the recognition they whine for. To the question of how effective the efforts since 9/11/01 have been, I offer the fact that there has not been a single follow-up attack on our homeland. Agencies which previously would seal information behind layers of legal protection now share it with other agencies on a daily basis.
To the statement by Winer that ”The President lied about the connection between al Qaeda and Iraq,” I say, ”horse manure.” Winer does not know what he’s talking about, and he doesn’t know what to read, whom to listen to or how to learn the truth – on any subject. His motives are impure, his words are hateful and his thoughts are illogical.
He wants proof (and attention). The proof rests in the fact that he/we can continue to live, work, travel and prosper from coast to coast in the USA without the degrees of fear found in Baghdad, Jakarta, Jerusalem, Darfur, Kabul and countless other places around the globe. This is true in spite of the fact that the world is more dangerous today than it was just ten years ago. Yet, as Americans, our freedoms remain.
If Winer wants to be constructive, and I believe he does not, he will use his influence and his training to get his candidate (formerly Dean, now Kerry) to provide specific details of what will be done in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in the USA and anywhere else where we know that terrorists operate or find safe harbor. Some reminders are in order:
Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.
This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.
Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen.
Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.
Our President told us what he was going to do and he’s doing it. If members of Al Qaeda are shooting videos as they cut the heads off of Americans in Iraq, how is Winer able to conclude that there is no connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq? There is but one obvious answer to this question.
Keeping this nation safe has become more difficult than it was twenty years ago. I just heard that Tom Ridge, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, has testified more than 140 times before committees in Congress. This is a man who was appointed shortly after Septempber of 2001, and these 140 appearances occurred in the 34 months since then.
It’s pretty difficult to build a new approach to anything when you are so continuously diverted and second-guessed by bureaucracy. This is true regardless of political party.
Steve Jobs had cancer surgery over the weekend. Few companies of Apple’s stature are as dependent upon their CEO as Apple is. With no chemo or radiation therapy required, we’ll continue to hope and pray that Jobs really can use August to recuperate.
Later tuned in to some highlights from the Kerry speech. He said he would respond if America was attacked. Well, duh. I take something else from this distinction: he will not attack if America is provoked.
”I defended this country as a young man, and I will defend it as President.”
This really intrigues me. I agree that Vietnam was a defense of the United States, inasmuch as we were trying to blunt the advance of Communism. So: only Nixon can go to China. (Only Kirk can go to Chronos, for you Star Trek geeks.) Only Kerry can confirm that Vietnam was a just war. This completely upends conventional wisdom about the Vietnamese war, and requires a certain amount of historical amnesia. Why does this get glossed over? The illegitimacy of the Vietnam war (non-UN approved, after all) is a key doctrine of the Church of the Boomers; to say that service in Vietnam was done in defense of the United States is like announcing that Judas Ischariot was the most faithful of the disciples. Imagine if you were a preacher who attempted such a revision. Imagine your private thrill when everyone in the congregation nodded assent. The past was more malleable than you had ever expected.
This is an important point. If you want to now use your military service as a badge of honor, how do you reconcile your anti-war language and your ribbon-tossing antics as patriotic? I know, I know – your opponent in this election never served in Vietnam. That’s not at issue here. What’s at issue is whether you’ll respond when we are attacked and/or provoked.
Be assured of this. During the next five to ten years, we’re going to see threats and actions against what this country stands for on a level that we’ve never known. If you are a Christian, know that your worldview will encounter some truly horrible attacks from those who don’t understand, who hate or who equate your Christianity with your American heritage. It’s illogical. It’s inevitable. It’s foretold. Get ready.
A year ago today, Memphis was still trying to recover from a serious straight-line wind that tore through the city. At approximately 7:30a.m. on the 22nd, power was cut to over 300,000 customers of the city’s public utility. My power was restored at about 5:20p.m. on August 4, 2003. July and August heat in Memphis with no power is no fun. Living without lights in the middle of the night is no fun, either.
The burgers and fries I’ve been getting from the White House lunch room have not been as bad as the ones that Keith has been getting. I’ve also been fortunate in that my treatment as a customer hasn’t declined in the last few years. I’ve been able to understand the people and I never realized a fryer blew up.
I like the way he’s expressed his thoughts, and he’s been on my high-priority reading list for quite some time![Note the comments he’s getting.] I’m very interested in the quality of the debate in this country. Anger at one person may not be the right or a sufficient basis for replacing them with another. Keith makes it clear that there are multiple areas in which he feels John Kerry can do a better job than George Bush. Those thoughts were expressed without venom and emotion. Keith does a good job of characterizing the nature of far too many of the so-called peaceful protests.
In my daily work, I work with people who need help getting to the heart of their business processes, their metrics and the facts about their work. I like facts. I like things that we agree on. What to do about those facts can be debated, but I like the point at which there is agreement on what the real facts are.
That’s what’s frustrating about politics. Instead of dealing with the facts associated with an issue, the public debates often begin without defining the problem, how it is measured and discussion of possible ways to solve it. Career politicians (on both sides of the aisle) foster this by becoming part of the media machine that spins their takes on the matter. From there the public is faced with listening to the spin to make choices. It’s a broken system!
As for labels, I agree with Keith. However, I’m guilty of participating in the labeling process, even though it is largely destructive to meaningful processes for finding solutions. I’ve even used a label to try and provide a ”snapshot” of my political leanings. Issue by issue, I use a framework of mental models assessment and study of any topic. It’s basically a cognitive technique that can be applied to anything. Yet, when a debate becomes emotional, the cognitive approach can get abandoned as quickly as any other reasoned method.
One of the most important questions facing us as a nation is whether or not we can return to statemanship and civil debate as a means for finding solutions to our problems.
This is a link to the news release (pdf file) from Berkshire Hathaway concerning the death of Susan T. Buffett. As a long-time holder of shares in Berkshire Hathaway, I offer condolences to the Buffett family.
This day also marked the loss of a neighbor to my mom. They had been friends for forty-six years. To that family, we also extend our sympathies and prayers.
I realized again tonight that I don’t really understand the use of header tags (h1, h2, h3, etc.). I use a fair number of blockquotes. Within a blockquote, I may have a style or two that should be marked up using header tags. The discussion I’ve linked to at Jon Hicks’s site simply confirms how little I understand.
I’m told you need to use header tags in order on a page; you shouldn’t have an h3 if there’s not an h2 somewhere on the page before it. It seems like a really complex matter to decide (and be limited to) the use of only six header tags. If you’ve got a header on the home page, it might be the h1 tag. Each title might be tagged with h2. The sidebar might use h3 and h4. Can you complete the stylesheet for blockquotes (and all other needs) with only the h5 and h6 tags remaining.
I’m really confused about this stuff. I need to go back to the books. Which one?
Keith Robinson is thinking (aloud) about some possible ideas for refreshing his site. He’s even open to a change from Movable Type to a different weblog tool/CMS. The features he wants and the discussion in the comments is an enormous help to anyone contemplating design changes or tool changes or both.
What did I learn from a cursory glance? Apparently, Movable Type 3.1 will have functionality that eliminates the rebuild time when posting. WordPress and TextPattern already post instantly. It’s an important feature.
Eric Meyer refers us to a table where 10 web sites (mostly designers) are compared in a table of twenty-five characteristics. It’s useful, interesting and furthers the cause of web standards.
It seems to me that designers are nearing the point where a set of rules for ”proper” design will be accepted. These won’t be rules about colors or fonts, but rules about such things as links, character encoding, printing stylesheets, etc.
Things like ”clean URLs” or titles as URLs need to be nailed down. Basic navigation techniques need to be nailed down. These statements of preferred techniques don’t have to limit the artistic freedom designers have. Rather, it focuses more time on the graphic design, because the basics will be understood.
* * UPDATE * * * Note the discussion by Dave Shea and Jon Hicks in response to their inclusion in the survey.
I’ve been listing site designs and specific features I like. I’m in the early stages of planning a site redesign. Pondering the obvious disruptions, inconveniences and ugliness that will happen if I undertake the changes myself, I’m also considering how I can learn design, if I continue to use professional design services. I’ve even put the sites I want to emulate at the top of my news reader. There are thirty great designs/designers on my ”top ten list.” I know.
In the last couple of days, I’ve been rereading Dan Cederholm’s sensational book. Then, just as I’m putting some more thoughts on paper, I run across Shirley Kaiser’s latest entry. She links to some very recent essays, articles and entries on web standards.
It’s great, and it will whet your appetite for what she’s planning to say on the subject in the coming days.
It’s been a long hot summer in Arizona. My friend, Craig Cantoni, has taken some time off, traveled a bit and refueled for the fall foolishness. His latest attempt to escape the heat in Phoenix just made things hotter. Get ready. This one pulls no punches.
Public ed plunderers at 7,000 ft.
By Craig J. Cantoni
July 28, 2004
Last week, my wife and I drove 110 miles to Flagstaff, Arizona to escape the summertime furnace of Phoenix and to take our minds off of political issues, especially the meeting of plunderers and economic illiterates known as the Democratic National Convention, which will be followed by a meeting of plunderers and economic illiterates known as the Republican National Convention.
Pulling into the hotel in the pines at 7,000 ft. elevation, our soaring spirits took a nosedive when we saw the marquis, where, emblazoned in large letters, was a welcome to plunderers and economic illiterates.
As luck would have it, the Arizona School Boards Association was holding a conference at the hotel. The parking lot was full of cars from school districts across the state, and the lobby was full of people who looked, spoke and dressed like Soviet apparatchiks on a weekend retreat to a dacha.
There, in all of their bureaucratic glory, were members of the public education establishment. There, in all of their political power, were the people who have a stranglehold on the Democratic and Republican parties, who are responsible for the economic illiteracy of the American public, who have a dangerous monopoly on K-12 classroom thought, and who, when they retire to their bedrooms at night, get in bed with their masters, the teacher unions, and engage in disgusting sadomasochistic rituals with public money.
After adopting a bureaucratic persona and attire, I spied on the meeting and schmoozed with some of the attendees.
Tellingly, the meeting agenda had nothing about academics, cost reduction or school choice. The three main agenda items were: 1) what to do if you are threatened with another district wanting to take over your district; 2) a presentation by Jamie Vollmer; and 3) a luau in the evening.
Who is Jamie Vollmer? He is a retired businessman, a popular speaker at education conferences and a fool.
To his credit, Vollmer admits his past foolishness. He says that he once believed that public education could be run like a business. Apparently not knowing anything about public choice economics, he did not realize that government schools are going to behave like the government and thus be held hostage by politicians, bureaucrats, rent-seeking unions and other special interests.
To his discredit, Vollmer continues to be a fool. After having an epiphany about the true nature of government schools, he has become a big fan of government schools. He is like a smoker dying of lung cancer who, after learning the true nature of smoking, becomes a cheerleader for the tobacco industry, earning a good income by speaking at industry conferences about the glories of tobacco.
Vollmer’s new shtick is to change America in order to improve public education. To quote from an article of his in the March 6, 2002, issue of Education Week: ”For the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve, and therefore, to improve public education means more than changing our schools, it means changing America.”
Well, it certainly doesn’t mean learning proper grammar, as the above sentence shows.
Borrowing a page from the Bolsheviks, Vollmer arrogantly believes that America should be changed to meet the needs of the government, not vice versa. And how does he propose to do this? Through propaganda, of course.
But Vollmer doesn’t call it propaganda. He calls it ”marketing” and ”getting good information to the community.”
Education associations and teacher unions love his message. For example, The Washington Education Association had this to say about Vollmer’s ideas in a recent newsletter:
”The solution requires getting good information to the community. That doesn’t mean holding a meeting at school, a setting where many may already feel alienated. It doesn’t mean sending home a letter to the small portion of families who have children. It does mean teachers and concerned parents (not administrators) taking their message on the road, to the community’s turf—the Rotary Club, the senior center, the church socials—and on the community’s time.”
The above paragraph is astonishing. The WEA says that meetings should not be held at schools, where ”many may already feel alienated.” So instead of addressing the alienation and giving alienated parents the freedom to escape the government school monopoly, the WEA agrees with Vollmer that ”You must talk to the community about your successes.”
The WEA then lists people who have ”their own narrow agendas.” According to the WEA, they include ”talk show hosts, school board wannabes, disaffected parents, tax fanatics.”
The list does not include the WEA, because it does not have its own narrow agenda. Guffaw, guffaw! But it does include a tax fanatic like me who has the temerity in a free society to question why my wife and I are coerced to pay $190,000 in public education taxes over our adult lives, although we exercise our constitutional right of religious freedom and send our son to parochial school. To the WEA or a Bolshevik, only a ”tax fanatic” would dare to ask such questions about the redistribution of his money.
The WEA also agrees with Vollmer that the ”three Rs” are outdated and should be replaced by the ”three Ts” of ”Thinking, Technology and Teamwork skills.” What the WEA and Vollmer really mean by ”Thinking” and ”Teamwork skills” are ”group-think” and ”conformity,” which are the ”skills” needed to be cogs in the bureaucratic wheels of big government and big business.
I left Flagstaff sick to my stomach—not from altitude sickness but from a sickening realization that bureaucrats, Bolsheviks, propagandists and buffoons have a monopoly on K-12 classroom thought and a stranglehold on American politics.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
Sales manipulation is notoriously bad in the automobile business. There are ways to minimize it and win in the end. Shirley Kaiser uses her own experience to help others.
I’ve subscribed to lots of RSS feeds. They’re arranged in channel groups in my news reader, which is FeedDemon. Now I want to put them into a reading order inside each channel group.
I’d like to have a ”Top Ten” inside each channel group. Is there a way to do that? [I don’t spend much time in support forums. They seem inconvenient to me. So, I’ve not done the requisite searching in the FeedDemon support forums!]
Here’s the letter I wish I had received on the first day of every college class. No…this should have come to me as a condition of acceptance into college. It should have been clear that this was going to be the stated agreement between me and every professor I had. Professors and students would understand it was the way things would be.
Susanna is to be commended for writing it. One of the key points:
But it’s important that you realize what my job is. This is not kindergarten. This is not elementary school. This is not even high school. This is college. My primary job is to make you think critically.
Doug Bowman of StopDesign uses the Microsoft site to explain why a standards-based, tableless design would be so much better than the current ”many-table” design.
The shame is that Microsofts site isnt as optimized as it could be. They havent taken the plunge yet. Users download unnecessarily larger pages, and servers waste extra bandwidth to keep up. At 40 KB, the HTML for Microsofts home page is not exactly a bloated beast. But it is burdened with inaccessible, kludgy, table-based markup filled with proprietary attributes and some awkward JavaScript. Notice I didnt mention whether it was valid markup or not. Despite using the flavor of XHTML, Microsoft omits the doctype on their home page.
If you want to read something that will lift your spirits, take a look at Jay Allen’s story of how he came worked to win the Movable Type Developer’s Contest.
A couple of days ago I mentioned how much I liked the design at Sonnenvogel.com.
I’ve just found another site that I’m crazy about. Mike Davidson has all the elements I want to bring into this weblog. Here’s how I see it:
colors are more muted
lines are not nearly as heavy as here
comments are styled well
there are four styles that you can switch between
there’s a user-selectable font size
I like the way the text area sits with drop shadow on the background
the width of the home page and text area is great
navigation at the top of each page is well done and simple
the sidebar is simple, but useful
the color schemes for links really work
essays are moved to a link within the navigation bar
the separation of entries and the timestamp lines are light, but useful
Tonight he’s posted an entry about clean URL’s. It’s been a hot topic and one I want to pursue in the refresh of this site.
How can I get those things done to this site? I know it when I see it, but I don’t have the CSS and XHTML and Movable Type skills to make it happen.
* * * UPDATE * * * Two other things I want to include are determining what it takes to write and entry and post it without causing my site to stop validating. Is this something that MT 3.0 or 3.1 solves? Is it something that a plugin will solve? Is it only solved by composing entries external to MT and then posting them?
Also, I want to resolve the domain issues. Sometimes you are rodentregatta.com, but if you leave a comment, you see stevepilgrim.com. I want to fix that once and for all, but without disrupting past comments. It will take some digging, but I’ve got to believe it can be done.
Here’s a good tip – compliments of Marie Carnes. Go to the Convention Bloggers web site. Near the end of the left sidebar is a link to the *.opml file for all of the RSS feeds from the bloggers who were invited to the Democrats’ convention.
In whatever news reader you have, simply set up a group specifically for the convention. Import the opml file. When you’re tired of it or the convention ends, delete the feeds you no longer want, move some feeds into your other groups or delete the whole group.
In addition to good advice about how to handle the upcoming Service Pack #2 for Windows XP, this article serves as a real incentive to buy the Macintosh.
If Apple were on top of its game, it would be launching another ”Switch campaign,” complete with hardware incentives, how-to guides and software promotions. The aim would be to get Windows XP users to use the time required for SP2 on their Mac conversions instead!
As things stand right now, the race to elect a President in 2004 is (approximately) tied at 45% of the votes for each candidate. The two candidates are actually competing for the 10% of voters considered ”undecided.”
What message does each candidate have for someone who is undecided? President Bush has a fairly specific agenda. John Kerry has a series of plans.
Can an undecided voter read these documents and decide? If you see things in the USA as rather gloomy, which candidate’s documents appeal to you? If you see things in the USA as rather upbeat, which holds the most appeal?
Here’s the premise: The best native format for a word processor is XHTML plus CSS.
A wiki has been established to debate this notion. All I can add to the concept is the notion of a layout and color guide that allows for proper positioning of the sections of this home page. Let me see what it’s going to look like while insuring that it is valid XHTML, valid CSS and all links are operable.
CNN and Al-Jazeera are doing a bad job. Consider it said. From there you can substitute the names of fifty or one hundred other major media companies in place of those two.
It validates as XHTML Strict. The CSS validates. The navigation scheme is great. The background images look very nice. It’s done in Textpattern. Visit Sonnenvogel.com.
There continues to be a lot of nonsense flying around about ”outsourcing” and ”offshoring.” We defined these terms once before.
Focusing on the offshoring trend, it’s obvious that there’s more to the issue than just ”cheap labor.” John Dvorak gives you a taste of what’s going on. Deming spoke of a system of profound knowledge. Until we view this problem as a complete system and from all the angles, we’ll continue to arrive at wrong conclusions. There are economic, political, business, customer, employee, supplier, transportation, insurance, warehousing, social, security, regulatory and a host of other dimensions to this problem.
Some of the best advice I received during my trial-and-error efforts with Radio Userland came from Rogers. He understands the ”gap” in knowledge that exists between those who write software, those who document software and those who ”merely” use software.
He’ll do this right. It’s already available at Amazon for pre-orders!
It’s probably too late to get a bargain on Jay Allen’s rookie card. He’s already in the big leagues and his star is rising fast.
Late today Six Apart announced that Jay’s the Grand Prize winner of the Plug In To Movable Type 3.0 Developer’s contest with his MT-Blacklist 2.0. I’ve been using MT-Blacklist on this MT 2.661 weblog and love it. Were Jay (somehow) getting paid for every spam comment he’s blocked here, he’d be getting wealthy by the second.
Congratulations, Jay! When I learn how to upgrade to MT3.0, MT-Blacklist 2.0 will be right there.
Yesterday, during the marathon effort to correct some deficiencies with the syndication features of this web site, I discovered some other things that need attention.
Firefox – While I think I’m avoiding some security risks by using Firefox, the list of frustrations continues to grow. If I get an email in Outlook with a link in it and I click on that link, Firefox launches again and a dialog box opens asking me where I want to save a file. The links are not files I want to save at all, but Firefox doesn’t get that. The almighty ”tabbed browsing” doesn’t open the link in a new Firefox tab, either.
Couple this with the growing number of times that I’m seeing Firefox completely stop responding, and I begin questioning the wisdom of being on pre-release software. The other big nuisance I’ve found is the loss of the functionality of the editing icons in the extended entry field of Movable Type. Meryl had provided some tips on making them work in the ”entry body” text box. If you try to bold, italicize or insert a link in the extended entry field, Firefox puts it in the entry body. Here they are in list form:
pdf files lock up Firefox
Firefox stops responding fairly often
Movable Type’s text entry icons don’t work in the extended entry field
email links open a new copy of Firefox and a dialog box to save a file
favicons frequently stop displaying
Syndication – The problems are well-documented. Three different feeds. One is completely hosed. One of these days, I’m going to put a link in the sidebar that says, ”Syndicate This Site.” That link will take you to a separate page of syndication possibilities like Shirley has created. On that page will be an Atom feed, an RSS 2.0 feed and an RSS 1.0/RDF feed. From there, you’ll (one day) be able to get to RSS feeds for each category. You’ll be able to get to feeds that include comments and some that don’t. This seems like a reader-oriented way to design things. People can see what they want to see.
Comments – I need to rethink how my comments work. If there’s a link inside a comment right now, it opens in the same pop-up window as the comment. That window cannot be resized or scrolled. That’s just wrong. Also, the XHTML allowed for entering and editing a comment needs to be changed. Examples of comments (numbered sequentially) and styled well can be seen at Matt’s and Keith’s and Paul’s sites among many others.
Apple’s AirPort Express caught Walter Mossberg’s attention yesterday. Today, David Pogue [free subscription may be required] weighs in with his own analysis. While not the end-all-be-all solution, this seems like one more favorable entry on the side of the ledger that says, ”Apple is the right alternative to Microsoft’s security mess.”
After nearly a full day of trying to figure out how to edit my three syndication feeds so that full entries are shown in FeedDemon, I can tell you that I simply do not possess enough IQ to make it happen. My experience and background simply doesn’t involve day-to-day programming.
For those readers who would like to read full entries in your news readers, I apologize. I simply cannot figure out how to provide that to you. Something between Movable Type, the three feed templates, FeedDemon and the way I use scripts and other features on my weblog is in conflict.
To those who have offered suggestions and advice, I appreciate the help. I wish I were smart enough to take advantage of it, but…
...that is not to be!
This marks my fifth entry about all this. Here are the previous four: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
I’m simply documenting my efforts so when this rolls around next year, I’ll have some backdrop for all that I’ve tried to do. Never mind RSS feeds for categories, with and without comments or feeds with the author’s name identified. I can’t make the most basic of changes to this stuff. Currently, the index.rdf file isn’t even viewable. Having begun my day at 2:45 a.m. this morning, this has felt like a total waste. It’s now 8:30 p.m.[NOTE: There really should be some documentation for this mess!]
The other joy I’ve discovered is the the editing icons do not work in the Movable Type Extended Entry text box when Movable Type is running in Firefox. They work fine in the primary text entry box, but not in the extended entry.
How fast can I buy and get transferred to a Macintosh? I want to use a computer – not spend all my time troubleshooting it.
I hate testing a live weblog for all the world to see. If I understood more about how all this junk works, I might be able to somehow test offline so that the weblog isn’t cluttered with RSS and Atom and RDF testing.
All I’m trying to do is get an extended entry to show up in one or more of the three feeds. I’ve given up on figuring out how to make ”author name” appear in a news reader.
Whatever. This is a second test for the morning. Can you see the extended portion of the entry. It follows…
Here’s the extended portion of the entry. I doubt very seriously that it will be visible in your news reader.
** UPDATE * * * Just as I expected, it doesn’t work. I can’t tell whether or not this is a result of running the script for ”read more/hide more” when there is an extended entry. Maybe it is some missing element/tag/variable/container/syntax/XHTML/CSS/add your acronym here/add your term here/dollar sign/frustration sign/why isn’t this explained somewhere/.
Delta Airlines announced this week that they had lost $1.96 billion during the quarter ended June 30, 2004. After 75 years in business, this is a company that is in dire straits.
About 4:00a.m. this morning, I saw one of the reasons why. Just because you call them students, passengers or patients, it doesn’t mean they are not customers!
I have all three types of feeds. None of them will provide you with a complete entry, if I use Movable Type’s extended entry feature. I cannot figure out why.
A hearty thank you goes to Marie Carnes for her help. The fact is the feature/script on my weblog that allows anyone to see entries from the same day last year and in prior years pointed me to Marie. When I wrote about my RSS travails this morning, she commented again.
This time, I’m not going to let a year go by without solving this problem. When I figure it out, I’ll solve it for all three syndication feeds. While I’m at it, I hope to be able to add the ”author field” to the feeds.
It’s a nuisance to maintain three different news feeds!
This entry is nothing more than a test of my RSS 2.0 feed. What I’m attempting to do is modify the feed to make certain that full entries are passed to your news reader.
I use a script that allows me to display a portion of an entry on my home page. At the end of a long entry is a link that says, ”read more.” If I put text into the Extended Entry field of Movable Type’s text entry boxes, the script kicks in. You’ll see it next:
This is now the extended part of the entry. Up until this test, the RSS feed did not show this portion of an entry. I’ve made a change and I hope it will now provide the complete entry.
Once I’ve tested this, I’m going to move to the Atom feed and make certain it is providing full entries. Be patient. Once this is resolved, I’ll get back to other topics.
* * UPDATE * * * It did NOT work. It will take more time to figure out why or what to do to make it work. In the meantime if you get flakey results from my feed, please let me know.
* * UPDATE 2 * * * The Atom feed does not pick up the full entry either. Anything I put in the ”extended entry” field of Movable Type is not passed with my RSS or my Atom feed. Some savvy user may be able to point me in the right direction.
* * UPDATE 3 * * * Scriptygodddess is the author of the script I use. She also uses the same script. I’ve just checked the RSS feed I get from her. It shows the extended or complete entry. That tells me that what I want to do can be done. I’ve simply got to find which line(s) in the RSS feed and the Atom feed need to be changed. Then, there’s always the index.rdf file which may need to be changed as well. Why am I having to modify three files to allow people to read my site in a news reader?
Inquiries for help come in waves. Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of counseling with people who find themselves adrift. Men have lost jobs. Women want to go back to work. Homes are broken. Recent graduates are uncertain.
In so many cases, the people we talk to have become obsessed with themselves and their circumstances. They’ve lost the ability to see service to others as the path out of the dilemma. Some are worried about how they are seen by others. Some are worried about keeping up a charade.
Some bury themselves in their appearance. Obsessions with makeup, appearance, exercise and diet block all other thoughts. Some are merely muddling through, focusing on nothing. They are ”hoping” that something will ”come along.” They are without a method.
Others are living in clutter. They see every event through the lens of ”how does this affect me or how do I ’feel’ about this?” They cannot see that their negligence in small things is directly impacting the bigger things in their lives. They seek more ”stuff,” but remain confused about why they are unfulfilled.
What are these people to do?
Many times there are similarities from one case to another. The woman who spends hours in personal grooming each day (her family’s claim, not mine) faces the same issues as the guy with piles of material he intends to read, but hasn’t. Here are a few of the components of the common denominator:
lack of discipline
lack of focus and direction
lack of ambition and motivation
selfishness
unclear priorities
no method for solving problems or making decisions
missing or limited structure and routine
envy and jealousy
sullen demeanor
confusion over what’s a symptom and what’s a root cause
materialism
unable to be alone without feeling lonely
Plenty of psychiatrists would diagnose ”depression” as the problem. Plenty of drugs get prescribed to treat these conditions. Without a doubt, there are cases of clinical depression. They should be treated professionally with the best that the medical industry can provide.
However, every unfocused, selfish person is not a case of clinical depression. Some of them are simply lazy. Some are merely self-absorbed. Some are unwilling to change. Some truly are content in their misery. Others want to change, but need a method. They want a structure and some guidelines for their lives. Someone needs to use a bit of compassion and tell these people the truth.
Deadlines, checklists and accountability work wonders. By simply narrowing their options, some their places of service. Once they realize that there are more important things in life than how they feel or look, they begin to get better. They find meaning.
It sounds harsh, but it is not. If they seek a job, there is a way to go about that. (Wishing is not a method.) If they seek appreciation, there is a way to find real reward for service. If they seek direction, there are methods for finding the way. If they are tired of living a compartmentalized life where they appear outwardly prosperous and well-adjusted while fighting turmoil within, there’s a pathway out.
If you’ve been ”hoping” for a change, isn’t it time to really seek a disciplined way to make change happen?
Style matters when you are seeking a career coach or a methodology for identifying the work that truly matches your passion. Curt Rosengren is the ”Passion Catalyst.” If you are looking at your life and the role that your work plays in your sense of fulfillment, take a look at Curt’s site and services.
Dan Miller is about to launch a new book. He’s also ramping up the circulation of his (free) weekly email newsletter. If you’re not pursuing the career of your dreams, it’s time to find the alternative. Dan has a process for doing it.
Use the comments to leave your email address and I’ll forward a copy of Dan’s latest newsletter explaining the offer. [Oh yeah, you won’t get spammed, either. Dan guards his list of subscribers closely.]
Virginia Postrel takes a look at Nicholas Kristof’s analysis of Christian eschatology. So many people have wrong-headed notions about why they were placed here. It’s difficult to help them understand what the final battle really means. There’s a lot of ground that needs to be covered before Armageddon is placed in proper context.
Life In America began Friday’s entries by pointing to James Lileks. This morning, he deals with the aftermath of having dealt with the Syrian band. Here’s a quote or two:
Syrian band update: it now appears that they were a Syrian band. (It’s an Insty link, which should send you to skeptics and supporters.) I am duly chastened for encouraging you to read this story and draw your own conclusions. In the future we must hew to a new rule: if you are on an airplane and you see a group of Arabic men with foreign passports work in concert, including standing up en masse and taking to the lavs during landing, you are obliged to give the give them the benefit of the doubt. Do not report your concerns to the flight attendants.
Later he continued with this:
So its a sign of frantic paranoia to ask if we should pull aside Syrians before they get on the plane. Its full-blown nutso nonsense to request that people should read the piece and decide for themselves.
Repeat to yourself: there is no threat. Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Wisdom! Vigilance is, uh, racism!
To some people, the very idea that a woman writes her account of being worried on a plane is tantamount to the government requiring the TSA to put a knee on the neck of anyone whose skintone trends towards the swarthy. Noted. But Ill tell you this: Id rather we err on the side of concern and inconvenience a few than wave on board four twitchy Saudis and suffer the loss of the Sears Tower. Because Im one of those nuts who thinks theres a war on. You know: a paranoid. Full blown. I see visions, and in these horrible dreams I see two towers falling. Some days I think that really happened. Time to double up on the thorazine.
What James Lileks reports is rather consistent with a few discussions I had over the weekend. There’s the notion floating that Americans are forfeiting their civil liberties right and left. I examine what I did on September 10, 2001 and what I did over the weekend and I find little difference in the amount of freedom I have. I guess there’s some way for me to view my life as existing under some oppressive regime, but the choices I make about what I do every day just don’t support the words ”oppressive” or ”regime.”
Am I willing to sacrifice something I do, buy or choose if it would prevent the loss of a city? Absolutely. There’s a war. Remember?
I saw a link to this site somewhere today. I added the RSS feed to my news reader. However, I’ve now forgotten which site I was reading. They deserve a link. This is a great CSS tutorial.
Last year about this time we were studying Zeldman’s book and watching the redesign of Ben Hammersley’s site. There were many questions. We quoted Deming and recited a prayer from September 14, 2001.
There’s still much to learn. Some questions have been answered. Many remain.
No, it wasn’t me; at least not yet. It’s coming though. Take a look at Matthew Mullenweg’s purchase and the tips and comments he received after posting about it.
Here’s a list of recent Mac-related entries that I’m using to make a purchasing decision as well as to define a migration and learning curve:
Sean Bonner was kind enough to answer several of my Macintosh questions. He’s also the brains behind a nice Apple weblog. If you’re thinking about making the switch, this one needs to be in your regular reading list.
When is the next generation of PowerBooks expected?
Is it anticipated that the next PowerBooks will be G5-based?
What are the advantages/disadvantages to 15” vs. 17” PowerBooks?
Is there a favorite carrying case in the Mac PowerBook world?
Can a Macintosh join a Windows Server domain?
Can a Macintosh comunicate with a Windows Terminal Services server?
Is a Windows-emulator required to make these things happen?
Is a CD or DVD the only or best way to move data from a PC to a Mac?
Will a new PowerBook connect easily to an existing Linksys WAP?
Memphis will charge almost ten percent for sales tax. That $300 or so will buy lots of software. Is there a way to buy a Macintosh that would dramatically lower my sales tax?
There’s a risk in using IE6. If you use Windows and IE6 there’s a lot to do to keep your PC safe from intrusion and running well.
You can switch to Firefox. I’m running version 0.9.2 with only two or three extensions. There are problems. Open a pdf file in the browser and Firefox will ultimately lock up. Cancel it from the task manager and Firefox quits. Relaunch Firefox and you will face a long startup time, all favicons will be lost until the sites are revisited, and the pdf problem will return the next time you open a pdf file.
What to do? Well, I like Firefox as an alternative to IE6. It takes some downloading of extensions, but it works – sort of. My problem is the fact that I need a system that is more dependable. I can’t deal with my browser locking up and needing to be restarted just because I viewed a pdf file.
Well…there just isn’t much to do. The Macintosh running OS X, which is a Unix/Linux variant, is apparently either untargeted or impervious to all the junk we often have to do to keep Windows machines running well (or at all).
These notions were confirmed at the Apple Store and by browsing the web. Here’s a set of entries at the TextDrive support forum that supports the idea that Mac’s are rock solid. Take a look at the comments posted with this entry, too.
Chris Lott at Ruminate posts something he calls Linklogs. This week he points to something called Checkershadow Illusion. It further links you to some other illusions. For a rookie designer this is clever and educational stuff!
Cameron Moll, a Textpattern user, is listed on Eric Meyer’s list of Luminous Beings. The request was for CSS-savvy folk who might tackle a book-writing assignment that Eric had to pass on. Don’t miss the comments with Cameron’s entry.
Why do I visit Cameron’s site? I’m considering the move of a 4000 to 5000 entry Movable Type site over to Textpattern with an update of the design. Cameron’s site shows the kinds of things I’d love to build in.
Forever Geek provides great advice. Today, they offer 7 Tips To Keep Your PC Running At Peak Performance. Sometimes I think that do-it-yourself I.T. management is one of the worst drains on productivity to ever come down the line.
The failure to do some periodic upkeep on a computer is the very reason many people suffer with five or ten minute startup times, annoying pop-ups and rather bizarre system performance. Consequently, they suffer at every computing session when fifteen to thirty minutes a week could save them twenty minutes every time they sit down at the computer.
When I read a story about the hijacking of a server owned by the State of Arkansas, I’m reminded that security will likely be the number one concern for the next couple of decades. From physical security of homes and offices to the security of every form of technology we use, we’re at risk.
Think about his as you consider which web host, credit card, cellular company or online banking service you’ll use.
Former Mayor Ed Koch of New York City settled – for me at least – the leading issue for the Presidential election. Appearing in an interview with Neil Cavuto, he said something close to this:
I’m going to support President Bush for reelection because I believe terrorism is the biggest concern we face. He, the President, has taken the position that we’re going to take the war to the terrorists. We cannot enjoy any of our other freedoms if we live under the cloud of fear that terrorism brings.
While that’s a loose paraphrase, it’s right on the money in ideology. Either we’re under attack or we’re not. Isn’t there some way for us to agree on that fact? If we’re under attack, we’re going to fight on American soil or elsewhere. Surely, that’s obvious.
These facts don’t depend upon whether or not France likes us. They don’t depend upon whether or not Dictator A, B or C has or had a given number of weapons in the arsenal. Make note that Osama Bin Laden didn’t have a single Boeing aircraft in his ”stockpile of weapons.” Yet, that’s what was used to attack us.
More than the economy, more than healthcare, more than jobs, more than the next course of action in Iraq…the war on terrorism and how it will be waged should be our focus. Are we going to fight the war on terrorism or are we going to leave that to the United Nations? As I understand it, the two campaigns come down on different sides of that question.
The Scene: One of the power places for breakfast in the Memphis area. I was waiting for my breakfast meeting guest to arrive. Two women were departing, and as they passed, I heard the following brief exchange…
First Woman: You told me the bridge would increase my concentration in other areas.
Second Woman: Isn’t it amazing?
First Woman: I’m playing the best golf of my life, and the only thing that’s different is the bridge.
What were they discussing?
Both of these women happened to be carrying study guides to the game of Bridge. Warren Buffett has said similar things in past writing or speaking at the annual meeting for Berkshire Hathaway. He and Bill Gates play, rather frequently, and often together. They play online.
This set of entries at the TextDrive support forum allowed me to turn Firefox 0.9.2 into a tool unlike any browser I’ve used thus far.
I don’t yet have it configured to launch my favorite text editor for viewing source or CSS, but that’s a small thing compared to all that the browser with several extensions will do!
I don’t like the time it takes for my site to ”rebuild” after an entry. However, that’s not the worst thing I’ve ever said about Movable Type. The worst thing I ever said about Movable Type and the company behind it, Six Apart, is that they had become too quiet. That, more than any other factor, led to the noise level about their release of MT 3.0.
All of that – except the rebuild times – seems to be changing. Mena Trott has postedseveralentries today that sheds a much greater light on what the company has been doing and how much depth the company is building. They are getting what appears to be excellent advice about early stage funding and organizational structure. I wish other software companies would take notice of the approach.
A semantically correct navbar, without the heartache provides the background and a link to a new tutorial from Westciv. The title says it all. If you’ve ever wanted to add standards-compliant navigation to a web site, this is the tutorial for you.
The only thing that would make this better is a web service that allows you to build your navigation and copy-paste it to your content management system. But, that would be too easy!
Web Standards Solutions is the perfect book for those who are interested in developing standards-compliant web sites, have written a little CSS, have a pretty decent handle on the differences between HTML and XHTML, but have difficulty explaining why one style of markup is semantically, and technically, superior to another…
Web Standards Solutions shines brightest when covering the most mundane—rudimentary, raw markup elements like headers, paragraphs, lists, and so-on. They’re the every-day alphabet soup of HTML, and are abused, misused, or underpowered by countless web designers the world over. They’re not the sexiest topics (which is why there are countless ’Cookbook’ books out there), but they’re the very bedrock of web design, and with Cederholm’s guidance any web designer can tap into their inherent power.
There is a top ten list when it comes to web designers. Paul Scrivens is chief curator, statistician, judge and jury. He’s also on the list! These are the places to go to learn.
If you know anything about trying to drive variation out of a business process or customer experience, you’ll see signs of how Apple accomplishes this using design. You cannot inspect quality into a product, service or experience. It must be designed in from the very beginning.
Understanding income and what to do with it is a factor that separates the haves from the have-nots. Understanding how net worth grows also separates those who prosper from those who constantly scrape by. This holds for individuals and businesses.
Few topics get as much coverage as money. The investing shelves are full of resources at every library and bookstore. The list of truly useful material is much shorter.
In February of this year, Michael J. Mauboussin left Credit Suisse First Boston and joined Legg Mason. One of his first essays since joining them is available as a pdf file. It is truly outstanding. For more articles you might take a look at the Cap@Columbia web site. Dig a bit and you’ll find some outstanding tools for improving your thought process concerning investments.
At Blogged and Dangerous you’ll find a serious concern about the missing ”removable media” at Los Alamos. This one bothers me as well. These incidents now span multiple administrations and both political parties.
It begs the question: do we want a war fought against terrorism on American soil or somewhere else? Does anyone believe that we are not a target? Is there really a debate about which candidate the terrorists would rather have in the White House?
Right now, I simply need to know how to modify my feed templates in Movable Type – Atom and RSS 2.0 – so that two things happen:
Add an author to the feed so that my name shows up in FeedDemon when the RSS feed is read there.
Improve my feed so that anything appearing in the ”extended entry” field of Movable Type will show up in my RSS feed. In other words, I want everything I write to be readable in a news reader.
How? Where do I go? What do I type when I get there?
Walter Olson writes about legal matters in a way that makes sense. I can’t tell you how many times some legal matter gets distorted by a legal twist or maneuver that seems so illogical. Walter exposes those things for what they are.
I’m still contemplating a major switch of all of my technology from Windows XP to Macintosh. If you’ve got thoughts about what the real essentials for a Macintosh might be, let me know. Here’s what I know I’ve got to have:
Chapter Five of Designing the Band came on line last week. If you haven’t been keeping up and you are interested in the design process, this is a great series by D. Keith Robinson.
Sometimes a web design just stops you. Matthew Mullenweg points to Orderedlist.com’s new 2.0 design. Notice the curved navigation bar at the top of the site!
WordPress is not my current content management system. However, there is an awful lot to like about it. I’ve just run across the explanation of customizations and modifications that Shelley Powers made within her own copy of WordPress. As usual, her explanation is well-written and, I believe, useful to anyone who maintains a weblog with any of the popular tools.
Over at the Textpattern support forum I’ve posted a question about the well-equipped Macintosh. I’ve asked about the proper software for replacing some key Windows applications.
I can’t command the audience that Paul Scrivens draws when he does one of his ”non-scientific polls,” but if you’re a Macintosh user and know the ”must-have’s” for a well-equipped Macintosh, I’d appreciate your input!
Avoiding the NYT focus I’ve accused others of, here are a couple of companies that are actually accomplishing what James Fallows spoke of in his NYT piece. Take a look at Main.net and Current Communications Group. Both are overcoming the obstacles to carrying broadband signals over powerlines.
Is Broadband Out of a Wall Socket the Next Big Thing?
I WANT to finish this column before a familiar mood has passed. That is the sense of wonder at seeing that a new form of technology actually works. Based on previous episodes, the mood will soon give way to jadedness. (The first time I used a digital camera, I was amazed that I could see the pictures immediately after I shot them. Within a few days, I had a list of ways the camera should be improved.) So, in this fleeting upbeat moment, here is a word of appreciation for an advance that already has me wondering how I lived without it.
People who continue to form their opinions by starting with the reporting from the New York Times are missing perspective. They simply can’t accept that the New York Times has become ”Katie Couric for those who read.”
Campaigning on an anti-Bush platform might be successful. We’ll know in November. For those interested only in ”winning,” that’s sufficient. For those interested in the American way of life, the values set forth in our founding documents and the debate about whether or not a different policy concerning terrorism is needed, the campaign thus far is proving to be awfully superficial.
Of course, it’s probably time for me to stop reading a weblog (or two) that simply rant and link without logical analysis of facts. The litmus test should probably become, ”Is he a source of understanding or a source of confusion?”
TextDrive is Dean Allen’s new hosting company. Dean is also the mind behind Textpattern, Textism and Textile. Tonight, I was catching up on some back entries at the TextDrive and Textpattern support forums.
Curt Rosengren continues to provide great resources for those seeking passion, vigor and enthusiasm in an existing or future career. If your newsreader doesn’t include his writing, you should make it a part of your regular reading.
Individuals believe different things. We define liberal and conservative differently. We define Republican and Democrat differently. Often, we define these terms in light of specific individuals. Define a liberal using Franklin or Eleanor Roosevelt as your model and you’ll get a rather different looking critter from the one you get using Whoopie Goldberg or Alec Baldwin as your model!
Here’s a very small portion of how one conservative attempted to explain the issues to an impressionable, teachable 24 year old who is seeking her way.
”Take the universe of the American people. We all want, for the most part, I mean there are some exceptions to this, we all want the same things in life. We want freedom; we want the chance for prosperity; we want to be the best we can be; we want as few people suffering as possible, economically; we want to have healthy children; we want to have crime-free streets; all these things, they’re pretty common. Doesn’t matter what race you are, doesn’t matter what gender you are, doesn’t matter what sexual orientation you are, these are the things we want. The argument is how to achieve them.
Now, the American left, or liberals believe, that the individual, on balance, is not capable of providing all of those things him or herself, because American left believes that most people are not equipped to make the best judgments for themselves, they’re not equipped to access the economy and do the best for themselves economically.
The American Conservative, the right, believes that freedom is the essence of life in America and that freedom allows everybody to seek whatever it is they want and need on their own terms, and that they are far better equipped to get what they want and need than a central government distributing things to people based on what that government thinks people should want and should need.”
Rush Limbaugh
Responding to a caller’s question/dilemma July 9, 2004
There are some changes under way that stand to be fundamental to our lives during the coming two or three decades:
Regulated telecom will fail in the face of VoIP.
Bar codes will yield to RFID.
Energy choices will become a matter of daily budgeting in our daily lives.
Heathcare reform will become far more than a policy debate for every citizen.
Insufficient savings and retirement resources will reach crisis proportions for millions of Americans.
Personal and technical security will be a mounting issue for families and businesses.
The fundamental choices about how we achieve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness will drive a new awareness of the importance of our right, responsibility and obligation to vote. We will once again address the notion of whether it is the government or individuals who are better suited to make the decisions.
Note: these things aren’t negative. They are simply changes. How we deal with them will determine whether they become positives or negatives for us.
Early in my working life a couple of things became clear to me. As a matter of day-to-day practice, I was more inclined toward longer term, incremental approaches to improvements than in go-for-broke revolution. I was more inclined toward the power of compound interest than the power of swing-for-the-fences risks. Through boom and bust, Ben Graham’s value investing philosophy, as revised and extended by Warren Buffett (see pdf file), has served me far better than the momentum investing philosophies of the late 1990’s.
Whether management style or investing style, longer term approaches simply suit me better. With those things in mind, I have a suggestion for anyone who is considering the alternatives for long-term financial needs. Take a look at the Longleaf Partners Funds as managed by Mason Hawkins and the outstanding team at Southeastern Asset Management, Inc. [Disclaimer: I have money invested in these funds, but I have no equity ownership in Southeastern.]
Clinton’s book about Clinton apparently is selling well. Drugs sell well. Divorce lawyers have little trouble selling their services. Things that sell well aren’t always good things.
In the noise level again rising around Clinton and his book, pundits are going out of the way to recast the legacy Clinton left us. If you need to separate signal from noise or to recalibrate your right-from-wrong sensors, take a look at Ken Starr’s factual and brief discussion of what really happened while Clinton was lying to a Federal Grand Jury. It ran in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal and you may need a subscription to read all of it.
Here’s an excerpt:
Mr. Clinton glosses over this enduring lesson about the role of the independent counsel, as well as sliding by many of the investigation’s undisputed findings. His epic-length reflections sweep aside not only the flinty facts, but the vital importance of history and tradition in our constitutional architecture. That impoverishment in the presentation reinforces the unfortunate sense that only personalities and (alleged) motivations count in modern public life, when in truth, it is the integrity of ideas and principles that have lasting consequences.
In addition to all the flawed notions about how we’ll determine who to vote for, there’s a crowd on the Internet that believes the crowd on the Internet is going to be the group that decides who gets elected. They are not.
The vast majority of citizens in America do not currently get the majority of their news or the information that influences their opinions from the Internet. Dream on if you believe otherwise. Katie Couric, unfortunately, will influence more people than any ten weblogs.
Shouldn’t we clearly understand what the issues are in any two-party race? Shouldn’t we have some clear position statement about every issue from each candidate? Finally, shouldn’t the planned course of action for each issue during the first month, year and two years be spelled out?
It makes no sense for one party to run a campaign by simply opposing each position of the competitor. ”I don’t agree,” is just not good enough. A candidate should spell out what he stands for, why and what he plans to do. Otherwise, he doesn’t get my attention – much less the possibility of my vote.
Earn a million, file no return?
The state wants to talk to you
By Mark Schwanhausser
Maybe it slipped their minds. Maybe they were busy counting their money. Or maybe the dog ate it.
Whatever the reason, 65 Santa Clara County residents who hauled in at least $1 million in income still haven’t filed their 2002 tax returns. Ditto for many more local professionals who really ought to know better: 59 certified public accountants and 221 lawyers.
State tax officials said Thursday they are mailing notices to about 700,000 scofflaws—or nearly one of every 20 taxpayers—statewide. All told, they owe $450 million that could help plug the state’s $6.5 billion budget gap.
The county is home to about 8 percent of the 865 Californians who earned at least $1 million in 2002 and didn’t file a tax return. That’s double the county’s share of tax-slacker CPAs, lawyers, contractors and medical professionals.
While it should come as no surprise, the vigor with which the talking heads are trying to compare John Edwards and Dick Cheney is nearing hilarity. There are people sitting in front of cameras with straight faces who are trying to compare the two records of public service to the United States.
Nevermind any other factor. They are simply trying to have a serious debate over which man has done more for the USA. There is no limit to what the media will do to get a group of people yelling at each other on TV – all at the same time.
Whatever they believe, you might want to take a glance at James Lileks’s site today. You’ll find some quotes worth keeping!
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve avoided launching IE6 at all. I’ve forced myself to work with Firefox, then I configured (tried to configure) Opera. Here are my findings:
I like both browsers a lot. Either would suit my needs as replacements for IE6.
Firefox locks my system up an average of once a day. It’s guaranteed to do it more than that if pdf files are opened. Firefox also opens any link in an email twice. It also opens new windows for email links rather than new tabs.
Opera cannot display the IE ”links” toolbar. They call it a ”personal” toolbar, and no amount of trial-and-error with the customization of that toolbar gets me more than three Opera-related links on it. This is a big drawback. I start my day by clicking from left to right on the string of favorites I have set up on my ”links” toolbar. It works fine in Firefox and IE.
Opera also cannot display the formatting buttons on the Movable Type text entry screen. I found a fix for Firefox that even allowed me to change the tags from B to strong and i to em. I haven’t found such a fix for Opera.
In fairness, Opera feels like the more finished package. Firefox really reminds me of the old Netscape browsers that seemed to have a feature, but you couldn’t get it to work.
I use technology a lot. It has to work reliably. While I get a small amount of enjoyment out of toying with it, I do not like to spend hours trying to make something work only to have an intermittent or flakey result. Both of these products have important areas where they fall into this category.
While I believe SP2 is going to make IE a bigger target for a while, there is at least some hope that SP2 might bring some security to the browser and add some much needed features.
Just a note for passers-by. Browser choices are not religious events for me. I don’t care which browser I use so long as 1) it worx reliably 2) enough other people use it to have a support foundation 3) it can be configured using set-and-forget work habits.
For the first time today, I had the need for a concise list of postal or email addresses. I wanted to send a simple, business-oriented press release to sixteen media outlets in Memphis, TN.
Do you have any idea how time-consuming and difficult it is to identify the right sixteen contacts? I’ve got a couple of hours in the task already, and it is nowhere near complete. Sixteen names and addresses for people who might want to receive a press release about a business matter are hard to find.
Google or not, we’ve got a ways to go. One piece of good news in all this. I stumbled into another Memphis web site with an RSS feed. Feed subscribed!
[Note: This is not a cry for a solicitation from every advertising and public relations agency in Memphis. It’s sixteen pieces of mail for crying out loud.]
Warren Buffett has written an outstanding piece for the Washington Post today. [free subscription may be required] James Glassman has critiqued it. You be the judge. My mind is made up.
I wish I could point to James Lileks’s entry for today with sympathy. I cannot. The reason has nothing to do with ”esoteric toys.” It has nothing to do with privilege. The reason I can not muster sympathy is that he simply recounts the story that every one of us faces countless times each year.
Change the sewn-on name tags on the shirts. Change the logos painted on the service vans. Change from esoteric toys to pest control, plumbing or roof repair, and you’ll get identically the same story. America is dreadfully unprepared to do business.
The only difference in James Lileks’s case is he writes so well about the fiascos.
On this day when we have two complete tickets to the Presidential sprint to November, it seems worthwhile to bring back the Political Allegiance Quiz. It’s a year old, but you might discover something about your beliefs. You might also determine whether you feel or assess.
There is a secret set within each of our hearts. It often goes unnoticed, we rarely can put words to it, and yet it guides us throughout the days of our lives. This secret remains hidden for the most part in our deepest selves. It is the desire for life as it was meant to be. Isn’t there a life you have been searching for all your days? You may not always be ware of your search, and there are times when you seem to have abandoned looking altogether. But again and again it returns to us, this yearning that cries out for the life we prize. It is elusive, to be sure. It seems to come and go at will. Seasons may pass until it surfaces again. And though it seems to taunt us, and may at times cause us great pain, we know when it returns that it is priceless. For if we could recover this desire, unearth it from beneath all other distractions, and embrace it as our deepest treasure, we would discover the secret of our existence.
What if your current product sold for $0.039 per unit? What if you learned that a competitor was offering something superior to your product for $0.012 per unit?
That’s the essence of the situation reported by BuzzMachine in mentioning Skype.
World Magazine Blog reports that the President has ordered flags raised from half-staff two days earlier than might be customary after the death of a former President.
Quite an illustrious group of web designers discuss the notion of colors for visited and unvisited links at CollyLogic. Who knew there could be so many possibilities and so many opinions?
One of the reasons I don’t experiment more with web design is the concern I have for appearing to steal techniques or features from others. While learning CSS and XHTML, I find myself drawn to a variety of techniques. I’m never quite certain what should be considered a technique available to everyone and what should be considered a design that is proprietary to a specific designer.
Andy Budd points us to Pirated Sites. I had no idea that the stealing could be so blatant.
Given any choice at all I prefer to prevent problems rather than fix them. That goes for just about any area of life – technology in particular. The past month’s security issues with IE and things from Microsoft found me giving alternative browsers a try. Opera and Mozilla/Firefox are the tools I’ve been looking at. I use a laptop computer (all the time), and the speed-scroll section of the touchpad doesn’t work with these other browsers. That’s a relatively small habit to change given the reduced security risks.
I’ve noticed that some shortcut buttons at the top of my MT text entry screen are missing in Firefox. I have to type out the full syntax of an a href tag.
Meryl is facing similar changes for the same reasons. She has posted three entries that may be of use to others: | 1 | 2 | 3 |
* * UPDATE * * * No sooner had this entry been out there a few minutes, than I had a suggestion or two from Meryl regarding those missing icons on the text entry screen. One ”hack” she suggested is at kurcula.com. The other is at FCKeditor. A quick glance makes me believe that this latter option simply replaces your text entry box with a full-featured text entry box.
It raises the following questions:
Does FCKeditor include spell checking? I was told to use IESpell, but I’ve never added it. How does this compare to enabling your text entry box with Textile?
Are these tools going to conflict with one another?
Will the B and <em>i</em> icons ever plug in tags that validate in XHTML? I believe we’re supposed to use strong and em, but I’m not sure whether those are the only tags that will provide valid bold and italicized text.
Overall this is great stuff. It simply seems that a couple of answered questions open up entirely new veins to be mined.
* * UPDATE 2 * * * After a second comment from Meryl, I got my courage up and edited my edit_entry template. Sure enough, it worked. I’ve got the buttons showing in Firefox, and I’ve also been able to edit the tags so that the icons insert strong and em tags!
The dilemma with junk like this is whether to stick with a tool that has Jay Allen fighting the good fight, or are you better off moving to a different CMS tool that is considered a less ”target-rich-environment.”
I’ve just subscribed to an RSS feed that results from a tool produced by Ben Hammersley. By using this tool, you get an RSS feed of all the validation errors in whatever site/URL you choose. Many of the validation errors are just as cryptic as they would be when reported by the validator. The fact is they are coming from the same place. However, this might be an easy way to get a site to validate and then prevent errors from creeping in on a post-by-post basis.
Between now and November a whole lot will be said and written that brings on more saying and writing. For an excellent compendium of recent political events, the AlphaPatriot has served us all incredibly well. Take a look!
The Memphis Manifesto continues to list all the places that are to be preferred over Memphis for one reason or another. Most of the time this is measured based upon the number of creative people or businesses that exist in a given metro area. Here’s a copy of the Manifesto.
I’m sure I’m not enlightened enough to understand all of this, but it seems that when your mayor is under investigation by the FBI, your city may have bigger problems than its artistic headcount.
One of the biggest challenges I have faced trying to do business in Memphis is its apparent lack of sophistication. I don’t mean the kind of snobbery that masquerades as sophistication. I’m talking about tools, techniques and approaches that involve something more than good ’ol boy methods. Were I attempting to illustrate this with an example, I’d compare the old shop-keeper who simply reorders what he sells each day as a means of inventory control. Contrast this with automated techniques for running linear algebra problems that can lead to truly optimized inventory and profit management results.
Memphis businesses lean on the older methods in many, many cases. To the extent that ”creative people” can bring with them the sophistication, I’m all for the effort to build that talent base. Remember, this absence of sophistication is why I travel.
Here’s one more example. Ephraim Schwartz has written An Automated Audit for Infoworld’s June 28, 2004 issue. The contents of that article are probably important to no more than one hundred individuals in Memphis. Of that group, we’ll find they are concentrated at one or two big banks, a hospital and FedEx.
In the feeding frenzy that is the national media I’ve heard today’s legal proceedings in Iraq called many things. I’ve heard tribunal, preliminary hearing, arraignment, trial, court hearing, judicial hearing, a court appearance, an appearance before an Iraqi judge and Saddam’s day in court.
One network spent an unusual amount of time speculating about why Hussein was allowed to dye his hair before appearing in court.
With a new constitution and government that is only days old, the questions will swirl endlessly around every piece of legal maneuvering that lawyers would be doing were these events happening in the USA.
An additional key point, which is a quote by Jarvis of a Dick Morris opinion:
”The man who had won his party’s nomination by stepping aside and letting Dean destroy himself, now sought to repeat the act as President Bush wrestled with al Qaeda and the Baathists in Iraq and with Richard Clarke closer to home….”
As I write this, I’m watching and listening to CNN try to cover the court proceeding involving Hussein this morning. CNN is spinning furiously – in favor of Hussein and against the USA. Every point of law is getting questioned. Cameras with microphones weren’t allowed. Yes, they were. It’s as if the network truly wants the USA or the DOD to look bad.
Clearly, this is going to be yet another (new) issue for President Bush to deal with. With the media on Saddam’s side, we’re faced with the following consequences:
The Iraqi people are likely to be worried yet again that the tyrant might return to power.
The legal wrangling opens the possibility that some court, somewhere might exonerate Hussein.
Contrary to beliefs that the Iraqi people would treat him harshly, Hussein is making an appearance and is posturing as the incumbent leader of Iraq.
This might be the most difficult issue for President Bush to deal with as a candidate. Kerry can stand by and watch this unfold without spending a single dollar.
While I’m not forecasting it, this looks frighteningly like the political meltdown of George Herbert Walker Bush. Few predicted he could be defeated immediately after the Gulf War. Now we’ve got a former dictator – appearing without blood on his hands – getting the ”benefit of the doubt” from CNN. All of their questions are now on the table:
Which court has jurisdiction?
Was the ”invasion” of Iraq by the coalition legal or illegal?
What is the real public opinion of all this in Iraq?
Can defiance by the accused coupled with the media’s support unhinge the legal process?
Should this have been done in an international court?
Will an Iraqi judge really hold his own against Hussein?
Will the American populace see through all of the media spin? We already know the answer to this one. With a collective attention span equal to the length of a sound bite, we’re witnessing the media’s attempt to tie today’s court proceedings to the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice. We are not likely to be able to say and do enough to show that this truly is an Iraqi prosecution.
Because our company does e-commerce projects, we frequently get involved in advising and assisting clients with their bandwidth needs. If you get into the bandwidth needs for a small business, you often wind up in the local, long distance, hosting and ISP decisions to complete the picture. There was a period of time when it made sense to represent some of the telecom companies as an agent/dealer just to grease the skids of the telecom provisioning, billing and procurement mazes.
Once we were in that loop, the phone calls began…
”Wednesday is the end of the month, do you have any deals that will close?” Once a quarter the call would be, ”I need a list of the ten prospects you’re going to close next quarter.” Both of these requests come with a breathlessness and a panic that says, ”there is no greater priority on the Earth than that you comply with what we are requesting from you.”
Not once has an employee of a telecom acknowledged that a dealer is not an employee. Resellers of their services are not viewed as customers. Resellers are viewed one level below the rookie sales rep that was hired yesterday. Resellers are to be told – not asked. Guess what, Big Teleco – some of us went into business for ourselves years ago just to prevent the kind of treatment you’re dishing out.
Through Worldcom and Enron scandals, most telecoms have done nothing to alter the way they do business. As a group they continue to hire and train the most offensive, aggressive, deceptive sales forces we’ve ever been associated with. They have no regard for existing customers, preferring instead the ”new subscriber.” Let a three year agreement near expiration and they don’t care. They certainly won’t pay their dealer or agent to renew the agreement. Rather, they hope the customer stays with them, but they also have no intention of paying any further commissions after the initial agreement.
Now comes word from the Wall Street Journal [subscription may be required] that the SEC has sent an inquiry to 20 telecoms. They are asking for specific definitions of what a customer is, what a subscriber is, how far past due the accounts receivable can get before the telecom stops calling them a subscriber, etc. The SEC wants to know what processes are used in counting ”access lines.” When a customer moves on to another telecom, does the former telecom stop counting the access line(s) that run to that customer? How are ”cut-offs” counted? When do they occur?
Answers are due on July 19, 2004. This might get interesting.
Oh, and no, I won’t help you make your month by Wednesday!
If you haven’t read a good article about the security of wireless networks lately, this one is worthwhile. Wireless security continues to be a weakness. Wardriving remains easy to do.
Unfortunately, the security problems go far beyond wireless. In spite of years of discussion of products like Zone Alarm, there are plenty of networks connected to DSL lines and cable modems that don’t include enough security and continuity protection. From segments in large corporate networks to small businesses to home office and small office users, networks are exposed. Here are some typical risks:
backups aren’t done or are done in a haphazard manner
browser popups continue to infiltrate computers
virus definition files are not updated daily
Operating system patches and updates are ignored or postponed
Knowledge about how to configure security software,routers and firewalls is weak
Admin logins and passwords remain unchanged from the out-of-the-box condition
Republican blue jays and their education entitlement
By Craig J. Cantoni
June 30, 2004
It is said that Social Security and Medicare are the third-rail of politics. If you dare mess with the entitlements, AARP will electrocute you on the third rail and then tell grandma and grandpa to drive the train back and forth over your body for fun.
But there is another entitlement that is even more entrenched than Social Security and Medicare. If you have the temerity to even suggest that it is an entitlement, its beneficiaries will torture you before throwing you on the third rail.
What entitlement am I referring to? Public education.
And who are the people most likely to become hysterical when their government-granted ”right” is questioned? Republican women. I know, because I have been on the receiving end of their temper tantrums.
For example, in a recent Arizona Republic column, I said that local parents in a predominately Republican, upper-income part of town were like greedy pigs at the public teat for squealing about the local school district denying their request to build an unnecessary high school in their housing development at a cost of tens of millions of dollars.
Given my history of being a leader in equal rights for women and being married to a professional woman who is a rational thinker, I don’t like to say this, but the sorry fact is that women responded to my article with emotional outbursts, while men responded with reasoned arguments. Sadly, this has been the case whenever I’ve written about public education.
For example, one mom sent a nastygram and said, ”My children deserve a high school in their neighborhood, and I think you’re a jerk for trying to stop it.” Another said, ”We are not loaded and want our child to attend public school, not as a privilege but as a right.” She went on to say that she ”won’t walk away from making sure that all of our kids have a right to a free and appropriate education!!!”
Neither women offered a logical argument for spending taxpayer money on an unnecessary high school. They simply squawked as mindlessly as mother blue jays looking for more bugs for baby blue jay.
Dads, on the other hand, were open to having an intelligent debate about the facts of the matter, about whether public education is still providing a public good and about different funding mechanisms. One wrote, ”Vouchers would allow rich and poor students to attend the school of their choice instead of being told by the school board what school they can attend.”
If he knows what’s good for him, the dad won’t say that in front of mother blue jay. Squawk! Peck, peck!
In previous articles, I have raised a fairness issue of parochial parents having to pay double for education, once in public school taxes and once in private tuition, in order to exercise their right of religious freedom. I suggested that a fairer system would be for them to receive a tax credit equal to what they pay in public school taxes for each of the 12 years that their children are in private school. Since the average household in my home state of Arizona pays approximately $190,000 in public ed taxes over the adult lives of the heads of the household, the credit would be about $45,000, thus leaving a balance of $145,000 for public schools.
Squawk, squawk, squawk. For suggesting that private school parents keep $45,000 of their own money while letting public school parents take $145,000 of it, I was attacked by flocks of screeching blue jays, as if I were a cat trying to get into their nest and eat their offspring for lunch. One squawked, ”You’re mean-spirited and selfish!” Another peeped sorrowfully about her lot in life: ”You don’t care that I have bills to pay and have to drive a minivan instead of a nice SUV.” Still another made a birdbrained remark that no one forces parochial school parents to send their kids to private school, apparently not realizing that they are forced to pay public school taxes, although their kids don’t attend public school.
Over the years, I have learned how to stop the mommy blue jays from pecking at me. I say, ”Okay, your arguments are so compelling and intelligent, that I’ll drop the tax credit idea if you send a thank-you card to me or another private school parent for giving you tens of thousands of dollars.” It’s like asking Medicare recipients to please send a thank-you card to my son or other another kid for picking up the multi-trillion-dollar tab for their medicine and medical care that will be imposed on future generations by our benevolent and munificent government.
I never hear from the blue jays again. My request doesn’t change their entitlement mentality, but at least it stops their mindless squawking.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
If you don’t have Matthew Mullenweg’s site bookmarked or firmly implanted in your RSS feed reader, change that immediately. His site is a great daily read for anyone interested in web design, the future of the Internet and the concepts behind personal publishing.
”We’ve got a great thread over at Engadget right now where everyone is talking about what their next cellphone/smartphone/PDA phone purchase is gonna be.”
”Many of you are well enough off that … the tax cuts may have helped you,” Sen. Clinton said. ”We’re saying that for America to get back on track, we’re probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”
Having broken the cover on the Treo 300, the morning was spent searching for the right course of action. It turns out that I can get it repaired. This will buy me the time I need before the Treo 610/660 ships.
When I posted my dilemma last night, I had no idea I’d find an entry about the Treo 610 in yesterday’s posts at Engadget. Today there is an entry about a new device from Motorola called the MPx. At Gizmodo, I only had to go back as far as last Friday to find something on the Treo Ace (610/660?).
Bottom line: I’m hedging my time until the new device is available. I came close to buying a Treo 600 this morning, but backed off when there was a hint that my 300 could be repaired. Buying a little time, I’ll be able to make a late summer or fall decision about one of the next generation of all-in-one PDA/phones. A happy camper at this point! To those who sent emails and comments, many, many thanks!
The cover of my Treo 300 broke off tonight. I’ve been lucky. In two years of heavy use, I had avoided this common problem. It’s particularly frustrating because there is apparently no repair procedure for it – warranty or otherwise.
In today’s technology life cycle, it’s unlikely an economical repair service could be offered. Now, the question facing me tomorrow:
Do I buy another Treo 300 since they appear to be really inexpensive now?
Glenn Reynolds has provided a link to an excellent essay about polling – scientific and otherwise. Beyond merely gathering data and reporting it, the science of polling involves not only sampling data from the right places, but also weighting that data during the analysis. Weight it one way and the sample appears to provide support for a given conclusion. Another way provides totally different support.
Don’t be misled by what your favorite polling or media service is saying! If the odds paid off every time, there’d be no dark horses.
I might be mistaken, but this article makes me believe that the Iraqi Information Minister is still talking. The funny side of all of this is that reporters are continuing to listen to those of his bent. Who looks silly now?
”Routine testing of notebook computers” dating back to March of 2002, has uncovered a design flaw in some HP computers. HP is ”moving swiftly” to solve the problems. My last experience with HP gave a new definition to the word ”swift.”
Jason Kottke has redesigned his site. It really is elegant in its simplicity. Yet, there are so many features that I don’t know where to start. From the blogroll, to the archives, to the remaindered links and on and on, it’s great.
Word comes that Tim LaHaye, author of the Left Behind series, and Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, have decided to collaborate on a book. It will be about Calvinist theology. Title?
Notebooks have long been the tool for original thoughts and building on knowledge. The Moleskine notebooks come with a history of their use included with each copy.
You can now subscribe to an RSS feed that will provide Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook a page at a time. There are 1,565 pages, but you’ll enjoy the way they are written and organized.
Mark Bernstein provides some thoughts about discovering and explaining important ideas. The blogosphere may have slipped quietly from this lofty goal. Mark points to ”Ten Tips.” He adds a few thoughts to that list. Civility is one thing that’s been lacking. I discovered as much yesterday!
Since the fate of the country does NOT hinge on my ability to debate any of you, I’m not going to. I’ve stated that I consider myself a ”classical liberal.” You can learn what a classical liberal believes by visiting the links. The fate of the country does depend upon the ideas that the majority of its citizens hold.
Some pick people they don’t like and declare themselves for the other side. Some find people who support a given position or cause and align with them. Others have a vision for what this country was intended to be. They weigh most issues in light of whether the issue carries us closer to or further from the vision.
Still others align with those who wrote our founding documents (e.g. the Federalist Papers, The Constitution, The Declaration of Independence, etc.). Using the positions of the Founders and the founding documents, they form positions about each and every issue.
Then, there are those who vote with their pocket books. Each issue either helps them or hurts them in the bank account. They vote or hold positions accordingly. Some people base everything on emotion. How does an issue or the people speaking about it make them feel? Once they know and understand their emotions they take a stand. Take a test if you need to!
While I believe sincerely that we divide ourselves into groups or categories, it’s wrong for me to go public with how I have people and positions classifed in my news aggregator. Fortunately, many who have written me are not even in my list of regular reads. Others are people I read routinely, but they weren’t classified.
Anyhow, I’m going to continue to write about my beliefs and positions on matters given my worldview. I will refrain from impuning others in groups. You take a position, you can defend it. You shouldn’t have to defend others holding a similar position. I stand by my belief that those who agree with the positions Michael Moore espouses in his latest movie are of the liberal ilk. Perhaps not, but I haven’t spoken to anyone who has said, ”I agree with what Michael Moore said, but I’m a conservative.”
Keep going to Michael Moore’s movie and praising it in your weblogs. You will instantly be moved from the channel group which originally fit my interest in your site to the one called ”Flaming Liberals.” Friday night movie goers have created a lot of moves this morning.
There is still plenty of time to get yourself added to the ”Flaming Liberals” channel group in my copy of FeedDemon. Unfortunately, I’m having to move a fair number of web designers into that bunch. It seems that some of the sites I’ve been reading to learn web design often dip into the political realm. I do, too.
Yet, if they are whiney, they get moved. If they lack decent judgment and logic, they get moved. If they say treasonous things, they get moved. If they support Michael Moore, they get moved (fast). If they extrapolate and assume to ridiculous extremes, they get moved.
For those among the flaming liberals who are also outstanding web designers, you have my respect for your talent and knowledge. It’s the direction you’d like to see this country go that bothers me. Please understand, you don’t get deleted. Your site still gets read, particularly if you write about something interesting other than politics.
Apparently, our VP let off some steam on the floor of the Senate after the session ended. It seems the steam was directed at none other than Senator Patrick (we’ll call him Leaky) Leahy.
Gary Petersen may (I’m not yet sure) have set off the final collapse of my efforts to learn and use Textpattern this morning. His narrative on Product Blogging actually covers a lot of additional ground.
First, about Textpattern. I’ve really been struggling to understand the relationship between tags, templates, XHTML and CSS with all of the weblogging tools. I understand XHTML tags. I understand a portion of what can be done to style those tags with CSS. I still don’t understand the placement of a weblogging tag in and around an XHTML tag within a template and styled by CSS. Furthermore, Textpattern is a product that is far behind Movable Type and WordPress. If those products represent a teenager and an adolescent respectively, Textpattern is in the second trimester of pregnancy!
Help for Textpattern comes from a discussion forum. There isn’t any documentation. Dealing with the product assumes you’ve already learned and dealt with the relationships between tags and templates and such. Installing and setting up a test weblog is fairly easy, but learning how to style that weblog or to transfer an existing weblog from another tool is unbelievably challenging.
This morning finds me reconsidering WordPress and Movable Type. I realize that I’ve learned a lot more about Movable Type than any other tool. I also like the communities that have grown up around MT and WP.
Gary’s entry makes it obvious that WordPress was easy to set up and easy to start. He also mentions a product called ActiveWords.
Finally, Gary’s entry brings to mind some new ideas for making weblog technology work for a business and its products. We’re going to start applying that advice right away.
For those looking for GMAIL accounts, I’ve got a couple of unused invitations. Dane Carlson sent me an invitation. I signed up. I share the notions you’ll read at *Asterisk.
Shooting liberals and loons
By Craig J. Cantoni
June 24, 2004
I recently shot a liberal who had been haranguing me for the last two years over my weekly opinion column in the Arizona Republic. I’ll never hear from him again. If you want to know how to shoot liberals and other loons without getting arrested, read on.
I’ll start with how I shot the haranguer.
I shot him with a rhetorical bullet by asking him the following: ”Since you dislike my libertarian views, could you please describe your political philosophy? To make it easy for you, pick a point on a 10-point scale, in which ’0’ represents totalitarianism, ’5’ represents contemporary liberalism, ’6’ represents neoconservatism and ’10’ represents the full array of liberty, including civil liberties, economic freedom, property rights, and the rights of self-defense and free association.”
The haranguer wrote back and said that he was too busy to answer my question. Yeah, right. He is not too busy to send me long, haranguing e-mails, but he’s too busy to pick a point on a 10-point scale. In reality, the question flummoxed him, because like most people, he had spent his adult life thinking in terms of the traditional left-right scale, or liberal-conservative scale, and not a liberty scale. Like a shot in the forehead, the question undoubtedly made him realize that his political philosophy was not about complete freedom, and he was not about to admit it.
Here are six other bullets that I have found effective in shooting liberals and loons:
Bullet One:
When a liberal or loon says that taxes should be increased in general or for some utopian purpose, shoot back with this loaded question: ”Given that government spending has increased 300% in inflation-adjusted dollars over the last 100 years, given that the cost of government is $24,000 per household, given that a clerk earning $64 a day at a convenience store has almost $10 taken for the Social Security and Medicare of well-off retirees, and given that I pay more than 40% of my income in taxes, what do you think is a fair percentage of income for people to pay in taxes?”
I have asked at least 50 liberals and loons this question. None has ever answered the question with a specific percentage. Most answer with platitudes and generalities about fairness and justice. A few have actually said that no one should pay more than 25% of income in taxes.
Bullet Two:
When a liberal or loon says that schools are underfunded and need more money, fire the following question: ”How much do you pay per year and over a lifetime in school taxes?” If the person doesn’t know (and few people do), fire a follow-up question: ”Then how do you know that schools deserve more of your money and whether you are getting your money’s worth?”
Bullet Three:
When a liberal or loon says that health care should be provided by the government, squeeze off this round: ”Do you also believe that everyone should get free food, shelter, clothing and transportation from the government, and wasn’t that tried by the Soviet Union?”
Bullet Four:
When a liberal or loon says that health care is right, pop ’em with this: ”Aren’t you really saying that people have a right to take other people’s money for their health care? If so, where is that right written?” If he responds with claptrap about the profit motive not working in health care, ask him the following: ”Are you aware that the government critically wounded a consumer market in health care 60 years ago, when misguided policies resulted in employees getting their medical insurance from their employers instead of buying it on their own, and that the government delivered the coup de grace with Medicare in 1965? Why do you blame the market when there is no consumer market in medical insurance?”
Bullet Five:
When a liberal or loon says that higher gas prices are due to price-fixing by Big Oil, blast back with this bullet: ”Then why does Big Oil allow prices to fall?”
Bullet Six:
When the first five bullets mortally wound a liberal or loon, and in his dying breath he calls you mean-spirited and selfish, finish him off as follows: ”Gee, if you care so much about other people, why don’t you give them your money instead of mine?”
Lock and load. Happy shooting—rhetorically speaking.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
Tech Republic is a site I visit from time to time. Today I got an email from them that carried this headline, ”Should an AS/400 refugee go MCAD or MCSE?” I have no idea why I clicked on the link. Having done so, I realized that I was in a discussion forum concerning a guy’s search for a new career path.
What was interesting was how other techies were advising a techie. Clearly, there were all forms of geekdom represented in the tips this guy received. There were also pieces of advice about opening a retail store, becoming a carpenter or seeking the rewards of mortgage brokerage.
In its own way this thread of discussion provides clear insight into why the I.T. function is in such desperate need of leadership at most companies. Some incredibly bright people simply must be channeled to those projects and tasks that are of highest value and highest return to the organization.
The proper style and methods for interviews have been lost in the hiring of ”pretty faces” and ”radio voices” in today’s 24×7 cable news people. One of the worst – and there are so many – is Jon Scott. Couple poor technique and bad manners with ”ninety seconds to tell two decades of history” and we’ll just talk over each other until…I’m sorry, we’ve got to pause for this commercial break.
Conjunctions are the worst enemies of today’s television interviewer. An interviewee who uses these words sends fear and trembling through the pretty faces who spend more time getting wardrobe and makeup correct than conducting serious interviews. ”I’ll give you a little of my airtime, but never lose sight of the fact that this news broadcast is about me and my airtime!
Oh, and everything isn’t ”breaking news.” They think all of us are dolts.
Mr. Charles Munger is Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and is called Warren Buffett’s partner. He has often mentioned Costco as one of the companies that does things the way a shareholder would expect them to be done. Rebecca Blood has linked to an article about Costco, its CEO and the way employees are treated. This one is worth your time.
K-12 Group-think
By Craig J. Cantoni
June 22, 2004
Does group-think result from the government, unionized teachers and a few textbook publishers having a near-monopoly over K-12 classroom thought? And if so, is this a good thing in a free society?
Judging from reader responses to my articles in the mainstream media over the years, the answer to the first question is yes, at least in terms of group-think about public education, government and economics. The answer to the second question is no, as group-think certainly is not good in a free society, especially group-think about the subjects of public education, government and economics.
Millions of readers have read my articles over the years, and hundreds have responded with letters and e-mails. Whether they are Democrats or Republicans, college-educated or not, the vast majority of them think alike about public education, government and economics. For example:
– Most believe that public schools are underfunded, in spite of a doubling of per-pupil spending in real terms over the last 40 years, and in spite of overwhelming evidence that increased spending has not translated into improved academic results. One soccer mom, in a disagreement with me about education spending, forwarded a newspaper article to prove her point that Arizona and Utah rank at the bottom in education spending. But a sidebar to the article clearly showed that the two states rank near the middle when education spending is calculated as a percentage of personal income, which is the most accurate way of comparing spending between states. She didn’t see the facts staring her in the face, because she had been brainwashed for years by the education establishment to believe the canard about the states ranking at the bottom.
– Most want an increase in public ed spending, although they have no idea what they pay in public ed taxes over their adult lives. They have no idea because the education establishment does not want them to know the number. Of course, it is impossible to know whether you are getting good value for your money if you don’t know how much you are paying.
– Most believe that public school teachers are underpaid, although the facts show that when teacher pay and benefits are calculated on an hourly basis, they are paid more than many professions that require a more rigorous degree. Naturally, unionized teachers are not about to cite such facts.
– Most do not know that government spending has increased in real terms by 300 percent over the last century, that transfer payments have increased 20-fold from 2 percent of government spending 100 years ago to 40 percent today, that the cost of government is $24,000 per household, that the cost of regulations is $8,000 per household, that there are about 10 million more wealth-consuming government employees than wealth-producing manufacturing employees, or that future generations will be left with Social Security and Medicare deficits of over $40 trillion. These are not the kind of facts that government schools and unionized teachers are going to stress.
– Most are illiterate in economics, because economics is not taught in government schools. Thus, most fall for claptrap spread by such socialist politicians as Ted Kennedy, who claims that nationalized health care will make health care affordable. Of course, costs don’t decrease because something is socialized. The costs simply become hidden and are transferred from one person to the next in a gigantic government-run shell game, with politicians receiving campaign payoffs to referee the game.
– Most don’t know that health insurance is unaffordable for millions of Americans because the government killed a consumer market in health insurance 60 years ago. Government schools, which are used by the government to enroll people in various socialized health care programs, are not about to teach this fact.
– When I question why it is fair for private school parents to subsidize well-off public school parents through public education taxes, most readers respond with the same platitudes about public education being for the benefit of the poor. It would be a valid point if not for the fact that the vast majority of public ed parents are not poor and can afford to educate their kids without taking other people’s money, just as they can afford to feed, shelter and clothe their kids without taking other people’s money. If they really wanted to help the poor, parents of public-schoolers would pay the cost of their kid’s education out of their own pockets in direct tuition, so that public school taxes would only go to the poor. Again, this is not a perspective that unionized teachers and government schools would bring to the classroom.
– Most readers say that I’m mean-spirited and selfish when I write that private school parents and homeschoolers should get a tax credit equal to what they pay in public school taxes for the 12 years that their kids attend private school or are homeschooled. They even say this when presented with the fact that my wife and I will pay $190,000 in public school taxes over our adult lives, although we get no direct benefit in return, because our son attends parochial school. In our case, the tax credit would be about $45,000, thus leaving $145,000 for public school parents. Only someone who has been indoctrinated in socialism can believe that the giver of $145,000 is mean-spirited and selfish but the recipient is not.
– Most readers claim that public schools are a public good like highways and parks. Of course, highways and parks are not in the business of teaching impressionable children. Also, in my home state of Arizona, most highway costs are paid by users through gas taxes, sales taxes on cars and various fees—unlike public schools, which are funded by users and nonusers alike. And those who spout platitudes about the public good rarely offer any coherent theory about what is a public good and what isn’t. The extent of their narcissistic thinking is that public schools are a public good, because they and their kids have attended them and received more ”public good” than those who haven’t attended them. Government schools are not about to disabuse them of the notion.
A closing question: Is it just a coincidence that most Americans have attended government schools and that most Americans think alike about public education, government and economics? I think not.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
I live in a city known for its image issues. To say there is an inferiority complex is to dramatically understate the case. As a distribution center, Memphis is a lot like a city with a huge Air Force base. With FedEx headquartered here, we have some pilots in the area. However, relative to the work done by FedEx, pilots are far outnumbered by other ”classes” of workers. Wages in Memphis are low. It’s a poor city relative to cities of comparable population.
If you doubt what I say, take a look at this chart from the June 14, 2004 InfoWorld. Notice just how ridiculously low the I.T. salaries are in Memphis. This has been true for many years. During the height of the personal computer ”franchise wars,” Memphis led the nation in product discounting. [Remember, Entre, Computerland, Inacom and MicroAge?]
For that reason, I’ve spent the majority of the last fifteen years working for clients outside of the Memphis area. Memphis is also a place that has no respect for knowledge. Who-you-know is far more important than what-you-know. Consultants are held in lower esteem than they are nationally, which is bad enough. Anyone, other than doctors or lawyers, who attempts to earn a living from what-they-know is quickly identified and categorized. Advisory work that commands $1500 to $2500 or more per day in other places might be valued at $500 in Memphis. That price assumes you’re in the good ’ol boy network, you’ll invoice the work well after the work is done and then happily wait sixty days for payment.
Keep these things in mind as you read InfoWorld’s 2004 Compensation Survey and you’ll understand more about why we travel. Traveling gets old, but it certainly has provided a different standard of living than the I.T. industry in Memphis can provide.
I’ve come to admire people who can crank out skins for their web sites at will. You Can’t Get There From Here has a new skin. Shelley Powers has been really busy creating new styles for her site. She’s even got two groups – static and dynamic. I haven’t a clue what the distinction is.
I’m still fighting a mental block with things like the width of text areas and sidebars. Is it the CSS that’s setting these widths or is it something in the XHTML? Until I understand simple things like this, I suspect style-changing is way over my head. There’s even some possibility that the choice of switchers is dependent upon which weblog tool you’re using. My interests are Textpattern, Movable Type and WordPress. Do they require different switchers?
The style switchers that are used are also puzzling. My first exposure to ”skinning” or style switching was based upon this tutorial. I believe lots of the Movable Type sites were using this technique. Then, there is the CSS Zen Garden and the customized style switcher that is used there. It seems to me that this site uses a PHP style switcher which means it is ”server-side.” The code that makes the switch of styles is actually run at the server (I think).
At Jeffrey Zeldman’s site there are three links – here’s #1, here’s #2 and here’s #3 – to information about understanding client-side style switching. I may be wrong again, but I perceive that these techniques involve javascript, which makes the change a client-side switch.
I haven’t the slightest clue which is better or why. I couldn’t begin to tell anyone why CSS Zen Garden uses one technique for switching while Zeldman.com uses another. [If someone knows and can explain it in nongeekspeak, I’m all ears.]
Dan Cederholm was running a book giveaway. Comments yielded links to sites or articles about web standards. Now there’s a list of all the links. You can also get to them at Orderedlist.com.
[7] Russ: How do you deal with the ’IE factor’ when building layouts in CSS?
Molly: I start drinking earlier and earlier in the day!
Seriously, my preferred method is to design to the ideal. I develop in Mozilla first, and then determine how to re-fit for IE 6.0 and other browsers. This might not be the best solution for everyone, but I find that it helps me because I can create really solid CSS and then study which workarounds and hacks I have to employ to achieve results for IE. Then, using strategies such as placing hacks in individual CSS files and then importing the hacks into my primary CSS document allows me to remove the hack the moment it’s no longer needed. I simply remove one line of CSS from the main CSS document and delete the CSS document containing the hack, moving ever closer to the original clean, idealistic CSS.
No matter how much I read about web standards, web design and what processes people use to do their work, I learn something new nearly every day. As many times as I’ve heard about the problems of IE6, I think Molly’s interview explains the issues as well as any. If you’re not a regular visitor to her site, take a look. Oh yeah, more books are on the way!
Democrats have fumed over our presence in Iraq. Some believe we should be there, but we got there under false pretenses. Clearly, some in the Bush administration feel as though some of the intelligence reports they received were flawed.
Clinton’s book is out. In interviews, he’s still oblivious to the fact that he was impeached for lying to a grand jury. Liberal media members call it spin. I call it lying.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a story about the launching of the liberal radio network called Air America [Note: Subscription may be required] From beginning to end this is a story about the many deceptions that were exchanged between founders, employees, suppliers and investors in the new venture.
In the same edition of the paper is a story about Lou Dobbs who has been whining endlessly about American businesses that have sought offshoring opportunities to countries where employees earn less. (It’s a classic case of lowering costs.) Yet, a newsletter that Dobb’s mails to investors has included these offshoring companies in a list of companies he endorses while also placing them on the ”offenders’ list” at his offshoring web page.
Now we’re about to endure political conventions and the final stages of the campaign for the White House. Truth is going to continue to be pretty hard to find.
We have become so focused on power, prestige and position relative to others that truth is lost in the shuffle. We believe we are more important than others. Truth gets lost. Are you more important than others? Why? Is it the car? Is it the clothes? Is it the position you hold? Is it your net worth that makes you more important? Do you understand the relationship between truth and leadership?
”Furthermore, you shall select out of all the people able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain; and you shall place {these} over them {as} leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens. Exodus 18:21 New American Standard Bible
Take a look at this essay, and you’ll understand that Mike Adams’s tenth myth is right on target:
Myth # 10. The decision to join the gay rights movement will secure enough donations from gay activists to offset the ensuing donor boycott from the once proud alums of Mississippi State University.
Big Butts, Small Brains
by Craig J. Cantoni
June 17, 2004
There is an inverse relationship between the size of American butts and the size of their brains. The bigger the butt, the smaller the brain.
A case in point was the lead story on big butts, er, obesity, in the June 7 issue of Time Magazine. The story included the results of an opinion survey on obesity.
Eighty-seven percent of respondents said that individuals have a great deal or a good amount of responsibility for being obese. About the same percentage said that obese people are not getting enough exercise. At the same time, 58 percent said that the federal government is doing too little about the problem, and 41 percent said that there should be a tax on unhealthy foods, with the revenue being used for programs to fight obesity.
This illogical small-brained thinking can be summarized with the following syllogism: Individuals are responsible for being obese. Individuals can reduce obesity by eating less and exercising more. Therefore, the federal government should do something, including taxing people who are not obese and giving their money to those who are.
Naturally, since it was published by a propaganda arm of the nanny state, the lengthy article did not question the fairness, morality or constitutionality of the federal government taking money from people who control their urges and spending it on butt reduction programs for those who don’t.
To the establishment media, the Constitution is a quaint document under glass at the National Archives, and fairness and morality are always covered from the perspective of irresponsible people instead of responsible ones. This results in irresponsible people being portrayed as victims. And that, in turn, results in more irresponsible small-brained people who believe what they read in Time.
Following the mainstream media formula, the Time piece portrayed the obese as victims of biology, advertising, fast food, poverty, the price of healthy food, the auto, suburban sprawl and global warming. I’m kidding about global warming but not the others.
Before reading the piece, I knew for certain that it would not cover certain issues. It did not disappoint me. For example, it did not mention the following:
– That children in single-parent families are 40 percent more likely to be obese than children in two-parent families.
– That much of the rise in single-parent families is due to misguided government policies and programs—the very same government that 58 percent of Americans believe can solve the problem of obesity.
– That there is a connection between obesity and welfare, because welfare strips people of personal responsibility, initiative and self-esteem.
– That it is a myth that healthy foods are expensive and not affordable for lower-income Americans.
On the last point, Time said that wealthy people can afford to buy an expensive lean steak, but poor people can only afford fatty food. What poppycock! Healthy food is not expensive. I know, because I don’t eat much meat but do eat a lot of salads made with beans, other canned vegetables and fresh produce. Granted, my wife wears a gas mask to bed, but that is beside the point.
Locally, a can of kidney beans costs 50 cents; a can of peas, 60 cents; and a pound of fresh broccoli, $1.64. Two high-protein, low-fat meals can be made out of these ingredients at a cost of $1.37 per meal, excluding the nominal cost of olive oil and vinegar.
The Time piece even had advice to parents for talking to their kids about being overweight. The advice was to be sensitive to their feelings and not be judgmental. I’m a bad parent. I tell my kid that if he eats one more potato chip, I’m going to rip his tongue out of his mouth. He is not overweight but is undergoing psychoanalysis. Just kidding about the psychoanalysis.
A recent PBS NewsHour segment on obesity in Arkansas covered the issue the same way that Time Magazine did. Of course it did. PBS is another propaganda arm of the nanny state.
The segment described the anti-obesity program started in public schools by the Arkansas governor, a former big butt, who, like reformed smokers, wants the state to stick its butt in other people’s business. He believes that the state has a right to stick its butt where it doesn’t belong. Why? Because socialism breeds socialism. PBS didn’t characterize the governor’s initiative that way, but that is how it should have been characterized.
If PBS were not a propaganda arm of the nanny state, it would have explained that socialism is achieved in incremental steps. First, the state socializes health care. Next, the state says it has the right to control obesity because obesity increases the state’s health care costs. Then, the state says it has the right to take money from people who eat responsibly and give it to people who don’t.
Featured in the PBS segment was a dumpster-sized honor student, whose command of English makes NBA players seem articulate by comparison. If she is an honor student, average students in Arkansas must have the brains of hamsters and the butts of elephants.
The student was shown at home having dinner with her mom, who is the size of two dumpsters. Dinner included a fried chicken leg the size of a mastodon leg, creamed corn and corn bread. Dad was missing from the scene. I’m sure that he was working overtime and was going to be home later. Wink, wink.
The scene then shifted to an interview with a school administrator. Hold on to your chair. You’re going to be shocked by what she said. She said that the schools can’t fight obesity without more money. Shocking! She did not explain why it is the role of schools to fight obesity or why parents can’t simply stop serving fried mastodon legs to their kids. And of course, PBS did not ask her such questions, because PBS and government schools are different arms of the same propaganda ministry.
As butts have gotten bigger, brains have gotten smaller, the nanny state has gotten bigger and the propaganda ministry has become more effective in shaping public opinion. It’s enough to make me want to kick some butt.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
At any given time, I may have four or five Moleskine notebooks in use. One tracks changes I want to make to this web site. A second tracks notes for my company and its site. I keep a spiritual journal in a third. The fourth one that I’m using right now tracks new ideas and opportunities. Other people may have as many as seven or eight notebooks going at once.
Glance at a stack of these on a desk or in a brief case and you won’t be able to tell them apart. How do you keep them straight? Here are some ideas:
Avery’s adhesive dots on the front or back cover; ok, but again difficult or impossible to see if the notebooks are stacked.
Title page indicator; ok, but requires that you unfasten the elastic closure and open the book.
Best Idea? Use colored markers to make page-edge indicators. Preferably, use a fine point marker, squeeze the closed notebook tightly shut and make geometric, numeric or alphabetic codes on the top, bottom or side edges of the pages. Cleverly done, the colors and/or a series of letters or numbers will provide an easy-to-see indentifier for as many notebooks as you might have active at once.
Tough times test people. Someone once said that we are all…
... 3 meals away from borrowing
... 6 meals away from begging
... 9 meals away from stealing
... 12 meals away from murder
What do you know about yourself? What do you know and believe about being tested? What pushes your buttons? Is it a rude driver? Is it a coworker? Is it an indifferent clerk? Is it money? Is it something mundane?
For most people reading this, it isn’t missed meals. It’s some other routine or intrusion into our comfortable little lives. Think about what you value above all else. Most of us spend way too much time trying to be comfortable. It’s time for all of us to take a stand, value something above our stuff and the lengths we go to trying to protect it. Otherwise, our values will unravel.
First, read this guy’s bio. Then, read some of his articles. In the face of liberal media and incessant blathering about diversity and rights, this guy offers some alternative perspectives that are worthwhile.
He’s a vigorous opponent of the ”speech codes” in universities that limit truly free speech. The message has been, ”your speech is free, so long as it agrees with our worldview.” Then, when they allow a single faculty member to remain in their midst, they claim dramatic leaps in diversity. Does one Republican among a department faculty of fifty like-thinkers represent diversity?
Oh Yeah. If you come here hoping to read pseudo-intellectual political correctness, you will be disappointed. Political correctness has done more harm to this nation than many other social and cultural phenomena that we’ve allowed in the last fifty years.
Here’s the message I want to send. If these reports that the Saudi’s have killed the leader of Al Qaeda in Riyadh are true, then fine. No cost for jail time. No cost for lawyers. No cost for media coverage. No cost for a lengthy trial. One more driver of evil is removed. That’s fine.
The Middle East has a rather high concentration of terrorists, hate-mongers, extremists, Jihadists, etc. Either we agree on that point or we don’t. They understand nothing about shame, remorse, decency or civilization. This may be a small minority of the so-called peaceful Muslim community, but they must be routed.
They talk to a different God from the one I worship. Dr. Albert Mohler wrote this today:
What we believe about God determines everything really important in life. As A. W. Tozer reminded us, what we believe about God is the most important thing about us. The ultimate test we will ever face is the test of truth—do we really know God?
These words are from his series called No Ordinary God.
Please read and think about the series. Parts | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
I’m seriously angry and ready to DO something. I’m sick of the rhetoric. I’m sick of debate about whether the Koran says this or that. I’m sick of the liberals blaming America. I’m sick of watching our towers collapse. I’m sick of seeing holes in the side of our ships. I don’t want to hear of another Marine barricks blown up by Middle Eastern zealots. I’m sick of watching kidnapped civilians murdered abroad. My anger causes me to lose sight of my own God. It turns me to the Old Testament.
There comes a time when the shrimpy little spokespeople for these foreign governments need to just shut up. I’m ready for leadership that says, ”this globe is simply too small to tolerate these so-called cells of terrorists.” Then, let’s take the political handcuffs off the military and rid this world of these thugs. I’m too agitated to think clearly, but reason doesn’t seem to be one of the options for dealing with Middle Eastern stupidity and tolerance for extremists.
The question? Will anyone do anything, or will we merely talk some more?
I’m entirely prepared, willing and able to become the ”ugly American” once more. This stuff must stop. It must stop. It must be stopped now. I don’t care if some nation(s) sees the seventh century again. They should stop or be bombed into submission. Lawlessness, barbarism and extremism must be eliminated – period.
Either you believe this or you are willing for these things to start happening in the city or town or area where you live. There isn’t any middle ground. Ask yourself what you are prepared to accept. Ask yourself just how vigorously you’re willing to resist. It’s sick. It must end – now.
No sooner had I made the request than a loyal reader and helper came through with a GMAIL invitation. In January of 2002 I was struggling to learn Radio, weblogs, sidebars, blogrolls and things even more fundamental to the web. There were a lot of new users of Radio at that time. Dane Carlson ”adopted me” during the height of that explosion in user counts at the urging of the experienced users. Adopted meant getting help and a ready source of answers.
Dane and I have stayed in touch and he continues to offer some great help along the way. If you haven’t read his weblog or the Business Opportunities site, which he also writes, you should add them to your regular reads. Thanks also to Steven Vore for the pointer.
Too many Americans hold to a view of God that is both sub-biblical and disastrous. Rather than believing in the God of the Bible, they believe in a God of their own imaginations, cut down to manageable size. The Bible reveals God to possess certain definite attributes that define His nature. On these, there must be no compromise.
The folks at Six Apart have changed their licensing arrangements. The new prices certainly seem to align well with the ways that people use the product.
Though I wouldn’t have dreamed I’d be in this mode, I’m rethinking some choices I’ve made recently. WordPress seems to be thriving, but documentation is scattered making it tough for a rookie user to pick the product up and produce a really attractive, fully functional web site.
Textpattern, while providing some sensational features and a future that looks very bright, is several steps behind WordPress. Textpattern is still ”gamma” software. There is virtually no documentation.
All things equal, I’d have a list of specs for moving this weblog to Textpattern with some alterations or updates to the look of the site. All things are not equal.
How will I handle this? Not sure. Perhaps I’ll update MT and continue my work with Textpattern. It’s bound to move out of gamma and into a newbie-friendly mode soon.
Rain on a day when the Wall Street Journal had already been soaked prevented my discovery of Peggy Noonan’s reflections on the Reagan funeral and life as a speechwriter. Thanks to Russ Lipton, I got a link to the piece that ran yesterday. [Note: subscription may be required.] Read every word of it. You’ll be glad you did.
The things that get us are the things we never expect. The things we never expect are things we believe can’t happen.
Do you have a plan for your family if the price of oil goes to $100 or more per barrel? Do you understand the kind of impact such a price might have on you?
I’m not one to predict doom. I am one to understand the ”downside.” Let the sovereign rule of Iraq faulter slightly. Let a pipeline or two remain disrupted a bit longer than expected. Let terrorism linger in Saudi Arabia. Let Israel remain under attack. Let inflation creep upward at the same time interest rates rise.
It doesn’t take all of these things to see some upward pressure on gasoline prices, heating oil prices, natural gas prices and the cost of living. Do you have a plan?
PBS Rips Candidate Thomas Jefferson
by Craig J. Cantoni
June 15, 2004
In the event you missed it, last week’s PBS show ”Washington Week in Review” discussed the presidential campaign between John Kerry, George Bush, Ralph Nader and Thomas Jefferson. Here is a transcript of the segment:
Gwen Ifill (Host): It’s not surprising that John Kerry and George Bush are still running neck and neck, but the big news of the week is the huge drop in the polls for Libertarian candidate Thomas Jefferson. CBS is now projecting that he will get fewer votes than Ralph Nader.
Michael Duffy (Time Magazine): I have never seen a candidate with such radical ideas and such a tin ear for politics. The dumbest thing he did this week was poke his finger in the eye of the American Association of Retired People while on the stump in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In speaking about the trillions of dollars in Medicare bills that will be passed to future generations, he actually said the following: ”I sincerely believe… that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
David Sanger (NY Times): Yeah, it’s unbelievable that he would equate Medicare to swindling. But then he kept digging his political grave by adding this: ”Then I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it [the next generation] with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.”
Tom Gjelten (National Public Radio): And what is it with his funny way of talking? He’ll never get the votes of the MTV generation by speaking above the sixth-grade level.
Gwen Ifill: Good point, Tom. And what do you think of him slamming Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan for not telling the truth about paper money that is not backed by gold?
Tom Gjelten: Jefferson’s ears aren’t tin. They’re hardened steel. Greenspan is an icon, but Jefferson preached to him about the danger of paper money. Let me quote what he said: ”The trifling economy of paper, as a cheaper medium, or its convenience for transmission, weighs nothing in opposition to the advantages of the precious metals… it is liable to be abused, has been, is, and forever will be abused, in every country in which it is permitted.”
Michael Duffy: I don’t think that was his biggest gaffe, considereing that other than Wall Street, no one understands the banking system. His biggest gaffe was alienating Hispanics with his stand on immigration.
Gwen Ifill: I thought he was in favor of immigration.
Michael Duffy: He is, but his mistake was warning about too much immigration from one country at one time. It’s hard to believe, but he actually made the following statement in San Antonio, Texas: ”[Is] rapid population [growth] by as great importations of foreigners as possible… founded in good policy?... They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their number, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass… If they come of themselves, they are entitled to all the rights of citizenship: but I doubt the expediency of inviting them by extraordinary encouragements.”
David Sanger: That was certainly a huge gaffe, but the biggest gaffe was his stand on the Iraq War, Israel and the Middle East. Rush Limbaugh was taken to the hospital with a heart attack when he heard about it. In speaking before the Anti-Defamation League in Manhattan, Jefferson gave a history of European meddling in the Middle East in the early 20th century and beyond, including the Balfour Declaration, the creation of the Zionist State of Israel in what had been a peaceful region, and Britain’s creation of Iraq out of three distinct cultures and warring tribes. He made the point that because European colonialsim is the root-cause of many of the problems in the Middle East, Europeans should solve the problems. Then he sent shock waves through the audience and the State Department by saying: ”I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property and lives of their people.”
Tom Gjelten: Let’s don’t forget that he also alienated the Religious Right and the Unreligious Left. He alienated the Religious Right by saying, ”Whenever… preachers, instead of a lesson in religion, put [their congregation] off with a discourse on the Copernican system, on chemical affinities, on the construction of government, or the characters or conduct of those administering it, it is a breach of contract, depriving their audience of the kind of service for which they are salaried, and giving them, instead of it, what they did not want, or, if wanted, would rather seek from better sources in that particular art of science.” Then he alienated the Unreligious Left by speaking about morals: ”Peace, prosperity, liberty and morals have an intimate connection.”
David Sanger: He even lambasted Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor when he was asked at the University of Michigan what he thought about her affirmative-action decision. He responded that ”Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.”
Gwen Ifill: I also understand, David, that he has upset the Democratic wing of the Republican Party by attacking Senator John McCain for his campaign finance reforms.
David Sanger: He sure did, Gwen. He did it by expressing his weird view of the First Amendment. It’s hard to believe, but he actually said this about free speech: ”There are rights which it is useless to surrender to the government and which governments have yet always been found to invade. These are the rights of thinking and publishing our thoughts by speaking or writing; the right of free commerce; the right of personal freedom. There are instruments for administering the government so peculiarly trustworthy that we should never leave the legislature at liberty to change them.”
Tom Gjelten: Speaking of weird views, he has Congress and every lobbyist and federal employee up in arms over his warning about the centralization of power in Washington. To quote: ”When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”
Gwen Ifill: Thanks for your summaries, gentlemen. I’ll wrap up this segment with quotes from the other candidates about Jefferson. John Kerry said that ”Jefferson is a right-wing extremist who has obviously never read the Constitution.” Bush said that ”Jefferson is no compassionate conservative or patriot … uh, terrorism … uh, weapons of mass destruction … uh, a sovereign Iraq.” And Nader said, ”This man is an enemy of the proletariat and the environment.”
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author and columnist. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com. Credit is given to the following University of Virginia website for some of the Jefferson quotations: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/
Dr. Mohler continues to amplify his thoughts on the Christian worldview. The latest entry is a logical follow-up to what he had to say on Monday.
The fact that so many modern people believe in ”just an ordinary God” indicates the true nature of our challenge. This ”god” of popular American spirituality is nothing like the God of the Bible—not even close.
Note: Just because I may not agree with some things a person says, does or teaches, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have some other worthwhile things to say!
* * UPDATE * * * As of June 16, 2004, here are the three parts thus far: | 1 | 2 | 3 |
Westciv has a new site design. It’s a huge improvement. It would seem that the headstart that Topstyle has might get a little tighter if Westciv stays the course.
I’ve got two web hosts. I like them both. TextDrive is new and I have less experience doing things there. It’s the home of some future work I have planned. Hosting Matters has been rock solid for me for almost two years. Judging from what can happen when you have hosted information, I’ve dodged quite a bullet by having relationships with these two providers.
We live in a world where allegations are more important than evidence. We live in a world where denying an event means it didn’t really happen. We live in a world where perception is valued over reality. In short, we live in a world that distorts truth.
The ultimate example comes from Howard Dean, who is now denying that his ”scream speech” didn’t happen.
Having allowed Overlawyered to slip into a lesser read channel group in FeedDemon, I’ve been missing out on what Walter Olson’s been writing. That situation has been rectified.
Here’s a link to Walter’s coverage of the tort reform in Mississippi. There’s linkage to past coverage of the situation in Mississippi at the end of the entry.
When I sit down to my computer, I use IE6. It’s habit. It’s laziness. I simply haven’t taken the time to switch to new tools. I also use Outlook for email. With version 0.9 of Firefox, there’s a new call to make the change. Here’s the list of tasks that comes to mind:
favorites must be moved
I use the google toolbar many times each day. How does Firefox provide similar functionality?
In the ”Links” toolbar in IE I have several vital bookmarks and favlets. How do I replace these in Firefox?
Oracle wants to pursue businesses with fewer than 500 employees. That’s what they call ”small business.” Small business means lots of different things depending upon which company or research group you might be reading. In my world, a 300-employee company is a large customer. A small customer is one with six to ten employees. For many research organizations those don’t make the radar screen. Here’s a quote that caught my eye:
Though pricing information has not been made public, Oracle will model the U.S. program after a similar one it introduced in Europe and Asia, where packages start at $35,000 for 10 users, an Oracle spokesman said. By contrast, Oracle’s large customers usually sign multimillion-dollar contracts.
I’ve traveled nearly all of my working life. It’s enjoyable, but tiring. The last ten years of air travel have had more uncertainty than the ten before. Deregulation brought cheaper tickets, but it introduced rapid change. There was a time when a ticket in hand was as good as cash in hand. Any airline; any time; day or night, if they were going your way you could go with them. Not any more.
That’s not my point.
I mentioned that daughter #3 caught a flight at dark thirty yesterday morning. By midday she was on the ground and oriented. She had read about the Big Apple almost continuously since learning of the outcome of her audition back in February. So, what did she do?
Rather than move into her apartment and ”collapse.” She went to class. ”Class” in the dance world means something a little different from what I once thought. In a lot of classes, there isn’t a huge amount of new instruction. Rather, it’s a supervised time for working out. If you’ve never been around a professional dancer, they are athletes. They go to class (multiple times) every day.
At a class a teacher or an artisitic director puts the class through a series of required movements. There’s time at the bar. There’s time dancing specific movements to music. It’s not a rehearsal for a performance. It’s a time to perfect, condition and improve.
Drive me to the airport at 3:30a.m. Change planes once. Arrive in a different time zone seven hours later and I’m going to take it easy. Have a nice dinner. See a show. Get to bed early. Youth with a dream is different. She found a way to catch a subway and change trains twice. She found a class. She danced on Broadway! Did I mention I’m proud?
If your hosting service has suddenly dropped you, let me suggest TextDrive as an alternative. As weblogging and CMS make further inroads on the Internet, we’ve seen the migration of some users away from Movable Type. We’ve seen the move of some/all of the hosting for Userland from one coast to another, but it is still unclear what that company is all about, who owns it and what its future might be. Textpattern and WordPress have stepped in with a future for anyone who might be disillusioned with the past.
What frames your view of the world? Is it secular humanism? Is it live-and-let-live? Is it political? Is it freedom or dependence? Here’s one person’s description of a Christian worldview:
The foundation of the Christian worldview is the knowledge of the one true God. The fact of God’s existence sets this worldview apart from all others—and our knowledge of God is entirely dependent upon the gift of divine revelation. All Christians need a regular ”reset” of our worldview perspective. The times demand that we address the pressing issues and controversies of the day with Christian truth. Eternity demands that we take every thought back to the reality of God’s existence and the revelation of His character and will.
I like what Walter Mossberg writes for the Wall Street Journal. He’s good at translating geekspeak into executivespeak. There is a difference and it has nothing to do with executives being indifferent or uneducated in technical matters. Some people don’t like his dismissiveness of weblogs as a journalistic medium.
Today’s Wall Street Journal carries an interview of Steve Jobs by Mossberg. You’ll probably need a subscription to get to this, but if you can pick up a copy of the paper today, you’ll enjoy this view of the industry by Jobs.
Though I just mentioned that daughter number three is headed for NYC, Dads have radar, sonar, satellite imaging and all manner of profiling, remote monitoring and ESP built into their instincts. For that reason, the Ten Rules for Dating My Daughter hold, even at this distance. [thanks to Kim du Toit for the link]
Daughter #3 has never liked being ”the baby.” She was convinced when she went into the seventh grade that she should have her own apartment. ”Independent” doesn’t begin to describe her.
This morning I put her on a flight for New York. She’s a professional ballet dancer and will be dancing for the next couple of months at American Ballet Theatre. She graduated from high school a year early by going to college to get enough credits. She turned professional immediately out of high school.
She’s now completed her fourth year as a professional ballerina. She danced with ABT a couple of years ago. She’s been invited back.
Yes, I’m a proud dad. She’s hit the big time. There are few places that rival ABT in the ballet world. It’s been an unbelievable experience to see someone discover their dream at age four and never once question their calling. She’s never needed coaxing or coercion to get to lessons, classes, rehearsals or performances. Few people love what they do more than she does.
Virginia Clark, you are in our prayers. We miss you already!
With some rounding error and allowance for 87, 89 or 93 octane ratings, gasoline costs approximately $2.10 per gallon with oil currently priced at about $38.50 per barrel. Is it reasonable to assume that $100 oil will lead to gasoline at $5.45 a gallon?
If those numbers are even close, the two-car family driving each vehicle 15,000 miles per year and getting 18 miles per gallon will see their gasoline budget change from $3500 to $9083 each year.
Let this escalate at the same time that interest rates on adjustable mortgages are ramping up, and you’ll begin to see an impact on the economy unlike any we’ve seen in our lifetimes.
This isn’t a forecast, but it’s clearly a set of conditions that could unfold rather easily. An individual’s best solution to these kinds of challenges will be to work at something you enjoy with the potential for increasing your income at a pace that is comparable to rapid jumps in the cost of living.
Good morning. Metrics are hard to come by in the weblogging world. It’s not clear how many sites have been built with each tool. Somebody knows, but to my knowledge, that isn’t generally public information.
Matthew Mullenweg is tracking the use of WordPress and says that there are now 10,000 sites built with WordPress. How does this compare to Radio, Textpattern and Movable Type?
Slashdot pointed to an article in the Austin Chronicle about Richard Mackinnon and the Wireless City Project he’s got going in Austin.
It would be a fun business and engineering endeavor to organize and build the teams, resources and ultimately the network to serve a city. We’ll put some more brain power on this one this week!
A portion of my latest (email) discussion with Craig Cantoni has been posted at the new Memphis Redblogs site. It’s about the virtual impossibility that we will ever reduce the size of the government and it’s impact on our lives.
Having observed the dignity and tradition of the Reagan funeral, someone remarked that they felt as if they were watching ”the ruling class.” They were.
This nation is rapidly dividing into a nation of people who are codependent on government care. If it’s not stadium subsidies for their favorite sport, it’s a belief that socialized medicine would be preferred. If not that, it’s a belief that government schools are somehow superior (or could be made superior) to any private or parochial school.
The list of programs, subsidies and entitlements from our government have grown so lengthy that we have lost any chance of truly shrinking the size of government and the tax burden it places on us. Too many people have a depency on one or more ”programs” or ”entitlements” offered by ”big government.”
The Ruling Class is necessary because those who are riding in the wagon don’t produce anything close to enough to keep the wagon moving forward. It’s the Ruling Class that’s doing all of the pulling. Sure, we may have periods where we somehow constrain the growth of government, but make no mistake, we are rapidly becoming a nation of two classes.
Here’s a guy who spent the last four days toiling over fourteen custom-made golf clubs, only to walk away with $945,000. What will you earn during your next four working days?
During the week of mourning former President Reagan’s death, a lot of people got to a point of having little else to say. Some others decided to vent their dislike of the former President with anything they could come up with. One example of this was found in the accusation that Reagan’s Alzheimer’s Disease might have been cured by stem cell research and the resulting therapies.
As it turns out, stem cell research is apparently not likely to have the major impact in the area of Alzheimer’s that it might have in other areas. The next 24 months will be a period when we debate and researchers find alternatives to embryonic stem cells.
Some others lamented the great expense and time devoted to the funeral. A couple of people even went so far as to imply that the family and the Republicans conspired to dominate the news. Actually, the state funeral is available by law to any former commander-in-chief. Here’s a simple list of some of the traditions and the meaning of the things you saw this past week. Some more of the background is available here.
Posting here may be pretty light for the next couple of days, except during breaks. I’m deep into some coursework on XHMTL, CSS and tools for web design.
I only wish tutorials were available for Textpattern. I’m impressed with the software, but learning it in its present state is pretty challenging. Documentation is slim. Tutorials are non-existent.
For those who’d like to dig into standards-based design, try these:
I’m interested in developing an XML syndication feed for an ERP application. Properly done, RSS could become the next executive information system. Thanks to Richard Caetano for the idea.
Today is the day of Ronald Reagan’s funeral. It’s been declared a federal holiday. This morning there was a funeral service at the National Cathedral in Washington. Following that service will be a burial service in California.
The scenes on television show dignity. There is dignity throughout the military’s traditions within a state funeral. There is a reminder of the political era of Reagan. That was a time when political opponents could fight like cats and dogs until 6:00 p.m. Then, it was time for the lifelong friendships to prevail over all else. Many have said it was about being able to disagree without being disagreeable.
Here are some selected phrases from the service at the National Cathedral:
With the lever of American patriotism he lifted up the world.
Margaret Thatcher
June 11, 2004
Seek big, expansive dreams and causes…
He sought grand visions…
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends.
Dr. Al Mohler has a list of ten lessons on leadership that can be taken from the example set by Ronald Reagan. I heard Edwin Meese identify three things that made Reagan and his Presidency so effective. Paraphrasing his remarks, they were:
get the economy moving again
rebuild the American military capabilities
restore the American spirit
These two people show the leader’s clear vision with solid methods for reaching that vision.
Paul Scrivens announces the launch of Business Logs. We’re about to move into an era of weblog design and development that focuses the medium on organizational needs and uses.
D. Keith Robinson doesn’t want to focus so much of the discussion on web standards any more. Simon Willison obliges by listing a lot of new topics that will make for many hours of debate.
One of my favorite sites on the entire web is called *Asterisk. It features the work and advice of D. Keith Robinson. We’re about to be led through his process for developing a web site for a new band. The Prologue and Chapter One are now available.
Lately, a lot of my time has been spent at a test weblog I’ve set up to learn some new tools and techniques. I’m becoming more convinced of the value of standards-based design. I’m not able to do it, yet, but then, I can’t do a table-based design either.
If there’s uncertainty in your mind about the value of having your company’s web site redone in validating CSS and XHTML, you might enjoy reading this.
Are Americans Wimps and Socialists?
by Craig J. Cantoni
Why aren’t Americans storming the castle and overthrowing the overlords who have consigned them and their offspring to lives of tax servitude? Are they wimps and socialists?
They are neither. They are frogs.
You may know that if a frog is put in hot water, it will jump out. But if it is put in a pot of cold water on a stove and the heat is slowly turned up, the frog will stay put and boil to death. The same is true for taxpayers.
If government expenditures suddenly increased by 300%, taxpayers would grab their pitchforks, overthrow the House of Lords in Washington and put the heads of the tyrants on pikes on the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac. But because expenditures have grown over 104 years instead of overnight, taxpayers have sat like boiling frogs as government spending has increased threefold since 1900 as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product.
Imagine the revolution that would have occurred had the government increased spending by 300% in 1900 in one fell swoop. It would have made the Boston Tea Party look like tea and crumpets at Buckingham Palace.
Americans also have sat still as transfer payments, which are a euphemism for neighbors stealing from neighbors, have ballooned like a bullfrog’s throat over the last century from 2% of government spending to 40%, or 20-fold. Imagine Americans being told in 1900 that 40% of their taxes would be stolen by their neighbors and special-interest groups. The nation would have seen its second civil war.
And imagine taxpayers being told in 1914, which was the year following the ratification of the income tax amendment, the 16th Amendment, that the federal income tax per capita would be where it is today, at $2,500. That is 352% more than per-capita income taxes in 1914, in inflation-adjusted dollars. Or imagine taxpayers finding out on April 15, 1914, that they had to pay an accountant to file their taxes because there were suddenly 4,000 pages of tax forms, as is the case today.
It would have been unimaginable 100 years ago for Americans to think that federal spending would ever reach today’s astonishing level of $21,671 per household.
If President William McKinley had said in his inaugural speech in 1900 that he was going to increase government expenditures by 300% and taxes by 352%, his assassination would have occurred on the spot instead of in 1901. And his assassin would have been lionized instead of vilified. There would be a statue of him in the Capitol Rotunda next to other revolutionary heroes.
There are other reasons why Americans are behaving like boiled frogs instead of people who love liberty. First, most taxes are hidden and not paid directly by taxpayers. For example, for homeowners with mortgages, property taxes are paid by the mortgage company and not directly by the homeowner. Likewise, sales taxes are tacked on bills and not paid separately. The same is true for income taxes and FICA taxes, which are withheld from paychecks and never seen by workers. And corporate taxes are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.
It’s not surprising that the self-employed and small-business owners tend to be fiscal conservatives. They know what they pay in income and FICA taxes, because they write quarterly checks to the government for the taxes.
It’s also not surprising that per-pupil spending has skyrocketed over the last 25 years. That’s because Americans have no idea what they pay in public education taxes over their lifetime. (They pay over $150,000 per household.)
The government demands accurate financial statements from corporations but doesn’t practice what it preaches. Have you ever received a statement from your state, county or city government showing what you’ve paid in taxes from year to year and the percentage that the taxes have increased? Naturally, the government’s coconspirators, the leftist media and government K-12 schools, are not about to tell the public.
Another reason why Americans are behaving like boiled frogs is that they are considerably more wealthy than 100 years ago, in spite of the growth of government. Thanks to the free market—or I should say the 50% of the market that is still free and not socialized or regulated to death—the average income in inflation-adjusted dollars has grown from $8,360 in 1900 to over $40,000 today. During the same period, the portion of income spent on food has dropped from 43% in 1900 to 15% today, and the number of autos has increased from 8,000 to over 132 million. Lower-income Americans have conveniences and a quality of life that only the upper-crust of society had 100 years ago.
I have been writing about taxes for years and have usually been met by yawns from readers, especially from Republican soccer moms in open-toed shoes with their webbed feet showing. Politicians only have to mention the magic words ”children” and ”per-pupil spending” for female frogs to agree to the stove being turned to a higher temperature. Male frogs are just as agreeable, but the magic words for them are ”subsidized sports stadiums.” And older frogs are even more agreeable. The magic words for them are ”send the bills for our medicine to future generations.”
Americans consider the French to be wimps and socialists, and the British call them frogs. Ironically, Americans are not wimps and socialists, but they are frogs.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
The front page of Network World highlighted a fiber-to-the-home project in Reykjavik, Iceland. It’s expected that the local utility will connect 4,000 homes this year to a 100Mbps connection that provides eight ethernet ports to each home.
Remember when there was a lot of noise about the shared equipment specification from BellSouth, Verizon and SBC? There’s still the possibility that some form of wireless technology might prevail, but eight ports of 100Mbps ethernet in every home doesn’t seem likely. (It’s the physics!)
South Korea, already known as the bandwidth capital of the world, announced in November of 2003 that they were going to build a nationwide 100Mbps network. This is happening in a place that already has more DSL-class speed per capita than any other country in the world. While broadband at one to three megabits per second is certainly faster than dialup service, I’ve come to think of broadband as 10Mbps or better. As the standard ethernet LAN in the USA moved to 100Mbps, that became the new broadband standard.
With GigE in wide deployment, it can’t be very long before someone will start labeling anything greater than 100Mbps ”broadband.” The great debate involved whether or not fiber-to-the-curb would prevail over wi-fi technologies. Digging up the streets was listed as the great cost and infrastructure inhibiter for fiber. The physics of wide-area wireless has always been its inhibiter.
At this point I’d like to see the top 100 cities in the USA wired with (continuously-upgradeable) 100Mbps fiber and eight ethernet ports per termination point. Eight ports provide:
voice communications (VoIP)
Internet access
movies on demand
television programming
gaming networks
available
available
available
Properly designed, these city-wide networks should be connected to Level 3’s (continuously upgradeable) long-haul fiber. None of this should be done with taxes. The project should be privately funded and the price target should be (in 2004 dollars) $100 per month or less per installation point. It’s ambitious, but it’s achievable.
This most recent request by SCO makes it clear to me that the company has no viable future and should not be allowed to continue with such ridiculous legal wrangling. They serve no one.
SCO should simply go quietly. The business should fail and somebody else should take over the ownership and licensing of Unix. For those of us who are users of the technology, a ”real” unification of the Unix/Linux standards would be best. There is little value in the fragmentation of so many of the open source distributions.
There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven—A time to give birth and a time to die; A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal; A time to tear down and a time to build up. A time to weep and a time to laugh; A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones; A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing. A time to search and a time to give up as lost; A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear apart and a time to sew together; A time to be silent and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate; A time for war and a time for peace. What profit is there to the worker from that in which he toils? I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves. Ecclesiastes 3:1-10 New American Standard Bible
In the language of today, here’s how the same thing might be said:
There’s an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth: A right time for birth and another for death, A right time to plant and another to reap, A right time to kill and another to heal, A right time to destroy and another to construct, A right time to cry and another to laugh, A right time to lament and another to cheer, A right time to make love and another to abstain, A right time to embrace and another to part, A right time to search and another to count your losses, A right time to hold on and another to let go, A right time to rip out and another to mend, A right time to shut up and another to speak up, A right time to love and another to hate, A right time to wage war and another to make peace. But in the end, does it really make a difference what anyone does? I’ve had a good look at what God has given us to do – busywork, mostly. Ecclesiastes 3:1-10 The Message
Consulting with many businesses through the years, I’ve learned that many companies are merely expensive hobbies. Always on the brink of folding, these businesses are often run by people who could earn a much nicer income doing something else. Instead, they toil – in some cases under great pressure – at businesses that are simply feeding their interests.
Dane Carlson links us to another examination of whether or not writing a weblog can be (significantly) lucrative. The numbers mentioned say loudly, ”No!” It’s a nice hobby, but it’s not likely to pay its own bills, much less any of the others!
For the love of design, web designers have endured some rather humiliating treatment. As a customer always fearful of appearing stingy, I now realize that all the fees I’ve paid for help amount to a rather handsome sum. [Thanks to Paul Scrivens for another interesting non-scientific survey!]
By the same token, I’ve been ignored by some rather talented people. I could only assume that assistance with a weblog design was perceived to be ”beneath them.” I’ve also been snubbed by a designer or two who behaved as if they held the keys to Fort Knox. After each contact with these people I was left feeling as if I wasn’t important enough to pay them my money.
Talented designers should be paid promptly and fairly. Their work has value. Customers of designers should be served promptly and respectfully. It’s the way of the free market.
Economics Lessons for Reporters
by Craig J. Cantoni
June 9, 2004
The June 8 edition of the Arizona Republic had a front-page story with this opening line: ”More than 45,000 seniors and disabled Arizonans have saved $3.2 million on prescription drugs in the year since Gov. Janet Napolitano launched her program to help deal with expensive but necessary medication.”
In keeping with the standard journalism formula, the story had the obligatory quotes from someone with AIDS and from a single mom of three kids. It also printed quotes from leftists who think the program isn’t rich enough, from a Retard (Republican embracing taxes and rampant dependency) and from a representative of AARP, which should change its name to Bunch of Avaricious Robbers and Fleecers, or BARF, in view of the fact that it engages in nauseating lobbying for the richest socioeconomic group in the nation.
The 108 column-inch story did not say anything about the economics of the program, but if we accept the story at face value, as most readers of the Republic will, then why should the state restrict itself to buying medicine?
If buying medicine results in lower prices at no cost to anyone else, as the story implied, then the state should buy all necessities of life, including food, shelter and clothing, for all citizens. It should become a gigantic buying cooperative and issue discount cards for food, shelter and clothing.
Note to staffers Karina and Jon: stop salivating over the prospect of your socialist utopia being realized. It’s been tried before and doesn’t work. The reality of economics doesn’t go away just because economic reality is ignored.
Here are some lessons on the economic reality of drugs and health care in general:
Lesson 1: The government fatally wounded a consumer market in health care 60 years ago when misguided government policies resulted in most Americans becoming dependent on their employers for health insurance, unlike the situation for food, shelter and clothing. The coup de grace was delivered 39 years ago with the enactment of Medicare, which now has over 100,000 pages of regulations and price controls. Those who say that the consumer market has failed in health care do not realize that there is not a consumer market in health care.
Lesson 2: A couple of predictable outcomes have resulted from the death of a consumer market: First, utilization and costs have increased, due to the users of medical services not paying directly for the services. It would be akin to grocery shoppers sending their supermarket bills to their employers or the government. Hamburger sales would decline and steak sales would increase. Then, to stop people from buying steak, a huge corporate and governmental bureaucracy would issue diktats and price controls. The second outcome is immoral cost-shifting. The self-employed, the unemployed and others pay more for health care than the members of corporate and government health plans, because of cost shifting to the least powerful consumers. Cost shifting also occurs through the tax code, due to the self-employed, unemployed and others not getting the same tax breaks for medical expenses as members of corporate and government health plans, due to those with the least political power getting the shaft from those with the most political power.
Lesson 3: If pharmaceutical companies don’t get a high enough return on investment, they can’t attract capital to invest in new drugs and production capacity. This lesson plays out in Europe, where the pharmaceutical industry has been in decline due to a low return on investment, due to government meddling in the market.
Lesson 4: If pharmaceutical companies give discounts to states, they have to make up the lower profit margins somewhere else or lose investment capital. See Lesson 2 about cost shifting.
So what is the answer for the poor? Private charity is one answer. But if the state is going to be involved in helping the poor buy medicine, a system should be developed that causes the least distortion in the market and doesn’t put the state between consumers and health care providers. Food stamps are an example of a system that causes the least market distortion.
It’s become a cliche to say that there is no free lunch in economics, although the mainstream media doesn’t seem to have heard the cliche. The newspaper coverage of health care and other economic issues has too much barf and too many retards.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He has been active in health care reform for years and can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
During the weekend I read tributes to former President Ronald Reagan. By Monday the venom was beginning to flow from the liberals. People with diseases were grousing. Gay people were grousing. People who like to be contrary had something to say. The elite liberal media saw an opportunity to whine. Then, Democratic conspiracy theorists began to weigh in.
Though not profound, original or new, I realized that every one of these complaints against Reagan was based on emotion. That’s long been the style of the Democrats. Find (even one) example of some highly emotional tragedy and use it to shape government policy. Find 3% of the population with the same problem, and they make a Federal disaster out of it.
The vision the Founders had for this country never enters the liberal mind. It simply finds some special interest and turns it into a national cause. The more heart-wrenching the story, the greater the plea for government involvement. Not once is there a concern for how much of each paycheck must go to Washington, D.C. to fuel their interest. It is the time-tested mode of operation, and they are very consistent with their approach.
Fight for freedom anywhere and they’ll complain, protest, whine and lament the terrible and senseless loss. Diminish their special interest in any way and you get labeled a warmonger, mean-spirited conservative or worse. Often, it gets much, much worse. If your interest isn’t their’s, they go into an emotional tirade laced with all forms of insults. It is their style.
To these people I once again ask a question they have never answered. What percentage of our personal incomes should be paid in taxes of all kinds to be certain that all the causes are addressed?
I continue to study web design rather intently. To facilitate this study, I’ve got a detailed categorization or grouping scheme set up in FeedDemon for the stuff I’ve been reading. Most of it is arranged by product. Then, there are some other groups about writing or technology or faith, etc.
In the last couple of days, some RSS feeds have been moving to a new group. The name of this group is ”The Flaming Liberals.” On Friday such a group didn’t exist in my aggregator. Now, it’s nearly full! Let a famous spokesperson for ”the other side” pass away, and these folks cannot wait to disparage their memory.
They’ll remain in ”flaming liberals” until I decide to delete that group from FeedDemon.
Yesterday and last night were spent working with web servers, domain names, MySql databases, user names, passwords and lots and lots of subdirectories. At midnight last night, none of it worked.
Beginning again very early this morning, I got some help. Now it works and I’m too weary to do what I set out to do in the first place. After all the trial-and-error work, I’ve now got to go back and document everything so that the next time I try to get into this, I’m not faced with similar setbacks from the outset. I have no idea what changes ultimately made the stuff work together.
Were I to have to start from scratch right now, I’d probably go through the whole thing again. What did I learn yesterday? Absolutely nothing.
These are little creatures who simply live among us. They have no idea the damage they do. They have no idea what they are doing. They are the little snotty smart alecs you hoped the teacher would deal with. They haven’t changed, grown or matured since then. They are among the most pitiful in our world today.
Ted Rall exists in the same excremental layer that sustains Michael Moore. Here’s one more tiny example. There are many more.
...there is no level so low that you won’t go there. Oh, you’ll try to mask it and cover your tracks, but you simply won’t pass up the opportunity. It would have been great had this country been able to avoid politicizing the death of a President. We cannot. Remember, if you followed that link, you read what a leader in the Democratic Party believes needed to be said this morning.
How much time will pass before some Democrat implies something conspiratorial in the weekend’s D-Day anniversary, a Republican President’s death, the war on terrorism and the election? Not long, I’m sure. It may have already happened.
The bots I talked about last week are still at it. You can see a (tiny) segment of the activity log which continues to fill up with their attempts to get to me.
HENRY TREWHITT: Mr. President, I want to raise an issue that I think has been lurking out there for two or three weeks, and cast it specifically in national security terms. You already are the oldest President in history, and some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with Mr. Mondale. I recall, yes, that President Kennedy, who had to go for days on end with very little sleep during the Cuba missile crisis. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?
REAGAN: Not at all, Mr. Trewhitt and I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience. If I still have time, I might add, Mr. Trewhitt, I might add that it was Seneca or it was Cicero, I don’t know which, that said if it was not for the elders correcting the mistakes of the young, there would be no state.
TREWHITT: Mr. President, I’d like to head for the fence and try to catch that one before it goes over but – without going to another question…
I wish it was easy for a layperson to find the archives of mainstream media commentary about Ronald Reagan dating to the early 1980’s. Were such things available, we’d find an amazing contradiction between what the liberals have been saying this past twelve hours and what they said then.
It occurs to me that we’re very likely seeing a new floor in the price of oil around $35 to $40 a barrel. Days of $25 a barrel are probably gone. How fast will we ramp our distribution network for diesel fuel? How fast will we jump from SUV’s to hybrid luxury cars?
For those who want to know what a ”classical liberal” is, read the links in this entry. As my good friend Craig Cantoni says, think of us as small ”L” libertarians. Think of the total elimination of certain cabinet-level departments in our federal government. You’ll begin to see the ”revolutionary” reshaping of a government bloated beyond any current Republican resizing proposals!
Interest rates are likely to rise for the balance of 2004 and into 2005. Who will the nation look to for the optimism that Ronald Reagan returned to this nation in 1981?
It takes some reading of history to understand what was intended by the Founders of this nation. What had influenced those men? What had they read? What events in history were on their minds as the Constitution was drafted?
This past week I got a few questions about the labels people like to put on themselves and others. There’s a real danger there. Some simply won’t have it any other way. They’re like the armies of yesteryear. They want to insure they have on their uniform, and they identify enemies by the color of their uniforms.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where enemies don’t raise their hands and say, identify me this way. There are no blue and gray uniforms. There aren’t any red or blue uniforms. In the arena of ideas, enemies and allies are identified by other means. In the war on terrorism we face an enemy that raises cowardice to a new height.
The mass media likes the labels of conservative and liberal. They like to pinpoint Democrats and Republicans. What’s missing is any kind of deliberate study of what our Founders were attempting to put together during the formative stages of this nation.
So, what is a small ”L” libertarian? What is a ”classical liberal?” Most people who fall into either of these classifications are also ”critical thinkers,” a skill that has almost been lost. Instead of carefully thinking through each and every issue or idea using a mental latticework of disciplines, people simply determine which side is espousing something and align or oppose accordingly. In other words, if you’re a Republican and Al Gore says something, then it can’t possibly be right. If you’re a Democrat and Dick Cheney says something, there’s no way you could agree with him.
Our mental models must start allowing for the ”law of unintended consequences.” An example might be found in welfare. If welfare is a product of too many years of paternalistic views of government, and we now have far too many people living off the wealth of a few, then something must be done. However, false starts at dismantling or wrong approaches might lead to a set of consequences unforeseen by the staunch opponents of welfare.
A critical thinker’s mental latticework brings an understanding of multiple disciplines into play. You can learn a lot more about how to build your own mental latticework by reading here.
If you haven’t experimented with Textile, you should. Here’s what I know. You can go to the Textile site and use it to create well-formed markup. You may have to scroll down the page if you’re using IE6, but you’ll find it.
If you use Movable Type, you can use Brad Choate’s plugin which ”equips” your text entry box in Movable Type with Textile’s features. It’s my understanding that Textile or a Textile plugin is standard with WordPress.
It’s also designed into Textpattern in such a way that it can be enabled or disabled. Textpattern is apparently nearing a 1.19 gamma release followed shortly by a Release Candidate 1.0. Somewhere in all of that programming, someone is going to add more features and bug fixes to Textile.
It’s my belief that this software goes further than just about any I’ve seen to insure that a weblog – made up of lots of entries on lots of days from a writer in lots of moods – will validate.
All the talk of politics and web design has prevented mention of three technical matters of some importance:
Wi-Fi Disruptions – I assumed it was something in my work area, but now I learn that Wired is running a story about unexplained interruptions of wi-fi signals that actually appear to be active. Lots of fingers are pointing toward Microsoft, but, naturally, they blame other things.
Clearwire – Craig McCaw is getting a lot of press about an ambitious new venture. For the past eighteen months or so, I’ve wanted to live in a city or town underneath a wi-fi cloud. The fact is that I’d like to see the entire nation under such a cloud, but without government subsidies. I don’t want to pay more in taxes to fund the cloud! Clearwire is apparently aiming for solid wi-fi/WiMax coverage across the country.
A $499 Color Laser Printer – I’m old enough to remember the introduction of the very first laser printers for personal computers. Apple and HP led the way. This week, HP announced a broad new initiative promoting digital color imaging. One piece of this announcement is a $499 printer called the Color LaserJet 2550.
A friend named Joe mutters, ”when we start the Island of Joe, things are going to be different.” Normally, the muttering begins after listening to a radio or TV news broadcast. The ”liberals” get him down, and he thinks of setting sail for the ”new world.”
I’ve often wondered (too seriously for some) where we would go if we began to have the urges that caused the original colonists to abandon Europe for America. Where is the New World? Joe knows we would simply head for the Island of Joe. We haven’t found it on a map.
On the first boat leaving for the island there’s one person in particular that I’d want on board. No one is better at finding the gaps between what the Founders intended for this nation and where we are today. Better still, he can (and is unafraid to) communicate those gaps better than anyone I know. Here’s the latest from Craig Cantoni:
What Is a Moderate Republican?
by Craig J. Cantoni
June 4, 2004
After publishing a four-page article yesterday saying that Republicans are either in denial or power-hungry liars for claiming that they are for limited government and that they have actually limited government, an Arizona Republic editorialist was on the local PBS affiliate last night speaking favorably about ”moderate Republicans.” Can someone please tell me what a ”moderate Republican” is?
I think it is someone who goes along with Democrats regarding increased taxes and spending on education and other social programs, but I’m not sure. If that is the right definition, then I have a follow-up question: Why is that considered moderation?
To me, the term smacks of some kind of Orwellian doublespeak or Politburo propaganda, especially considering the statistics on the growth of government that I cited in my article and which I’ll summarize below. It’s the opposite of moderation. It’s immoderation, or to use a synonym, excessive. It would be akin to calling someone who drinks a fifth of Jack Daniels each night a ”moderate drinker.” Given the facts about taxes and spending, the big spenders should be called ”excessive Republicans” or ”immoderate Republicans” or ”thieving Republicans.” Here are some of the facts:
– Federal spending comes to $20,000 per household. Is that moderation?
– The cost of regulations adds about another $8,000. Is that moderation?
– We are leaving our kids a horrible legacy of debt in the trillions of dollars for our entitlements and other selfish, greedy gorging. Some economists put the total bill for future generations at $40 trillion. If that’s moderation, then robbing piggy banks is moderation.
– Transfer payments, which are a euphemism for citizens taking money from their neighbors, now account for 40% of federal spending, up 20-fold from 1900, when they accounted for 2% of federal spending. Moderation?
– When my grandparents immigrated here in the early 20th century, total government expenditures were about 8% of Gross Domestic Product. Today, they are about 375% higher. Moderation?
– In 1914, the year after the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment and five years before my dad’s birth in the coal mining town where his dad worked in the mines and was able to keep almost all of his money from the tax man, the income tax per capita was $69 in inflation-adjusted dollars. Today, it is over $2,500. Moderation?
– The tax rate on a median family was zero in 1914. Today, it is over 25%. Moderation?
– In 1914, there were four pages of IRS forms. Today, there are over 4,000 pages. Moderation?
– Discretionary non-defense spending will have increased by 30% in President Bush’s first term. Moderation?
– There are now about 22 million federal, state and local public-sector employees, or about 83% more than manufacturing employees. The nation has ”outsourced” millions of wealth-producing jobs from the private sector to the wealth-taking public sector. Moderation?
– Local county and city governments have spent about $1 billion on subsidies to private sports teams and another billion for an expanded convention center and a biotech research center in the face of excess convention capacity and excess biotech investment across the country. In addition, they are proposing $2.3 billion on a light-rail line that will actually increase pollution and have a negligible effect on traffic. That comes to $4.3 billion, which is equivalent to the annual income of about 108,000 families. Moderation?
Help me out here. In view of the foregoing facts, could someone please tell me what the term ”moderate Republican” means and why the mainstream media loves to use it? Thanks in advance for sending your response to the e-mail address below. I may summarize the responses without the names for a future article.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is a moderate author, moderate columnist, moderate small ”L” libertarian and moderate founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He lives with his moderate family in Scottsdale, Arizona, where the summer temperatures are not moderate. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
After about ten months of use, I made a switch from Radio Userland to Movable Type (MT) to write this weblog. Why? Radio was doing some strange things in my installation, and I wasn’t a coder who could prowl in the bowels of the product. I also wanted a style/design that I thought (at the time) was only available with MT.
By October of 2002, I began writing a new (Sekimori-designed) Rodent Regatta. With the May 2004 change in direction at Six Apart and the ”pay-by-the-weblog” approach to licensing, I began a search for other tools.
I thought it might be WordPress (WP). WP may yet win. Then, I began to look intently at Textpattern (Txp) and the hosting service provided by TextDrive. I like Dean Allen’s sense of style, and I like both WP and Txp for their open source PHP and MySQL approach. Why? In the weblog world, those technologies have lots of participants and avenues for enhancements, plugins, hacks, etc.
There’s another piece of this search as well. It’s important. I want a product with enough popular support to cause lots of talented designers (as well as developers) to use it, create templates for it, provide stylesheets for it and to generate a lively set of sites that converse about the product.
What I’m now realizing is that MT, WP and Txp are all at very different stages in their life cycles. WP is moving extremely fast and lots of developers are hacking the (open) source code to create their own content management systems (CMS). By the time these talented people finish with their version of WP, they have a unique tool suited to the way they write and what they want a CMS to do for them.
Work is needed on unifying the documentation and tips for WP. MT wins in that area. Textpattern is still in gamma mode. It appears the ”community” is much smaller, but that’s a completely subjective assessment. I like the direction that I believe it’s headed. The only conflict I have is trying to keep a couple of sites (this one) up and running while learning a new tool. I don’t want RR to be my test platform. I’m beginning to understand that there is some way to have a completely functional test platform/weblog with all of these tools, without making that ”lab” publicly visible. [Note:I’m anxious to accomplish this step!]
I’m also learning that designer assistance – for tags, templates, markup, css and migration help – is somewhat sparce in the Txp world – for now. However, I’m told that as the product moves toward ”release candidate 1.0” status, that will change. Good designers and developers are (likely) to create the equivalent of Blogstyles for Txp, a plugin directory, as well as other tools, hacks and tips.
All of this may have been completely obvious to others, but the stages of these various products along the maturity curve weren’t obvious to me until recently. Getting all of these resources to truly unified and easy-to-use sites for each product (as compared to MT) will take some time. I’m convinced it will happen and WP and Txp will have large enough user communities to insure that the products are functionally equal or superior to MT for the weblog writer.
Insulting Your Intelligence Once Again
by Craig J. Cantoni
June 3, 2004
Is it possible to pick up the newspaper and not have your intelligence insulted? Not today.
The headline on the front page of the local section of today’s Arizona Republic reads: ”State ranks 45th in kids’ well-being.” The accompanying story quotes a study by the left-leaning Annie E. Casey Foundation and quotes the director of the left-leaning Children’s Action Alliance. It did not quote anyone with a different perspective and ideology.
The story cites a high dropout rate, a high teen birth rate, a high child death rate, the percentage of children in poverty and the percentage of children in single-family homes as the primary causes of the state’s low ranking. It also lists the five states with the best ranking (Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Iowa, Utah) and the six states with the worst ranking (Arizona, South Carolina, Alabama, New Mexico, Louisiana, Mississippi). Surprisingly, unlike many previous stories on the subject, today’s story did not imply that the low ranking is due to cheapskate, heartless Republican legislators who don’t want to raise social spending and taxes.
So where was the insult to intelligence?
It was the fact that the story did not mention the role that race plays in the states with high rankings and in the states with low rankings. Because of political correctness, ignorance, laziness, a leftist bias or whatever, race wasn’t mentioned at all. Thus, readers did not get the full story.
Let me fill in the missing piece.
Putting New Jersey aside for a moment, four of the five states with the best rankings are overwhelmingly white, ranging from 89% white in Utah to 96% white in New Hampshire. Four of the six states with low rankings have large black populations, ranging from 25% black in Alabama to 36% black in Mississippi. Two of the states with low rankings, Arizona and New Mexico, have large Hispanic (really Mexican) populations, at 25% for Arizona and 40% for New Mexico, and large Native American populations, at 5% for Arizona and 9% for New Mexico.
At first, New Jersey seems like an anomaly. It ranks in the top five but has a white population of only 69%. But having lived in the Garden State and being honored as ”Community Service Volunteer of the Year” by a major Gannett newspaper there, I know the state very well and understand that it really isn’t an anomaly. First, 5% of the state is Asian, mostly from the subcontinent of India. Second, a significant percentage of its Hispanic population, unlike New Mexico and Arizona, is Puerto Rican and Cuban. Third, the white population consists of a lot of old money, a large professional class and relatively few lower-income transients, unlike New Mexico and Arizona. When people get divorced in other states and look for a place to start a new life, they tend to move to the Southwest and not to New Jersey, where housing is expensive. Such factors also explain why New Jersey ranks near the top in per-capita income.
In other words, both low and high rankings are mostly the products of racial demographics, immigration patterns and socioeconomic legacies. And that, as Paul Harvey says, is the rest of the story.
I simply could not join the Rocky Top Brigade because of loyalties that run very deep elsewhere. This places in me in direct contradiction with a key tenet of their constitution as well as their official religion.
Now there’s the new Memphis Redblogs, ”a collaborative website featuring conservative and libertarian-minded rightwing types in the Memphis area.”
As a classical liberal I’m not sure I fulfill all of their qualifications either. However, it’s good to finally identify some fellow weblog writers in the area.
Are Republicans In Denial
or
Simply Power-hungry Liars?
by Craig J. Cantoni
June 3, 2004
Republicans continue to say that they are the party of limited government and that voting for them will reduce the size and reach of government. At the same time they claim to be winning against the Democrats and the Left.
Republican leaders who say that the Republican Party is winning and is the party of limited government are either in denial about the growth of govenment or are power-hungry liars.
Let’s start by looking at the growth of Leviathan over the last century and then follow with a look at more recent growth.
According to the Heartland Institute and verified by my own research, total government expenditures were 8.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 1900. Today, they hover around 30 percent.
Memo to Republicans: When the score is 30 to 8.2 in your opponent’s favor, you’re not winning.
Republicans say they have won if they succeed in reducing government expenditures by a percentage point or two. But even a reduction to 28 percent of GDP would mean that government expenditures would be 3.4 times higher than 100 years ago.
Memo to Republicans: Unless it’s a game of golf, if your opponent’s score is 3.4 times higher than your score, you are not winning.
More important, like a cancer, the nature of the expenditures has metastasized into something that is insidious and pernicious.
In 1900, almost all government expenditures were for the common good—for those government services like national defense and public infrastructure that benefited all people equally or as equally as practical. Back then, transfer payments were only 2 percent of government spending. Today, they are over 40 percent. Stated differently, there has been a 20-fold increase in transfer payments in 100 years.
Memo to Republicans: When the score is 20 to zero in your opponent’s favor, you’re not winning.
Of course, the words ”transfer payments” are a government and media euphemism for ”theft.” We can have endless debates about the merits of programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, KidsCare, AFDC, school lunches, school loans, farm subsidies, mass transit subsidies, subsidies for professional sports teams (e.g., Bush’s Texas Rangers), and thousands of other thefts, er, income transfers. But make no mistake about it, such programs benefit the recipients of the money much more than society at large and certainly more than non-recipients. For example, there is no doubt that a Medicare enrollee will get a direct, tangible benefit from the Republican prescription drug benefit. However, few if any benefits will accrue to future generations that have to pick up the $7 trillion tab for the Medicare deficit.
It is axiomatic that people on the receiving end of transfer payments tout the general welfare more than those on the paying end. Similarly, politicians who gain political power by redistributing money tout the general welfare more than politicians who don’t gain from redistribution. Some will even go as far as to call themselves ”compassionate conservatives” to win votes with other people’s money.
Compassionate conservatism is expensive. Discretionary non-defense spending has increased under President Bush more than under any president since Lyndon Johnson.
Unfortunately, he has been aided and abetted by the mainstream media, Hollywood and other shapers of the popular culture—all of whom favor the takers of other people’s money over the rightful owners of the money. And, naturally, government schools, which have a state monopoly on K-12 classroom thought, do not teach that transfer payments are synonymous with theft. To the contrary, the schools are used by the government to recruit parents to sign up for transfer payments. Maybe that is what President Bush means by his ”Leave No Child Behind” program. If there were truth in government labeling, the name of the program would be ”Put All Children on the Government Plantation.”
When my grandparents walked off the boat and onto Ellis Island at the beginning of the 20th century, about 60 percent of government spending was at the state and local levels. A century later, federal spending is twice as much as state and local spending combined, costing each household a whopping $20,000 per year. The Founders’ idea of a limited national government has been turned on its head, and with it, the belief of citizens that they can influence the government.
As anyone who has ever worked in a large corporation knows, the more centralized and bureaucratic an organization becomes, the less influence those at the bottom of the organization have and the more out of touch those at the top become. The same holds true for nations.
The other thing that happens is that power shifts to bureaucrats. Low-performing corporations are almost always centralized, hierarchal organizations in which accounting, human resources, legal, government affairs and other administrative departments have more power than sales, engineering and manufacturing. Over time, the culture changes from risk taking to risk aversion and from dynamism to bureaucracy. The same holds true for nations.
There are now almost twice as many public-sector employees at all levels of government as manufacturing employees. Tellingly, the mainstream media engages in hyperbole about 100,000 call center jobs being outsourced to India but is silent about the ”outsourcing” of millions of jobs from the wealth-producing private sector to the wealth-consuming public sector.
Before the income tax was authorized in 1913 with the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, Americans, including my grandparents, could save for retirement and not pay any taxes on the earnings on their savings. None. Zero. Today, it is very difficult to earn enough on one’s retirement savings to beat inflation and taxes.
Both Democrats and Republicans pretend to be munificent by letting taxpayers defer a small portion of their income taxes through such tax code provisions as 401(k) plans. And the government’s bed mate, the mainstream media, including the business press, joins in the pretense. In reality, such provisions are a bonanza to government bureaucrats and hundreds of thousands of tax accountants, tax lawyers, investment advisors, corporate benefits administrators, sellers of record-keeping software, and other professions that feed off the body politic, including trial lawyers who sue employers when they inadvertently violate some arcane regulation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
In 1914, the year after the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, the income tax per capita was $69 in inflation-adjusted dollars, versus over $2,500 today. In 1914, less than one percent of the population had to file a tax return. Today, 45 percent of the population has to file. The number of IRS employees was 4,000 in 1914, versus 110,000 today. In 1914, there were four pages of IRS forms. Today, there are over 4,000 pages. The tax rate on a median family was zero in 1914. Today, it is over 25 percent. (Source: Cato Institute)
Memo to Republicans: When the score is 25 to zero in your opponent’s favor, you’re not winning.
And then there are all of the hidden costs of regulations. To take just one example out of thousands of examples, a little-known federal agency is harassing—yes, harassing—the Swift Transportation Company of Phoenix for being successful. A $2.4 billion company with 16,500 trucks, Swift is the largest long-haul trucking company in the nation.
The harasser is the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which was a Frankenstein monster created in 1999 by the creator of Frankenstein monsters, Congress, ostensibly to make roads safer. Which party controlled Congress in 1999? Hint: It wasn’t the Democrats.
It just so happens that large-truck accident rates have declined by more than half over the past three decades, and companies like Swift already had incentives to reduce accidents, including the prospect of fewer lawsuits and lower premiums for liability, medical and workers’ compensation insurance. Because of the incentives, Swift had only 1.6 fatalities per 100 million miles driven in 2002, but that didn’t stop the FMCSA from harassing the company.
What was Swift’s offense? It didn’t complete the required paperwork to the satisfaction of the bureaucrats at FMCSA.
All bureaucracies grow larger, and FMCSA is no exception. Two years ago its budget was $361 million. This year it requested a 24 percent increase to $447 million, which is equivalent to the annual income of approximately 11,000 families.
Memo to Republicans: Creating new monsters is not a way to achieve limited government and grow the economy.
At its current growth rate, FMCSA may eventually issue enough regulations to rival the current 100,000 pages of Medicare regulations, including the hundreds of pages for the new Republican prescription benefit that will grow to thousands of pages. Medicare regulations have little to do with patient care, just as FMCSA regulations have little to do with highway safety. But the regulations have turned doctor offices into paper factories and a source of income to consultants who help them stay out of trouble and to trial lawyers who want them to get into trouble.
The regulations also increase campaign donations (really protection money) to politicians. And then do-gooders, who can’t connect the dot of the growth of Leviathan with the dot of the growth of campaign contributions, want to solve the problem of money in politics by restricting free speech instead of reducing the size of the regulatory state.
Multiply the dead weight of the FMCSA by a thousand, and you’ll get an idea of how much of the nation’s resources are disappearing into a bureaucratic black hole instead of being invested in productivity improvements and new businesses. Some estimates put the annual cost of regulations at $7,000 per household
Just as sobering is the fact that many of the nation’s best and brightest people, including Republicans, make six-figure incomes from feeding off the regulatory state by being Gucci-clad regulatory experts, consultants and lobbyists. They will not let their regulatory rice bowl be taken without a fight.
So how can Leviathan be stopped? Since all political change begins with a change in mindsets, it can’t be stopped unless there is a change in the public’s mindset about transfer payments. As long as most Americans do not realize it is wrong to feed off of the regulatory state and to take their neighbor’s money for themselves under the guise of the common good, Leviathan will continue growing and politicians will continue finding creative ways of redistributing money, regardless of what the U.S. Constitution says about enumerated powers.
But Republicans can’t change mindsets as long as they tiptoe around this issue for fear of alienating voters, for fear of being called mean-spirited and for fear of becoming a minority party once again. If they are really for limited government and really care for this nation, they have to say over and over again, without equivocation, that transfer payments are a form of stealing and that stealing is not only wrong but will lead to our demise. Calling transfer payments ”compassionate conservatism” plays into the hands of liberals and leftists, who have their own euphemisms, such as ”social justice” and ”fairness.”
A party that speaks in euphemisms can’t be trusted. A party that wins elections but loses the war against Leviathan is a loser. A party that is the lesser of two evils is still evil. And a party that grows Leviathan while preaching limited government is either a liar, in denial or power hungry.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author of a book on bureaucracy, a columnist and the founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
At what point do designers really concentrate on a specialty? Is developing and designing weblogs considered a lower-level activity? Do all designers aspire to be the one to redesign the New York Times site or some other high-profile site?
Is there a happy middle-ground where weblog projects, small business sites and some corporate identity work makes a nice living?
In the wee hours I received two comments to this weblog from Anil Dash who is Vice President of Business Development for Six Apart. Anil was interested in features that I’m looking for that might make me switch from Movable Type. He also responded to my public inquiry about how quiet the company seems to have become.
Here’s how I answered Anil this morning:
Anil:
Thanks very much for your comments. Certainly I would never encourage a business in extremis to act or react with undue haste. Having worked with a number of large corporate crises, I’d avoid suggesting any course of action that might make things worse. Your comment to me gives a much better indication of how you and your coworkers are viewing the situation, its magnitude, your customers and the urgency of the matter.
As for features that make me want to switch, I don’t think of a single competitor’s feature that would prompt a change. Similarly, I can’t think of a single software feature that, if added, would be sufficient to retain me as a customer.
Movable Type – now Six Apart – has had an enviable reputation as customer-oriented. I think it is the handling of changes and communication with customers that makes me look for alternatives. As an outsider to this ”event,” I see many others who have switched for similar reasons.
One lesson learned from years in business is that there are diplomatic ways to ”fire” certain customers or customer segments. Your developer edition, the pricing structure and your announcements concerning the commercial demand for your products and services may be signals that the real growth of Six Apart will be funded not by individuals, but by larger corporate clients. That’s fine; and absent the demands of a support-intensive set of individuals, you may well flourish under the alternative strategy. Clearly, the things you are measuring in your business are telling you what to do and which markets to pursue.
Again, I appreciate your comments and the insight you’ve provided into how you’re approaching the recent changes.
Regards,
Steve
Steve Pilgrim
www.rodentregatta.com
* * UPDATE * * * I’m not completely certain how the skillset differs between one who is considered a ”developer” vs. one who is considered a ”designer.” Someone once said, designers make things look pretty. I think it goes well beyond that. Whatever the case, Six Apart is clearly focusing its effort and energy on a class of customers it calls ”developers.” The market overlap between those who might use LiveJournal or Blogger and those who would use Movable Type or Expression Engine is getting removed.
TypePad is the (recurring revenue) service that Six Apart offers to those who might be considering Blogger or LiveJournal. Movable Type is a tool for developers. You’ll have to be the judge of what skills you must possess to be called a developer!
>From what I’ve seen, the skilled people who are using tools built around PHP and MySQL are clearly developers. Most of the time they know the other elements of L-A-M-P such as Linux and Apache. The hue-and-cry over 6A’s moves has energized WordPress and Textpattern along with others.
At some point, the skills people possess must be marketed. To do that developers must appeal to business people. Business people think in terms of cost, time and what’s-in-it-for-me. If you are capable of saying, ”I can take your two Movable Type sites, change the look slightly, move them to Textpattern (or Expression Engine, WordPress, etc.) and preserve the functionality you now have in those sites,” you have an incredible business proposition to make. If you can also say those things and put a time and cost estimate against it, you’ll stay just as busy as you want to stay!
Craig Cantoni preceded this essay with the following:
The Arizona Republic had the largest circulation drop in the nation of 8.1%, although it serves the second-fastest growing state in the nation. At the same time, hardly a week goes by without someone writing me and saying that although they love the libertarian (really classical liberal) themes of my weekly column (for which I accept no money) and the conservative themes of Bob Robb’s column, they are cancelling their subscriptions in the face of the overwheming number of stories and editorials favoring increases in taxes and government spending. Is there a connection between the two facts? Selfishly, I want circulation to increase and have written articles for other publications and Internet sites detailing the lack of balance in news stories in the establishment press on social, economic and tax issues, in the hope that someone at the paper would notice and respond accordingly. My latest is below. As a consultant to a newspaper that has increased circulation and profits considerably, I understand the demographics facing newspapers, including the fact that young people are not reading newspapers as much as older people, but that makes it even more shortsighted to disenfranchise older readers, many of whom are conservative.
Then, about an hour later, I received the following:
About an hour ago I had sent an e-mail offering my take on the Arizona Republic’s 8% drop in circulation and attaching an article of mine on the formula used by the establishment media to cover taxes and government spending. (The e-mail and article are posted at the end of this.)
Since then, I have picked up the Arizona Republic and read the front-page story on cities renewing pay raises. The theme of the piece is that city workers have had to endure cuts in their cost-of-living (COLA) increases this fiscal year, the poor dears. The story proves my earlier point as follows:
First, the 40 column-inch story only quoted city employees, city managers and a union representative. It quoted no one with an opposing view, no taxpayers who are fed up with high taxes, and no local compensation consultants (The head of my compensation consulting affiliate and I have over 50 combined years of experience in setting pay rates and designing pay plans). I had said in my earlier e-mail and article that the formula followed by the establishment press, including the Republic, is to quote tax takers (government employees and other recipients of taxes) much more than taxpayers, who are often not quoted at all.
Second, the story implied that city employees have suffered without pay increases, yet the accompanying table says the opposite. For example, according to the table, Tempe employees received a 3.5% COLA increase and 5% ”other” increase in the 2002-2003 fiscal year. Then, when increases were cut back the next fiscal year, they received no COLA increases and 1 to 5% ”other” increases. I don’t have any clients that increased wages by 8% last year. Moreover, planned increases by my clients for this year range from 1 to 5% and none of the increases will be COLA increases. In fact, a new client, a bank president, wants a new pay plan and said that he doesn’t want cost-of-living increases and will not grant merit increases unless both the employee and the bank perform well. In other words, what is a standard pay practice in industry is seen as draconian by city employees and their cheerleaders in the press.
Third, the article did not mention that the budgets of most cities have increased faster than inflation and population growth over the last decade. Nor did it compare the pay and benefits of government employees with private-sector employees. Coincidentally, I published an article yesterday on this subject. It is pasted below. At the end of the article I’ve pasted the e-mail and article that I sent out about an hour ago.
What the hell are they teaching in journalism school?
Journey From Naivet and Apathy to Taxpayer Rage
by Craig J. Cantoni
May 31, 2004
My father-in-law recently assisted me in my lifelong journey from the naivete and apathy of my youth about government spending to my taxpayer rage of today.
Having once performed community service on the board of the housing authority in his small hometown in rural Pennsylvania, he recently sent me the pay scales of the full-time staff of the authority, knowing that I have 30 years of experience in evaluating the worth of jobs and establishing pay rates and benefit levels in the private sector. He also knows that I have written columns about how recipients of government housing assistance rip off the system, and he shares my concern over high taxes and unbridled government spending.
It is no surprise that housing authority employees gorge themselves at the public trough as much as government employees from other agencies. But there is nothing like seeing the disgusting feeding frenzy firsthand in one small corner of Leviathan to understand why the government is obese, likely to get even fatter and unlikely to ever go on a diet, regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats are in office.
It’s bad enough that the recipients of public housing often live in housing that is nicer than the housing of taxpayers, as I saw when my father-in-law gave me a tour of the new public housing in his hometown. But it is rubbing salt in the wound to see that housing authority executives and employees get better pay and benefits than taxpayers. And it is like sticking a blunt needle in the wound to see housing authority executives, both Democrats and Republicans, come to my hometown of Scottsdale from colder climes for taxpayer-paid junkets, er, housing conferences, during the winter.
Please excuse my screaming. It comes from the realization that there is so much vested interest on both sides of the political aisle in maintaining the status quo of so many rice bowls that there is no hope of reforming the system or reducing the per-household cost of government from the current $24,000—especially with the establishment media changing its role decades ago from government watchdog to government lapdog.
I could find no expose or critical news story of housing authority pay and benefits in the first 10 pages of a Google search on the subject. Clearly, the establishment media is sleeping soundly in its master’s lap as Pulitzer Prize-winning material about government waste goes unreported. Tellingly, the media wolf pack wakes up and howls and growls over corporate fraud and obscene CEO pay, which is a tiny morsel in a huge doggy dish in comparison to government fraud and obscenities, especially the Ponzi schemes of Social Security and Medicare and the nonexistent Social Security trust fund. The pathetic pooch-like press is like a dog that salivates over a dog biscuit while ignoring a two-pound porterhouse steak.
Other important distinctions between corporate and governmental theft escape canine-brained reporters. For example, shareholders were not coerced to buy Enron stock, but taxpayers are coerced to hand over 15% of their pay in FICA taxes. Worse, thanks to a form of child abuse at the hands of the government, today’s retirees are sending much of their entitlement bill to today’s children.
It doesn’t take much research to determine the depth of the housing trough. For example, the starting pay for a maintenance laborer in the Dayton Housing Authority is $13.32 an hour. Munch, munch.
What are the qualifications of a maintenance laborer? A high school degree or GED, and the ability ”to read and comprehend simple instructions,” as well as the ability to ”add, subtract, multiply and divide.” Granted, that leaves out many graduates of government schools, but my wife, who is a human resources executive for a national apartment company, says the housing pay is about 40% higher than private-sector pay for comparable work. Belch!
Benefits are even richer. Unlike the private-sector, most housing authorities have pension plans instead of 401(k) plans, fully paid medical insurance, 13 paid holidays, 22 days of vacation after 20 years, and the ability to accrue 12 sick days a year and then to cash in the unused days.
I’ll need a sick day after writing this.
Of course, the richer pay and benefits are warranted, given that government employees work harder than private-sector employees. Just kidding. The real reason for the higher pay and benefits are statutes requiring prevailing union rates. It’s not a coincidence that union membership has plummeted in the private sector, where competition prevails, and skyrocketed in the public sector, where competition is nonexistent.
Now that you know why I’m in a rage over taxes and government spending, maybe you can tell me why most Americans remain naive and apathetic.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
Dean Allen is the author/programmer behind Textpattern. The first release candidate for Textpattern is not yet out. The software is in ”gamma” mode. There is enough known about Textpattern to note several key attributes:
it’s a writer’s tool
it’s based on PHP and MySQL
it’s a rich environment for creating standards-compliant sites
Textpattern’s support forums have several calls for help moving from other tools
These things make it pretty clear that the right designer could hang out a shingle offering migration and design assistance and probably be (profitably) busy for many months.
This isn’t about merely being a ”good” designer. It’s about having very specific skills. It’s not enough to graduate from law school if you’re planning to specialize in asbestos litigation. The same is true here. Knowing XHTML and CSS isn’t sufficient; nor is knowing Movable Type tags.
In this particular case, knowing how to move all of the functionality, look, feel, style and data from a Movable Type weblog to a comparable Textpattern weblog is the challenge. Once someone proves they know how to do this, they’ll write their own ticket. The business of web design gets specialized under these rules, and specialists always make more!
>From that point, they can ”name their price.” All they’ll have to do is quote dependable target dates and be willing to communicate with rookies. If someone is ambitious, it could be an outstanding opportunity.
Maybe I’m naive about what’s important to designers. Maybe this opportunity is like asking Michelangelo, ”what will you charge to paint my bathroom?” I don’t think so.
The fact is I have two MT weblogs I’d like to move to Textpattern. I’d like to make some design changes. I’d like to set up one or two ”private” test or learning weblogs, so that I can learn Textpattern, PHP, MySQL, how the designer was able to move my old weblogs, where the tags go, etc. In other words, I want to keep writing what I write, but I want a place to learn how to do things with the tools. I’m not inclined to ”experiment” with my live sites.
There’s gold in them hills – for the right person!
Is it my imagination or has the team from Six Apart become amazingly silent since announcing that they were going to further revise their licensing plans?
Is there some ”insider” communication vehicle or are things really as quiet as they seem?
I’m a pantywaist, a liberal, a pacifist and an appeaser. And I hate soldiers, cops, firefighters and anyone else in a uniform.
Not really. But that’s what Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and other ”conservative” talk-radio blowhards would say about me. Why? Because I believe that the Iraq war is a mistake and will make us less secure. And I don’t believe that anyone who wears a uniform is automatically a hero and deserving of adulation.
In reality, I’m a former artillery captain who still has an artist’s rendition hanging on his office wall of a forward observer sitting in a mud hole, surrounded by hordes of Red Chinese, with binoculars around his neck and a map in front of him. The caption reads, ”The Greatest Killer on the Battlefield.”
As the drawing suggests, I have no problem incinerating people and nations if they are a threat to my family, my neighbors or the nation, and if doing so will eliminate the threat and make us safer. Nor do I have a problem with preemption and telling France and the United Nations to put croissants up their nose, if doing so will make us safer.
I strongly dislike Jane Fonda, Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy, and would like to put croissants up their nose. At the same time, I strongly disagree with the foreign policy of Paul Wolfowitz and other neocons, and would like to put croissants up their nose. Because I disagree with the latter, it doesn’t follow, ipso facto, that I like the former, as talk-radio blowhards would have their listeners believe. And because I find it painful to listen to President Bush’s speeches and follow his thinking, it doesn’t mean that I believe that John Kerry is presidential material or that I’m an unpatriotic liberal.
The fact is, I was in the Army Reserves for eight years after active duty and saw firsthand that some reservists had joined for the extra money, some for macho reasons, some because they worked for the government in civilian life and could get plenty of time off for summer camps and special training, some because they craved authority that they couldn’t get in their civilian jobs, and some for patriotic reasons. Some were malingerers, some were incompetent, some were disadvantaged with few other options in life, and some were dedicated professionals.
I also realize that firefighters and police officers have a wide range of motives for choosing their profession. Some police officers want to help society, some want a nice uniform and retirement, some are thugs, and some get an undeserved bad rap, as I believe was the case in the Rodney King affair. Some firefighters risk their lives to save others; some start fires for the thrill of it, as was the case recently in Phoenix; and some, as in my hometown, gorge themselves at the public trough with union featherbedding and rich pensions.
Putting on a police or firefighter uniform doesn’t change human nature, instantly transforming the wearer into a hero, as the Right believes, or into a villain, as the Left believes.
Moreover, it is counter to the facts to believe that policing and firefighting are any more dangerous than other lines of work. For example, the fatality rate for law enforcement officers is about the same as roofers. In 2003, 148 officers were killed while on duty, with over half of those the result of auto accidents or other on-the-job accidents. Much more dangerous occupations include taxi drivers and convenience store clerks.
To me, an unsung hero is the Indian immigrant who toils long hours in his inner-city convenience store without knowing if his next customer will blow his head off. He has no medical plan, no pension, no uniform, no special status in society, and no firearm or training in how to use one. Nor does his family get a fancy funeral, public adulation and death benefits if he his killed ”in the line of duty.” However, he does get called a ”dot” and overhears other snide remarks about his appearance and accent from other racial minorities. But don’t look for coverage of this racism by establishment reporters, who want the public to believe that only white Anglo-Saxons can be racist.
Don’t get me wrong. I applaud when a police officer or firefighter does something that is worthy of applause. For example, four firefighters in my hometown recently saved the life of a boy by lifting a car off of him. It doesn’t matter if civilian passersby would have done the same thing. The guys are deserving of public praise.
I also defend the police when they warrant it. For example, when I was shopping in a liberal enclave in the New York metropolitan area during the Rodney King affair and overheard some customers parroting the one-sided coverage on the local news, I interrupted and said, ”It’s too bad that you automatically conclude that the police are at fault and that there can’t be another side to this.” They looked at me as if I were a jackbooted Nazi.
The point is, talk-radio blowhards engage in black-and-white thinking like the liberals they criticize. To them, you’re either for something or against something. There is no gray in their world, no nuances. Just like the Left, everything is a litmus test. According to the Right, if you’re against the Iraq war, you fail the litmus test of patriotism. According to the Left, if you’re against socialized medicine or another collectivist scheme, you fail the litmus test of compassion.
Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy have three other traits in common. First, they live in an echo chamber, only hearing their one-sided beliefs repeated over and over again and not letting new ideas inside. Like being in a closed garage with a car engine running, they breathe their own exhaust and exhibit all the signs of being poisoned by intellectual carbon monoxide. For Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, they like to hear themselves talk and shut down callers who disagree with them. For Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy, they live in the cocoon of the East Coast liberal establishment and think that the New York Times is a balanced newspaper.
The second thing they have in common is a love of government power. Both sides want to use government power to remake the world into their image.
And the last thing they have in common is this: The contemporary liberalism of Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton, and the contemporary conservatism of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, are at odds with the classical liberalism of George Washington, who, if alive today, would be opposed to the collectivism of the Left and the foreign escapades of the Right.
But, as we know, Washington was a non-compassionate pantywaist.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author and columnist. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
Yesterday, Jay Allen tailored my MT-Blacklist file. It was a remarkable set of changes and I encourage anyone using MT-Blacklist to implement the blacklist.txt file that he altered for me.
At roughly noon yesterday two different bots(?) have been attempting to post comments here every twenty seconds. They try one second apart from one another. So, every twenty seconds, I get an attempt by one of them. Then, one second later, the other one tries.
My Movable Type Activity Log is an amazing thing right now. It’s catching every attempt by these morons. I’m assuming that the column in the Activity Log that shows IP address is showing the IP address of the offender. Both of the bots are using the same IP address. At the risk of giving these filthy thieves anything resembling what they want, I’m going to disclose (with some encryption) the two domains that appear to be behind this.
If any of you are able to do anything with this stuff, here’s the scoop:
Platitudes and Maxims About the Public Good
by Craig J. Cantoni
May 23, 2004
Have you ever noticed that those who spout platitudes about the public good tend to be the people who benefit the most from the so-called public good?
Take seniors who say that there is a public good to them getting free medicine from the government, so that they don’t have to eat cat food and live in a cardboard box under a bridge, or whatever exaggerated claims they make. There is no doubt that the seniors receive a good, but it comes at the expense of future generations that will be picking up the tab. As is often the case, the public good for one person is a public bad for another.
This leads to the following maxim:
Those on the receiving end of a public good like the public good more than those on the paying end.
Another example is the claim that there is a public good to using public money to build sports stadiums for privately owned sports franchises, because the franchises are good for the local economy. There is no doubt that an economic good accrues to team owners, players, sports fans, newspapers that cover sports, and the owners of bars and restaurants near stadiums. But if any good accrues to non-fans and taxpayers at large, it is far smaller than the good that accrues to those who receive a direct benefit.
This observation leads to the second maxim:
When the recipients of a public good are allowed to define what is a public good, there are no limits to what can be called a public good and what can be taken from the public treasury in the name of the public good.
The first two maxims seem so obvious that one has to wonder why they are not obvious to the average American. The answer is another maxim:
Socialism results in socialized thinking.
The best example of this is public education, which has been around for so long that few people question why compulsory education has to be delivered by government schools or why it is a good idea in a free, pluralistic society for the government to have a monopoly on k-12 classroom thought. If someone has the temerity to raise such questions, he either gets platitudes about the public good in return, or worse, looks that say, ”What kind of question is that, you right-wing extremist dumb ass?”
If you doubt me, try this experiment: Ask public school parents if it is fair for religious school parents to pay double for 12 years of education in order to exercise their constitutional and natural right of religious freedom. Typically, like dogs responding to a doggy biscuit, the Pavlovian response will be thoughtless, repetitious barking about the public good. ”Bow-wow, public good, ruff-ruff, public good, wag-wag, public good, sniff-sniff, public good!”
Sometimes the response is different. For example, I once posed the same question to a leftist dean of education at a forum on school vouchers and tax credits. He responded that I was mean-spirited and selfish for asking the question. In his twisted Bolshevik brain, I was mean-spirited and selfish for asking the question, but public school parents are not mean-spirited and selfish for taking money from religious school parents, who, unlike public school parents, get mostly platitudes about the public good in return for their school taxes.
This leads to a fourth maxim:
Those who have been indoctrinated by the government don’t know that they’ve been indoctrinated.
As proof of this maxim, it is rare to find an American who understands that government schools engage in a form of indoctrination, although it is obvious to an outsider that unionized teachers on the government payroll favor collectivism over individualism, because they have a built-in bias for the collectivism of unions, the government and public education.
It’s no accident that students are not taught economics in government schools, for that might lead them to question the economic hokum put out by the regulatory/nanny state and its allies in the National Education Association and mainstream media. It’s no accident that they are not taught that the NEA is one of the most powerful lobbies in the nation, for that might lead them to be suspicious of the NEA’s constant clamoring for more money. It’s no accident that students are not taught about the dark side of socialized medicine, for that might lead them to question why government schools conduct enrollment drives to get parents to sign up for free government health care. And it’s no accident that they are not taught that the stated purpose of public education at its beginning in the mid-nineteenth century was to indoctrinate southern European immigrants and Catholics in the thinking of White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestants, including the St. James Bible, for that might lead students to wonder if some form of indoctrination is continuing today.
Granted, indoctrination in religious dogma takes place in religious schools, but there is one important distinction between that indoctrination and the indoctrination that takes place in public schools. If parents don’t like religious dogma and don’t send their kids to a religious school, they are not forced to pay tuition to a religious school. But if parents don’t like the secular humanism taught in public schools and don’t send their kids to a public school, they are forced to pay public school taxes.
Which leads to the last maxim:
When the public good is based on taking money by force from some people and giving it to other people, it is not good.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
The following 392-word article contains previously unpublished information showing just how bloated public education is. It was published by the Arizona Republic on May 26 as a weekly point-counterpoint with a public school teacher. Craig Cantoni and the teacher are debating whether the pay package for the new Scottsdale school superintendent is too high.
More Bang for the Buck in the Phoenix Diocese
by Craig J. Cantoni
The new Scottsdale school superintendent, John Baracy, has the potential to earn just shy of $200,000 under his contract with the district. Is that too much?
This may surprise my face-off friend to my right, but I can’t say that it is too much. I also can’t say that it’s too little or just right, although I have 25 years of experience evaluating jobs and setting executive compensation.
Why can’t I say whether Baracy is paid appropriately?
Because there is not a free market for public school superintendents, due to the government controlling 90 percent of K-12 education. It’s like asking if Politburo members in the former Soviet Union were paid appropriately, or for that matter, if members of the U.S. Congress are paid appropriately.
When superintendent pay is set through a political process instead of a market process, it is subject to the fevers of the day and to political manipulation. The same holds true for teacher pay and per-pupil spending.
Although in economic terms the near-monopoly of public education has ”crowded out” a private market, a remnant of competition can still be found in Catholic schools. The Phoenix diocese has 14,600 students, 28 elementary schools, six high schools and 20 preschools. Yet the diocese superintendent, Mary Beth Mueller, doesn’t even earn half of what Baracy earns.
One of the reasons she doesn’t earn half is that she has not built an empire. Her staff consists of two assistant superintendents and two administrative assistants. To compare, there are over 100 people on the central office staff of the Scottsdale district, which has about twice as many students but fewer schools.
Unlike the Scottsdale superintendent, Mueller doesn’t get paid for propagandizing about declining enrollment and money. The Scottsdale district calls it ”community relations,” but that is a euphemism. Few Catholic parents even know that Mueller exists, and judging by the paucity of coverage in the local media about the efficiency and effectiveness of parochial schools, neither do reporters.
Mueller just does her job quietly and competently without fanfare or controversy. Meanwhile, the Scottsdale superintendent ”earns” over twice as much, has a huge staff to help him and gets plenty of publicity.
I don’t know if Baracy is paid appropriately, but I do know that parochial school parents are getting more bang for the buck than Scottsdale district taxpayers.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, public speaker and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
I was a Macintosh user during the early 1990’s. ”Is there something equivalent to that for the Macintosh?” was a frequent question after seeing a piece of software running on the Microsoft platform.
Studying the steps required to migrate to a new weblog tool I find that same question coming up again. Others come up as well. Is there a comparable plugin? Will that script work? Is there any way to make this template work?
Experienced designers of XHTML and CSS sites are continuing to make the switch from Movable Type to WordPress. Om Malik has made the switch according to Matt.
It’s obvious to me from the experiments I’ve done thus far that I don’t have the know-how to move my existing sites to any new tool. The design portion of that work, which entails properly modifying XHTML markup, CSS stylesheets and the tags within the weblog templates, requires skills I don’t yet possess. To change a site without that knowledge will essentially cripple it during the trial-and-error of the move.
Being fair to everyone, Movable Type still has stronger documentation than any of the other tools I’ve considered. Properly placing a Movable Type tag within the appropriate XHTML markup and CSS styling remains a challenge in spite of hours in the doc.
...to think I could add anything to anything that James Lileks writes. Today’s reminder brings to mind the complete selflessness of the World War II veterans with this statement:
Men like my father wouldn’t be comfortable with a daily parade of thanks, anyway; like many heroes, he didn’t take every opportunity to remind us what he’d done, nor did he want to be viewed exclusively through that prism.
James Lileks
Memorial Day, 2004
I’ve known many WWII veterans. Seldom have I heard them talk about rank. Seldom have I heard them criticize fellow officers or enlisted people.
My two favorite veterans have gone home to be with the Lord. One of them was my best friend, and he died in 1982. Things haven’t been the same since that day.
For the last few days I’ve been hit very hard by comment-spam. I’m considering my options at this point.
Jay Allen has provided a couple of different insights into how to maintain your blacklist and why IP banning is not effective in fighting spam.
Options at this point include changing weblog tools in hopes that another tool will not be as hard-hit as Movable Type. There’s the possibility that MT 3.0 is more secure from comment-spam with TypeKey. I don’t know that, but I assume it’s an improvement. I could turn comments off completely for this weblog, but I’ve learned far too much from people who read and contribute.
* * UPDATE * * * To his everlasting credit Jay Allen has tailored my MT-Blacklist file. It’s optimized, streamlined and much more restrictive. For any of you who want to replace your file, here’s mine. To those of you accustomed to commenting, you should be aware that we may get some false positives. You’ve got some other ways to reach me, so let me know if it’s too tight.
Rewriting the Media’s Formula On Taxes
by Craig J. Cantoni
May 28, 2004
The media’s formula for covering tax and spending issues is as unintelligent, unoriginal and unimaginative as teenage girls who copy the latest fashion trend from Britney Spears.
The standard formula is to quote individuals and special interests on the receiving end of taxes instead of taxpayers on the paying end, thus leaving the impression that there is overwhelming support for higher taxes.
To illustrate…
...an article last year in the Arizona Republic about a state budget deficit quoted 12 people who were either public-sector employees or on some government program. All 12 were in favor of higher taxes instead of spending cuts. No self-interest there. Not one person with the opposite view was quoted. No biased reporting there.
Worse, the story made no attempt to put taxes and spending in context. Like virtually every story on the subject, it was silent about the tax burden of average families and how much the burden has increased over the generations. The reporters were either ignorant, lazy, had an agenda or were sheep-like followers of the journalism herd.
In case they miss the point, none of the foregoing explanations is a compliment—not that it matters to reporters and their editors. Even after their unbalanced reporting has been exposed, and even with the establishment media losing market share, they continue writing articles solely from the perspective of tax takers. ”Hey, it’s the formula, stupid!” is their refrain, and ”Hey, the New York Times does it!” is their excuse.
What would a different formula look like? The following fictitious article shows how a story on taxes might be written to reflect the views of taxpayers.
Taxpayers fed up with state spending
by Bill Balance
The possibility of higher taxes for education and day care has many taxpayers upset.
”Federal spending alone costs the average Arizona family $20,000 per year,” said Steve Sanchez, the owner of a landscape company in Gilbert. ”With state and local spending thrown in, I’m working four months of the year for the government.”
Joan O’Brien of Scottsdale had similar sentiments. ”I’m fed up with the public education establishment repeating the canard that Arizona ranks low in per-pupil spending. The fact is, we rank near the middle, and the average household pays about $190,000 in public education taxes over the lifetimes of the heads of the household.”
”Half of my income already goes to the government,” lamented Craig Cantoni of Scottsdale, ”and the majority of that goes to other people and special-interest groups in the form of entitlements and subsidies. The Democrats talk about fairness, but they refuse to say how much more my wife and I should pay to achieve their utopian view of fairness.” Cantoni went on to describe how his poor immigrant grandparents could afford to send their kids to parochial school, because tax rates in the early 20th century were only about a third of today’s rates.
Melody Carter, a state employee and single mother of four toddlers, had a different opinion. ”How do they expect me to make ends meet on my lousy salary without state assistance for day care?” She refused to explain what happened to the father of her children, why she keeps having children she can’t afford, and why she thinks that she is entitled to other people’s money. ”My personal life is nobody’s business,” she said angrily as she stormed off.
State Representative Robin Wright, a Democrat, was asked if she thought it was fair for a family to pay half of their income in taxes. ”What a mean-spirited, selfish question,” responded Wright. ”People should be happy to help the poor. It’s the compassionate thing to do.” Wright refused to say how much she pays in taxes and how much she gives to charitable causes.
Republican State Representative Susan Poole laughed when she was told about Wright’s comment. ”Typical redistributionist. Yes, people have a moral responsibility to help the less fortunate, but Wright fails to understand that people don’t have a right to other people’s money. Besides, forced compassion is not compassion. That’s why private charity is best for the giver, the receiver and society as a whole.”
Todd Talbot, the director of the Copper State Tax Research Foundation, called the compassion issue a ”red herring,” explaining that over half of Arizonans now get more back in entitlements and government services than they pay in taxes. ”Unless you’re a socialist, you can’t tell me that over half of the population is poor and deserving of other people’s money,” said Talbot.
Talbot believes that the nation has reached the ”tax-tipping point,” which is the point where ”the majority of voters begin to beggar the minority of voters.” His final comment was sobering: ”The fatal flaw of the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights is that there is nothing in the law to stop the majority from taking all of the minority’s money.”
Judging by the angry reaction to the latest tax proposals, many Arizonans seem to agree with Talbot.
***
Is the preceding fictional piece biased? Perhaps, but less so than the formulaic reporting of the establishment media. Would news stories similar to the fictional piece change public opinion about taxes and spending? Yes, and that’s why the establishment media won’t change the formula.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
Until you can take a blank page in Notepad and enter the proper DOCTYPE declaration (preferably from memory)followed by everything it takes to produce an XHTML page that validates, you’ll never style your own weblog.
Until you can take a blank page in Notepad and enter all of the rules associated with a style sheet (CSS) that validates, you’ll never style your own weblog.
Until you can identify precisely where each and every tag from your weblog tool of choice belongs within the XHTML template (and styled by the CSS), you’ll never style your own weblog.
In short, unless you’re a designer or you’re willing to ”settle” for one of the standard templates that comes with your weblog software, you’ll not style your own weblog to suit your wishes.
Textpattern doesn’t come with a ”styled” template that’s ready for public consumption in version g1.18
Perhaps there are designers for hire in the Textpattern world.
It’s a shame to start a Saturday so early and be frustrated mere hours later. I woke up at 6:00 a.m. with an eye toward installing Textpattern and learning a bit about the interface. I attempted to follow the instructions carefully. Now, when prompted for a login and password, I log in and I’m taken to the main entry screen. In Textpattern it’s a tab called ’write.’
Any link or button I press on that screen takes me back to the login screen. I haven’t been able to figure out what the cause is. I had such high hopes for my ability to become more self-supporting with Textpattern than I have been with either Movable Type or WordPress. Seems as though the common denominator is ”ignorant user.”
All I really want to do is get my two sites moved to a CMS tool without major disruption. I’d like to have test versions of each so that I can tamper with the layout without experimenting on the live sites.
I’ve spent thousands of dollars buying XHTML courseware, design services, software licenses and reference books. Once trapped with a given tool that works and a given design that is working, I guess you are there to stay until you’re prepared to spend more money getting things changed by someone ”in the know.”
No way to start a long weekend. This stuff shouldn’t be this hard.
In short order I got some really solid answers to my questions about Textpattern’s handling of comment-spam. There’s quite a host of features focused on managing comments. Good news with more to follow tomorrow.
Last night and again tonight I’ve returned to my computer to find dozens of comment-spam messages. Tonight’s messages were of the most despicable, foul and filthy kind. Only someone with absolutely no purpose in life could do this sort of thing. I don’t care whether they are Nigerian, Chinese, Iranian, American or some other nationality. They are the lowest form of being. They are the lowest common denominator in the world of filth. They are the reason censorship is justified.
I wish MT-Blacklist could proactively catch this junk. Rather, it will only now prevent comment-spam from these particular fools acting under these particular identities. Nothing stops them from selecting new IP addresses and new domain names to assault the Internet. Woe be unto the first one of these maggots that I meet face-to-face.
Know this. Before I continue to provide a forum for these deviates to deface, I’ll turn off comments and trackbacks completely. They are cowards with no sense of worth whatsoever. They’ll not take what is mine!
I’ve banned their IP addresses and made sure they are now in the blacklist. Their comments have been deleted. As I plan the migration to Textpattern, I’m going to find out exactly how that tool deals with comment spam. More when I know it.
Two high profile design sites have been redesigned. Catch a glimpse of what’s getting said at redemption through standards.
What’s interesting about all of this is how seldom there is any universal agreement about what is good and what is bad in design. Once the subjective matters are on the table, everybody’s got an opinion.
In Tables vs. CSS: A Fight to the Death over at Sitepoint, Sergio Villarreal has written a nice comparison of two approaches to the design of a fictional site. [thanks to Richard Erickson of MovableBLOG::Asides for the link]
Here’s an entry to Wikipedia about TextDrive. While I’m looking forward to learning from my experience with Textpattern and TextDrive, I’ve got so say that this approach to raising a little startup fund can teach anyone in small business a lesson or two. By providing those he needs the most – customers – a value that they are not likely to find anywhere else, this owner was able to attract pre-payments for his services.
There are no bank convenants. There are no liens on the business. There are no outside investors looking over his shoulder. All he must do is what he wanted to do anyway – serve customers with a service he and they cannot find elsewhere.
To better learn CSS, web standards, accessibility, semantics, XHTML, validation…
To set up several additional sites that I’ve been contemplating…
To learn to do some design work…
To have a test platform for all of the above…
To consider a set of tools and methods for switching my existing sites to new tools…
To have a tighter contact with people who are as interested in writing as they are programming computers…
...and because there has been near total silence about the Movable Type licensing changes since May 21, 2004...
...I’ve made a decision to set up multiple Textpattern sites and have WordPress as a second tool that I’ll learn and use. Work will begin next week. Progress will be slow initially, but it will accelerate. If you’re at all confused about any of this, I point you to my About page.
Some people hate our President so much that they’d rather see us fighting terrorism on the streets of San Francisco, Miami and Kansas City than to acknowledge the slightest small improvement in Iraq. They truly believe that what America is doing to free Iraq is worse than anything that Sadam Hussein did.
These people seem to give no thought whatsoever to the measures that are required to defend a nation. Their next leap, when the next attack on America comes, will be to claim we bring it on ourselves. I have shrinking tolerance for even polite discourse with someone who can make the leaps in logic that these people make.
Do they truly believe that everyone or even a majority of the American people believe as they do? Have they ever explored the beliefs of someone outside their specific circle of cronies and like-minders? Can they participate in a civil discussion without becoming shrill, whiney and ultra-emotional?
Could they or would they ever consider the possibility that their views are wrong? It’s not about whether they are entitled to hold views. The issue is whether or not their views are based upon facts. Can they cite facts that show how their approach to terrorism would be superior to the one this country has taken?
>From where do they collect facts? Who influences their opinions? Do they think or merely emote? Are they concerned or simply trying to be heard? Are they more comfortable speaking with a group of young soldiers or members of the media? Do they wish they were ”the media?”
Have they ever once stopped to consider how they came to possess the freedoms that allow them to speak out so negatively about others who are working just as hard to preserve their nation and its rights and privileges? Would they know a patriot if they saw one?
I just don’t know how to thank you for the front-page story today singing the glories of the new state budget and increased funding for education and kindergarten. I think it’s great that the single moms quoted in your story will be getting more money. And thank God we no longer ask them penetrating questions about their personal circumstances. I mean, who are we to pass judgment on them just because they want our money? If they say they need my money, they need my money, no questions asked. After all, it takes a village, a village newspaper, village reporters and the village treasury to raise a family.
And thank goodness you didn’t call me or anyone like me for a pithy quote.
I might have said something about the average Arizona household already paying $190,000 in k-12 public education taxes over the adult lives of the heads of the household. Since the average household has two kids, that comes to $95,000 per kid, even when using the new math taught in government schools. Such a statement would have rained on your chirpy piece and upset your bedmate, the NEA. Or I might have said that I will spend an additional $65,000 to exercise my constitutional and natural right of religious freedom to send my kid to Catholic school. That comes to $255,000 for 12 years of education. What a deal! Am I a compassionate classical liberal, or what?
Worse, I might said that my wife and I already fork over half of our income to the government and then asked how much more you and your single moms think it would be fair for us to pay in taxes. Egad! That would have been mean-spirited and selfish, just like those troglodyte Republican legislators that your employer makes fun of all the time for sticking up for taxpayers instead of tax takers. Grr, I get angry just thinking about those meanies.
By the way, do you know the Italian, Spanish, French and German words for ”stinky unbalanced reporting”?
Regards,
Craig J. Cantoni
Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT)
The state is that great fiction by which everyone
tries to live at the expense of everyone else.
Lost in the President’s message last night is the distinction between ”spreading America” and spreading freedom. He was clear about the difference between these two as they relate to Iraq.
”That nation is moving every week toward free elections and a permanent place among free nations. Like every nation that has made the journey to democracy, Iraqis will raise up a government that reflects their own culture and values. I sent American troops to Iraq to defend our security, not to stay as an occupying power. I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American. Iraqis will write their own history, and find their own way. As they do, Iraqis can be certain, a free Iraq will always have a friend in the United States of America.” (Applause.)
Textpattern and WordPress are weblog tools based on MySQL and PHP. You might have read some of Shelley Powers’s articles from the LAMP series. LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. The use of Linux and Apache on web servers is well-established. Clearly, this is the open-source approach to web-oriented development. Just as clearly, there will always be a religious debate about Microsoft’s alternatives to these four components.
Now, as weblog tools become capable content management systems (CMS), it is clear that this LAMP architecture is, and will continue to be, a significant enabler of future web services and web-based applications. No matter how effectively Microsoft competes, open-source advocates will keep these technologies alive. Some believe they will thrive.
Outstanding hosting, built around LAMP and optimized for LAMP-oriented content management systems, is not really common. It’s easy for novice users to get baffled by the various control panels, terminologies and specifications in the hosting world. If a change occurs at the host and the change isn’t communicated, your next visit to your host will present surprises. The key word in all of this is ”outstanding.” Outstanding providers of products and services are simply rare.
I’ve used only two or three hosts. My current host is Hosting Matters, but I originally signed up for Bloggerzone, which was later folded into Hosting Matters. I like the tools they provide and the help I’ve been able to get. I’ve recommended HM to others.
As of this morning, Dean Allen’s TextDrive service still has spots open on the VC200 list. Dean talked to some venture capitalists about raising money to start a host for Textpattern. Instead of taking that route, he decided to make an offer to charter customers. For $199 you get a rich set of hosting features for life. By signing up approximately 200 customers at $199 for a service optimized to LAMP, he raises the $40,000 needed to cover a couple of years of operating expenses.
The VC200, having helped launch the service, will get their hosting for life as part of TextDrive’s ongoing marketing budget. It’s an incredible deal. He starts a company with no debt. Two hundred or so customers get an outstanding host. Everybody gets to learn together about the future of hosting, web design, development and technology.
If you’re still looking for an outstanding hosting service, take a look.
The TextDrive offer is drawing lots of attention. Dean Allen (of Textism fame) clearly has honorable principles and high expectations for being able to offer classy service and support. $199 for a lifetime of hosting is simply too good to pass up, particularly when you read in the forums that cheaper storage and bandwidth is likely to sweeten the introductory offer for the initial 200 customers over time.
”In the last 32 months, history has placed great demands on our country, and events have come quickly. Americans have seen the flames of September the 11th, followed battles in the mountains of Afghanistan, and learned new terms like ”orange alert” and ”ricin” and ”dirty bomb.” We’ve seen killers at work on trains in Madrid, in a bank in Istanbul, at a synagogue in Tunis, and at a nightclub in Bali. And now the families of our soldiers and civilian workers pray for their sons and daughters in Mosul and Karbala and Baghdad.”
”We did not seek this war on terror, but this is the world as we find it. We must keep our focus. We must do our duty. History is moving, and it will tend toward hope, or tend toward tragedy. Our terrorist enemies have a vision that guides and explains all their varied acts of murder. They seek to impose Taliban-like rule, country by country, across the greater Middle East. They seek the total control of every person, and mind, and soul, a harsh society in which women are voiceless and brutalized. They seek bases of operation to train more killers and export more violence. They commit dramatic acts of murder to shock, frighten and demoralize civilized nations, hoping we will retreat from the world and give them free rein. They seek weapons of mass destruction, to impose their will through blackmail and catastrophic attacks. None of this is the expression of a religion. It is a totalitarian political ideology, pursued with consuming zeal, and without conscience.
Our actions, too, are guided by a vision. We believe that freedom can advance and change lives in the greater Middle East, as it has advanced and changed lives in Asia, and Latin America, and Eastern Europe, and Africa. We believe it is a tragedy of history that in the Middle East—which gave the world great gifts of law and science and faith—so many have been held back by lawless tyranny and fanaticism. We believe that when all Middle Eastern peoples are finally allowed to live and think and work and worship as free men and women, they will reclaim the greatness of their own heritage. And when that day comes, the bitterness and burning hatreds that feed terrorism will fade and die away. America and all the world will be safer when hope has returned to the Middle East.
These two visions—one of tyranny and murder, the other of liberty and life—clashed in Afghanistan. And thanks to brave U.S. and coalition forces and to Afghan patriots, the nightmare of the Taliban is over, and that nation is coming to life again. These two visions have now met in Iraq, and are contending for the future of that country. The failure of freedom would only mark the beginning of peril and violence. But, my fellow Americans, we will not fail. We will persevere, and defeat this enemy, and hold this hard-won ground for the realm of liberty.
Carnival of the Capitalists is being hosted by a site called startupskills.com this week. I’m just getting acquainted with both of these sites, but for those interested in running small to medium-sized businesses, these sites appear to offer some great resources.
>From Ian’s Messy Desk comes a link to David Allen’s site and book. If you have trouble ”geting things done,” the tips you need are there. One big question we all must answer: are we doing things right or are we doing the right things?
”There is in the life and teaching of Jesus a relentless tendency towards simplicity. There is a steady impulse toward living at risk, and with a kind of abandon to the Father’s care that looks foolish to the well-off world.”
John Piper
A Godward Life Volume Two (p.285)
* * *
”It was not always plain to me that pursuing God’s glory would be virtually the same as pursuing my joy. Now I see that millions of people waste their lives because they think these paths are two and not one.”
Stephen Covey suggested seven habits. One of them was to ”begin with the end in mind.” The end in this case is a properly rendered index.php page from WordPress or Movable Type or whatever your choice of weblog tools might be.
At my current state of knowledge, it appears that the index.php page is dependent upon four other things. Those things are templates, tags, xhtml and stylesheets (CSS). My weekend project has been relatively successful, but I’m to the mental block I’ve had ever since my earliest days of weblogging. How do you know what to do with each of those four components to make the home page (index.php) look the way you want it to look?
I upgraded my test weblog to WordPress 1.2. I imported entries from my Movable Type weblog. Those things went smoothly, though they took far more than the five minutes everybody has been reporting. The software performed flawlessly, but my lack of knowledge caused each step to be laborious.
This afternoon, I’ve learned of something called ”template manager.” I have not been able to determine what this plugin does, nor whether it clears the fog from the diagram you see here.
The ”end” I have in mind is a properly functioning copy of Rodent Regatta moved over to WordPress with an understanding of what was necessary to make that happen. Whether or not the folks at Six Apart find a way to license their software without charging by the amount of content I produce, I need to know how to relate MT templates to WP templates. More important is the need to understand how the pieces fit together to produce the final look of a weblog.
All of my attempts thus far at style-switching, changing stylesheets manually and importing the ”look” of Rodent Regatta into WordPress have failed. No matter the success of the weekend in small things, the big thing I’ve been trying to grasp for almost three years remains in the fog. Frustrating.
* * UPDATE * * * To the original five entries I created in the WordPress test site, I imported all of the entries (over 4000) from this site. Now, the WordPress site won’t validate. Here’s the message:
”Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on lines 627, 1037 it contained one or more bytes that I cannot interpret as utf-8 (in other words, the bytes found are not valid values in the specified Character Encoding). Please check both the content of the file and the character encoding indication.”
How in the world do all these great designers create such grand-looking sites that validate and comply with all the semantic, accessible and standards-based rules? The more I learn, the less I know.
I’ve noticed during the weekend that many Movable Type sites that are in my aggregator have been very quiet. The channel group devoted to WordPress has been extremely active.
Okay. I’m about to export my MT entries to a file so that I can experiment with the import to WordPress. I’ll keep you posted.
In this entry full of resources, Jennifer provides links to the information needed to move your Movable Type templates over to WordPress. I’m still digging!
WordPress 1.2 is now available, and I upgraded a test site to the new version this mornng. No problem at all. These things remain to be done:
find out how you install a new or second (third and fourth) template with a style-switcher
find out how to import MT entries into the test weblog
find out whether or not WordPress has a standard blogroll feature or whether I must migrate my blogrolls
figure out how to protect a WordPress weblog from comment-spam
figure out how Movable Type templates map to WordPress templates
All of this is going on while we wait on any additional revisions to MT’s licensing arrangement. One note of interest: after four or five entries, I attempted to validate the WordPress weblog. It validated!
* * UPDATE * * * In the effort to decide which product is going to get the majority of my attention going forward, I find this scoring of WordPress and Movable Type is pretty accurate and consistent with my own experience.
* * UPDATE 2 * * * Matthew links to another review of WordPress and it will really motivate you, if you’re on the fence.——-
Word comes today that Six Apart is contemplating some additional changes/enhancements to licensing. Given that I’ve got quite a history (for me) with the product, this is great news. I’ve toyed with WordPress and a couple of other tools. I’m not fond of unpredictable upgrade and licensing plans, nor am I thrilled about licensing that is based upon the content I create.
However, I’m simply astounded at the effort (for me) that it takes to migrate an existing site to another weblog tool. Given my challenges with all the things that make up web design (e.g. templates, CSS, tags, XHTML, etc.), staying with Movable Type for existing work would be a very good thing. Remember, once I identify which tag is the one for ”date,” I’m still left to determine which template that must go into and how to position it in the final, rendered page.
I’ll be hedging my future by learning another tool that doesn’t put a content limitation in the license. That’s not the same as ”free,” but it certainly prevents a situation where I can’t create a new site because of a license limitation. In a perfect world, all of my helpers wouldn’t count against my author limit. Those people help me with scripts, markup and design and they have author accounts, but they don’t post anything.
Take a new document in Notepad and begin to add a DOCTYPE and some XHTML and build a stylesheet. It’s pretty clear to me how those pieces fit together.
Throw in a content management system with templates and tags and things get a bit more challenging. Learning how tags nest inside each other and markup is not immediately obvious. Understanding the role of various templates in rendering a home page is also a puzzle.
I’ve seen a list or two of the new templates for the Blogger redesign. I haven’t yet found a list of templates for WordPress. I’m sure they exist.
* * UPDATE * * * In the comments to this entry, Alex King points to one of his own pages which lists a lot of templates for WordPress. Experimentation to begin soon.
A long time ago I studied differential equations. Recently, I’ve studied linear algebra as it applies to optimization problems. I read. I study. I’m not without a respectable IQ. Yet, I’m ignorant; challenged and ignorant.
Articles like (and in particular) Print It Your Way and Onion Skinned Drop Shadows at A List Apart make me wonder what my web standards syllabus should be yet again. How do you start? What’s the 101 set of classes? What’s the 101 book? How do you get to this graduate-level stuff?
At a nice-looking site she designed, Angie McKaig tells of her battle to lock in the terminology of photography. (I feel the same way about web design!) Her latest lesson turned the lights on. Take a look at the list she provides.
Maybe there’s value in committing this illustration to memory.
Somehow, tags, CSS, templates, markup and know-how combine to give a website the look that it takes on. It’s not yet obvious where you are to put the CSS from your ”old” site in order to make the ”new” site (built with a different CMS) carry the same ”look.”
I’ve been toying with WordPress this evening. It installed just fine. I’ve experimented with basic posting. The steps for exporting entries from Movable Type to WordPress are clear, though I haven’t worked on that effort.
What stumps me now is the same thing that has blocked me with Movable Type. Figuring out how to use CSS, tags and templates to format and present the entries in the database is a challenge. I’ve got all these templates in Movable Type, but it’s really a puzzle to see how those migrate correctly to WordPress.
>From Digital Media Minute we’re pointed to an article at Clagnut about sizing text using ems. I think this falls into the category of style-switching and text-switching techniques.
It seems to me that most techniques for switching involve using a second, third or fourth stylesheet for the presentation of a site. It’s not yet clear to me how the switching of text alone might differ from switching other aspects of a site, except that the style sheet for one ight switch text only, while many other elements of the presentation might be changed by some other stylesheet.
More to learn! There also appears to be some variety of ways to actually accomplish skinning or style-switching on a site. More when we know it.
I’m an engineer by training. My first ”emotional” click with a product was in 1973 while still in engineering school. My HP-45 scientific calculator with RPN arrived. For a weekend, I learned every feature, function and feel of the machine. It was ultimate geekiness.
My interest in web design, XHTML, tools and such is far less touchy-feely. For now, it’s a hobby. It’s a hobby I’m deeply interested in, but I’m terrible at it. I’m fascinated with the software and protocols that make all of this possible, but it’s not an emotional thing. She’s right. They’re only tools.
NEA Calls For Higher Spending on Food
by Craig J. Cantoni
May 19, 2004
The National Eating Association (NEA) concludes in a new report that American families are not spending enough on food and that the United States will not remain competitive in the 21st century unless the government increases per-person spending on groceries and restaurant meals.
NEA president Frank Furter had lunch at the White House yesterday to discuss the problem with President Kerry, who spoke to reporters afterwards. ”It’s a national disgrace that Americans are spending only 15 percent of their income on food, including ketchup, compared to 45 percent 100 years ago,” said Kerry. ”I’ll be asking Agriculture Secretary Hank Heinz to speed up the implementation of the Leave No Child’s Behind Behind program.”
Silly, isn’t it? But it is no more silly than the National Education Association’s unrelenting focus on per-pupil spending and its complete silence about what a public education costs the average household. Without knowing the cost, it is impossible for consumers of education to know if they are getting good value for their money and to make cost-benefit tradeoffs.
Over the last few months I have been asking audiences and individuals if they know what they pay in public education taxes. So far, no one has known.
I’ll give the answer momentarily, but first, imagine asking a homeowner what he paid for his house and getting this response: ”I dunno, but I want to pay more because the National Association of Realtors says that spending on homes isn’t high enough in this country.”
Some people mistakenly believe that the amount on their property tax bill that goes to public education is the total of what they pay in school taxes. Because it’s hidden, they don’t realize that when they pay for their dry cleaning at the neighborhood dry cleaners, the price includes a portion of the school tax that the store owner pays. Similarly, the portion of school taxes that is funded from state revenue is hidden in income and sales taxes.
It is just the opposite for parochial school parents like my wife and me. We know exactly what we pay. For example, we pay $3,700 a year in parochial school tuition for our son. By the time he graduates from high school, we will have paid about $60,000 for 12 years of Catholic school.
Because we know what we pay, we are able to make cost-benefit tradeoffs. For example, we don’t want his school to build a cafeteria, although our kid has to take his lunch and eat outside. And we don’t want class sizes reduced by 50 percent to the size of the classes at the nearby public school. Because we know what we pay, we value his education more than if we didn’t. And because we value it more, we and other parochial parents expect our kids to behave better and study more than their public school friends.
That expectation is the primary reason that parochial schools can deliver a superior education at lower cost. Public schools, on the other hand, suffer from the problem of the commons. As is the case with public housing, when the collective pays for something, the individual doesn’t have the same sense of ownership and personal responsibility that he would if he paid for it himself. Like magic, writing a mortgage check or a tuition check every month dramatically changes one’s perspective on spending and makes the individual much more cost-conscious.
For that reason, the NEA and its allies in the establishment media do not want Arizonans to know that the average Arizona household pays about $3,200 per year in public school taxes. And since the heads of the household pay school taxes over their adult lives, that comes, on average, to a whopping lifetime total of about $190,000. For a family with two kids, that’s $95,000 per kid, or about $35,000 more than what it will cost my wife and me for our son to attend 12 years of Catholic school.
The total is higher in other states. In Washington State, for example, it is about $240,000. Would Washington State families pay that much if they were writing tuition checks to cover the amount? To answer that question, imagine the parents of one child writing a check for each of the 12 years that their kid attends public school. That would come to $20,000 per check ($240,000/12). If that didn’t trigger rioting in the streets, at least there would be demands for greater efficiency and effectiveness in public schools and more parental responsibility.
And that explains why politicians, the media, the NEA and the rest of the education establishment focus on per-pupil spending instead of telling taxpayers what they pay in public school taxes.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
I really want to learn how to apply things like Son of Suckerfish Dropdowns. Until a moment ago, I had no idea what this was all about. I hadn’t read the predecessor. I’ve only glanced at the example.
To think I’m still trying to figure out where to put Movable Type’s day/date tag in the template to make the day and date appear as a heading over each day’s entries in another site I’m working on…
...what do you call enthusiasm and frustration when they occur simultaneously?
* * UPDATE * * * There’s even more to read than we thought!
Some of the fog is clearing and the directions for weblog tools are becoming clearer. Movers seem to be (largely) focused on WordPress and ExpressionEngine. I’ve downloaded both. Let the trials begin. It seems Scriptygoddess is looking rather seriously at WordPress.
* * UPDATE * * * Matthew Mullenwegg is keeping us posted about various moves to the WordPress product. What’s obvious to me is how many of the early moves are happening with people who can really enhance the product with their know-how. It also seems to remove some of the risk of one or more key developers tiring and abandoning the project. Decisions, decisions.
* * UPDATE 2 * * * Jenni at Code Novice may have offered the final bit of encouragement I need. Read these three entries: | 1 | 2 | 3 |
After emotional day, Sept. 11
commission hears Giuliani From staff and wire reports
NEW YORK One day after his police and fire chiefs were grilled over their Sept. 11 response, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani told members of a national commission Wednesday that their priority should be preventing a new attack, not assigning blame.
In a bizarre twist of technological intrigue, the writer of Linux confesses to a collaboration with the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. I kid you not! [link provided by Matthew Mullenweg]
Operationally, AdTI strives to emulate what one scholar has termed Tocqueville’s ”omnicurious style of journalism.”
There appears to be a bit of confusion which is nearly always preyed upon by a left-leaning media. That confusion stems from two different terms and concepts:
weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s)
mass weapons of destruction (MWD’s)
WMD – A weapon so deadly that it has the capability to devastate a large number of people and a lot of property over a wide area. Example: two nuclear devices or three liters of sarin gas in a warhead.
MWD – A lot of weapons together in one place. Example: a drawer-full of slingshots.
You see? We don’t have to find acres of weapons for Iraq to have WMD’s!
I have a personal weblog, the one you’re reading now. I’m working on a business blogsite for my company. It isn’t complete, yet. I had previously assisted someone else who was starting a new venture by using my copy of Movable Type to help him get a web site going. That has been abandoned. That’s how I use MT 2.661 today. I’d love to expand that usage in the future.
In order to support two weblogs, prepare for the future and to get support from designers and developers who need to be authors on any of the sites I create, I’ve got to have an MT 3.0 commercial license with more than five authors. If I were more knowledgeable, I’d do a lot of the work myself and I wouldn’t have to have so many authors. I’m the only one (initially) who will be posting to either of these sites, but I know from time to time I’ll be calling for help from others. My only choices are the $199 plan or the $599 plan. The $199 plan doesn’t leave much room for growth or expansion, new sites or new authors.
Imagine a world in which you buy Microsoft Excel based upon how many spreadsheets you’ve already created and how many you expect to create in the future. Beyond the usual Microsoft-bashing that would go on, reasonable people would be baffled about how to determine their price. Add to that the limited visibility about how new features added to the product might change your pricing in the future and you’re left to guess at whether your $600 fee is an annual figure, a one-time event or something else.
I really like Movable Type and the people I’ve come in contact with as I’ve tried to learn HTML, XHTML, MT, CSS, etc. I don’t want to ”sacrifice” that learning curve. I’d simply like to know that I could allow a ”temporary” author to log in, install some markup, scripts and plugins and logout. Deleting that author, though they might have been #6 for a couple of days, shouldn’t place me in violation of the 5×5 commercial license!
I need one of those 1000-nails-a-month hammers, even if somebody else is driving the nails! [Big-teethy-grin-smiley goes here!]
Scriptygoddess has provided some more detail about the way she uses Movable Type and why the new licensing arrangement really doesn’t fit her current uses of the product. However, if you read carefully, you’ll find that she is also calling into question the feature set that (isn’t in MT 3.0) and hasn’t been announced for the future.
I’m still on the fence. I’m not sure I can learn a new tool quickly enough to keep some things I’m doing at a functional level. By the same token, I’m disappointed that work done to date is now going to cost $600 on top of design and support fees I’ve been paying to others.
Are these minor amounts of money that most people are fussing about? Yes. the problem comes with having no visibility into what MT 3.1 might cost, when there might be some new features and how quickly WordPress can get the product ready for truly (novice) users like me.
In my next entry, I’ll restate my own approach to using Movable Type.
I wish I thought all the calls for people to resign from their jobs was based upon some notion that someone else will do the job better, rather than this sense I have that humans wish life’s turmoil on people they don’t like.
Teeter-totter Reporting at the Arizona Republic
by Craig J. Cantoni
May 17, 2004
A front-page story in today’s Arizona Republic was more unbalanced than a teeter-totter with Shaq on one end and a jockey on the other.
The story was about an election tomorrow on raising taxes in Scottsdale to purchase more preserve land. There were just over 23 column-inches that quoted proponents or that put the tax in a favorable light. Conversely, there were about ten column-inches that quoted opponents or that put the tax in an unfavorable light, and those inches were near the end of the story on the second page.
This two-to-one ratio and placement are par for the course in the establishment press in stories on tax increases and government spending. Such coverage explains why federal, state and local spending continues to far outstrip inflation and population growth, and why federal spending alone costs the average household $20,000 per year.
The story begins…
”Arizona voters will decide the fate of thousands of coyotes, kit foxes and sky-high saguaros…”
How’s that for objectivity and balance? The opening would have readers believe that thousands of coyotes and kit foxes will die if the tax isn’t passed. This is creative writing, not reporting. A neutral opening would have gone like this: ”Scottsdale voters will be going to the polls tomorrow to vote on a sales tax for more preserve land.”
The reporter goes on to say that voters ”will do more than weigh in on the future of unspoiled land.” She doesn’t say that power lines run through part of the ”unspoiled” land under consideration.
Later, the reporter writes, ”The votes come in the middle of a conservation crisis.”
Oh really? Although the reporter didn’t mention it, 85 percent of the land in Arizona is already off limits to development, a 20,000-acre regional park is next door to Scottsdale, and a 2.8 million-acre national forest is only 10 minutes away. That hardly constitutes a conservation crisis, regardless of the outcome of the vote. It would have been more accurate for the reporter to write, ”Arizona already has a glut of preserve land.”
Then there are the accompanying photos. One is of a blooming ocotillo framing a stand of saguaros on undeveloped land. Below that photo is a photo of a housing development, taken from a perspective that makes the development look as overbuilt as Manhattan. The third and last photo is of a diamondback rattlesnake.
There were no photos of the coyotes, rattlesnakes and bobcat that have been seen in my development. Nor were there any photos of the cacti in my backyard, which are much more abundant than the cacti on the undeveloped parts of the neighboring Salt River Pima Indian Reservation.
The story did not mention the curious fact that the information ballot for the vote that was mailed weeks ago to voters contains 13 pages of arguments in favor of the tax and not one against it. How did that happen? Don’t look in the Republic’s news pages for an answer. And don’t look there for an expose on how spending advocates virtually assured themselves of victory by tying the vote to a phony public safety issue and by scheduling the vote for a special election, when voter turnout will be low, thus making it easier for proponents to get a majority of the votes.
Newspapers used to be for the little guy. Now they sit on the end of the teeter-totter with the big spenders.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
Some of you read my entry about needing to spend $600 to stay on Movable Type and sent emails. I’ve learned that the templates on my weblogs may have to be altered to run MT 3.0, but I can’t find out where, how or why.
That lack of knowledge spells ”more money.” Someone who knows the issues associated with upgrading to MT 3.0 will have to be paid to migrate my sites. That means the cost is in excess of $600. It raises the question of how far $600 might take me in trying to move my sites and their designs over to WordPress.
Eric Meyer seemed to have little trouble moving from his ”home-grown” solution to WordPress. Trust me, I’m no Eric Meyer! So, what’s this really going to cost?
Pay to upgrade to MT 3.0: license fee + design assistance = $ x
Pay to move to WordPress: $0 license fee + design assistance = $ y
Mark Helprin has written some masterpieces for the Wall Street Journal. Not one of them is better than No Way To Run a War, which appears in today’s edition.
Whether you have to subscribe to the online edition, buy it locally or drive 100 miles to the library, don’t miss it. Here are some paragraphs that caught my eye. The link to the piece may require your subscription. Don’t hesitate. Here are some paragraphs that tell you why you should not hesitate to read the whole thing:
Having decided to remake a country of 26 million divided into warring subcultures with a shared affection for martyrdom and unchanging traditions, the administration thought it could do so with 100,000 troops. Israel, which nearly surrounds the West Bank, speaks its language and has 37 years of experience in occupation, keeps approximately (by my reckoning) one soldier on duty for every 40 inhabitants and 1/13th square mile, and the unfortunate results are well known. In Iraq we keep one soldier per 240 inhabitants and 1.7 square miles. To put this in yet clearer perspective, it is the same number of uniformed police officers per inhabitant of the City of New York.
John Kerry may say one thing and another, but no matter how the topgallants break in the Democratic Party, its ideological keel is a leaden and unthinking pacifism, a pretentious and illogical deference to all things European, and the unhinged belief that America by its very nature transforms every aspect of its self-defense into an aggression that justifies the offense against which it is defending itself. After the enemy has attacked our shipping, embassies, aviation, capital, government and largest city, and after he has slit the throats of defenseless stewardesses, and crushed and immolated three thousand unwary men, women, and children, those who wonder what we did wrong are not likely to offer a spirited defense.
Their allergy to military expenditure assures that, unlike Republicans, who provided just enough to accomplish an arrogant plan if nothing went wrong, they would not provide enough to accomplish a humble plan if everything went right.
With nothing to offer but contradictions and paralysis, they and their presidential aspirant have staked their policy on a mystical and irrational prejudice against unilateralism. This is a new thing under the visiting moon, an absurdity propounded by the very same people who often urge the U.S. to unilateral action when it refrains, for example, from interventions in Africa to fight genocide or AIDS. In what way is America, moving in concert with Britain and Spain to invade Iraq, more unilateral or less multilateral than France moving in concert with Germany and Belgium to oppose it? And does a wrong act cease to be wrong if others join in, or a right cease to be right if others do not?
In a war that has steadily grown beyond expectations, America has been poorly served by those who govern it. The Democrats are guilty of seemingly innate ideological confusion about self-defense, the Republicans of willful disdain for reflection, and, both, of lack of imagination, probity, and preparation—and, perhaps above all, of subjecting the most serious business in the life of a nation to coarse partisanship. Having come up short, both parties are sorely in need of a severe reprimand and direct order from the American people to correct their failings and get on with the common defense. [emphasis mine]
These paragraphs are quoted from the May 17, 2004 edition of The Wall Street Journal. All of the material is Copyright 2004 by Dow Jones & Company with All Rights Reserved.
Many times I’ve linked to the seven deadly diseases for business that were originally written by W. Edwards Deming. In the last decade I’ve come to think of these same seven diseases as afflicting our nation. Each of the seven correlates with a national trend. Number six is ”excessive medical costs.”
This morning Craig Cantoni addresses the bizarre thinking that some are doing concerning health care in this country. The May 4 op-ed he cites truly was excellent. Craig adds to the excellence with this:
The Third Reich Plan
for
Nationalizing American Health Care
by Craig J. Cantoni
May 17, 2004
I despair. When the retired head of underwriting for New Jersey Blue Cross and Blue Shield writes a letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal calling for nationalized health care, there is little hope of stopping the incremental socializing of American medicine.
The letter was published in the May 14 edition in response to a brilliant May 4 op-ed that correctly said that a consumer market is the cure for what ails U.S. health care.
The op-ed explained, as one of mine did in the Journal in 1997, that a consumer market was mortally wounded 60 years ago when misguided government policy resulted in most Americans getting their health insurance from their employers instead of buying it directly, as they do in the case of such other necessities of life as food, shelter and clothing. The coup de grace was delivered 39 years ago with the enactment of Medicare.
Even a freshman economics students understands that a consumer market does not exist when the consumer sits on the sidelines as third parties make buying decisions for him. But for some reason, a business executive who worked for one of the third parties does not understand this economic fact. Or perhaps he understands it but is rationalizing his lifetime of working in an industry that cozied up to the government and treated consumers like second-class citizens. Maybe that is why he was silent in his letter about the Blues being accused of restraint of trade.
In one of the worst cases of cognitive dissonance ever seen, the letter writer wrote this gem: ”Yet the crisis in health care finance and access has been brought on in large part by market forces—an employer-based delivery system that has left 40 million low-wage and laid-off workers uninsured.”
He has it exactly backwards. It was not market forces that tied one’s health insurance to one’s employment. The real culprits were wage and price controls in 1942 that gave employers an incentive to begin offering health insurance in lieu of wages, subsequent National Labor Relations Board rulings that made health insurance a union bargaining right, tax rules that gave employees a tax advantage over the unemployed and self-employed, and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act that gave employees of large corporations protections from expensive state mandates not afforded the average working stiff.
That doesn’t sound like a free market to me.
The letter writer saved his most startling and erroneous conclusion for last. He said that Medicare is a good model for nationalizing American health care because it is ”99% private.” Gasp! That’s enough to take your breath away.
Medicare is as private as industry was under the Third Reich. When Hitler was asked why he hadn’t nationalized German industry, he replied that he didn’t have to because he controlled the industrialists. Similarly, over 100,000 pages of Medicare regulations and price controls dictate what health care providers can charge and offer patients. And it is a little-known fact that Americans cannot opt out of Medicare once they begin to accept Social Security payments.
Fortunately, the Third Reich was defeated. Unfortunately, there is little hope of defeating the nationalization of American health care, not when former insurance executives fail to understand the difference between markets and socialism, and between freedom and coercion.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
My weekend of browsing and all the discussion of the Movable Type announcement clarified some things. I learned of the LAMP acronym. I like the notion of using tools that are open and widely known. The challenge of really learning PHP, MySQL, Apache and Linux is (at least) intellectually intriguing, if not particularly practical for someone like me. Though those are key web technologies, is it reasonable to think they can be learned late in life? We’ll see.
In three different places I’ve read of performance problems with Movable Type 3.0. I’m wishing I had noted the three sites. I didn’t.
Can someone who is using MT 3.0 tell me whether or not these reports are unique to specific people and problems, or is there some performance flaw in the ”new MT?”
Some communication difficulty is tolerable. Some new pricing arrangements are tolerable. Adding a performance problem on top of those is intolerable.
* * UPDATE * * * Performance must be improved with MT 3.0. Via a comment, Steven Vore pointed me to Jeremy’s site, and he speaks of a much-improved rebuild time.
After editorializing a bit about the announcement by Movable Type, it’s time to make some decisions in the next week or two. I’ve just spent about $1000 having some design work done on an upcoming commercial site. Coupled with the site you are reading and one other, I’m faced with three choices:
Stay with MT 2.661 for $150 (I assume the old commercial license is still available for the old version)
Upgrade to commercial MT 3.0 for $600 (I need more than 5 authors)
Pay someone to help me migrate to another (open source/free) tool
Are bold bloggers willing to speak to someone face-to-face with the same boldness? In this case ”boldness” may be a euphemism for ”rudeness.” If a blogger had an audience for thirty minutes with the party they speak so harshly about, would they say the same things? Three arenas where this point comes to mind:
When I began writing after 9-11-2001, I used Radio Userland’s product to get started. I wanted my site to look and perform like some others I was reading. What I discovered was that you had to know many things about the way Radio fit together to be able to tweak it.
During those days, Russ Lipton was discovering and writing about Radio. Russ had some web development or programming skills, but he wrote for those of us who didn’t. I think his Radio Userland documentation still stands.
This morning, I think I found the same Russ Lipton writing for World Magazine’s blog. You’ll enjoy his work.
if youre going to learn about MySQL or PHP, especially if you want to learn about both, grab any one of the many freely available open source applications, install it, and then learn by tweaking.
When I started writing this weblog in January of 2002, that was my theory. I thought I could learn HTML and later XHTML and CSS just by doing. I’ve learned a lot, but I’m no where close to where I ought to be. I’ve had many, many (costly) false starts.
I’ve read books that spend the better part of 150 pages telling you ”how web design has always been done,” only to hit you with CSS and XHTML on page 151. Why learn all the bad (tables) habits if they are no longer the preferred way to do things? Why learn upper case tags if XHTML insists they be lower case?
I’m not much closer to a proper way to learn all this stuff. However, I’m’ confident that if you can identify the tools you want to learn, then find someone who really knows those tools and can teach you without overemphasizing ”the way we use to do it,” you’ll be better off.
If you’re still listening to the noise level at Movable Type and pondering your options for a future weblogging tool, consider some criteria. First, however, you might want to read the interview with Ben and Mena Trott at IT Conversations. You’ll get some sense of what they expected with the announcement of their licensing revisions and price sheet.
As for criteria, here are some of mine:
Learn and build knowledge around one tool
Stick with a tool that will ”be there”
Make sure the tool will be enhanced over time
Understand the annual cost to stay current
Know that developers want to add to it
Deal with comment spam
Allow editing of multiple weblogs from a single console
It should encourage standards-based design
Underlying technologies include MySQL and PHP *
Know where support will come from
Some portion of the blogging elite adopt it
Avoid a tool dependent on ”one man’s genius”
After reading so much about the Movable Type licensing and those who propose alternatives to it, I discovered a term I hadn’t heard before – the LAMP environment. It stands for Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP (or Perl or Python).
A list of feature considerations for weblog software. We’ll consider PHP, MySQL, plugins, native functionality, current price, future prices, support, etc.
In any case study of a company under pressure or making major announcements, there is a set of phases in what’s happening. These phases often proceed very rapidly, but they generally take the following form and sequence:
Pre-information
Customer comment, rumors and speculation
The Announcement
Customer reaction and misunderstanding
Company Response and Clarification <----You are here!
Customer comment, rumors and speculation – Round 2 and beyond
The company responds well and recovers/flourishes…....OR
Customers stay away in droves and the company’s history is rewritten
The early stages of this sequence largely determine whether a crisis forms and must be ”handled.” Properly done, a crisis never ensues and the announcement is questioned, answered and the company preserves its reputation.
* * UPDATE * * * Brad Choate has some comments about the MT 3.0 announcement(s). My perception is that Brad has been a rather prolific producer of plugins for Movable Type, and has done a great deal to educate the Movable Type user community. His thoughts belong in the list provided yesterday.
The folks at pmachine are giving away 1000 copies of ExpressionEngine to the first folks who follow the rules. Another example of how customers will ultimately win!
I’m getting comments, trackbacks and suggestions for alternatives to Movable Type. I’m not committed (now) to changing. I’m thinking, but I’m not yet acting. Issues that give me pause:
market share of MT is huge
my present designer uses it
plugins are plentiful for extending MT
a real company with real revenue is behind MT
I have a couple of years of user experience with MT
There is a classic study in free enterprise and marketing that is playing out before our eyes. Six Apart, after months of expectations, releases a new version of their flagship product, Movable Type. In a classic twist of irony, the announcement probably carries more ”trackback pings” than any other post in the history of Movable Type. Unfortunately, the majority of them reflect the frustration of a user community that is more disappointed with being ”blindsided” than having to pay for software.
Here’s a rough summary of how it has played out. In a matter of a very few weeks, we learn that it is not a ”feature” release. Then, we hear of a scheme called TypeKey for protecting Movable Type users from unwanted comments. Some privacy fanantics went nuts over the registration methods behind that. Remember, this is from a company that also offers a (utility-computing) version of its software called TypePad. [Editorial note: maybe there is ultimate strategy playing out here. Price your more sophisticated tool so that only sophisticated users buy it. ”Drive the rest” toward your recurring revenue service.]
Then, at the moment of actual release, Six Apart announces their first pricing method. I don’t believe software can be adequately enhanced and supported without a price. Someone somewhere must have a revenue stream to be able to continue what they are doing to further the software. So, price isn’t my issue.
This morning we hear from one of Six Apart’s competitors, who depends solely on donations and volunteers as the methods for enhancing and supporting his software. It seems that in the middle of this fray, a new guide for migrating from Movable Type to WordPress is ready. On top of that, a new release candidate for WordPress’s next version became available overnight.
All of this is classic, American free enterprise. The importance of words, their timing and their meaning is paramount. The style can be as important as the words themselves. One player pulls a hamstring and competitors capitalize. The long-time fans and teammates come to the rescue of the injured player.
Willl New Coke be pulled? Will it be repriced to make it more palatable? Will competitors seize share during the moment of weakness? Will customers get what they want? Yes, they will!
Opera 7.5 is a fantastic browser and more. For the quickest move from whatever you’re using to Opera 7.5, take a look at this guide by Christopher Hester.
Tonight, I realize there has been a (rather) large outcry about the prices. Some are also ranting that there is any charge at all. This is something I’ve never understood about the software business. What made people think that Movable Type would be free forever? If I mow the lawns of three neighbors for the first month of the summer, is it reasonable for them to assume/expect that I’ll be mowing for free for the rest of the summer?
My questions had nothing to do with the prices, though perhaps they should have. Rather, I’m concerned about the mixed signals over the past few months. It sounds like the messages from a company that is simply growing too fast.
Clearly, if 100,000 people paid the price today, Six Apart won the software lottery. I don’t really think that happened. For me the bigger issue is one of what tool to count on. I’ve been trying (frantically) to learn Movable Type along with CSS, XHTML and web standards. Lately, I’ve heard from several people that many of my validation problems are a result of something inside Movable Type and not something I’ve been doing in my markup. All the problems aren’t due to the tool, but some of them are.
As much as I like WordPress’s early press, I’ve always been concerned about the sustainability of a software product that is free. I’d feel much better if someone or some company found a way to add value to the open source, charge a nominal fee and create a viable business around the product.
I don’t like the fact that a visit to www.sixapart.com doesn’t give you a clear path to the pricing. Go to www.movabletype.org and you can find the pricing, but the link takes you back to a page at at sixapart.com. These seem like small things, but they don’t come across too well from a company announcing its first round of pricing.
I hate to think of changing content management products. I would not change over money. I will change if I believe I can learn more by moving my weblog(s) to a different tool supported by different people who are committed to teaching and furthering web standards!
The Futility of Debating Utopians, Do-gooders and Progressives
by Craig J. Cantoni
May 13, 2004
There is nothing more frustrating and futile than trying to have an intelligent debate with utopians, do-gooders and progressives. Debating them about such articles of faith as suburban sprawl, education funding and mass transit is as frustrating and futile as debating someone from the religious right about a religious belief.
A case in point:
I recently spoke at a public meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona, where I recited statistics showing how government spending has grown much faster than inflation and population over the last decade at the local, state and federal levels. I went on to use the planned light-rail system for Phoenix as an example of unnecessary spending, saying that for an astronomical cost of $2.3 billion, which is equivalent to the annual income of about 50,000 families, the system will actually increase pollution and have a negligible effect on traffic.
As expected, the reaction of the audience was immediate and hostile, since most attendees were utopians, do-gooders or progressives. Upon hearing my remarks, they squirmed in their chairs and got the same pained look in their faces, as if all of them were suddenly in need of Preparation H.
One man grimaced and responded, ”Well, I moved here from Chicago and therefore support mass transit.”
Huh? Apparently, his ”logic” went like this:
I’m from Chicago.
Chicago has mass transit.
Chicago and Phoenix are identical in age, layout and climate.
Therefore, mass transit is a good thing for Phoenix.
Or maybe his logic went like this:
I moved from Chicago to Phoenix.
Phoenix is a better place or I wouldn’t have moved here.
Phoenix has lower taxes or I wouldn’t have moved here.
Therefore, let’s turn Phoenix into another Chicago.
Whatever his logic, it was futile to argue with him, because he was clearly someone who ”thinks” with his emotions instead of with reason and facts. Accordingly, he didn’t dispute my facts, offer countervailing facts or ask me to identify the sources of my facts. He simply believed that mass transit was a good thing and wasn’t about to let facts overrule his feelings. End of discussion.
Another attendee said he supported higher taxes, especially for public education. I asked him if he knew how much he pays in public education taxes. He admitted that he did not. I then posed the same question to the rest of the audience. No one knew the amount.
Judging from their blank expressions, the attendees didn’t get my point, which I thought was obvious—namely, how can someone support paying more for something without knowing what it costs in the first place?
Since they didn’t get the point, I went on to tell them how much the average household pays in public education taxes in Arizona. It is $3,200 a year, or close to $190,000 over the adult lives of the heads of the household. Since there are on average two children per family in Arizona, that comes to $95,000 per child. Ninety-five thousand!
Those facts transformed the blank stares of the audience back to their original pained expressions—not because the attendees now knew the astronomical cost of public education and were angry over the education establishment and the media keeping the number a secret. No, the pained expressions were directed at me, because I had the temerity to question one of their most sacred beliefs—that public schools don’t have enough money. End of discussion.
Another speaker on the panel with me had the audacity to question why the audience was in support of raising the sales tax to purchase more preserve land in Scottsdale at a starting cost of $500 million, especially in view of the fact that the current sales tax is above the national average, that there are thousands of acres of preserve land in the city already, that a 21,000-acre regional park is next door, and that a 2.8 million-acre national forest is 10 minutes away—all in a state in which 85% of the land is closed to development.
The audience responded with platitudes, bromides, cliches and canards about sprawl and development. One attendee expressed anger over the ”greed” of a developer who had bought land from the state at an auction years ago and now will only sell it to the city for a preserve at the current market price, which is almost twice as much as the original purchase price. I thought about asking her if she would be willing to sell her house to the city for half its market value, since she isn’t greedy like those greedy developers. I also thought about asking her if she lives in her car, since she is opposed to development. But I knew that the points would only produce more pained expressions.
Another speaker on the panel, a courageous city councilman who is running for mayor, made the point that the city can’t afford to do everything that everybody wants—that tradeoffs have to made and priorities set. More pained looks. He should buy a case of Preparation H. He’ll need it after he gets screwed at the polls by the utopians, do-gooders and progressives for telling the truth about city spending.
I didn’t stay after the meeting to speak one-on-one with the attendees, but I have after many other meetings, where I’ve asked utopians, do-gooders and progressives such questions as:
”Where do you get your news?” Typical answer: ”In the local paper and from local and network TV.”
”So to get another perspective, you don’t read publications like The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Reason Magazine or studies from the Cato Institute?” Typical answer: ”No.”
”How do you know that Arizona ranks low in school spending?” Typical answer: ”It’s been mentioned many times in the local paper.”
”So if it’s printed in the paper, it’s true?” Typical answer: ”I didn’t say that.”
”In view of the fact that my wife and I pay half our income in taxes, how much more do you want us to pay to support the higher taxes you want for your program?” Typical answer: ”Well, I don’t think anyone should pay that much in taxes.”
”Okay, so how much should we pay and where will the money come from for your program if we’re currently paying too much?” Typical answer: ”Uh … well … umm … I’d have to give that some thought.”
”Have you ever taken a course in economics?” Typical answer: ”I had a boring course my freshman year of college.”
”Who is your favorite economist?” Typical answer: ”I’d have to think about that.”
”How about Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises?” Typical answer: ”I don’t know them.”
”Since you apparently hate corporate greed and fraud, what about the millions of Americans who petition the government to take their neighbor’s money for themselves? Or how about well-off seniors who have persuaded the government to send their prescription bills to their kids and grandkids? Aren’t they greedy? Or what about the government saying that there is a Social Security trust fund when there is no such thing? Isn’t that the biggest fraud ever?” Typical answer: ”You’re comparing apples to oranges.”
In closing, the worst thing about utopians, do-gooders and progressives is not their irrationality, false logic, intellectual contradictions and ignorance of economics and facts. It is their belief that anyone who dares to question the merits of their pet causes is a mean-spirited, close-minded right-wing extremist. That’s why trying to have an intelligent debate with them is an exercise in futility.
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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
I think if MCI plays ”Wonderful World” one more time, I’m going to put something through the television. Only a company that has simultaneously managed to defraud so many people while being ”forgiven” of so much debt could be singing ”what a wonderful world” every ten minutes.
This morning I’m reading about a Developer Edition (DE) of Movable Type 3.0. This comes as a surprise. Since October of 2002, I’ve been trying to learn the way that Movable Type tags, templates, CSS and XHTML fit together to make an easily-changed weblog/blogsite. To that end I’ve read consistently about the changes, updates and plans for Movable Type.
I’m not close to being able to provide Movable Type support services to others. I’m not a designer, developer or ”power” user. However, I want to learn. I want to understand what changes to a CSS stylesheet causes the end site to look like. I want to understand what the XHTML in the templates is really doing to produce the end site.
Now, what do I do? Do I download and start learning and using the Developer Edition? Do I wait for the User Edition (UE)? Where is Movable Type Pro in all of this?
Movable Type/Six Apart may be introducing confusion into the marketplace they have largely built. With alternatives aplenty, it behooves them to get more specific and detailed with their announcements. What is the schedule for a User Edition? What are the differences between it and the DE version? What are the prices/donation issues?
The West doesnt have the power to change Islam; it only has the power to destroy it. We have a lot of nukes. We could kill everyone. We could just take out a few troublesome nations, kill millions, and irradiate Mecca so that the Fifth Pillar is invalidated. The hajj would be impossible. Every pilgrim a martyr. I dont think well do either; God help us if we do, but inasmuch as we have the capability, its an option. But it would be a crime greater than the crime that provoked such an act, and in the end that would stay our hand. They know we wont do it.
We talked about what, but in case anyone is unclear about when ”the party might be spoiled,” you need look no further than this entry over at Instapundit.
Warren Buffett and Charles Munger own the lion’s share of Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire Hathaway owns Wesco Financial, and Charles Munger runs it. Whitney Tilson has covered and reported on the annual meetings of both of these companies in 2004. Here’s a link to his notes from the Wesco annual meeting, which was held on May 5, 2004.
The annual meetings for these companies are unlike other shareholder meetings. The legal and business details of the meetings are handled in less than fifteen minutes, but Buffett and Munger provide their insights and answer questions for as much as six or seven hours. If you ever have the opportunity to attend either of these meetings, it will be well worth your time.
Berkshire Hathaway has become one of the strongest insurance companies in the world. The company, via its subsidiaries, writes many types of insurance. From super-catastrophe to re-insurance and from auto to life, the company and it’s officers are uniquely positioned to see the kinds of risks that can occur in businesses. Often, the question arises in some form, ”what keeps you up at night?”
Here’s how Charlie Munger – via Whitney Tilson’s notes – answered that question:
Personally, I think the most important issue is still the threat that something really god-awful happens in terms of an atomic bomb or pathogens. Its so unpleasant to think about that people put it off, but if you think about whats likely to really spoil the party, thats far worse than a little inflation or one president vs. another.
What makes the Iraq thing so hard is that its hard to know whether weve reduced or increased this risk [of a WMD attack]. But I dont think we want to have a lot of really rich countries in the hands of nuts full of hatred. I think the policy of sitting back and doing noting is the wrong policy, because the nut will eventually do something awful.
The threat of bioterrorism and an atomic attack is still our worst problem. But people prefer to talk about workmans comp and corporate malfeasance…
Charles Munger
Wesco Financial Annual Meeting
May 5, 2004
Should such an attack occur, we’d grieve for a while, but it wouldn’t take twenty four hours before members of one political party would be accusing the other of having ”allowed” such a disaster through some form of negligence or mishandling of information. We will quickly forget why we elected whichever party might be in the White House or in control of Congress.
It won’t matter that we wanted more jobs or more education. It won’t matter that we elected this person or that because of oil interests or to repeal the Patriot Act. Once the kind of risk cited by Munger occurs, we won’t remember what was on our minds when we elected whomever our office-holders are.
It ought to be one of the things we (and they) are most concerned about as we think in advance of electing people.
IBM is doing two things of importance in my view. First, they are giving another boost to the notion of software-by-subscription. They’ve called it utility computing and on-demand computing. It was once hyped as the ASP model. Essentially, it treats reliable bandwidth as a given.
The second thing that they are doing is providing a multi-platform alternative to the productivity applications from Microsoft. This could become a much bigger announcement than it first appears to be. Prices appear to be between $2 and $4 per month per user. This means the annual cost for a 20-employee company might be as little as $960. Contrast that with Office 2003 which would likely cost at least $6000 or so.
* * UPDATE 2 * * * Jeffrey Zeldman discussed the announcement and proclaimed, ”Now anyone, at virtually any level, can own and manage an attractive and standards-compliant personal site.” [Just what I’ve always wanted, but I have not a clue as to how to get there with Movable Type.]
To these possibilities, it’s probably time to rethink Blogger as part of the mix. The tool may be making a big-time comeback. Take a look at the redesign!
Browsing some recent entries at Movable Type-related weblogs, I’ve found several links to information I’ve often wondered about. How do you attach an image to a category so that every entry posted to that category contains that image? How do you keep a post at the top of a weblog? Answers. Also, there are some specifics about how to alter an RSS feed to include extended entries as well as how to create an RSS feed for a category. Good stuff!
There’s a ”win-at-all-cost” movement within the Democratic Party. It doesn’t matter what kind of person, politician or leader another individual may be. The goal is to ”get rid of the Republicans.” It is going to take a decade or more of extreme hardship in this nation to return us to values-based thinking about our leaders, our elections and the role of this republic in the world of tomorrow.
The parties despise each other. The hatred is based far more on the ”you got one of ours; now it’s our turn to bring down one of yours” politics of the past thirty years. We no longer believe that men make errors, unless they’re a member of the party we support. If they are a member of the ”other” party, they not only make errors, they are ignorant, lack character, lie, cheat, steal and worse.
The people we are describing this way are the people that we elected! Why isn’t this our fault? Because we live in a world where we are never at fault; all blame belongs with them.
The news aggregator brought this to my attention while looking at recent updates at marcpasc.org. He’s pointing to an entry titled The Increasing Invisibility of Income Inequality. It was written by Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayak. Here’s how he begins:
Take a thoughtful libertarian and a thoughtful left-liberal for a latte, listen to them converse, and youll find agreement on a surprisingly wide range of issues.
So far, so good. That is, assuming you believe it is not difficult to find a ”thoughtful left-liberal.” But, let’s assume that can be done.
Proceeding with Boudreaux’s entry you’ll find that he discusses income inequality and the fact that ”a rising tide lifts all boats.” The thing I’ve never been able to get a ”thoughtful left-liberal” to answer is this: how much of my income do you think the government should take away in taxes? By the time liberals get their way with every emotion-laden, heart-rending entitlement program, what’s it really going to take from the money I earn? That redistribution of wealth is unlawful, though seldom challenged by career politicians on either side of the aisle.
Blogging helps you learn because you can post what you don’t understand and there is someone out there who is willing to help. However, don’t go running around looking for free help everytime you encounter a problem. I get too many emails from people saying they are having an issue with with some CSS and I can tell they haven’t tried their best to solve it. I learned my CSS by breaking everything and having to fix it all over again.
In a single entry, Instapundit gives us a health update, a great photo service and an update on the oil-for-food scandal. Only my fellow Tennessean pulls this off with such aplomb.
I like to think fondly of the 892,332 page views that he and I have received so far this week.
Liberals like apologies. They like lots of apologies. They like lots of apologies from lots of people. Once they hear an apology, they like resignations. They like lots of resignations…you get the picture. What they really want is enough power to match their shrill whining. Toward that end, they’ll say anything and do anything to try to get that power.
Now you’re twenty-two, and today you graduated from college. The emotions just never stop overflowing. I’m as proud of you as a dad could possibly be.
Most hours of most days you and your two sisters are lifted up in prayer as I try to imagine what you might be doing at that moment or what you might be going through. Know that those prayers continue for your happiness, your safety, your life’s direction and your relationship with God.
Thank you a thousand times over for the joy that comes from being your Dad.
No two carpenters use the same tools. Not the same brands. Not the same types or sizes. Web designers share this fact with carpenters. Each designer uses favorite tools for the work they do.
However, some patterns are emerging among those who focus on standards-based design work. In the personal publishing area it seems to me that Movable Type and WordPress are the two tools that are most prevalent behind weblogs that validate and support web standards.
As for editors and such – you may want to review this.
The Entrepreneurial Mind reports that Belmont University has been listed in a ”top 10” list for universities with an entrepreneurship emphasis. Congratulations to Dr. Cornwall and all the others who worked so diligently to build an excellent program.
Seeing that the folks at SmartCity Radio are going to talk about promote light rail as a means of urban travel, I had to dig out some Cantoni wisdom.
Here’s the first tidbit, followed by the full rant:
Elvis Found Alive in Mesa Trailer Park
by Craig Cantoni
Many readers believe that the Arizona Republic did a great disservice to the public in its shameful coverage of light rail before Phoenix voted for the boondoggle. If it had covered the facts instead of unsubstantiated opinions in the news pages, the public would not have been convinced to waste a billion dollars. The costs and benefits are so overwhelmingly against light rail that those who tout light rail must also believe that Elvis is alive. Reporters claim that they were simply reporting both sides of the issue, but the fact is that the newspaper wouldn’t print this headline: ”Elvis found in Mesa trailer park.” However, it did publish equally ludicrous claims about light rail from proponents. That is not responsible journalism. It is lazy journalism. Anyway, pasted below my signature block are two factually-based policy papers on light rail, one by the Maryland Public Policy Institute on a proposed light rail line for the Washington D.C. area, and one by the Allegheny Institute on a proposed rail line for Pittsburgh. I’m sure that they are fighting an uphill battle in trying to blunt the unbalanced reporting on the issue in the Washington and Pittsburgh mainstream media, who also believe that Elvis is alive.
Regards,
Craig J. Cantoni
Light Rail: The slowest and costliest way to move people
by Randal O’Toole
Maryland Public Policy Institute
As traffic congestion builds in Virginia urban areas, many people ask, ”Why not relieve congestion by building light-rail lines like those built in San Diego, Denver, and Portland, Oregon?” Before Virginians get too filled with light-rail envy, they should take a close look at the experiences of those other cities.
The most important lesson is that this nineteenth-century technology completely fails to meet the transportation needs of twenty-first-century cities. Costing as much to build as a four- to eight-lane freeway, the typical U.S. light-rail line carries fewer people than one-third of freeway lane – and most of those people would otherwise ride a bus. Thus, $100 spent on light rail does less to relieve congestion than $1 to $4 spent on buses or road improvements.
Does light rail reduce congestion? No, it increases congestion whenever the rail lines occupy former street space and also because it is such an ineffective use of transport dollars. The Texas Transportation Institute reports that U.S. urban congestion is growing fastest in Portland, the Twin Cities, San Diego, and Boston – all areas emphasizing rail over highway transport. Congestion grew slowest in Houston, Phoenix, and other regions that emphasized road improvements instead of rail.
Does light rail improve transit? No, most cities that built light rail experienced a decline in transit’s share of travel. This is partly because the expense of light rail forced transit agencies to increase fares and/or reduce bus services to areas not served by light rail. A Los Angeles bus rider’s union successfully sued the regional transit agency for spending billions building rail into white suburbs while it let bus service to transit-dependent minority areas deteriorate.
Is light rail more attractive to transit riders than buses? No, transit riders are sensitive to frequencies and speed, and buses can run more frequently and faster than light rail.
While most light-rail lines average just 20 miles per hour, many express bus routes average better than 30 miles per hour.
While safety demands that light-rail vehicles be spaced several minutes apart, buses can run just seconds apart.
When Portland voters rejected funding for more light rail, the local transit agency increased bus frequencies and speeds along the proposed rail route and increased ridership by 20 percent.
Does light rail revitalize neighborhoods? No. Ten years after Portland’s light-rail line opened, city officials were dismayed to find none of the redevelopment they expected along the line. They now offer millions of dollars of tax waivers and other subsidies to attract developers to the area. Los Angeles, San Diego, and other cities have had similar experiences.
Is light rail safe? Far from it. Because they are so heavy, light-rail vehicles kill 11 people – mostly pedestrians – per billion passenger miles, while buses and urban freeways kill only about 4 per billion passenger miles.
So why do so many cities want to build light rail? One word: pork. The federal government gives cities billions of dollars to build useless rail lines. This creates a powerful lobby of interest groups to promote rail construction.
If you hate automobiles and highways, you love light rail because every dollar spent on light rail is a dollar that can’t be spent actually relieving congestion. You hope that the increased congestion will lead people to stop driving – although there is no evidence that it does.
If you are the mayor of a big, slow-growing city, you love light rail because building light rail means spending federal transportation funds in your city instead of in the fast-growing suburbs where those funds are really needed.
If you are a downtown property owner, you love light rail because most light-rail lines go downtown rather than to the suburban office parks and shopping malls that compete against you.
In short, light rail is simply one more way to divert taxpayer dollars away from where they are needed to where they primarily benefit wealthy elites. In political campaigns where light rail has come before voters, the vast majority of contributions for light rail come from engineering firms, contractors, banks, and downtown business interests.
Subways and commuter rail transit work in cities with high-density urban cores, such as New York and Chicago. Yet even in dense regions light rail is not the answer: New Jersey’s new Bergen-Hudson light-rail line is one of the biggest failures in the country.
Building light-rail lines costs more than the federal and local dollars wasted on these boondoggles. It also reduces urban livability by increasing congestion, reducing pedestrian safety, and promoting more corporate welfare such as tax breaks for developments along the light-rail lines. Virginians who want to protect the livability of their communities should look for other solutions to transport problems.
Randal O’Toole (rot@ti.org) is the author of The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths and a member of the Board of Scholars of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, an education and research organization headquartered in Potomac Falls, Virginia. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided the author and his affiliations are cited.
This piece was originally written on March 15, 2002.
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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
If you’ve had a hard time accepting that standards-based designs – in which content (XHTML) and style (CSS) are separated – are superior for any of the regularly-stated reasons, Scriptygoddess has a specific project that is convincing.
For those of us who still wrestle with padding, margins, colors, lines, headings and all of the other ”styling effects” in CSS, this provides incentive to press on!
This thing called personal publishing has really flourished since 9-11-2001. In my case, the events of that day served as a catalyst for me to get started doing some things I had been putting off.
Content management systems (CMS) or personal publishing platforms became intriguing to me as I began to realize what a person, group or a corporation might achieve by communicating 24/7 with something other than a static web site.
If any of this makes sense to you and you’re interested, you should take a look at Whose blog is it? Don’t overlook the comments, either!
After all the hoohah over the HP12C Platinum, the original remains as the one to beat. In spite of some new cosmetics and features, the new one simply doesn’t show enough improvement as a 20-year update of its predecessor. HP is still updating the calculator line since launching it in 1972.
Hey, Katie and Angie. Let’s go to Sydney in September, then tour for a couple of weeks in October. I can learn something about web standards, and you can catch up with old friends. Everybody check your vacation schedules. This is more than a pipe dream!
For those who did not attend the 2004 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, Whitney Tilson has provided a link to his notes. They are comprehensive.
If you are involved in owning and/or managing a business of any size, Warren Buffett’s letters to shareholders going back to 1977 are some of the best business instruction you can receive. They are on line and free.
If you are an investor, Buffett’s advice about how to think about investments in common stocks just as you think about investments in businesses is superb.
Jeffrey Mayer (succeedinginbusiness.com) has an entry commenting on Phil Mickelson’s step-by-step plan that led to victory in The Masters. He then considers step-by-step plans that can lead to greater sales results.
Business Opportunities Weblog (via others) is running a table that shows how much some franchises earn. I may be misreading the table and the paragraph that precedes it. That paragraph seems to be telling me that the last column in the table is the gross profit that each franchise makes.
I think of gross profit as the different between sales and cost of goods sold. From gross profit, businesses subtract all other expenses associated with running the business. The table shows annual figures. Don’t be deceived by a sales figure of $1.3 million followed by a ”profit” figure of $916,000. It costs a lot more to run a McDonald’s than the difference between those two figures.
The table is still worthwhile. You get a good idea of how to view the financial structure of some businesses with which we’re all familiar.
It’s media bias when they spend more time talking about isolated incidents of American soldiers abusing POW’s than they spend on the deaths of our own people. It’s media negligence when they abbreviate coverage of Americans killed, burned, beheaded and dragged through the streets by Iraqis. The media is simply happier when the problems are on our side and not on the other side.
When Aljazeera says something, how do we know whether to believe or disbelieve? When our media outlets spend as much time writing about each other as they do reporting the news, how do we determine where fact and fiction are commingled?
In the Google IPO coverage, I read that another foundation will be established to work on ”the world’s biggest problems.” That’s good. Better that a foundation’s money goes to solve the world’s biggest problems than the taxpayer’s money via a bloated government, etc. If you want to see how those endeavors usually work out, just read my second post from Craig Cantoni for today: (Note: all emphasis is mine)
Loopy Thinking at the American Enterprise Institute
by Craig J. Cantoni
April 29, 2004
The president of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Christopher DeMuth, has been in Washington, D.C. too long. As evidenced by his op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, his thinking has become as loopy as the Beltway.
The op-ed begins with straight talk about government spending and the economy. He correctly states that ”domestic discretionary non-security spending grew by 15% from 2001 through 2003 and will probably increase by more than 25% during President Bush’s first term—a much faster growth rate than at any time during the Clinton administration.” He continues by saying that federal spending now totals $20,000 per household and that Bush’s Medicare drug benefit will add $10 trillion to the government’s unfunded liabilities.
Proceeding with his straight talk, DeMuth goes on to say that the growth of the regulatory state has exploded under the Bush administration, and he expresses concern that the fondness for big government is undermining the economy, technological innovation and the nation’s long-term security.
But then DeMuth veers off course and starts his loopy thinking.
Having presented clear evidence that Bush and his fellow Republicans in the Republican-controlled Congress are not fiscal conservatives, he goes on to say that they really are conservatives. In other words, they should be judged on what they call themselves, not on what they have done.
DeMuth then attempts to square the circle created by his loopy thinking by hypothesizing that Bush has been too preoccupied with Iraq to keep Congress from giving free goodies to special-interest groups.
Whew, I’m getting dizzy from following his loops.
What DeMuth appears to be saying is that unless a conservative president has time to stand guard over the nation’s wealth, a conservative Congress will steal it.
He conveniently forgets that Bush spent a lot of time getting his Medicare prescription giveaway passed, that he made eleventh-hour calls to Arizona congressman Jeff Flake and a few other true conservatives to pressure them to vote for the largess, that he had time to enact steel tariffs in order to buy votes from steelworkers, that he increased funding for the Department of Education, that he enacted the unconstitutional ”Leave No Child Behind” program, and that he gave a State of the Union Address in which he made steroid use by athletes an important federal issue.
DeMuth is also silent about how Bush made his money. He made it the old-fashioned liberal way. Cronies of his dad let him in on a deal to mooch from taxpayers with taxpayer-subsidized baseball.
It’s a shame that DeMuth has been infected with Beltway thinking. He should start a recovery program by walking a few blocks from his office to the Cato Institute, which, in spite of being headquartered in Washington, has not lost touch with reality and bashes both parties when they go against limited-government principles.
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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
The following piece on obesity was published as Craig Cantoni’s weekly point-counterpoint by the Arizona Republic on April 28. (Note to light-rail opponents: he took a shot at light rail.)
I’d Rather Have Skinny Government and Fat People
by Craig J. Cantoni
Contrary to what shift-the-blame lawyers and liberals say, Americans are not fat because of fast-food, bad genes or evil Republicans. They are fat because they eat too much
Eating unhealthy food is not a new American phenomenon. Old grocery ads show that the most popular foods in the early twentieth century were lard, bacon, salt pork, whole milk, sugar, eggs and butter. Genes haven’t changed in the intervening years, but waistlines of jeans have. That’s because most Americans used to do manual labor instead of sitting on their behinds. Also, kids used to walk to school, where, unlike today, there was not a school lunch program that served free food to chubby kids.
Before logging was mechanized, lumberjacks consumed over 5,000 calories a day and did not gain weight. With mechanization, lumberjacks would be the size of Ted Kennedy if they consumed that many calories.
To me, it’s great news that thanks to the market economy, families spend only 15 percent of income on food today, versus 43 percent 100 years ago. It’s also great news that life expectancy has increased by 30 years, real incomes have increased 500 percent and flush toilets have increased from 10 percent of homes to almost 100 percent.
The bad news is that the government has grown into a huge oinker. The ravenous federal government now consumes nearly 20 percent of Gross Domestic Product, versus three percent in 1900. Corpulent state and local governments devour almost as much GDP as their fat federal cousin. And because of socialism, costs have skyrocketed in K-12 education and health care.
In 1900, entitlements were nearly zero. They now comprise two-thirds of the federal budget, which costs each household an astonishing $20,000 per year. Locally, $2.3 billion in pork will be spent on a light-rail system that won’t reduce traffic or pollution but will fatten the pockets of fat-cat contractors.
Lawyers and liberals believe that the government has a right to tell us what to eat, because society pays for the health care of most Americans. Of course, society wouldn’t be paying if it were not for the socialist pyramid scheme of Medicare.
Since lawyers and liberals want fatter government and poorer and skinnier people, they should move to N. Korea. But if they don’t want to starve, they better take some Big Macs with them.
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Mr. Cantoni is an author, public speaker and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
Schadenfreude. This might be the essence of the rat race that so many call ”living” today. Those seeking advantage at all costs – in waiting lines, in traffic, in work – find momentary glee only as they gloat over taking advantage of another. They call it competition and believe they’ve ”won” something. They have not.
That said, I know what it’s like to be stuck in a job you don’t like. I am looking for every opportunity to help other people find jobs they love. It really is special once you get there.
porting existing design templates from Movable Type?
having a weblog that validates?
having a weblog that is extensible with plugins?
getting tips from a wide cross-section of users?
spending less time doing the above steps than modifying existing Movable Type templates and entries to make them validate as XHTML Transitional?
Latest count for Rodent Regatta: 239 validation errors.
OR…
Would it simply be easier to stick with Movable Type, learn CSS, select a tool for creating entries that validate (TopStyle Pro or StyleMaster) and continuing to build on the small amount of knowledge that I’ve already got?
Modern liberals worry me far more than the Patriot Act, strict laws and the war on terrorism. Please understand that modern liberals come in all shapes, sizes, sexes, religious affiliations, political parties and ages. Classical liberals are simply a thing of the past.
When I explained a simple way to think about an investment, I did so in the context of a savings account, a deposit and a business that offers a certain profit (hopefully in cash) on an annual basis. It was admittedly simple, and not the only consideration when considering an investment.
However, some people overlooked the obvious. The same reasoning applies to the purchase of single share or 100 shares or 30,000 shares of a public company. If you’re unwilling to own all of it at the price you’re paying for one share, you’re not getting a great deal on the shares you are buying.
There’s another factor. It’s known as ”margin of safety.” It was explained magnificently in Chapter 20 of The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. That chapter is titled ”Margin of Safety as the Central Concept of Investment.” If you haven’t read this or been through one of the early editions of Security Analysis, I strongly recommend doing both.
Different people learn in different ways. Read a book. Watch a video. Try and try some more until you get it. Have someone show you. Take a course. Follow a self-paced tutorial.
Redemption Through Standards is linking to a CSS course provided by one of its customers. Whether you use that or one of the Westciv courses, there are plenty of ways to get your head around CSS.
I’ve already listed two books that were mentioned at the Berkshire Hathaway meeting on Saturday. A long-time crony of mine just told me that Mr. Buffett also suggested a book titled A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
During the course of the Q&A time, he also recommended an article, The St. Petersburg Paradox and the Crash of High-Tech Stocks in 2000. It was written by Gabor J. Szekely and Donald St. P. Richards. This one is based upon work done in the 1700’s by Nicolaus Bernoulli, the one who formulated the St. Petersburg Paradox.
If you make decisions about investing that don’t include Maria or James, and you’re not afraid of a little theoretical math, the article will interest you.
There’s another quote worth posting here as well. When asked about ”how to achieve success in life,” Charlie Munger fielded the question:
”Avoid doing really dumb things. Avoid racing trains. Avoid cocaine. Avoid situations where you can get aids. It’s fairly obvious isn’t it? Avoid evil and disingenuous people especially of the opposite sex. (Huge laughs) If this gives you unpopularity with your peer group. . . (pause for effect)...To hell with em.
Charles Munger
Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting
May 1, 2004
Robert Scoble’s request to carry web designers’ wishes back to the IE6 programming team has now received 47 comments. That’s a pretty amazing way to get some straight, actionable feedback from a constituency that Microsoft (probably) would like to please.
My experience with web design is approaching three years of turmoil, torment, torture, trials, tribulations and fun. Yes, fun. In spite of thinking about throwing a computer across the room at times, I enjoy trying to figure out how these great designs and designers work. It hasn’t really been three years, nor has it been anything like full time effort or even a realiable five or ten hours a week of study, but I’m not where I would like to be.
One of the frustrating things is getting the terminology straight. I’m not talking just about tags vs. elements vs. attributes vs. values, etc. It’s stuff like validation, valid, well-formed and semantic that throws me. When I read Jeffrey Zeldman’s book and the remarkable piece that Dave Shea wrote, I understand. When I sit down to do something, I realize I don’t understand.
Now, here comes D. Keith Robinson with a focus on the concept of semantic writing or semantic mark-up. I’m clueless within three paragraphs. Now, in which of these books will I find this one?
I told someone today that these great designers make this stuff look as easy as the professional golfers make that game appear. I remember a time when I didn’t just think about throwing a golf club.
There’s a great looking site redesign at The Daily Report. You’ll love the way it looks. Here’s another case of, ”I can’t do it, but I know it when I see it.” Great colors. Great use of screen real estate. Classy looking fonts.
Let’s say you are given the opportunity to buy a great business. It’s a business you like. You’ve used the products and services of this business for years. You like it. You like it a lot, and now you have this opportunity to buy the business.
Realizing that your love and admiration for the company aren’t sufficient to lay out your hard-earned cash, you decide to do some very basic homework. You want to know what price you should pay for this business.
We’ll keep this (overly) simple. The business sells $1000 worth of goods and services every year. After paying all of its expenses, it earns $100. That’s the profit. As the potential investor, you are being asked to buy all of the 100 shares of stock that this company has issued. What should you pay for 1 share? At what price for a share of stock are you content earning $1.00 of profit per share? At what price for 100 shares of stock are you content earning $100 in profit each year?
Let’s start with a simple comparison. If you went to the bank and put some money in the bank at an interest rate of 2%, how much would you have to deposit in order to get $100 of interest each year? Answer: $5000 ($100 divided by 0.02)
Now, assume you have a really long-term view of life and investing. You’re going to deposit your money in something that is safe and earns a little more than you can earn at the bank. Let’s consider a 30-year Treasury bond. We’ll assume the current yield is 5%. That means, if we want to collect $100 per year of interest, we only need to deposit $2000.
Both of these are about as risk-free as you’re going to find. The business has quite a bit more risk. So, how much ”interest” or what rate of return do you want on your money if you know the business is going to provide $100 of annual profit? At 10%, you should pay $1000 for the whole business. At 20%, the $100 of annual profit says the business is worth $500. Each of the 100 shares should sell for $5.00.
Google’s revenue was $962 million and profit was $106 million in 2003. What is a share of the stock really worth? Bankers and analysts are suggesting that the business is worth $20 billion to $30 billion. The talk is that the whole company may take on a market value of $25 billion or more. In other words, to have the entire $106 million of annual profit, you would have to invest $25 billion. That makes your rate of return (the overly simplified interest rate) just a tiny bit more than 0.4%.
Remember that analysts and prognosticators are tossing around terms like price-to-sales ratios. A company with a market value of $25 billion that sells $1 billion each year has a P/S ratio of 25. IBM has a P/S ratio of 1.68.
Warren Buffett summarized his comments about the Google IPO with something like this:
”It’s a fabulous business, but my guess is that it comes at a fabulous price. We’d never buy a public offering. The chances of buying something undervalued in a public offering – it’s not our game.”
Warren Buffett
Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting
May 1, 2004
At the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting this weekend, Warren Buffett mentioned that there are signs that inflation could be heating up. What was his advice to the individual investor? Have a job that protects your way of life. Consider treasury inflation-protected securities (TIPS).
The news also flew around this weekend concerning Mr. Buffett’s advisory role in the Kerry campaign.
There’s an interesting link from Digital Web Magazine to Speak Up. The topic is the money earned by designers, a recent salary survey and the discussion broadens quite a bit from there.
One thing in particular became apparent as I read the comments. There is little discussion of the actual exchange of value between employee and employer or designer and client or design firm and client. There are fundamental reasons that teachers make less than professional athletes. We may not like those reasons, but they are a part of our culture and societal preferences.
Generally, we earn by providing goods or services in exchange for money. When enough people decide they’d rather have what we are offering than the money they are holding, an exchange is made. It may be a matter of conscience, but more people are prepared to exchange their money for what Britney Spears is offering than they are for what the third grade teacher is offering. It may be sad on one level, but the exchange of value is reality.
If Microsoft really has something over an eighty or ninety percent share of the web browser market, why wouldn’t they make improvements? If a rather large group of standards-oriented designers can show how IE6 fails in its handling of specific standards, wouldn’t Microsoft jump at an opportunity to fix those failures?
Andrei vented. Then, he gave us some great tips (watch the comments here as well). He achieved XHTML Strict validation for a short time, then found the flaws creeping back in via things other than his own markup.
That information is helpful to those of us who aren’t sure whether it is something we’re doing or something the tools we use are doing to cause non-validating (invalid?) markup. Terminology in all of this is important to me, though I’m not certain which of these are redundant relative to one or more of the others:
valid
accessible
semantic
standards-compliant
well-formed
usable
XHTML
CSS
optimized or lightweight
While I’m willing to learn, I’d like to learn in the context of a tool that helps me make sure I’m conforming to the rules that underpin each of the above terms. The more I read, the more confident I become that such a tool doesn’t exist.
Several weblog tools have hit the outer edges of the radar screen in recent weeks. I’m anxiously awaiting Movable Type 3.0 so that I can make some changes to my existing design and incorporate some new features. I want to see the product before launching those changes, because I want to make sure that plugins or other configuration settings don’t require a lot of work when upgrading from MT 2.66x to MT 3.0.
In the course of digging for information, these are the tools of some greater interest to me:
At the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, Charles Munger and Warren Buffett suggested two books. The first is called Deep Simplicity by John Gribbin. It is currently published and available in London. It will be here soon, I’m sure. Gribbin is the author of In Search of Shroedinger’s Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality. It’s one of the best explanations of quantum physics for laymen that has been written.
The second book is Les Schwab Price in Performance: Keep It Going. It’s the story of success in a small business, and is written by the founder and namesake of the Les Schwab Tire Centers. Mentioned at the Berkshire Hathaway meeting, it apparently offers outstanding advice in the area of compensation plans in small businesses.
I’ve never had a book recommendation from this meeting that lets me down. I may not agree with every book recommended, but even those I didn’t agree with opened lines of deep study and research.
Paul Scrivens sent me on a search of the Movable Type documentation. During that search I learned that Movable Type has a ready-made tag that keeps track of the comment numbers.
It is called <$MTCommentOrderNumber$>
I experimented a bit and found a way to drop it into one of my comments templates. Now, comments are numbered. No plugin. No script. A simple tag placed in the proper template. Many thanks to Mr. Scrivens.
Remember how we started the morning with the big-and-bold declaration about learning all this CSS and XHTML stuff? Sure, you remember. I’ve been working on allthis junk for the better part of two years. Since, most of my forays into the world of web standards and the basics of valid, useable XHTML and CSS end up in the ditch, I’ll simply let Andrei Herasimchuk speak for me and move along. (Remember, Dan is another of those who can do cold fusion on a table top; I’m just trying to make the Regatta validate!)
Have a great Saturday!
* * UPDATE * * * Just in case Andrei’s rant didn’t make the point, here’s one other view you might consider, but don’t do so without reading the comments after the article. Thanks to Andy Budd for the link.
I want to number my comments. No, I want to number your comments. It’s done well at Whitespace. It’s done well at Photo Matt.
Is it a plugin for Movable Type? Is it a Movable Type setting that I turn on or off? What allows those who have their comments numbered to automagically number them?
* * UPDATE * * * While I’m simply trying to stick a silly number next to each comment, the brilliant designers are finding five pixels of fault with the XHTML strict and transitional DOCTYPE declaration across various browsers. Here we have an example of the different between those of us who are capable of giving Mom our handprint in plaster of Paris, as compared with those who can demonstrate table-top cold fusion experiments that are readily verified by the world community.
Baptist churches have a string of administrative and organizational practices as ridiculous as the tax code. One of those is to name Sunday School departments according to the age of the members. There was a time that Adult 8 or 9 was the department for those whose next stop might be the cemetary. Adult 1 was for those who had just begun life as an adult – usually, a married adult.
Then, someone with far too much time on his hands reversed the whole thing. Assigning higher numbers to the older folks was offensive, so Adult 1 became the place you stayed until Adult 0 (heaven) called you home. Adult 9 was where you began.
That simply gives you a glimpse into the silliness that some Baptist churches deal with from an organizational perspective. Get inside some of those older Sunday School departments and you discover what’s really important. ”Oh, excuse me young man, we only serve donut holes in this department – not donuts.” It was the nicest thing that had been said to me in a while. Young man – I’m fifty years old.
Now comes the fact that under your Federal Goverment’s Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), a pastor cannot call a hospital to check on the welfare of a church member, and prayer requests printed in the bulletin may have to cease or be heavily edited.
Don’t misunderstand. Some of this is a good thing. The Baptist church has had many a Wednesday evening prayer meeting where someone stands up and says, ”Sally’s still in the hospital. Her dizziness has gone, but she’s still not able to be up much because the oozing wound from her surgery is till draining and…”
Look. Sally needs our prayers. Sally’s oozing wound does NOT need our prayers. I kid you not when I tell you I’ve heard people go on for fifteen or twenty minutes with every minute detail of what some poor soul has experienced at the hands of modern medicine. I don’t need the details!
HIPAA’s solitary contribution to the betterment of society may come from having shortened prayer meeting at the Baptist church on Wednesday night. [inspiration for this little rant comes courtesy of Jeffrey Veen]
Where does all the emphasis on the basics of web design, standards, XHTML, semantic markup, CSS and accessibility take us? Well, it takes us to the mountaintop, of course.
SBC Park is where the San Francisco Giants play baseball. The park recently lit up 121 wireless access points. Some people equate wi-fi with lugging a laptop, and today, that’s probably a valid concern. However, many PDA’s now connect to wi-fi networks.
In the future we’ll have hybrid phones that connect to wi-fi networks where they’re available. What we call a laptop today may one day take on a competely different form factor.
In addition to the stats interests of many baseball fans, the baseball park can be just like a restaurant, a bookstore or a coffeee shop for some people on the go. They want or need to stay connected.
I don’t see myself carrying a laptop to the baseball game. I do see myself carrying a hybrid cell phone that could take advantage of wi-fi! [link compliments of stopdesign]
It’s early on Saturday morning. I’m going to work through some tutorials on XHTML, CSS and some fundamental web design techniques. We’ll see how far we get by Monday morning.
* * UPDATE * * * Before the learning began I stumbled across this Roadmap to Standards. It just doesn’t get any better than this. Thanks to David at mezzoblue.
Relatively free of any more divisive commentary, Al Mohler’s most recent weblog entry talks about red and blue America. It highlights other writing and commentary about how our nation has become ideologically divided over cultural, social, religious, political and any other issue we can imagine.
Unfortunately, there is little information about how to reunite a nation once it is divided.
I suppose the well will never run dry of CSS tools, techniques and resources. It’s difficult to know where to start. Nick Bradbury has a short list of CSS articles that he’s been reading. These are going into the weekend pile of things to study.
Way back in 1997 or so people apparently figured out how to use tables for Internet page layout. By embedding one table into another and so on, rather minute layout effects could be achieved.
Going back to change that layout on a single page wasn’t all that bad, but a site with fifty similar pages required a lot of editing to bring about consistent changes.
Enter web standards, CSS, XHTML, accessibility, etc. There are techniques for better web site design. There are many, many benefits. The best book (I’ve found) on the subject is Designing With Web Standards. There you’ll find all the benefits along with the reasons that standards-based design will carry us into the future.
Doubters need only to visit the CSS Zen Garden for a glimpse of the vision. Without changing a bit of content or the markup for a page, a CSS change can result in all of the different layouts you see there.
For those who simply think there is nothing to the web-standards drive, you should do two things. Continue to use your WYSIWYG editors or let your 13-year old do it for you, and read what Andy Budd has to say about some recent comments on standards. Actually, you should read Andy’s weblog regularly anyway!
In spite of the title, I’m accusing no one of anything.
Two domains that I registered, but do not use are up for renewal soon. If they expire, I have 30 days to reinstate them by paying $99.95 plus the annual registration fee.
Since April 5 I’ve been trying to transfer these two domains from one registrar to another. I’ve followed the rules. I’ve asked for and received the transfer authorization codes. I’ve reinstated the transfers a couple of times.
At this moment, it certainly seems that one registrar may be waiting for these two domains to expire so that they can collect the extra $200. Be assured that details will be provided if they drop the ball on this!
I want to learn how to use CSS to set the width of the text area of a web page this weekend. That may be called ”padding,” but I’m not sure. I also want to learn how to use CSS to format a blockquote the way I normally format them. I’m still embedding or typing tags like center or strong and lots of <br />.
I know this doesn’t sound too ambitious an undertaking to those experienced web designers who read here, but it will likely fill and frustrate my weekend.
Stupid Cowards and Clean Elections
by Craig J. Cantoni (originally published in the Arizona Republic on April 21)
Last May, the Arizona Daily Star of Tucson ran an editorial calling me a coward for being one of two plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Arizona’s clean election law. The editorial showed how the establishment, especially the left-leaning media, will try to discredit those who fight for free speech and other liberties.
The editorial lied…
...that I’m a front for right-wing organizations. Actually, I’m a private citizen with strong libertarian beliefs who, as readers of this column know, criticizes both Democrats and Republicans when they abuse government power. The true coward is the Star, which, like the rest of the establishment media, can hide behind clean election laws and engage in political speech that is outlawed for private citizens and groups.
The Star’s real beef is that I’ve founded and funded an organization called Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). HAALT’s mission is to stop the immorality of the government taking money from some citizens for the benefit of politically favored citizens or groups instead of for government services that benefit all citizens equally, such as national defense. Of course, as a left-liberal newspaper, the Star somehow rationalizes that when the government takes money from one person and gives it another person, it is something other than theft. To them, it is compassion, social justice, fairness or some other twaddle.
Over half of political and governmental activity is in stolen goods, whether it is rich corporate farmers getting subsidies from the rest of us, the elderly sending the bills for their medicine to their grandchildren, corporate employees receiving favorable tax treatment for health care at the expense of the self-employed, or riders of Phoenix’s planned light-rail line having non-riders pick up 88 percent of the cost of their ride.
The fatal flaw of the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights is that it is legal for the government to take all of your money, if that is what the majority wants to do. That explains why John Kerry and other politicians openly advocate theft and class warfare without fear of being arrested or being called a thief by the likes of the Star.
It is illogical for the Star and other do-gooders to endorse government theft and then to wail about the corrupting influence of money in politics. The Star is worse than a coward. It is a stupid coward.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, public speaker and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
Today, I’m in a hawkish frame of mind. I’m ready to win in Fallujah. I’m ready to know that a friend mentioned in this article is safe. I’m ready for our military people to see, feel and know that we appreciate what they are doing.
Someone said something recently about making France the 54th state. With certain stipulations I could deal with that. For all those still distressed over an absence of WMD’s in Iraq, I’m ready to annex Iraq, too. I wouldn’t be one bit ashamed of having a U.S. territory in the middle east. I’d dare Syria to even glance our way.
If Saudi Arabia said anything, I’d slant-drill under the border, and sell their oil. Iran still has it coming anyway, so they could get in line, too.
War is hell. War isn’t for talking heads. War isn’t for intellectual exercise. War isn’t for United Nations approval. Let’s get the guys what they need to win, support them and find out who is next in line. I’m steamed!
For whatever reason, someone has just dropped a comment on an entry that dates back to Christmas Eve of last year. Here are the words from the comment as they were written: ”Borerline racism right here…”
That’s it. I can only guess at what the writer might have been implying. Just to clarify any confusion that might have resulted from my entry, I don’t like the position of the French government toward the USA. I don’t care who knows it.
Take a look at this quote:
The country that gave the world Voltaire is telling us the right to free speech doesnt include the right to be scornful.
People are much too quick to toss around the word ”racism,” particularly when they are talking about France. I’m no racist. I just don’t like the way my country, its leaders and its citizens have been treated by the nation of France, its leaders and its citizens. That’s my prerogative. Writing about it here is also my prerogative. Those who don’t like it have millions of other weblogs to read.
Oh, and while I’m at it, if my purchase of Moleskine notebooks in any way enriches the French, then I’ll stop those purchases as well. Trust me, it won’t be a difficult life living without anything made or exported by the French! The USA has done far too much for that nation to be treated as we have. Period.
”Last May, Munich said it was moving 14,000 computers from Windows and Microsoft Office software to SUSE Linux and a Linux Office clone.” (See story) [Computer Reseller News]
Microsoft lost the City of Munich deal, but hired the guy who led the way for the SUSE Linux team. They won’t lose many more!
With more than 5700 Dairy Queens in the USA, Berkshire Hathaway is gearing up the advertising as it has at other subsidiaries such as Geico, NetJets and Fruit of the Loom.
Ever since the French (persistent delusions of relevance) showed what they’re made of, I have suspended use of Rhodia pads. I miss them, but not as much as I enjoy doing a tiny thing to snub the French.
Today, I bought my first Moleskine (mol-a-skeen’-a) notebook. The recommendation was the Real Live Preacher’s. I think I’m going to like it. If it was good enough for Hemingway, it’s great for me. It’s also Italian – not French!
Google until you find a source for them, but here are some options for you:
If you’ve got other favorite tools for actually writing – not merely typing – post a comment and let us know what you use. We’re particularly interested in the preferences of engineers, architects, designers and scientists. What’s your favorite notebook or sketchbook?
Many potential owners of new small businesses overlook the notion of ”know your industry.” Others believe that knowledge of an industry provides them knowledge of all industries. Take a look at what Business Opportuntities Weblog has to say.
Coming from a background free of programming and web development responsibilities, learning HTML, XHTML, CSS, web standards and a host of other web-based technologies has proven quite the challenge.
The biggest challenge is trying to find out how to learn. Plenty of books spend their early pages teaching you what once was done. Then, seventy five to one hundred pages into the book, they say, ”forget all we’ve been saying.” They then dive into CSS and sometimes web standards.
Lately, I’ve been using the products and tutorials offered by Westciv. Here’s another introductory CSS tutorial that I’ll go through early this week.
Arizona Republic Awarded Wurlitzer Prizes
by Craig J. Cantoni
April 25, 2004
The Arizona Republic was awarded two Wurlitzer Prizes for its coverage of economics and business in its Sunday, April 25, 2004, edition. The Wurlitzer Prize is awarded to the newspaper that spreads ignorance the most by playing the same canards over and over again to a brainwashed public, similar to how an old jukebox plays a broken record over and over again to tattooed patrons of a biker bar who are too drunk to notice that they are listening to repetitive nonsense.
One Wurlitzer was awarded for a two-page story that began above the fold on the front page with the following headline:
Phoenix-area jobs in jeopardy Offshoring risk higher in Valley than in other areas
The story claimed that ”Metro Phoenix appears more vulnerable to jobs moving offshore than much of the nation because of its base of office support work and high number of computer professionals.”
The Wurlitzer committee thought that the story was brilliant in its deception. ”It didn’t tell the other side of the story,” said committee member Dee Seet, ”and that’s the first thing we award points for.”
Committee member P. Nochio added, ”The Republic didn’t say that the United States has a growing trade surplus in the jobs most represented in the Valley’s base. And committee member Bea Gile continued, ”Nor did it say that the Department of Labor is projecting 35 to 60 percent increases over the next decade in the numbers of network systems and data communications analysts, computer software engineers, database administrators, computer systems analysts, network and computer systems administrators, and computer and information system managers.”
Based on the projections, those metro areas with a high number of computer professionals and other service jobs will see a net gain in jobs with increased globalization. The Republic was awarded the Wurlitzer for reachng the opposite conclusion, thus keeping with the mission of the Wurlitzer Foundation to spread ignorance about globalization and the market economy in order to get Democrats elected to office.
Foundation president Ann Ecdote was particularly impressed with how the Republic took up more than half of the article with three human-interest stories about people losing their jobs to outsourcing. ”We always advise that when the facts aren’t on your side, appeal to the emotions instead of the intellect.” She noted that the Republic did not have one human-interest story about someone getting a job because of globalization.
The second Wurlitzer was awarded to Republic business columnist Jon Talton, who almost always reaches conclusions that are at odds with the facts. Talton won the award over the runner-up, the leftist New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, by writing this line: ”Business competitiveness appears to go hand-in-hand with job insecurity, stagnant wages, falling benefits and two-thirds of America’s corporations paying no income tax.”
”What a masterpiece of false logic and falsities,” exclaimed Wurlitzer Foundation spokesperson, Ann Anias, who changed her name five years ago to honor Ananias, the early Christian who was struck dead for lying. She explained that according to Talton’s logic, we could increase job security by being uncompetitive. ”He makes the case for socialism better than anyone on the staff of the Daily Worker,” said Anias.
She went on to praise Talton for not saying that consumers pay corporate taxes through higher prices.
Paul Krugman was complimentary in defeat. ”Even I wouldn’t have the audacity to say that benefits are falling,” said Krugman. He went on to quote from a Wall Street Journal article published on August 18, 1997 and written by Craig J. Cantoni.
”The cost of all fringe benefits has soared to 40% of total compensation, compared with 17 percent in 1955. Corporations spend almost 12% of total revenues on employee benefits, vs. 4.4% in the 1950s. The average employee’s benefits package (including payroll taxes) costs just under $15,000.”
Cantoni’s article also said that because the government killed a consumer market in health insurance 60 years ago, the cost of employer-provided health insurance is skyrocketing and will continue to replace cash wages as a form of employee remuneration. Of course, Cantoni will never get a Wurlitzer for telling the truth about health care and wages, since the truth will not lead to more socialism and to Democrats being elected to office.
In an award ceremony to honor the Republic, Wurlitzer Foundation spokesperson Anias said that the founder of the foundation, Will Wurlitzer, is spinning with delight in his grave over the newspaper’s special talent at spreading economic ignorance.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
”Why dont the same market forces that drive price competition for DVD players keep health costs from rising at double-digit rates? [Business Opportunities Weblog courtesy of Dane Carlson]
As the Business Week article mentioned, the ”virtuous cycle” really has provided great enhancements to our standard of living. However, regulated industries have never had the advantages that are ultimately uncovered in free markets. Healthcare is clearly a regulated industry.
The pharmaceuticals industry is among the most tightly regulated in the country. Government programs and employer-sponsored insurance programs clearly provide outside influences on the economics of healthcare.
What would you have for lunch if you had a $5 copay? Why is health insurance thought of as an employer’s responsibility to the labor force, but home owners and car owners don’t look to their employer to insure those purchases.
Dance and drama are artistic forms which means they have generally to be interpreted. Unlike drama, preaching is direct and has no need for interpretation.
For those interested only in displaying some information on the web, standards are a bother. These folks have not yet begun to think about accessibility, lower costs of bandwidth, quicker download times and easier site changes.
If you share my interest in designing and coding sites for more than expedience, take a look at this free XHTML course.
You may recall that an unscientific poll was taken to determine which editors are most popular. For those using TopStyle Pro, here’s some good news about future work to be done to improve the product.
Ted Shelton links to an article about the fundamental strength of voice-over-IP (VoIP) when compared to a phone company with no clue. Couple callous attitudes about customers with an unwillingness to believe a freight train is headed your way and you get the legacy telecos.
The unfortunate part of this trend is that it has been relatively slow-moving, but the methods, tactics, philosophies and self-interests of the traditional carriers hasn’t changed a bit. Arrogantly, they continue to use hardball sales tactics to sell their commodity offerings. Then, they don’t understand when their offices close or suffer huge cutbacks.
Telecommunications companies simply don’t get it. There is so little differentiation between their services that any price gap between two providers will immediately make customers move to the cheaper service.
Memphis is a city that is so concerned about ”image” that only the cheapest provider gets business. You don’t want to be seen or heard at the country club if you’ve somehow managed to miss this week’s low-cost provider of anything. Cell phone service is this way. Long distance service is this way. ISP service is thought of in the same way.
Techdirt Wireless provides a glimpse of how it works in arena for high-speed wireless data.
The Movable Type Personal Publishing System logo is shown in Mena Trott’s latest entry. MT 3.0 is described as having extensibility enhancements to the platform on which plugins and new features can be added. Point releases (3.x and beyond) will provide the new features required in a ”power tool.” It’s probably time to start learning a lot more about how plugins to Movable Type really work, conflict and get along with each other. I’ve only seen one other software tool in the last 24 months that I want to learn as much about as Movable Type.
The Media Judges the Media
by Craig J. Cantoni
April 22, 2004
Should former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling be the judge in his fraud trial? Silly question, unless you belong to the establishment media, in which case you are accustomed to the media judging its own fraudulent practices instead of letting outsiders into its cloister to make an independent judgment.
A case in point:
On April 21, 2004, the PBS NewsHour had a segment on the fabrications of USA Today’s star reporter, Jack Kelley. Sitting in judgment of Kelley and the mainstream media in general were two guests, both cloister members. One was Geneva Overholser, an articulate journalism professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. She is not only a cloister member, but she also trains novitiates to become cloister members. The other was USA Today staffer Susan Page, who was proud that the paper had appointed an investigative committee consisting of—yeah, you guessed it—cloister members.
This is akin to the Catholic Church handling its own sex abuse problem.
Professor Overholser said that most broadsheets are ”fine newspapers.” Certainly she has to know that many newspapers are losing readers and credibility, which is hardly a sign of doing a fine job. Yet based on what she said on PBS, she is apparently unwilling to take any responsibility as a teacher of journalists for the loss of readers and credibility.
Both Overholser and Page said that the solution was for newspapers to establish ombudsman positions, which are almost always filled by insiders on the newspaper payroll. In other words, let readers complain to an insider about problems inside the cloister. Sure, that’ll work. It certainly worked for boys abused by priests.
Here’s an example of how it doesn’t work in the newspaper business: Several years ago, a reporter by the name of Julie Amparano was fired by The Arizona Republic for fabricating stories. (Note: Thanks to the open-mindedness and graciousness of the editorial editor, the Republic, which is the largest circulation newspaper next to USA Today in the Gannett empire, runs a freelance opinion column of mine, for which I have never accepted remuneration)
At least a year before Amparano was fired, I had told several of the paper’s editors and the ombudsman at the time that Amparano’s stories had a bad odor. In view of the fact that Amparano was subsequently rewarded with her own column, my feedback was apparently ignored.
I believe my feedback was ignored because, like Jayson Blair of the New York Times, Amparano was a diversity hire. She had been hired from The Wall Street Journal to cover Hispanic issues because she was Hispanic. She was eventually fired for fabricating a story about a racist who had hated Hispanics, only to discover later in life that he was Hispanic.
This is an example of how one wrong leads to another wrong. The first wrong was the newspaper disregarding long-standing discrimination law, which clearly says that it is illegal to base hiring decisions on race or ethnicity. It doesn’t matter that all big-city dailies engage in the practice or that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission looks the other way when it comes to favored races. What matters is the message that the practice sends to the newsroom, a message that it is okay to break the rules and then to rationalize the rule-breaking with convoluted logic.
But don’t expect Professor Overholser to speak out against the practice and risk being branded a heretic by fellow professors, the vast majority of whom worship at the altar of affirmative action and, as surveys show, vote Democratic.
Which brings me to an issue that is more important to the media’s credibility than an occasional fabrication: the perception that the media has a liberal bias.
The simple-minded blowhards who host conservative talk-radio shows claim that the perception is real. The blowhards are wrong.
Judging by what they write, many reporters are simply misinformed, illiterate in economics, intellectually lazy, and disdainful of free markets, suburbia, the auto, Wal-Mart and the people who shop at Wal-Mart. At the same time, they are enamored with central planning, coercion, collectivism, taxes, nannyism, growth controls, subsidized downtown development, public transit and special rights for special racial groups.
Hmm, maybe the blowhards are right after all.
Seriously, it is virtually impossible to read a big-city daily anywhere in the country without becoming infuriated over the lack of balance, over the left-leaning opinion pieces masquerading as news stories, over the insults to reader intelligence, over the same shopworn New York Times formula followed across the land, and over the industry’s affection for big government. With the demise of a competing daily in most big-city markets, the industry has gone from being an admired government watchdog to being a disdained government lapdog, at least in conservative and libertarian eyes.
An example: Last year, The Arizona Republic had a long front-page story about the state’s budget crisis and proposed cuts in the state budget. The story quoted 12 people who were either on the government payroll or who received government entitlements. Naturally, all of the quoted people were opposed to the cuts.
The story did not quote one taxpayer who thought that the cuts were a good idea. Not one out of a state of five million people. Not one! The result was that a half-million readers only got one side of the issue: the pro-tax side. Typical.
I and others immediately sent e-mails to the reporter and to the chain-of-command at the newspaper. No response. No apology. No admission of violating journalism standards. And worse, no change in how stories are covered.
The trend of crossing the firewall between news and opinion has accelerated so much that news reporters now author op-ed pieces on the editorial pages, where their opinions reveal that they are indeed liberal. For example, a news reporter recently wrote the lead opinion piece in a Sunday edition of The Arizona Republic. The piece, which was about the growth of metro Phoenix, revealed the author’s bias against suburbia and the auto, and her bias for public transit and for limits on growth.
The same biases can be found in almost every big-city daily, as if every journalist across the land has been indoctrinated in the same liberal dogma. Perhaps Professor Overholser can explain how this happens.
Never mind. I’ll explain it to her. You see, Professor Overholser, journalism students are taught the simple basics of journalism and the standard politically-corect pabulum found on college campuses, but they are not taught economics, science or the philosophical and historical foundations of capitalism and our constitutional republic. As a result, they know how to sanitize stories about race, how to write a simple declarative sentence, how to check sources, and how to ask who, what, why, when and how. But they don’t know enough to recognize economic and scientific hokum when they see it.
Since schools of journalism aren’t going to change, it is up to newspapers to change. The change that would have the most impact is for newspapers to publish a detailed daily critique of their previous day’s coverage on page two, written by a non-employee from outside the cloister. Circulation would increase as newspapers recaptured the market share lost to talk-radio and other non-mainstream media.
Unfortunately, as demostrated by Enron and the Catholic Church, insular organizations don’t allow insiders to come inside and judge them until it’s too late.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
In an entry titled Breathtaking Hypocrisy Susan links to Susanna’s comments about the moral equivocation over violence as portrayed in The Passion of the Christ and Kill Bill 2.
A long weekend at Mississippi State was filled with activity. Daughter number two will finish there in May. We had a great time all weekend long. There were Barn Parties, baseball games, football games, meals together and lots of campus activities.
The weekend has been followed by lots of new opportunities and a new focus. It may take the better part of a couple of weeks before I write about it here. Stay tuned.
I haven’t launched my RSS feed reader in better than 24 hours. I’m in a hotel that wants $9.95 per 24-hour period for wireless Internet access. Frustrating. The massive wi-fi cloud over this country can’t form quickly enough for my taste. It would currently take about eight different accounts to get the kind of wi-fi coverage I really want.
There are people who are vehemently opposed to the use of weblogs for primary business sites on the Internet. Many – if not all – of these people will gladly point to sites that are completely free of any concern for web standards. Rich with tables and font taqs, these ”businesss sites” are considered appropriate.
Unwilling to spend even a few minutes understanding web development tools, standards and the value of a content management system, these happy souls move forward with the notion that weblogs are bad and sites are good. They have no clue about the distinction they are trying to make.
Here’s a site dedicated to citing examples of business blogs as primary web sites. Many thanks to Richard Eriksson for the link.
Spring is officially here. The weather is great. The pollen is beginning to clear up. Blooms are open. Spring game tail-gating has begun. Campus wi-fi offers full connectivity while enjoying the time away, but great distractions abound.
Remember that little thing about ”grab the nearest book.” Matthew Mullenweg entered those words in Feedster and found out just how many sheep are on the web. There were 1492 at last count!
Actually, I learned a few things with his entry. I’m not a visitor to nor user of Feedster, but I think this gives me some hints about how it might be used.
A Day of Anger and Questions
by Craig J. Cantoni
April 15, 2004
April 15 is not only tax day. It’s also a day of anger and questions.
After paying a tax accountant $1,125 to prepare two tax returns for my wife and me, two returns for our 13-year-old son, and five returns for my 82-year-old mother and deceased father, I am overflowing with anger and questions.
I’ll discuss the tax returns after I ask a question that I ask every April 15th: Is it moral for me to use force to stop an armed robber from stealing my family’s money?
If the answer to the above question is yes, then a follow-up question is in order: Is it moral for me to use force to stop someone who retains an armed robber to steal my family’s money?
If the answer to that question is yes, then there is one more follow-up question: Is it moral for me to use force to stop fellow citizens from voting to have the government and its armed agents steal my family’s money for their own benefit?
Sorry for the provocative questions, but…
...it’s an Italian thing. I was raised to believe that family comes before anything else and that a man has a moral obligation to protect his family. I understand that other people from other backgrounds were raised to believe that the state comes before family. Some even believe that it’s good for a woman to ”marry” the state instead of the father of her children and for the state to support her with money taken from her neighbors. It takes a village, you know.
Note to Attorney General John Ashcroft: Although I believe that I have a moral obligation to protect my wife, son and mother, and although I’d like to break the kneecaps of thieves who steal from them with the government’s help, I don’t plan on grabbing my tire iron—not because I think it would be wrong, but because I’d go to jail.
Speaking of jail, I have a question for you, Mr. Ashcroft: Since the primary purpose of government is to protect the lives and property of citizens, and since the primary purpose of your office is to prosecute those who take the lives and property of citizens, then why don’t your agents prosecute people who have government agents steal money from their fellow citizens?
After all, it’s not as if the culprits are hard to find. You could start with the directors of AARP, who use the mail to openly advocate that wealthy seniors steal from subsequent generations, including from my son. If it was justified to arrest and handcuff Enron executives, then it is certainly justified to arrest and handcuff AARP directors, whose theft is thousands of times greater. And while you’re at it, you could arrest all of the members of Congress who perpetuate the fraud and dishonest bookkeeping of Medicare and Social Security.
Closer to home, you could arrest the school board of my local school district. The district will take about $190,000 in school taxes from my wife and me over our adult lives, although we exercise our religious freedom and send our kid to parochial school. The district gives some of that money to our neighbor, a wealthy doctor who has three kids in public school and could well-afford to pay the full $252,000 that it will cost the district to educate his kids for 12 years.
Because the doctor and 90 percent of Americans have been indoctrinated in government schools by government teachers to believe that government schools are for the public good, he and most Americans don’t question how the public good is served by him and others being given other people’s money. It may be good for him, but it isn’t good for my wife and me. The good doctor carts his kids around in a $40,000 SUV, while we cart our kid around in a 13-year-old minivan.
Maybe a couple of arrests would make the doctor and others question what they’ve never questioned before about the public good. Maybe they would stop giving me blank stares or programmed platitudes when I ask them how the public good is served by the state forcing my wife and me to pay double for education, once for the public education of the doctor’s kids and once more for the parochial education of our kid. Maybe they’ll actually think beyond the group-think that they learned in government schools about the government. Maybe they would understand the difference between paying taxes for government services that directly benefit all people equally, such as national defense, and paying taxes for government services that directly benefit some people at the expense of others.
While we’re on the subjects of education and taxes and theft, let me explain why my 13-year-old son had to file state and federal tax returns. The reason is that my wife and I established a college fund for him when he was born. He has to pay taxes on the investment income, even though the income is reinvested in the fund.
Ironically, part of my son’s taxes goes to college students in the form of subsidized student loans. Some of the students come from families that are impoverished through no fault of their own, but others are from families that had the financial wherewithal to save for college but chose to be spendthrifts with their money. The government is lousy at distinguishing between the two types of families, because it is easier for politicians to take a portion of my kid’s college savings and give it to other kids than it is to tell voters to act responsibly.
These are the same politicians who wonder why the cost of a college education is rising so much faster than inflation. They can’t connect the dots. The first dot is student loans and other government subsidies, which have created a disincentive for colleges to control costs and be more productive. The second dot is the demand for college education, which has been fueled to a great degree by the devaluation of a high school education, due to government schools lowering academic standards and catering to the lowest common denominator.
Now to my mother’s five tax returns. She had to file so many returns because she and my deceased father had established trusts to protect their hard-earned lifelong savings from probate court and from grave robbers who steal family nest eggs through estate taxes. Returns had to be filed on each trust, as well as on the assets held jointly by my mom and dad, both of whom were working-class people who saved all of their lives for their retirement.
Like all other savers, my mom and dad paid income taxes on their meager wages, and then, as a result of a shortsighted and immoral tax policy, had to pay taxes for a second time on the investment income from their retirement savings. Now the government wonders why Americans don’t save for old age, and it can’t figure out how the looming shortfall in Social Security and Medicare will be closed without consigning my kid’s generation to a lifetime of indentured servitude.
My mom’s retirement savings included a substantial number of shares of Anheuser-Busch stock, which she inherited 40 years ago from the immigrant aunt who raised her after her mother died at an early age. She sold the stock this year, because it is not wise for an 82-year-old woman to be heavily invested in the stock market. She will pay taxes on the amount that the stock has appreciated in value since she inherited it, an amount that includes inflation, much of it caused by lousy government fiscal and monetary policies. Since 1964, the stock has risen in value from inflation alone by 593 percent. A moral government does not force an 82-year-old woman to pay taxes on inflation.
But we don’t have a moral government. And that’s why April 15 is a day of anger and questions.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
Lately, I’ve felt compelled to capture (by way of linking) the notions that are being tossed around by liberal critics of the nation’s policies, the President and members of the President’s administration. Linking to some of these people does NOT – I repeat NOT – signify a shift in my own thoughts about current events.
There is a big difference in reading what Tobias or Marshall say about matters when compared to reading some of the matters for yourself. I generally prefer to see the events myself rather than have someone spin or interpret the events for me.
I saw planes fly into the World Trade Center because I was watching television when it happened. I’ve read the documents at the 9/11 Commission’s web site. I watch hearings on CSPAN free of commentary.
In the arena of thoughts, ideas and words motives show through. It isn’t difficult to see that there are plenty of people in the USA today who are willing to forfeit the nation and all it has stood for to prevent the opposing political party from holding office.
”It’s the reason we’re doing eBay at 2 p.m. on the office computer and answering emails at 9:30 on a Sunday night. It’s our life.” [Business Opportunities Weblog]
While I continue to believe that ”Doors” was a better name, the folks at Lindows.com, Inc. changed the name of their operating system to Linspire. [InfoWorld]
Jeff Jarvis is preparing for BloggerCon II by getting a list together. It’s in a wiki. [Richard Eriksson provided the link, but my original entry attributed the list to Richard in error.]
Nick Bradbury had to have surgery and his early reports are that there was almost instant relief. This is super news. We’re wishing him well and a speedy recovery.
There are people who understand less about these topics than I do. There cannot be very many people who want to learn more about this faster than do I.
In a single entry Eric Meyer gives us a glimpse of the site that accompanies his new book as well as a look at his own Zen Garden design, which is number 100 in the list of CSS designs.
It’s all too puzzling for a novice in XHTML, CSS and web standards to know the best tools for learning. There are so many. Starting and stopping with different sites, books and software tools is not paying off. I need to find a single resource and advisor and stick with them to the bitter end.
I recall as a college student being asked about my major. Replying that I was majoring in electrical engineering was (too) often met with one of two responses. Either I was asked whether or not I could repair some small appliance or I was asked whether or not I worked on televisions. Understand this was in the dark ages, but human nature hasn’t changed a great deal.
Now that I have a weblog, I’m asked whether or not I’m a web site developer. I’m not, but I’m learning. I’m learning, but I’m not going to learn it all by the end of the week!
Steven Vore links to Meryl’s pointer about a site that is new to me. Apparently, CSS can be used to stylize forms just as it is used to apply style to other content. More to learn!
Two people saw different press conferences last evening. First, someone who saw nothing but the negative said this:
Tonight’s press conference was pretty bad. At one point I thought maybe Bush should just resign and go be President of Iraq. He seems to have lost track of his job, which is President of the country I live in, the country I just paid taxes to, the country whose young people are dying to save a country that did not attack us on Sept 11 and one that clearly does not want our help. Watching him fumble tonight, I realized this is Mr Joe Average thrust into a situation way over his head, as if that wasn’t bad enough, he started a war that has no end. Shame on the Republicans for nominating this guy in 2000. He can’t complete a sentence. He talked about a chicken farm in Libya (twice!). The Republicans still have the power to fix it, get a new candidate for the November election, and start the withdrawal from Iraq now. It’s a disaster. This guy is drowning, and that’s bad.
Then, there are some other points of view. Here’s how one of them saw the press conference:
Bush said that there’s no safe alternative to resolute action, and stressed that the terrorists fear democracy and freedom in the Arab world.
Overall, a pretty good opening speech—though he probably should have given it weeks ago. The first question was a ”quagmire” question. ”How do you answer the Vietnam question?”
I think Bush handled that pretty well, and he looked confident and quick on his feet (for Bush). More importantly, he seemed sincere, and determined (”tough” was an oft-repeated word), while admitting problems. And he stayed on message.
How will it play? I don’t know how many people watched it, but I think it will reassure a lot of people who haven’t paid a lot of attention day to day, and who wanted evidence that Bush is serious, has a plan, and is on top of things. Lots of talk about cooperation, to deflect claims of unilateralism. He was pretty good, and I wonder why he doesn’t do this more often. Ultimately, though, the issue isn’t the communication, but the way things work out. It’s not the talk, but the results.
My all star designer dropped a comment by here that explained what I had done to create problems viewing this weblog with other browsers. I had forgotten to switch the DOCTYPE for this site after doing some experimenting. That’s been fixed. The better news is that I’m now down to 280 validation errors. I’ll continue to find the problems and fix them.
In an effort to show regular readers that I will alsolink to Andrew Tobias when he writes as he once did, take a look at his most recent attempt to order something from IBM. This one feeds us no political sniping or whining.
Also, in fairness to IBM, I listened to a story just yesterday in which a friend of mine described his attempt to diagnose a problem with two IBM NetVistas that were purchased in 2001. Using a search engine and IBM’s technical support people, he found out that IBM was providing an extended warranty exchange for the primary system board. In fact, IBM sent a technician to my friend’s home to replace the system boards. No charge for the boards. No charge for the shipping. No charge for the technician.
Let me start by saying, ”I’m not a communist. I’m not a socialist. I’m not a Democrat.”
That said, I am concerned about a growing divide in this nation between those earning the minimum wage and those earning from the executive pay scale. A person earning $200,000 a year earns better than 18 times what someone earning the minimum wage makes. Not so bad.
However, the typical C.E.O. makes over 25 times more than the guy earning $200,000 a year. This is producing quite a divide, but what makes it worse is the fact that these divides often occur in businesses with mediocre results.
Take a look at W. Edwards Deming’s 14 points for the transformation of American industry. Now take a look at the 7 deadly diseases he called out:
Lack of constancy of purpose to plan product and service that will have a market and keep the company in business and provide jobs.
Emphasis on short-term profits: short term thinking, fed by fear of unfriendly takeover, and by plush from bankers and owners, for dividends.
Personal review system, or evaluation of performance, merit rating, annual review,,or annual appraisal, by whatever name, for people in management, the effects of which are devastating. Management by fear would be better, than management by objective without a method for accomplishment.
Mobility of management: job hopping.
Use of visible figures only for management, with little or no consideration of figures that are unknown or unknowable.
Excessive medical costs.
Excessive costs of warranty, fueled by lawyers that work contingency fees.
These dots begin to connect. Not only are management and the workforce focused on different things, but the worst of it all is that one often sabotages the work of the other.
The competitor in me believes that an extremely talented group of executive that currently earn between $100,000 and $300,000 a year could easily compete for and win jobs as CEO’s where the pay has previously been in the millions of dollars. By then acting on Deming’s guidelines these new CEO’s and their coworkers could all share in the rewards created for shareholders, customers and those working in the business.
What is your company doing to deal with the disparity in pay and performance?
Tonight I looked at this site using IE6, Mozilla 1.7b, FireFox 0.8 and Opera 7.23. There are substantial differences in how the site looks, and I can’t figure out why.
If someone spots something in my content or in my style sheet that needs to change, please let me know!
Craig’s latest essay uncovers root causes of 9/11 far better than any commission. It’s a must read!
Hearings On 9/11 You’ll Never See
by Craig J. Cantoni
The 9/11 hearings are a circus in which congressional clowns act surprised that the government is bureaucratic and that its many fiefdoms don’t cooperate and communicate with each other. The cirucus should be closed and replaced by serious hearings that examine the decades of foreign policy blunders that led up to 9/11 and the culpability of both political parties in increasing the likelihood of the United States being a terrorist target.
For example…
a hearing could be held on why the United States kept troops in Saudi Arabia for so long and openly sided with the corrupt and undemocratic Faud monarchy. The hearing could examine if that was a blunder that gave Saudi extremists, including Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 terrorists of 9/11, a raison d’etre for targeting the U.S. instead of another nation.
Another hearing could be held about our financing of the Taliban during the Afghan-Soviet conflict.
Still another could be held on our support of Saddam Hussein before and during the Iraq-Iran war.
There also could be hearings that enlighten Americans about the history of their nation. For example, a hearing could be devoted to the foreign policy of super-patriot George Washington, who feared getting involved in foreign wars and intrigues, and who wanted the United States to restrict its foreign relations primarily to trade. The hearing could pose the question of whether America’s national interest and security would have been better served if it had followed the first president’s advice in the Middle East for the last 50 years.
In addition, the history lesson could explain how the Seventeenth Amendment shifted the Senate from focusing on long-term issues of national importance to a legislative body that debates such weighty matters as how much water American toilets should hold. Because of the Amendment, Senators are elected by citizens instead of state legislators and are thus subject to the populist passions of the day.
Another hearing could address the role of European imperialism in the early 20th century, especially that of Britain and France, in fueling Islamic animosity towards the West and in creating artificial nations like Iraq out of warring tribes and religious sects. The hearing could detail Britain’s large loss of national treasure and troops in trying to pacify the ersatz nation of Iraq after World War I. It also could ask why we left Europe off the hook for solving the problems it created in the Middle East and, in the process, shifted Islamic enmity from Europe to us. Was that in our national interest? Did that make us more secure?
But the most enlightening hearing of all would be on Israel. It would pose the question of whether it has been in our national interest to support the beleaguered nation, which is seen in the Arab world as a hired gun for the United States and, rightly or wrongly, is a catalyst for Islamic extremism.
Pro-Israel witnesses could testify that Israel is the only democracy in the region, that it shares our Western values and heritage, and that it provides a military and intelligence-gathering presence in the Middle East that we would have to provide ourselves if Israel did not exist. Other witnesses could present the opposite view—that Israel does not share our values, because it is largely socialist and was founded for religious reasons instead of democratic ones by Zionists, many of whom were Bolsheviks.
Analysts from the Congressional Budget Office could testify that Israel receives $84 billion in annual welfare from American taxpayers, or $14,630 per Israeli.
Historians could give the sordid facts about Britain’s Balfour Declaration of 1917, which laid the groundwork for a Zionist state in Palestine, a state that 90 percent of Britain’s Jews did not support at the time. The historians also could show that when the Declaration was written, Arabs, Jews and Christians were living peacefully together in Palestine, as they had for centuries.
CIA analysts could be asked to estimate how many Arabs have become anti-American terrorists because of our support of Israel, and how the increased numbers have increased the odds that a terrorist will eventually detonate a nuclear ”dirty” bomb in Manhattan, creating economic chaos and mass hysteria.
In addition, Dr. Alvin Rabushka, a director of an Israeli economic research institute, could testify about his efforts to endow ”Israelis with the same freedom enjoyed by Americans.” He claims that ”for the better part of the last century, every prime minister and government of Israel have concentrated on strengthening the State at the expense of individuals and families.” He further claims that Israel has evolved into a socialistic system ”that denies fundamental freedom to its residents.”
Unfortunately, such views will not be heard and such hearings will not be held on Capitol Hill. The United States will continue to ignore the foreign policy lessons of history as Congress continues acting like clowns in a three-ring circus in the city that is named after George Washington, who had more wisdom than all of the bozos put together.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author and columnist. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
Paul Scrivens is planning a redesign of his site(s), and he’s doing it where we can all observe the thought processes. Here’s the first mention of it. He also introduced another non-scientific poll before returning to Redesign 2004: Thinking I and Thinking II.
If you haven’t visited the CSS Zen Garden recently, you might want to take a look at some of the recent designs that have been added. Go to the site and notice the list of alternative styles in either the right or left sidebars depending upon the style you have on screen at the moment. There is also the archive of all designs.
For those who haven’t been initiated into the finer points of web design, there are emerging standards for web design. One of the key pillars in the standards is ”separation of style from content.” Typically, this means we should use CSS to style a page and XHTML for the content.
The CSS Zen Garden illustrates this by allowing you to see identical content styled in many different ways. Be aware that when you change from one style to the next, you’re not seeing another copy of the content at another site. Rather, the stylesheet has been switched for the lone copy of the content that exists.
Bandwidth, download times and future changes are efficiently managed with CSS. It is truly the most effective way to develop web sites. Notice that you can view the CSS style sheet for each design. It’s the perfect place to learn CSS.
Last night on Now With Bill Moyers, pbs attempted to slant the entire program with this premise:
The war in Iraq isn’t going according to plan. Announcer, Now With Bill Moyers, April 9, 2004.
Having positioned the interviews with guests around this thought, Moyers proceeded to lay out the plan for the Democrats to win the Presidency in November.
One of the interviews was with Kevin Phillips. He’s another of the critics of the Bush family and their politics. However, he also pointed out several key factors that are reshaping the way we’ll think about politics in the USA.
You can make too much out of inequality because there’s always going to be a lot of it. But when it reaches a certain point where it’s built up to these extreme levels that we’ve seen today, for example the top one percent has as much disposable income as either the bottom 50 percent or the bottom third, depending on what you trust. You’ve got such an outrageous mismatch of the American opportunity with the American reality that it creates its own corruption. Kevin Phillips, Now With Bill Moyers, April 9, 2004.
Having studied wealth and democracy most of his life, Phillips wrote the following for the Los Angeles Times in April of 2000:
The share of U.S. wealth in the hands of the top 5%-and specifically the top 1%- has reached levels not seen since 1929 and expanded by more than $1 trillion. New data show corporate CEOs now receiving 475 times as much in annual compensation as the average blue-collar worker, an all-time record disparity. But the rich have had to share this cornucopia with the Internal Revenue Service as well as with yacht dealers and hedge funds so that, even at low tax rates, it’s been the key source of deficit reduction.
The reverse could be true with a bear market. The budget could go back into the red in a year or so, putting pressure on popular spending programs, scotching GOP arguments for top-bracket tax cuts and increasing pressure for new revenue from tax increases just when current economic data are profiling the top 1% or 2% of Americans as the fattest financial geese in the history of the republic. Kevin Phillips, With Inequality Of Income And Tax Burden Growing, Expect The Widening Rich/Poor Divide To Focus The Political Debate, April 16, 2000.
Phillips has another article that will run in the Los Angeles Times tomorrow. It is likely that this notion of the “great divide” in America will continue to be the Democrats’ primary stump speech. Learn now and form your own opinions about how our culture is changing.
Will our children be the first American generation that is unable to maintain a higher living standard than their parents?
If what I’m typing here renders properly when I post it, I will have made one of the big leaps up my learning curve for XHTML. Steven Vore posted a comment that leads me to believe that I can enter markup the following ways:
& was entered by typing shift-7
& was entered by typing &amp;
Now I know how to properly show markup that I want to discuss. This is big! Next, I want to learn how to modify my CSS template so that code carries a different color background, indenting and a special blockquote border.
Which of the two doctype declarations in the preceding post should be used?
How does one properly and correctly show markup within an entry so that it can be discussed? I’m told that the word, ”I’m” requires a special character for the apostrophe.
Here is the word without the special character: I’m
Here is the word with the special character – & rsquo;: I’m
Here is the word with the special character – & #8217;: I’m
I had to put a space after the ampersand to actually show the code. Why? What’s the better way? I want to be able to show the code I’m using and ask questions about it. Help!
It’s time to get back to the study of web standards, XHTML, CSS and the techniques involved in writing lean, effective web pages. My most recent reminder to get back to this came when I realized how different the doctypedeclarations can be.
While I can’t recall precisely the language from Jeffrey Zeldman’s book, I know that at some point, after explaining doctype, he said, simply go here, view source and copy the doctype declaration. I believe it has changed slightly since the time of the book.
On page 157 of the book is this:<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C/DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/XHTML1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
And, from the www.zeldman.com website is:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
It took me the better part of an hour to do the trial-and-error work that finally made the code above appear as code. Until I changed all the greater-than and less-than signs to their ”special characters,” there was no code showing. I love the sites that can show the markup, write some narrative, then follow it with more lines of the actual markup. I have no idea whether I’ve done this the proper way, but at least you can see the differences between the book and the actual web page. I’ll have to learn why those differences exist and what the best way is. I’ll also confirm the method for showing markup on a web page when you’re actually describing the markup.
If I accept W3C and Zeldman as authorities, I cannot accept the doctype declaration that is automatically added to a new XHTML document created in NoteTab, TopStyle Pro or other editors. My personal experience thus far is that those editors put a different doctype declaration in the page. I don’t know why.
These are the kinds of issues that limit progress. Why is there such general agreement on the proper way to do things, but few (if any) of the tools actually deliver the preferred method? If I continually bog down at the doctype declaration, I never get to the CSS or the markup of the page!
Anyhow, the need to get back into this stuff is mounting. I plan to put some time and attention on it this weekend. One goal is to narrow the list of ”experts” to those that appear to agree on the fundamentals. Perhaps all of the experts already agree, and I’m simply overlooking something.
Andy obviously could not find enough wrong with Condoleezza Rice’s testimony to come up with a rant. Instead, he behaves as if his columns are largely about personal finance and investing. Trust me, his focus on politics has outweighed his focus on investment advice.
While the effort to improve public communication is admirable, buried at the site is a resource that every writer can use. It’s called How To Write In Plain English.
If we continue to second-guess and undermine those who serve our nation, we are not going to have a nation to serve.
Take the best and the brightest who serve our country today, and pin the fifty year-old structural problem in our intelligence and crime-fighting agencies on them.
The grammar test I posted earlier may be responsible for putting spyware on your system. I’ve not been able to confirm this. I run and update Spybot and Ad-aware routinely to protect my system from any site which might drop spyware on my system.
CRN reports that IBM is buying a large outsourcing firm in India. This supports the economic theory that says large U.S. businesses that own these centers will profit from the lower cost available in overseas operations. Offshoring is not going to be our downfall!
Many times I’ve written here about Andrew Tobias. His was one of the first books I read after graduating from college and beginning a career. His financial advice to those on a salary was (and is) outstanding.
Over the years, he’s written other financially-oriented material that is equally good. However, since becoming Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, he has shifted his writing to strident criticisms of anything that does not originate within the Democratic party.
If a book appears that is critical of the current administration, Tobias quotes from it as if he were citing court documents. Today, his mind is made up about the upcoming testimony of Condoleezza Rice before it is given. My suggestion to you is to read two of these pieces for every one of Tobias’s!
The 2004 Pig Book from Citizens Against Government Waste is out. If you’ve ever seen a government project or program that wasted your tax dollars, you’ll not believe some of the new ways that politicians have found to abuse your money.
Someone explain to me why there’s not a clear correlation between the tax rates of sixty nine countries shown in this KPMG report and the winners and losers in the offshoring trend. Note this quote:
”Although the survey captures an interesting snap shot of global tax rates, it must be remembered that a low tax rate does not necessarily signify a low tax burden. Consequently, one must consider a particular nations tax base to properly gauge the tax burdens.”
Take a look at the second chart in this article about telecos emerging from bankruptcy. There is still an enormous load of debt to be worked out of these companies (and several others that aren’t coming out of bankruptcy).
Though clearly dependent upon the bandwidth providers, here are some companies that think they can take VoIP technology to businesses with as few as six employees.
There should be a way for a group of ten or fifteen professionals to collaborate using the latest telephone technology even though they are loosely affiliated. I’d like to have a Cisco phone on my desk that provides me with intraoffice features just as if all of us worked for the same business.
Finally, an article about something I’ve been suspecting for some time. The executive summary in a sentence: People aren’t avoiding voice-over-IP because it isn’t an effective technology; they’re avoiding it because the carriers are providing such miserable lines for the IP packets to travel along.
I’ve seen this any time I’ve talked to a small business owner about the merits of hosted/managed business applications. From QuickBooks to NetLedger to the latest in ERP applications, a hosted option exists. However, mention that to a business owner and you’ll get a litany of reasons why the ISP they use wouldn’t possibly be reliable enough to carry something so important as accounting data.
This is like the brokerage house that is willing to be without the computers for a few minutes, but let the phones die for even 30 seconds and there is chaos. For all their good and bad, the legacy phone companies conditioned us to believe that dial tone is always on, always available and never unreliable.
Only a new generation of carriers with customer-focused service guarantees and a willingness to stop billing any time the bandwidth isn’t available can solve this problem.
I’m not a warblogger or a political blogger. My views are pretty conservative and generally in support of what our government has done since September 11, 2001. The mainstream media so frustrates me that I have largely tuned out their televised shouting matches.
Doc Searls has provided a real service. He has pointed to and quoted from some of the weblogs that are covering the situation in Iraq. I’ve used his entry to add a channel group in FeedDemon called Iraq. In it I have added the Iraq blogs that Doc points to. I may not read daily, but it will at least provide a basis for checks-and-balances when the six o’ clock news distorts something.
In the early 1980’s there were dozens of startup companies focused on bringing multiuser business systems to market. The common denominator for these companies had two key components – Unix and the Motorola 68000 series of processors. Our company sold the Fortune 32:16. We also sold – no, tried to sell – some of AT&T’s early entrants into that small business space.
What we quickly realized was that – absent a programmer’s deep involvement – none of the software written for one of these machines would run on the other. Various versions of Bourne shells and the mix of utilities and scripts that existed on each machine made them different from one another.
Reading Robert Scoble’s entry this morning brought back memories of those days of trying to find an easily supported solution to sell to our clients. For so many small businesses, it is simply a flawed notion to start a technology project by writing on the whiteboard, ”Assume a technical professional.”
In small businesses technical professionals don’t exist, and the funds to pay for a steady stream of billable hours from a technical contractor don’t exist either. The concerns mentioned in the Forbes article are valid. Get close the Microsoft pricing and Microsoft becomes the easier answer for most businesses.
Will Red Hat take the hint? Will Novell re-emerge? Will the Microsoft/Sun relationship deliver a new operating system with the best of ”both worlds?” Will Apple and IBM do something with their own variants of Linux/Unix? Remember, one of the reasons OS X came about is because of Next.
I can honestly say that I’ve never watched a Martha Stewart television program. I’ve seen her trying to cook on Letterman’s show, but by the time he downed the cooking sherry, she was so frustrated that nothing ever got finished.
What is ”fair use?” How much or how little of a work can I quote here before I’m in violation of copyright law? Is an electronic link equivalent to quoting something? What is full attribution? Is full attribution the distinguishing mark of a legal quote?
Here are some links to articles pertaining to these questions:
Last week I got blindsided with this kind of thinking. It seems to me that her argument says using a hyperlink is a copyright violation. I’m pretty sure that’s not true. I’m also reasonably certain that I can quote something in full here, and, with proper attribution and links, be in compliance with the laws of the land.
It also seems self-evident that everything doesn’t belong in the public domain, and certainly not instantly. Intellectual property, aka creativity, carries a price tag and a duration. It’s good to see a meaningful debate about some of these matters. You’ll note that Lessig has actually ”updated” his original blog entry in response to some of what Manes said.
This is beginning to make some sense to more than the lawyers!
There is a genuine need in the marketplace for a comprehensive supply chain solution between very small companies and their major retail customers. If your business does less than $5 million per year in sales, but a third of that comes from one or more of the major retailers, you have no doubt been asked to comply with EDI requirements.
Getting information and transactions out of your own accounting software is only part of the battle. You must then format that data or those transactions into proper EDI transactions that comply with the customer’s requirements.
There are web-based services for handling this in lower volumes. There are costly software packages that can be used, but they require a great deal of tailoring to meet the specific functionality required.
I recently scanned the support forum archives of one of the popular accounting applications. I found several EDI applications mentioned that date all the way back to 1999. Here’s the list:
By far the most mentioned tool in this particular support forum was True Commerce. It seems that a business prepares itself best for the inevitable changes and new requirements that might come from EDI processing by using a tool such as True Commerce.
At this time it appears that no packaged accounting software provides the complete functionality required to handle EDI transactions with the major retailers.
Negotiation has never been an interest of mine. Smiling-and-dialing is definitely not something I enjoy. Helping a business improve itself is useful and worthwhile work.
Cold-calling is offensive to me as recipient or caller. There must be a better way to get valuable goods and services to those who need and want them without the high-pressure tactics that come with so many sales processes.
Honorable sales methods, free of manipulative or misleading falsehoods are the only techniques I’m willing to employ. I think it’s time to reread Selling the Invisible.
Serving on jury duty, I report to the Criminal Justice Center in Memphis, TN. On one recent arrival I passed through the metal detector and set it off. I was asked to step aside so that they could use a wand.
As the guard ran the wand in front of my body and behind there was no tone or light from the device. I was told I could proceed.
Walking away I hear one guard say to another, ”I think it must need some new batteries.” The reply was, ”They’ll get us some next week.”
The keys, money clip, pens and cell phone in my pockets could so easily have been something else; and, I bet you thought we had tighter security!
MSNBC reports that RCN is likely to file for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code. Here is the company’s own press release concerning its restructuring efforts.
Level 3 Communications has held a position in RCN since its inception. Walter Scott, Jr. is RCN’s Vice Chairman. James Crowe is a member of RCN’s Board of Directors. These two men also serve as Chairman and CEO respectively of Level 3 Communications.
I want to assemble five to ten RSS feeds from the best Linux resources on the web. I’m looking for Linux advice for people migrating from another operating system to the world of Unix/Linux. The first feed I’ve added is Apple’s feed regarding Mac OS X.
If you know of others that belong in a group of Linux/Unix feeds, let me know.
When I found MuniWireless.com I was convinced of the merits of municipal wi-fi networks. This morning I found this:
Did you know that Austin Wireless City has more free hotspots in Austin, Texas than T-Mobile? According to Rich MacKinnon, president of Austin Wireless City, T-Mobile has 34 for-pay Wi-Fi locations in Starbucks, Kinkos, Borders, and the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. The Austin Wireless City Project has 36 free Wi-Fi locations in small and medium, independently-owned businesses such as Book People, Ruta Maya, Quacks 43rd Street Bakery, and Opal Divines.
Austin Wireless City boasts more hotspots than T-Mobile in Austin MuniWireless.com
I know. What if Opal or Ruta Maya go out of business? What if they aren’t where you normally go? That’s where the proof of concept is so clear. For a rather small investment, this network can be expanded beyond the boundaries of those small businesses and could become a profit-based enterprise that still undercuts the cable and DSL prices offered in an area.
For the true road warrior, services like T-Mobile’s have their place. For a person that travels often and simply must have a reliable spot for access, T-Mobile will provide that service. For the local home or small business, living under the Wi-Fi Cloud of Austin could be a far more attractive ISP option. Whether sitting in the family room or sitting in the park, a wi-fi cloud would give Austin’s residents freedom from the cable or DSL tether.
Scientific, legal and philosophical practices had to be extremely pliable to give us the past eighty or so years of debate since the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. World Magazine has done a fantastic job of explaining just where the science has and is taking us, now that we are willing to get back to valid scientific methods of research and discovery. No thinking person should proceed through the weekend with reading The View From 2025: How Design Beat Darwin.
Five pieces make up the cover story: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
For Digital Web Magazine, Matthew Mullenweg shows the gray area that exists between the specific expertise of designers and developers. He accomplishes this in the context of PHP For Designers.
On June 5, 2002 I linked to an article that appeared in Wired News magazine. Today, March 30, 2004, the author of that article wrote this to me by adding a comment to my June 5, 2002 entry:
IP Address: 152.10.82.75
Name: Nan Chase
Email Address: nanchase@bellsouth.net
URL:
Comments:
I don’t have any record of your having gotten permission to reprint electronically the article Grid to Green. I own all rights, and you are in copyright violation. Wired News passes along all legitimate reprint requests, but I have received none concerning this one.
Please respond ASAP,
Nan Chase
Boone NC
828-262-1737
I replied to this comment as follows:
Nan:
This is easy to fix. I’ll delete the link I made to Wired News. I’ll also post a retraction of you, your article and any further linking to work you’ve done or any that Wired News does.
To more accurately state the ”case,” my electronic pointer to Wired News directed readers of my website to your article. My belief in doing so was that I was extending you a compliment and suggesting to my readers that they might enjoy your work.
My apologies for my mistaken notion.
Steve
All links to Nan’s article are gone. I’ve also edited the entry I made on June 5, 2002. Rest assured that her statement that I ”reprinted electronically” is simply not true, unless someone wants to claim that a link praising the work is the same as ”reprinting electronically.”
There seems to be a coach or counselor for everything these days—eating, exercising, shopping, organizing your closets, improving your relationships and of course helping you advance in your career. OK, so you think you might benefit from a career coach or counselor. Now what? What should you expect from this person, and how can you make sure you’re getting the most of their services? Here are some tips.
Forget your party loyalties for a moment. Nevermind the noise level of the media and the political party spokespeople. Disregard the nastiness of current events for just a minute.
Think about what you want in a President. Here’s an example:
Character and integrity.
A work history that shows measurable results.
Specific plans on each national issue.
A desire to shrink government appropriately.
An ability to communicate his/her view of the role of government.
An ability to assemble the right team.
Effective and frequent communication.
A reputation for consistency and firm resolve.
What do you want? What really matters? Is it always as simple as, ”I want a Democrat or Republican?” Have political parties lost their relevance?
People like Andrew Tobias will say or do just about anything if it means their candidate might get elected. One of the worst things that they do is to assume the ”other side” is wrong, distorts and abuses power. Only after they establish those details do they begin making a point. From that position they can see no possibility that there is another ”honest” or ”true” side to any story. It’s politics at its very ugliest, but it is the only style they have.
I don’t work 24×7. I’m not ”on call,” for longer than I choose to be. There are times that I simply disconnect from the PDA, cell phone, office phone, email and the answering machines simply do their jobs. There are other times when I choose to work at 3:30 a.m. That’s my decision.
Apparently, Mr. Rove’s position denies him that same freedom to decide. We now approach a state of existence where the gap between the ”haves” and the ”have-nots” grows wider, and those who resent it grow bolder. Someone once said he, ”feared the day when America’s richest lived behind gated communities with guns mounted on top of the walls.”
Stories such as this give a whole new meaning to the notion and methods of Neighborhood Watch. When they bus themselves to your neighborhood on the weekend to make a point, or terrify children, it’s time for change.
CBS News Sunday Morning put David Pogue on site at Google to tell the story of the company. Many things about the story entertained. It was reminiscent of the Silicon Valley of the late 1990’s. Tech companies in that era were hiring at will and creating great places to work. Fun, long hours, lottery-scale payoffs and popular culture were key elements of the work place.
CBS’s report mentioned some numbers that caught my attention. Google has sales of $1 billion primarily from advertising revenue. Google is expected to be valued at $20 billion when it goes public.
IBM is valued at around $158 billion. IBM has sales that exceed $89 billion a year. The company earns over $7 billion a year. The stock market puts a value on WalMart that exceeds $257 billion with $258 billion in sales and profit of almost $9 billion.
What makes Google worth twenty times sales? The answer lies in thought processes that are holdovers from the bubble.
You’d be hard-pressed to buy a sliderule today. Collectors might sell one, but it’s unlikely you’d find one manufactured in the last ten years.
You’d be hard-pressed to buy a DOS-based 8088 PC today; except from a collector.
Any phone system you’d buy today would be digital – not analog. The fact is that the major manufacturers would sell you a phone system that is VoIP-ready, whether you were buying it for VoIP or not.
Cass McNutt points to an entry about the economics of VoIP. When it can be hacked together so simply, the reality of its future is evident.
Indeed, the legacy carriers of voice communications cannot possibly defend their existing (copper) turf and defend against such incredibly inexpensive IP communication.
Being a sole proprietor, freelancer or free agent can be a rewarding lifestyle and career. Knowing how to price services competitively, but profitably can be an art. In his second entry on the subject, Paul Scrivens provides some pricing guidance.
I have but one note of caution regarding what Paul suggests. As a freelancer, you might find it difficult to actually invoice 2000 hours in a year. You’ll work far more than that, but billing for every hour of the work week is a challenge. You might want to reflect that in your overhead figure or in the number of hours that make up a working year.
When I visualize the ”life of my dreams,” changes to my current situation largely involve work. For some the changes involve family, relationships, spiritual matters, health and physical needs or attitudes and motivation. In other words, the gap between where we are at any given moment and where we want to be is usually wrapped up in one or more of those areas.
How do you visualize an ideal without being envious of someone else? The best techniques for visualizing change do not involve trying to become ”like” anyone else. They have to do with the steps you must take to build meaningful change into your own life.
There’s a big difference in saying, ”I want to look like (insert name here),” as compared to ”I want to be able to wear that suit again.” In one, you envy another. In the second, you envision yourself in a way that is totally achievable. You’ve been there before.
What about career, work and financial matters? What if you’ve never been to the ”place” you want to achieve. There’s still a way to imagine and visualize constructively, without simply coveting the achievements of others. Ask yourself some very specific questions and identify the gaps between your present situation and the life you’d like.
Here’s an example that relates to career and work:
What time do you wake up?
What does your work require that you wear?
Where do you go to do your work?
With whom do you interact?
What tools do you use to do the job?
How many people do you serve in a day?
What value do you add to their lives?
What are you offering that others will exchange their money for?
Does your work involve repair or creation of things, thoughts or processes?
Finally, how does your present situation differ from any of these answers?
What must be done to remove the ”gaps” between the dream and the reality?
For me, I’m ready to do something on a large scale. Boston’s Big Dig (absent the political quagmire), the Three Gorges Dam, New York’s City Water Tunnel #3 or other projects involving ”building big” hold great interest for me. Never content to be one of the cogs in the wheel, I want to have a view of a project that spans it’s length and breadth. I want to see the bird’s eye view – the big picture.
Specific dreams for me include seeing the legacy telephone industry in the United States replaced by end-to-end IP networks free of regulation and bureaucracy. A similar dream in scale and scope involves removing all dependence on foreign oil as a source of energy. Think of the challenge associated with turning personal transportation in the USA into fuel cell-based automobiles. Think of the challenge associated with providing a reliable and economical wi-fi network across a city of one million people, and free of the telephone support nightmare that exists in every ISP and technology company today.
What’s your dream? What are you prepared for? Two thoughts stick with me any time I enter into this visualization exercise:
Anything you can dream and conceive, you can achieve.
Do something you enjoy in life and you’ll never work a day in your life.
Several sidebar thoughts will enter your mind. How do you afford to make the changes you need to make? How do you overcome the obstacles that inevitably leap to mind? An answer that is counter-intuitive requires real discipline to embrace. That answer in the field of visualization says, ”don’t focus on the obstacles. Focus on the vision.” For those so-called pragmatists out there, this means that you must not assume that the reality of obstacles impedes the dream.
Sure, there is always a challenge in distinguishing momentary or temporary challenges from drive-stopping barriers. Christians often face decisions that involve determining whether an obstacle is a sign that they are outside God’s direction, or, most often, a temporary setback that encourages perseverance. The big projects mentioned earlier inevitably faced one or more turning points where something had never been done or attempted before. Sometimes it was a tool or technique that had to be invented on a scale never before imagined just to complete one phase of the bigger project.
Dreams can become reality. Visions can lead to matching results. Unwavering determination is needed. Mental toughness is needed. Great mentors, teammates and encouragement are needed. Personal, intrinsic motivation is needed. Prayer and attitudes that involve service to others are essential.
What you think about can lead you to your goals. Remember to guard your motives and your dreams. There are plenty of naysayers in the world, and they most often are disguised as the ”realists, the heirs to wealth and the ones who know why every idea will not work.” Beware of them. The heir was born on third base thinking he hit a triple. The ones who know why every idea won’t work are not anxious to see you achieve, accomplish or prosper. Read Proverbs 23 for more on these notions.
For now…it’s time to get started. What will you do before bedtime tonight to start identifying and pursuing your dreams in any area of life?
There’s a registrar that is 40% cheaper than Dotster. It’s called godaddy.com. Network Solutions still gets new business at $35.00 for a year of domain registration. Dotster charges $14.95. Go Daddy charges $8.95.
I’ve got some domains coming up for renewal at Dotster. I won’t pay the $14.95!
A thousand thanks to Brad Choate for this information.
>From time to time I come in contact with people who are driven by pure emotion. They want something, therefore it must be desirable. They believe something, therefore it must be true. They need something, therefore it is your problem.
You discover this in their manner, in their communication and in the way they organize their thoughts and actions.
Do people with all the answers bother you? Do people who are so sure of themselves get on your nerves? What about people who claim to be keepers, guardians and interpreters of ”the truth?”
When these folks are reluctant to recognize any sort of ambiguity in life, or to try to understand the struggles of others less fortunate, it truly annoys me. Life isn’t simple. Life isn’t simple for Christians. Christians shouldn’t portray themselves as people with all the answers in life. Yes, there is truth. Yes, we can know truth.
Yet, there is not some shield of protection covering those who call themselves Christians. There is also no corner on truth.
...that I’ve found comes from two sources. One source is the venerable What Color Is Your Parachute? Continuously improved and updated annually for over thirty years, it remains one of the premier tools for pursuing a well-structured career or job search.
Equally good, though less noted, is Dan Miller’s suite of advice and resources. His two books, 48 Days To the Work You Love and 48 Days To Creative Income, are super guides for discovery.
At any age and at any stage of any career, these books can help you pinpoint where you want to go. To this day, I use them frequently.
Continuing my catch-up work in the area of bandwidth, Om Malik also has linked to some terrific resources concerning WiMax technology.
In the face of lots of development to come in the field of WiMax, there’s also expanding coverage by municipal wi-fi networks. Oh, to live in one of those communities. I’d love to live independently of cable companies, legacy T-1 lines or DSL lines. I’d also like to see bandwidth to my laptop or wi-fi network that is an order of magnitude greater than it is today. Rather than 2Mbps, I want to see this country move toward 20Mbps to the Internet.
In a perfect world, I own my own businesses. In a slightly less than perfect world, I work for a privately held, small business. I define these companies as having fewer than 200 people and a sales volume that is $200 million or less. Quite a bit less is not a problem. This is preferable to me in many ways.
Om points to VoIP as a solution to this problem. I agree with him and believe there is a sparkling opportunity to come in the ”managed hosting” of VoIP systems. Have your ISP install a Cisco Call Manager and offer VoIP on a subscription or on-demand basis. It’s the wave of the future.
Take any of the multitude of stories swirling around the offshoring debate. In just about every one of them is a story like, ”She was making $110,000 in San Jose, but now someone in Bangalore is doing her job for $20,000.”
There’s an old trick for uncovering root causes, but it isn’t getting much use in the political realm of offshoring debate. Asking ”why” five times might begin to uncover some of the thinking that this country is going to have to do to properly assess the offshoring issue.
Here’s an example:
Q. Why are companies offshoring? A. To increase profits.
Q. Why does offshoring increase profits? A. Because the same or a similar job can be done cheaper.
Q. Why can an offshore job be done cheaper? A. Because the workers work cheaper.
Q. Why do the workers work cheaper? A. (your answer here)
Please understand that even this exercise has some flaws in it. First, we need to pay closer attention to the realities and the illusions of the word ”cheaper.” We also need to understand whether or not the ”same or similar job” really is the same or similar. Are we compromising? Are we settling for a lesser job because the work is so much less expensive? Have our standards for quality dropped?
Assume for a moment that the quality is at least as good – maybe even better. Is the work really cheaper? Is the fact that one of our domestic workers takes cell phone calls at 2:00 a.m. factored into the equations? Often those (remaining) domestic workers are the ones who are guiding and proofing the work done overseas. Have we factored in all the costs?
When Bangalore’s Starbucks parking lots are lined with SUV’s and luxury automobiles, where will the cost differential be? Will the drivers of those vehicles be dealing with federal, state and local tax burdens on income, cars, tags, real estate, capital gains and inheritance? Will their employers be facing minimum wage laws and workman’s comp coverage and Medicare and Social Security and …?
Someone needs to be evaluating the offshoring situation without a political motive. Don’t confuse a patriotic motive and politics. We should be concerned that our fellow Americans are losing their jobs without a clear way to replace them with comparable opportunities. Some of that is happening. It is not completely clear how much, because so many of the studies have been politically-oriented, funded or slanted.
We should be very careful about believing that some form of government intervention (protectionism) can solve this problem – if it is a problem – before we understand whether that same government intervention in years past caused the problem.
So if Al Qaeda had failed on 9/11, do you think OBL (Osama bin Laden) and the rest of the merry band would be sitting around a table in Kabul holding hearings about who was to blame? I tend to think they would have moved on.
Between jury duty, trying to get a new venture launched and dealing with endless problems associated with work, posting here has been light this week. Look for us to resume writing shortly.
In the meantime, contemplate what Thoreau had to say about the ”rat race.”
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.
Henry David Thoreau
from the Economy section of Walden
We made lots of progress today. My Movable Type installation is now built on the MySQL database thanks to a great deal of help from Stacy of Sekimori Design. If you have a need for design advice and assistance, I can recommend Stacy’s work wholeheartedly.
Now that MySQL is the underlying database, I’m going to rethink some of the plugins I’ve heard about which are available only if you are using MySQL. There won’t be a lot of work in that area, because Movable Type 3.0 is right around the corner.
You’ve probably noted the near total focus on CSS, web design, Movable Type and XHTML coding recently. (To those I often link to but have neglected lately, I apologize.)
I’m in the midst of an important project, and I simply must learn how to use Movable Type well to maintain web sites. I wish I knew of a tool that handles ecommerce sites as well as Movable Type handles content management. I need to be able to provide web-based registration and purchasing via credit cards with all the appropriate auto-responders. I’m clueless as to which tools or resources I’m supposed to be using. That’s not my point though.
During this crash course, the folks at Lockergnome got frustrated, abandoned web standards, got pasted with (virtual) rotten tomatoes and returned to standards. The story, all of its pieces and the happy ending can be found at Matthew Mullenweg’s Photo Matt.
I’ll return to a more balanced look at the Rat Race once I get the ecommerce stuff figured out and launched.
In this entry Eric Meyer celebrates the arrival of the second edition of his book. Eric is one of the gurus of CSS understanding.
However, there is other important information in his post. O’Reilly is returning to the ”lay-flat” binding for their books. Eric points the way. The ability to read and type, read and eat or read and know the book is not going to spontaneously close is worth a lot.
There is every possibility that MT-Blacklist won’t be required once TypeKey is rolled out under Movable Type 3.0. In the meantime, there’s a new MT-Blacklist file that you should add to your installation if you’re a MT-Blacklist user.
Then, of course, there is the noise level concerning TypeKey’s feature set and functionality. Dave Winer raised a few questions – some with speculative underpinnings and some with ”wish I’d thought of that” tone. Others began to weigh in with the pros and cons.
Be assured the ones actually using MT 3.0 as early testers are either keeping quiet or they are being quite reserved in their comments. There is truth somewhere in all the rumors. It will come out in due time.
Among the many factors that determine the speed of a network is the transfer rate of information through the various cables, devices and providers of service for that network. Your glass gets full at the pace of the smallest pipe in the system.
In this country, we have slowly made our way from 2400bps modems over dial-up connections through 9600 on our way to 56Kbps. Then, we began putting DSL lines and cable modems in that carried traffic at 300Kbps and up. We think of cable modem lines carrying as much as 1Mbps to 3Mbps under current configurations.
Once the signal arrives at our local networks, we think of 10Mbps, 100Mbps and 1000Mbps (GigE) as typical LAN speeds. Obviously, all of these are ”theoretical maximums,” but the point is that for most small business and residential users, we’re nowhere near a time when the incoming bandwidth from the outside is as fast as the LAN it’s coming into.
InfoWorld talks about the drive to speed up the LAN in this article. Remember, even though the LAN may have a wireless capability, that link is just another ”pipe” in the overall system.
I think there is a technique for keeping track of where you are on a website called ”breadcrumb navigation.” The technique uses HOME >> PAGE A >> PAGE B >> at the top of the web page to indicate where you are.
Then, there are menus. Some of them actually leave the button highlighted so that you know where you are at any given time.
It’s been a day of study and trial-and-error. Four new domains pointed to new name servers just yesterday are already resolving correctly.
The more I study, the more I become convinced that standards-based web design is likely to become as important an individual skill as word processing. If you can’t produce a simple site that validates and set up a web server for collaboration, you might get left behind. I’m not yet completely confident in any of these areas, but I’m digging hard to learn what I can.
Movable Type, CSS, XHTML and techniques taught by those who are good with these tools are feeding my studies. TopStyle Pro is also on the list of things to learn to be more effective as is NoteTab.
I’d like to be good at designing templates for Movable Type weblogs. I’m not. I’d like to take a default template and really know how to modify it to change the width of the weblog or the style or the look. I can’t.
When I look at the portfolios of the people I consider really savvy designers, I wonder what’s insulting to them. Are they insulted if someone says, ”I’m planning on using Movable Type as the CMS for a new business. Would you design the templates for me?” Is there some unwritten set of rules governing what these ”best of the best” designers charge that puts them out of reach to all but the Wireds and ESPNs of the world? How many zeroes have to be in their design proposal before it’s worthy of their time?
Have any of them stooped to developing Movable Type templates or is that beneath them?
Nick Finck is the publisher of Digital Web Magazine. In a master stroke of service and consideration to all of us who did not attend SXSW, Nick has provided a list of links to people he met at SXSW. You’ll find some of the truly great designers listed.
David Shea is the designer/developer behind CSS Zen Garden. This site demonstrates exactly what is possible when it comes to doing the markup for a site in XHTML and ”styling” the site with CSS. For the uninitiated, you, the viewer, can change the style or look of the site yourself without changing any of the content at all.
I’ve been doing a lot of searching for design and development help for a new web site/weblog we’re starting in conjunction with a business startup. It’s obvious that those that can make something look great may not be one-and-the-same with those who can do the software development behind the scenes. Taking credit cards and doing registration forms on the web is still more complex (apparently) than merely adding some canned forms or code to a page.
At any rate, I’ve been prowling the web for help. A by-product of roaming is a wealth of fantastic web design advice and material. Here are three lists of links to some ”weekend reading”: 1 | 2 | 3 |
Thanks go to Daniel RubinDidier Hilhorst for compiling these.
* * UPDATE * * * Note my strike-through above and the explanation for my error.
Yesterday was one of those days when you have ”aha” moments that overlap. Usually, the light bulb comes on due to some outside stimulus and the Wall Street Journal got the ball rolling early yesterday. Glenn Fleishman wrote it up.
There were a couple of articles in the journal. First, was the one about low take rates among the for-pay hot spots. That was pretty obvious and expected. Second, was the article right below that one in the Wall Street Journal. It covered the story of Verizon’s EV-DO technology. It wasn’t the technology discussion that caught my eye. It was the application of it.
For the first time, I began to really grasp the differences between stationary, mobile and traveling users of wi-fi. It’s one thing to equip an office (stationary) with wi-fi so that employees have access to the network in lunchrooms, conference rooms and patios. It’s another thing to blanket a campus or town with WiMax so that subscribers to that (W)ISP can use wi-fi in lieu of cable modems or DSL lines in homes or offices and still roam the town (mobile) and have access.
Things really get fuzzy when a resident of that WiMax-enabled town travels. What is the source of the wi-fi signal in a distant city. It’s unlikely the traveler’s home town (W)ISP has a cloud over the distant city he visits. This is painfully obvious, but it also explains the difficulty in knowing which service or services to subscribe to.
I’m a big proponent of the WiMax cloud covering a city and providing an alternative to DSL or cable at 80% of the price. Will any provider have the technical and financial strength to put WiMax clouds over the NFL cities and offer a mobile (in the city) and a traveler’s subscription plan to those clouds?
...or study or organize or plan presentations, you probably do research. If you do research, you know how difficult it can be to remember which site carried that one important fact that you intended to include.
Walter Mossberg describes Onfolio as a useful solution to these kinds of problems. Information Week covers the story as well.
There’s a full, working trial version available here.
For a time it wasn’t clear whether the problem in getting connected and staying connected to an ISP (internet service provider) was about the bandwidth (phone lines) or the ISP’s operational integrity. Today, few people – even on dialup – have trouble with the connection to their ISP’s.
Get ready for the next wave. With a reliable, high bandwidth connection comes the very real advantage of subscription services. Get to your accounting software via your services provider. Get to your Microsoft Office via the same provider. The day is coming when the small firm will even connect to a feature-rich voice communication system via your service provider.
You know what you’re good at. Likely as not, for most readers, it isn’t managing technology, backups, telecom systems and the like. Those are not what Michael Porter called your core competencies. Outsource them to your service provider for a low monthly fee and stick to what you’re good at.
Movable Type 3.0 is undergoing testing. As the testing group expands, Six Apart is going to begin offering some details about features and capabilities in the new version.
Every once in a while it’s great to see experienced web folks who speak up about things you’ve been pondering. Some bizarre sense of ”they’ve already figured that out,” prevents me from saying anything about what I see that’s wrong with so many weblogs, tools and techniques.
This morning, Sam Ruby talks about meeting people at conferences and finding that he didn’t know who they were until he heard the name of their weblog/web site. I’ve thought about that as I read names in my blogroll and my news aggregator. If I read a post somewhere that says, ”Sam said…,” I seldom remember which weblog to associate with Sam. The reverse is also true.
Phil Ringnalda elaborates and offers a solution or two. I simply want blogrolling.com and FeedDemon to allow me to group names using identical or separate groupings. Then, I want one file for tracking both and I want the tools to prompt me for both the person’s name and the weblog title.
Better still, let me subscribe to ”well-formed RSS feeds” that have all the details and drop those details into proper places based upon checkboxes I pick in preferences or during the subscription process. Do you want to subscribe to this person’s feed? What channel group? Do you want to blogroll this person? Which blogroll? Who is this? What’s the name of their site?
I’m closer to starting a complete site redesign here. If you’re willing to help, let me know. I’m going to need someone who really knows Movable Type and standards-based design. If you’ve also got an eye for graphic design and how to do a makeover, we should talk.
Among things I want to deal with:
Update the logo
Add some color, subtract some color, mute some color
Change to MySQL as the underlying database
Close comments after X days
Spellcheck every entry before posting
Get to valid CSS and XHTML where practical
Change the look of blockquotes
Number the comments with oldest listed first
Implement CSS or style switcher (Is this called ”skinning?”)
Expand the use of PHP where useful and appropriate
Change the look and behavior of links (is this hover or rollovoer?)
Improve the site navigation
Move some sidebar items to separate pages
Improve the use of disk space, particularly with images
Take advantage of plugins where applicable
Alter the sidebar script that handles ”On This Day”
Rethink sidebars, blogrolls and additional pages of resources
Should titles be permalinks? (Is this even the right question?)
Improve and expand the use of RSS feeds – including excerpts, extended entries, RSS feeds for each category, etc.
First I have to disclaim that I feel Asterisk* is a personal Web site, built with weblog technology and with a blog component.
There is much more to this site than the weblog.
I like that. It fits the way I’m thinking about my own site as I move forward.
Goals include:
Don’t lose or damage entries dating back to January of 2002
Give the site an improved platform for expansion
Lose some weight in lines, type and images
Learn more about how to use Movable Type
Make the site more appealing to visitors
Watch for this entry to be broken out to its own page of design goals and attributes as I move forward with the effort. What I’m hoping to accomplish won’t likely happen in a weekend absent some serious help from a skilled web designer and developer.
I have identified 40 recent entries from a list of expert designers and sites.
Both the Democrats and the Republicans have people holding positions within the party that should be removed. The third-grade rhetoric concerning who hit whom first is growing more tiresome than any thinking person will tolerate.
Any viable candidate for national office should spend more time talking about what they stand for and expect to accomplish without trying to contrast themselves with their opponent. Let us do that.
I don’t need to hear about who might have gone AWOL without any proof of that. I don’t need to hear who has voted against stronger national defense. Tell me what YOU believe, what you will do and what you stand for. Don’t editorialize about your opponent. I’m sick of it.
If you are the candidate and you have ”handlers,” officials, supporters or anyone else distorting a clear image of what you stand for, then fire them. They do nothing but annoy us. We’ll make the distinctions. Talk about yourself and your views – not your opponent.
Gizmodo and Engadget are two sites that will cause a gadget freak to loosen the grip on lots of cash. If you like technology and gadgets, put these two sites on your ”regular reading” list.
The Trellix folks have been fired by Interland and the ofifice is closing. Dan Bricklin tells the story. Wouldn’t it be great if this team could somehow fuel the growth of Software Garden while providing an east coast development arm for Sixapart?
Yesterday I read something that puzzled me, but then again, much that I read does. I haven’t been able to find it again, but it sent something like this: ”Get the XHTML code correct before you worry about the style.” I’m under the impression that this means work on the code for the site before you work on the CSS for the site. I guess this is good advice, but I haven’t got a clue how to do that when we’re talking about a Movable Type weblog.
This morning I’m reading Keith Robinson’s Case Study covering how he redesigned his web site. He lays out the process. This big picture view of the overall effort is well written and useful.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths. Proverbs 3:5-6 New King James Version
Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track. Proverbs 3:5-6 The Message
Interviews and news reports have overworked the phrase ”jobless recovery” to describe the move out of a ”technical recession,” and into a period of economic improvement. Unfortunately, too much emphasis has again been placed on stock valuation as a metric for economic enthusiasm or disappointment. Remember, we’re the same group of people who created a bubble by thinking that stock prices were near term indicators of company performance. Only over a long period of time will a company’s stock price really reflect the underlying intrinsic value and growth in book value.
Yesterday, the Dow was down over 160 points. It may go down again today. Until we begin to depend on real information and not media spin, politicized economic analysis or the latest quarterly report, we’ll get more of the same.
A business has to perform. It has to generate more cash that it consumes. For anyone just getting started with investing or those attempting to evaluate politicians and their likely impacts on free enterprise, I suggest two key resources. First, go read all of Warren Buffett’s letters to shareholders. Yes, even the one written in 1977 is relevant. It’s outstanding business wisdom.
Second, no matter how complex a business or economic event may seem, there is a simpler analysis underpinning it. You’ll get to the bottom of it if you use the principles set forth in The Accounting Game: Basic Accounting Fresh From the Lemonade Stand. No investor or business owner should lose sight of the things this book teaches.
On this date in 2000, the NASDAQ closed at 5048.62. Berkshire Hathaway’s A shares stood at a 52-week low of $40,800 per share on that date.
As of this writing, Berkshire stands at $94,250 per A share and the NASDAQ is at 1984.51.
Remember when earnings, sales and a ”real” business were thought to be unnecessary? If you remember any of that, you lived through one of the great bubbles in American history. If you don’t remember any of that, you were either asleep or too young to be aware.
With 290 million people in this country and a world-wide population of 6 billion, where will your customers be in the future? Rather than go into some protectionist mode, it’s time to use the best techniques available in business to become the preferred supplier of some product or service. Or, you can be a frightened chipmunk.
Experts predict that by 2006 only 50% of American workers will be ”employees.” The rest will be temps, consultants, contract workers, independent contractors, entrepreneurs, etc.
Related note from The Dilbert Future by Scott Adams – ”In the future, most people’s jobs will involve scrambling around like frightened chipmunks trying to find the next paycheck in an endless string of unrelated short-term jobs. But since ”Frightened Chipmunk” doesn’t look very impressive on a business card, people will call themselves entrepreneurs, consultants, and independent contractors.”
One of my favorite weblogs for design, content and advice is Asterisk*. It’s written by Keith Robinson.
His entry called Why Not Web Standards? has drawn 32 comments as of right now. If you’re following the web standards movement, you’ll learn a lot from Keith.
[WARNING: SOME FOUL LANGUAGE IF YOU FOLLOW THE LINK] Gizmodo gets a road warrior to disclose what’s in the gadget bag. This ought to be like James Lipton’s 10-question list on Inside the Actors’ Studio:
What is your favorite word?
What is your least favorite word?
What turns you on?
What turns you off?
What sound do you love?
What sound do you hate?
What is your favorite curse word?
What profession other than yours would you like to attempt?
What profession would you not like to participate in?
If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?
Everybody ought to disclose answers to these questions:
What make and model of cellular phone do you use?
What do you use for an organizer or PDA?
What’s your favorite camera?
What type of laptop or gadget bag do you carry?
How many days a year do you travel?
Which operating system do you use – Mac? Windows? Linux?
What’s your browser of choice?
What do you use most to listen to music – home stereo? MP3 player? iPod? car stereo?
What gadget, if lost, would you replace immediately?
What software application do you spend the most time using?
There are things that can be done behind the scenes of weblogs and websites that make it possible to read the content of the site using a news aggregator, also known as a feed reader. This is called syndication of content.
Someone who visits a weblog or website that publishes a syndication feed in either of the two most popular formats – RSS or Atom – can subscribe to that feed and begin reading content without having to browse to each and every site of interest.
As is always the case with innovation VHS or Beta debates result. The current one is between RSS and Atom. The developer of the RSS format is holding out an olive branch today. Stay tuned as I browse my news aggregator for responses to his offer.
* * UPDATE * * * Read the comments and you’ll see where this effort is headed.
In his 2003 letter to shareholders, Mr. Warren Buffett related a story that began with his May 20, 2003 op-ed piece published in The Washington Post. Here’s part of the story:
On May 20, 2003, The Washington Post ran an op-ed piece by me that was critical of the Bush tax proposals. Thirteen days later, Pamela Olson, Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy at the U.S. Treasury,
delivered a speech about the new tax legislation saying, That means a certain midwestern oracle, who, it must be noted, has played the tax code like a fiddle, is still safe retaining all his earnings. I think she was talking about me. Alas, my fiddle playing will not get me to Carnegie Hall or even to a high school recital. Berkshire, on your behalf and mine, will send the Treasury $3.3 billion for tax on its 2003 income, a sum equaling 2.5% of the total income tax paid by all U.S. corporations in fiscal 2003.
This gave rise to this eloquent response (to Ms. Olson) on the Motley Fool discussion board for Berkshire Hathaway:
The idea seems to be that Corporations are not People. Instead, corporations represent no property rights of real life people, with real life financial needs, but some kind of independent money trough dedicated to the public use. With politicians bemoaning the outsourcing of jobs by Benedict Arnold corporations, we see the confusion, and the attempt for public confiscation.
Are we going to ask corporations to hold to jobs in the US even when their shareholders are better served to have those same operations performed elsewhere? This only makes any kind of sense if those corporate assets are not owned by people, but, instead by the public. Do non-owners, seeking jobs, have a greater right and higher call on corporate assets than those who have actually purchased those assets? If so, at what point are your assets no longer yours? As soon as they are placed into corporate form? Does this silly idea also apply to partnerships, joint ventures and sole proprietorships? And what happens when some hard working individual saves and invests his or her money into a public company? Are the assets so placed aside for retirement, medical or educational needs now forfeit, instead dedicated to vain attempts to protect the jobs of others?
This is all the same thing. If taxes paid by corporations are not, in the final analysis, paid by their shareholders, then they are paid by no one. And if no one bears any corporate cost, then no one is injured when corporations are limited in their ability to best order their financial affairs and business operations. Limit their outsourcing, limit their use of offshore corporations, force this and that. No one gets hurt, it is only a corporation.
Buffett understands that Corporate assets are actually owned by People, not the Public. He compared his then taxes paid as a thirteen-year-old Person to his now taxes paid for him by Berkshire, a Corporation.
Elias Fardo Message #88332 – The Motley Fool
Discussion Board for Berkshire Hathaway
These are links to some resources recommended by Dan Miller. Dan’s work involves helping people turn ideas into income. One method of generating income involves self-publishing a book. Dan is planning a teleclass to teach this topic. In the meantime, here’s a link to other resources that Dan publishes, and here’s a link that will allow you to sign up for his (FREE) newsletter.
It’s been a long time since I read a book with such clear guidance to those seeking advice about planning. Whether you’re planning a life, a career or a new business venture, Visioneering by Andy Stanley is an excellent resource.
Just to show how strong the message is, here are the first words of Chapter one:
CHAPTER ONE
A Vision Is Born
What is a vision?
Where do they come from?
Visions are born in the soul of a man or woman who is consumed with the tension between what is and what could be. Anyone who is emotionally involved – frustrated, brokenhearted, maybe even angry – about the way things are in light of the way they believe things could be, is a candidate for a vision. Visions form in the hearts of those who are dissatisfied with the status quo.
Do a google search on these two terms, ”wifi” and ”wi-fi.” Search for the first and google will find about two and a half million results. Search for the second term and you’ll find four million. I’ll stick with wi-fi for this weblog.
There are several things we’re working on at the moment. Stay tuned for some new entries this afternoon. Among the topics we’re researching, corporate governance, offshoring’s cause-and-effect, self-publishing and vision as a matter of faith.
Visit us later today. I think you’ll be glad you did. A bleak day last year brought to mind one of the most profound passages of scripture in the Bible.
Liberal and Conservative Somersaults
Over Gay Marriage
by Craig J. Cantoni
The intellectual contradictions of liberals and conservatives are often hilarious, but they’ve outdone themselves with their philosophical somersaults over gay marriage.
Liberals are squawking about gays being denied rights, but as lovers of big government, they have endorsed government programs that infringe on the rights of gays. Conservatives, on the other hand, love small government but want more government when it comes to gays. Neither liberals nor conservatives seem to understand that gay rights wouldn’t be an issue and wouldn’t be plastered all over the media if the government had not made it an issue by putting its nose where it doesn’t belong.
Social Security is an example.
Gays say that Social Security discriminates against life-long gay partners by denying them the same survivor benefits that are granted to husbands and wives. But gays didn’t say that prior to 1936. They also didn’t have to run to the courts or the legislature before 1936 to get permission to bequeath their retirement savings to a gay partner.
What happened in 1936? Social Security was enacted. Since then, the government has not only forcibly taken money from gays (and heterosexuals) to fund their retirement and the retirement of strangers, but has also dictated who can receive the money upon death. Prior to 1936, gays could keep all of their retirement savings and, with a properly executed will, could bequeath the savings to another gay without anyone’s permission, without making a scene in the national media, without getting married in San Francisco, and without incurring the wrath of conservatives.
Social Security, like most government programs, takes freedom from people under the guise of giving them something. Specifically, it takes away the right of people to do what they want with a portion of their income. It then transfers the right to politicians, who respond to special-interest groups, the passions of the public and social mores. What used to be a private matter becomes a public matter and grist for politicians, judges, journalists and busybodies.
The same holds true for scores of other government programs and tax policies that favor some groups over other groups. For example, the federal tax code alone is 40,000 pages, and Medicare regulations are another 130,000 pages. These two government monstrosities in turn create millions of pages of court decisions, correspondence, forms and filings—and tens of thousands of bureaucrats to administer it all and to catch any citizen who violates a rule that the bureaucrats themselves don’t understand.
All of this unproductive activity is about one thing: restricting liberty. Contrary to Democratic Party claptrap, it is not about compassion, fairness or justice. It is about telling people what they can do, whom they can do it with, what they can keep and what they have to forfeit to other people.
Republicans are no better. Instead of doing away with the rules, they create rules of their own that serve their interests. Then, having conspired with Democrats to create rules and restrict liberty, they are aghast that gays are making a public scene and, according to them, undermining society and traditional marriage. But, again, it is the rules that have turned a private matter into a public matter. Now Republicans want more rules.
This is what happens when the government oversteps its constitutional bounds of protecting life, liberty and property. As laws, regulations and rules increase, free choice decreases. And as free choice decreases, people who feel aggrieved seek recourse in the courts, in San Francisco city hall and in the national media. Meanwhile, liberals and conservatives do intellectual somersaults instead of admitting that they have created the problem.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
An old crony frequently told clients, ”the first step in the problem-solving process is to find someone to blame.” He always got laughs because every corporate culture thinks that way.
The fact is our national culture has become a victim of the same kind of thinking. More important than true root causes or any review of thought processes is the search for someone to blame. Gary Petersen has found evidence of these traits. It starts with Blame It On Evolution, and continues (indirectly) with Evolution vs. Creation Reconciled.
If you want to learn standards-based web design, this book (along with Jeffrey Zeldman’s) gets you started. Both belong in the toolkit we’ve been talking about here. Read SimpleBits regularly as well!
...I was thinking about digital cameras on this date. Take a look at the list of products and prices. Now, look at what 2004 offers. I backed off last year, but 2004 is the year I leap.
After reviewing the recommendations for editors, this morning’s reading turns up an interesting ”configuration” for Firefox. As I interpret what I’m reading, it seems she is adding ”extensions” to Firefox that turn it into a web designer’s friend. I use IE and sometimes look at sites using Opera. Thus far, I’ve found no compelling reasons to switch from IE, but a browser configured as described would be incredibly useful. Kadyellebee provides some great resources for understanding and using Movable Type. She’s probably identified the ideal browser environment for the work she does!
Then, there’s a great set of sites that help you understand how to alter your Movable Type templates using CSS to get the ”look” you want.
All of these things belong in any toolkit assembled for designing Movable Type weblogs.
I had no idea that others were asking questions about Movable Type 3.0 when I posted this. I’m not a regular visitor to the MT support forums. Richard Eriksson has linked to a discussion between some MT users and one of the executives of the company. It sounds as if one of the key questions must be, ”why wasn’t I included in the alpha testing?”
That’s not my question nor my wish. I’d simply like to have the brochure-ware that tells me what to expect in MT 3.0’s feature set.
Aiirmesh Wireless Community Broadband set up a wi-fi hot zone for Cerritos, CA. I’m searching for a list of competitors that have experience doing metro wi-fi installations – not just hot spots.
The preferred player will have a plan for WiMax and how it will be used to integrate with or replace wi-fi installations.
We have a project that can get financed and started once we assemble some key pieces of pro forma financial information.
Here’s a list of some wi-fi cities. We want to provide speeds of 1 to 3Mbps to users of the network in a metro area. We already have an exceptional relationship with a company that can provide the backhaul bandwidth. We’d like to achieve price points that are 80% of those charged for DSL or cable modem access to the Internet.
In other words, we’re looking to hire an architect or general contractor in the field of wi-fi. If you know who that needs to be, drop me a note. [NOTE: We are not looking for proprietary fixed wireless solutions!]
* * * UPDATE * * * This is NOT a call for how to hack together an 802.11 network. This is NOT an effort to buy the cheapest WAP and hang it on a telephone pole in a ziplock bag. This is a commercially-oriented, large scale metro network with a need for high performance design, engineering and management paid for by paying customers. FYI!
There are genuine economies in store for any business that carefully decides what its core competencies are and outsources other things to businesses that have determined that those things are their core competencies. Offshoring is outsourcing taken overseas.
Neither of these terms implies anything about government involvement. Just to be clear, I think globalization is inevitable. I also think protectionism in any way is a flawed strategy. However, getting government out of our businesses is another thing. Most of the drive for offshoring centers around the fundamental difference in the wage-to-cost relationship for products made in the USA vs. those made elsewhere.
Were our government to immediately lower the many-tax-burden on businesses that has grown over the last six decades, many businesses would be able to rethink their strategy concerning offshoring. What’s the short story? Offshoring is not a result of government doing nothing to ”save jobs;” offshoring is a result of way too much government involvement in the lives of business owners and wage earners to date.
Read all the letters dating back to 1977 carefully. Read them again. You’ll have one of the finest business educations money can buy.
Our federal tax return for 2002 (2003 is not finalized), when we paid $1.75 billion, covered a mere 8,905 pages. As is required, we dutifully filed two copies of this return, creating a pile of paper seven feet tall. At World Headquarters, our small band of 15.8, though exhausted, momentarily flushed with pride: Berkshire, we felt, was surely pulling its share of our countrys fiscal load.
One of my Movable Type 3.0 questions has to do with referral logs and site meters. Coincidentally, Elise Bauer, who writes Learning Movable Type, provides some resources for learning and using various site meters and referral logs.
There’s little comfort in knowing that many of my validation errors are due to a flaw or bug in Movable Type. I’d like to see that corrected in MT 3.0, but the list of editors makes me realize just how much might be possible if I start composing and editing entries in another tool and copying them here for posting.
I recently added a site called white space to my news aggregator. Last night I read an entry titled Non-scientific poll: HTML/CSS Editors. When I first found the entry, there were 64 comments. This morning there were 86 comments.
Someone else will do a much better job of this, but I created a checksheet while reading the comments. If a product got mentioned in any of various versions or forms, it got a check. I probably double-counted or missed some, but here’s where things stood as of 86 comments: (Note that the editors are ranked and the number of times I counted each one is shown to the right.
* * UPDATE * * * I’ve added links to each of the editors. While owning one or more of these tools won’t make you a web designer any more than owning a stethoscope will make you a doctor, knowing one or more of these tools fluently is a likely key to full employment in the web design and development industry.
After 9/11 I made the weekly Target run, and wondered whether it might not be prudent to get some camping stuff in case, well, we had to leave. What would we need if something awful happened, and we had to light out for the territories? If this seems like a ridiculous overreaction, then either youve forgotten what it felt like after 9/11, when no one knew what the hell was around the corner (besides anthrax). Or your primary reaction to 9/11 was to fight American overreaction to a regrettable but understandable act of karmic comeuppance. Me, I just channeled the inner Boy Scout. Be prepared. So I bought waterproof matches and a small cook stove and some propane tanks and a wind-up radio, and put them in a box in the garage with some canned goods and fresh water. I didnt think it was likely wed have to leave. And I didnt want to be caught flat-footed if the worst happened. Toss the box in the trunk and roll.
That box is still up on the shelf in the garage. The threat level could be light beige, and I wouldnt take it down. Why would I?
Don’t go into your weekend without reading all of what James Lileks had to say this morning. It’s simply too inspirational, patriotic and wholly American to pass up. Here’s a bit more:
Okay. A simple quiz.
1. We should promote the rebuilding of the international community through the UN to stop tyrannical regimes through forceful nonviolent intervention.
Or:
2 ”Youre either with us, or with the terrorists.”
Imagine a bomb just went off in your local mall. Choose one.
I need to know some things. I’ve got projects to do and how they get done depends on the feature set of Movable Type 3.0. Some of what I need and want to do relates to changing this weblog. Other tasks involve new weblogs with specific capabilities. Here are some examples of questions I have:
To what extent are features previously available via plugin or third-party going to be native to MT 3.0? e.g. blogroll features found only in blogrolling.com?
I want to be able to turn off comments on posts older than a couple of weeks. That can be done with a plugin today, but it requires that the underlying database be MySQL – not the Berkeley db. Is this going to change with MT 3.0?
I’d like to better understand the referral information for this weblog. To use Refer, I have to be on MySQL. Any plans to build this type of functionality into MT 3.0?
Saturday, March 6, 2004, Berkshire Hathaway will post its 2003 annual report and the letter to shareholders from Warren Buffett. It’s a highlight of my investing year.
For those new to this topic, it has been said that a careful reading (and rereading) of Mr. Buffett’s letters to shareholders since 1977 is more useful than two years in business school.
The legal and healthcare industries appear to be two of the few that are continuing to prosper, yet by being overlawyered and over-medicated, these two costs have higher growth rates than any other costs that individuals and businesses face.
We have a minimum wage in this country that will place minimum wage earners below the poverty line, yet we have bureaucrats calling for an escalation of the minimum wage.
Healthy self-interest battles egocentric greed at every turn. Someone pointed out that from 1980 to 2001, the average working persons pay rose 74 percent, while CEO compensation climbed by 1,884 percent, and this is a ”free market” economy.
We’re shipping jobs and manufacturing offshore at unprecedented rates, yet we are unwilling to alter the ”systemic economic friction” that makes it virtually impossible for an American business to find any alternative to outsourcing.
Parts of San Francisco are selling gasoline for $3.00 a gallon, yet we are buying SUV’s at unprecedented rates.
Everyone is told to become a part of the information or knowledge economy, but so many of those jobs are moving offshore as well. On the other hand, we’re told to learn a trade to begin Protecting Your Livelihood. It’s sound advice if you ask me.
Worst of all, we’re about to hold another race for the Presidency of the United States between two career politicians who see ”government” as the solution to rather than the source of each of these problems.
In spite of the millions of dollars spent on telecom equipment and services, call centers know very little about what CEO’s really expect when it comes to serving customers
Telecom has been a highly visible industry in this country since the early 1990’s. Prior to that time, a lot of money was spent on telecom goods and services, but the phone just worked, AT&T had its way and the industry ambled steadily forward dragging its cash horde along.
Then, the calls at dinner time began. Friends and family began to be implicated in every scheme offering cheaper phone services. Sometimes the call didn’t even come in; the change just happened. Companies began to merge and acquire. Aggressive sales and marketing techniques used by more aggressive sales people began to confuse the masses.
Acquired companies weren’t really merged. Billing systems fouled the invoices and call centers put the complaining customers on hold. Errors took years to unravel.
Move ahead to 2004. Here we sit with all of this technology. We have the companies that remain from the legacy telecom years sitting right along side the new generation of equipment and service providers. Telephones, computers, proprietary networks and the Internet are converging. Each of those industries is rapidly developing new sets of dictionaries.
People are going to court, and maybe to jail. High pressure sales tactics are still in use. Some recent entrants in the telecom industry are trying to run billion dollar organizations using spreadsheets. (I kid you not.)
Many people understand less about the phone, ISP, hosting, long distance and equipment invoices they receive than at any time in history. Those same people fear the receptionist calling in sick just as much as they ever have. Nothing can create havoc in the small-to-medium sized business quicker.
With all this technology… With all this confusion… With all the promises made… is the customer getting better treatment or worse from that offered during the days of route salesmen, wooden pencils and yellow legal pads? Has the technology deployed really provided a better customer experience? Do you have any idea what it feels like to call your company? Few calls are dreaded more than those placed to tech support. The hold times we’ve been conditioned to endure when calling the tech support line can’t continue to climb, can they?
Anyone still puzzled about why executives now flee these issues by ”offshoring” the call center to Bangalore? When you know nothing else, you make decisions based upon price. When the prices look cheap, offshoring becomes one more way to annoy your customers with half-baked outsourcing schemes.
It’s time for a change. It’s time for an ethics transplant. It’s time for real solutions to real business problems. It’s time for business people to start figuring out how to be kind to customers again!
If you want a view of just how fast one of the players in the voice-over-IP game is growing, take a look at the work Om Malik has done.
Customer service in the USA is generally miserable. Technology is generally spectacular. When will we realize that we need to take a look at these two disciplines through the eyes of the customers we are trying to win and retain?
No matter how many residences and businesses embrace the voice-over-IP technology, the needs of customers who simply want a kind soul at the other end of the phone call will likely go unmet. It’s time for that to change! A cost reduction is simply not a sufficient reason to make the switch.
At a breakfast meeting this morning, I felt the seed of an idea germinate. It’s going to take another two to four weeks for the sprout to be seen above ground, but it’s happening. Exciting times.
The first web entry I read this morning was James Lileks’s Monday post. I’m a day late, I know. He does the Dad thing early on, then he turned here:
Elizabeth Bumiller of the NEW YORK TIMES asked Kerry: ”President Bush has said that freedom and fear have always been at war, and God is not neutral between them. He’s made quite clear in his speeches that he feels God is on America’s side.
Wired’s article about better earbuds reminds me of the fantasy I ponder. It’s the one where the perfect digital camera, an iPod with perfect earbuds, a Treo 600 and an Apple Powerbook make up my totally portable technology bag.
Questions abound:
What’s the perfect digital camera?
Is the iPod still the state-of-the-art player?
What about recording MP3’s? What do I need?
Do all the purists replace the iPod’s standard earbuds?
Om Malik and Wi-Fi Networking News are linking to articles about WiMax. One of them is written by Nancy Gohring of Wi-Fi Networking News.
Wi-Fi and WiMax could be well on their way to replacing DSL lines and cable modems for small business and residential Internet access. The economics of placing towers and antennae strategically, covering an area with a cloud and charging users a fee that is 80% of that charged by the cable company or the local phone company make an appealing business.
Why is this important? Read this. When other countries already have services offering to provide ten times the bandwidth (or more) that we receive at residential broadband pricing, it’s time for an alternative.
For the past twelve years I’ve believed that corporate culture does more to set the direction of a business than the leadership of the business can ever do. Certainly, the leadership of a business can start the corporate culture, but changing cultures is very, very difficult work. There is no end to the number of fads that have been embraced with an eye toward transforming corporate culture. Most of the time such fads fail.
David Isenberg offers a glimpse into a new book called Who Really Matters. Short answer: it’s not who you think it is and it’s not what they’ve been saying all these years!
There’s an article in InfoWorld that says you might be a spammer and subject to fines and not even know it.
The article makes a compelling case (indirectly) for a closer look at email services such as Constant Contact or I Make News. I’m not sure whether either of these services has explicitly stated their compliance with the laws and terminology called out in the article, but it’s an area of reassurance that most small businesses need before sending the next company newsletter to clients, prospects and interested parties.
I want to use a service that goes out of its way to keep me in compliance with the laws and regulations.
Ben Hammersley linked to Telltale Weekly last week and I missed up until a few minutes ago. As I understand it, you can download or listen to audio downloads of public domain texts.
Given that a minute of MP3 equals approximately 1MB, the bandwidth requirements are going to jump pretty quickly. What am I missing?
Dan Gillmor’s Sunday post at the Mercury News is useful to anyone considering the truly open and free markets that are created by VoIP and low-power FM radio. Dan covers three topics and how the government might handle them:
In my email this morning was the following message. I leave it to you to form an opinion about where this writer stands on the matter:
Subject: Liberals, Conservatives, and Southerners
How do you tell the difference between liberals, conservatives, and southerners?
Answer: Pose the following question:
You’re walking down a deserted street with your wife and two small children. Suddenly, a dangerous looking man with a huge knife comes around the corner, locks eyes with you, screams obscenities, raises the knife, and charges. You are carrying a Glock .40, and you are an expert shot. You have mere seconds before he reaches you and your family. What do you do?
Jeffrey Mayer takes us through a scenario in which a salesperson is trying to build a relationship. He advises us to stop wasting time and get to the point. The only thing I might add to what Mayer suggests is a bit of awareness of the behavioral styles of prospects. With an awareness of the personality type you’re dealing with, you can still get to the point, but you’ll do it in a way that is compatible with your prospect.
Every career involves the addition of tools to a toolbox. Sometimes the tools are techniques for dealing with people. Sometimes the tools are experiences that allow you to navigate through the rough spots businesses face. Sometimes the tools are more literal and physical if you happen to be in that type of trade or business.
Dan Bricklin is refocusing on Software Garden. He’s assessing where the market sits and which tools he wants to use for future work. All you Mac lovers will be pleased to know that he’s added a Powerbook to the toolbox. The tools of the software developer get some coverage as he evaluates the possibilities.
When several of the large ”mini computer companies” saw the inevitability of personal computers and small networks displacing their traditional machines, ”eating their young” was the term they used for the phenomenon. They were about to see proprietary, high-margin machines replaced with commodities where service contracts were no longer a guaranteed profit-stream and prices were well below any they had ever seen before. DEC and DG resisted and never really played. IBM (finally) bought into the change and survived, but after quite a bit of pain.
We’re seeing the same corporate mindsets play themselves out in the legacy phone companies. What is happening is inevitable. Spinning what is happening with fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is the way many legacy phone companies have chosen to respond. Clay Shirky writes essays about such things. One of his latest is about the thrashing that goes on as ”voice becomes an Internet application.”
Add to that a comment by a Presidential adviser and economist and you get a firestorm of debate and misinformation. Notice how many times Peters uses the phrase ”long haul.” Offshoring isn’t comfortable in the short haul. It – like most change – introduces some pain into the system. Few could dispute that – in a global economy – a more cost-effective American company is a good thing. Unfortunately, we get passionate about how cost-effectiveness is gained. If it involves offshoring, we become ambivalent about the notion of return on investment.
Free markets, and particularly global free markets, will always seek out the low-cost producers for any and everything. If a Chinese programmer can do your job for one fifth the wage, that’s where programming will go. If a call center employee in India will do your job for one sixth of your annual income, that’s where those jobs will go.
Some better questions to ask are these:
Will we do anything about our highly ”regulated” environment that prevents us from being able to live on less? I’m not suggesting lowering our standard of living, but is there financial friction in our system? Are we forcing higher wages because we have costly, over-regulated health-care? Are wages too high because of exorbitant litigation costs that are now ”built into our system?” Will those in other countries have an ”unfair” advantage because they don’t yet pay the tax rates that Americans pay?
Can we quickly learn our role when half of the world’s population (China and India) begin to pursue the lifestyles of Americans? When those two global population centers become consumer economies, what will Americans have to offer? Will each of those places be able to produce 100% of the desired goods and services ”in country?” If not, how will we meet the demand?
Are those in the centers for offshoring content with less? Will market economies drive them and us toward some middle ground of ”standardized” annual income? Will friction in their economic system put them at ”unfair disadvantage” as the pendulum swings back in a few years? Can we endure the short term problem of job shifts and realignment?
What will Americans learn to do that no amount of offshoring can replace?
This could get very interesting for all the weblog writers who use blogrolling extensively. I do, and I know just how much more could be done with the service were certain features made available. However, were BlogRolling.com taken in a different direction, each developer of weblog software might have to develop a feature for tracking blogrolls.
Voice-over-IP will completely replace all legacy telecommunications within the decade. That’s my belief.
Whether we consider small, residential needs or vast commercial needs, the economics of fast, open and unregulated IP communications will prevail over the entrenched centrally-planned bureaucracies of the past. Some of the names might be the same, but the network and what they do will look dramatically different.
Walter Mossberg provides a glimpse of how this is starting on the residential side. It isn’t difficult to see how quickly it scales to global enterprises.
My phone has been ringing off the wall, but I stayed head down and focused until the last of this latest batch of information was entered. Never again.
I’m still buried neck deep in a client’s failed attempts to use a computer to manage his business. It’s an absolute nightmare and it’s hard to imagine that someone with a master’s degree could create such a mess.
There are things I can’t say about it right now, but they will get said in the next week or so.
Hang in there and keep reading! We’ll be back on to something more enjoyable very soon!
No major news source that I can find has reported this story. A search of Google News for ”bin laden” and ranked in date order, provides this list of stories. Notice the BBC’s report seems to merely quote other sources.
A BRITISH Sunday newspaper is claiming Osama bin Laden has been found and is surrounded by US special forces in an area of land bordering north-west Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Sunday Express, known for its sometimes colourful scoops, claims the al-Qaeda leader has been ”sighted” for the first time since 2001 and is being monitored by satellite.
The paper claims he is in a mountainous area to the north of the Pakistani city of Quetta. The region is said to be peopled with bin Laden supporters and the terrorist leader is estimated to also have 50 of his fanatical bodyguards with him.
I use the Berkeley database behind the scenes of this weblog. Does anyone know of a plugin or tool that turns comments off after an entry reaches a certain age? I’ve seen such things for those who use MySQL behind the scenes, but I’m told that switching from Berkeley to MySQL poses great risks – particularly for those who don’t understand all the issues. I’m willing to consider any proposal you savvy Movable Type experts have for making that switch for me or coaching me through it.
God works in mysterious ways. They’re mysterious ways to us, at least. What might it be like if people really see the Passion of the Christ on some large scale? What might our discussions be like? What is the potential for a truly global impact of some magnitude?
For the past two weeks, my copy of spybot, which I run at least once a week, has reported no findings on my computer. My browsing routine has not changed. Normally, spybot recommends the removal of five to ten things it thinks could compromise my system. Lately, it recommends nothing.
This morning, I read Meryl’s entry about the SpywareInfo site. While the issues are completely unrelated, I’m wondering if someone has managed to download something to unsuspecting users (me) that defeats spybot search and destroy?
Since this day is about unsolicited advice, here are a few more points I’d suggest that you small business owners add to your charm school management curriculum:
Be on time for meetings with employees and suppliers.
All consultants are not evil or ignorant. Just because they don’t sell you a product, it doesn’t mean they offer no value to you.
Don’t think that just because you are the third generation to own or run the family business that you are somehow smarter than everyone you talk to. You’re not!
Get over your frustration with I.T. spending. I.T. is an important asset just like delivery vehicles, machine tools or inventory. Just because you didn’t have the foresight to start budgeting and tracking your various expenditures, it doesn’t mean they are all annoyances like unstopping the toilets! Start today and add these four accounts to your bookkeeping system:
I.T. capital costs
Software capital costs
Software updates and maintenance costs
I.T. operating expenses
Think in terms of both capital costs being turned or depreciated on no more than a 36 to 48 month basis. Think of operating expenses for I.T. in the range of 1% to 2% of sales. That’s right; get over it!
Then, begin thinking about every I.T. investment you make using these bullets as reminders of where the costs come from:
Hardware
Software
Training
Support
Maintenance
Don’t strut around your business talking about what a crazy day it is. You built the business. Why is it crazy?
To all the entrepreneurs, small business people and interested business readers out there. Given the (sorry) state of business management software in the marketplace today, and given the lack of real business acumen on the part of many installers of business management software, let me offer these points:
making software pay off costs more than you think it does
you can’t afford everything you want
projects for reworking companies around new business management software aren’t done on a fixed fee basis
if you ran your business like a business rather than as a diversion from your hobbies, you wouldn’t face half the problems you face
just because you own your own business, you are no better than any other person
people who work for you as employees or advisers are not the peasants you think they are
your real character shows, not when you’re in the pew at church, but when you’re at the conference room table in your business
I’m mired again in the project that may never end. It will end or I will, but sometimes it feels as if it might not end.
While I’m not posting, there’s a lot going on out there. Next Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and The Passion will be released. Closet theologians are everywhere spouting their views. Properly discerned, some of the dialog is great.
I really like Movable Type. I like the concepts behind entries saved in a database. I like the notion of categorizing and archiving entries. With forthought, it’s a terrific tool for organizing information.
For the rank beginner, making a Movable Type weblog look like you want it to look is daunting. If, as I did, you come from a background with no web design knowledge and terminology such as XHTML, CSS and syndication mean nothing, the task of customizing your weblog is nearly impossible. Thank goodness for good designers.
Once there’s a little knowledge, danger is just around the corner. Here’s an entry that describes how to start tinkering with Movable Type templates. It dates back to August of 2003, but it has been reposted at ETC. It won’t turn the person with no eye for design into a designer, but it certainly helps explain how the things that get typed on the screen wind up arranged as they are in a ”finished” weblog.
I’m deep under water due to a client’s call yesterday. I’ll be here for a while. Sometimes it feels as if this will go on forever. It won’t, but that fact certainly provides little comfort during the height of the pressure.
In the meantime, take a look at the comments and thoughts surrounding Mel Gibson’s interview with Diane Sawyer. Your best starting point is at LilacRose.
As the movie’s general release approaches, the noise level is rising.
I’ll be back here if I see any kind of break at all.
Staying out of the quicksand is much better than getting a good deal on a towing contract.
Philip B. Crosby
from Creating the Reliable Organization
Trust me. It isn’t easy to create a reliable organization. Variation creeps in from all kinds of causes. The unexpected can cost you your reputation. The only way to develop a truly (long-term) reliable organization is to seek ways to prevent variation.
His entry today is a critique of a debate in Christian Networks Journal. That debate is titled Religious Right or Wrong?. Unfortunately, there is no online edition of the article.
This morning my weblog shows only 729 errors when I run it through the (X)HTML validator. That’s down from over 800. Don’t get excited. When there were 800+ errors, there were more entries on the home page.
Keith Robinson writes Asterisk, a weblog of truly outstanding looks, content and usefulness. He did an experiment. He checked up on the claims of validation by some sites and designers. About half of the thirty he checked validated. It’s a nice piece of work.
Now for the $64,000 question. This home page has over 700 validation errors. Where does one start to remove them? How does one begin to produce entries every morning that don’t introduce new errors? All I want to do is write. Why can’t some writing tool keep me ”valid” as I write?
I’ve used Webmonkey as a reference many times as I struggled with the learning curve of XHTML, CSS, standards and such. It seems a serious waste to think of those archives simply going away. It’s one thing for their to be no new content, but entirely another to lose what’s been produced to date.
However, I’m sure others will emerge to replace the work lost. Here’s an example of some really useful work by Molly Holzschlag courtesy of Meryl.
We were working with a couple of companies in the supply chains to two of the largest retailers in the USA. As large retailers they can be large pains unless you commit up front to the resources, time and patience required to comply with their demands.
It is only a matter of time before RFID capabilities become part of the process. Here’s a scenario showing where RFID could be headed:
Here’s another scenario: You’re going on vacation in Las Vegas, and while you’re in that same mall, you buy a book on card counting. Unbeknownst to you, it, too, has an RFID tag impressed into the binding. RFID tags along with their antenna are already part of paper labels attached to shipping containers. It is no stretch to think how unobtrusive they might yet become.
Now as you enter the hotel/casino, an unobtrusive RFID reader tells management that you have in your possession a book on counting cards. The book has a unique serial number associated not with your credit card—that would be illegal—but with a customer ID, name, and address. The casino, in turn, subscribes to a service, maybe from Amazon, with a database of every book in print.
In a world of zero latency, as you passed through the doors, your photo was also taken and now it is distributed to every casino on the strip, so that every time you try to enter a casino, your image is matched to the database as a possible card counter, and two guys with closely cropped hair and tight-fitting sports jackets politely ask you to leave.
The article from LinuxInsider dates back to December 16, 2003, but Om Malik calls it to our attention again. It’s truly worthwhile.
Every big company eventually stumbles over something. Microsoft will, too. It is not a question of ”if,” but ”when.” Linux is waiting in the wings. Some open Internet tools, technologies and standards are waiting in the wings. Browsers are doing their part to give us independence from Microsoft. Oh, and don’t forget Apple (is there a PDA coming?) and OS X.
If I were starting a business today that required a sophisticated inventory control and business management system, I’d do one of two things. I’d either use one of the ASP models or web services that provides the functionality, or I’d buy the software I need, but I’d run it on Linux.
All of this has happened since the first of January. 2004 could be shaping up to become the year that telecom straightened itself out. Now, if all the new IP companies will throw out the unethical practices of the legacy telecom industry, we might just have something!
This is another government term that always intrigues me. They actually categorize people as ”discouraged workers” who are not looking for work because they don’t believe any jobs are available for them. At least that’s what the government uses as an explanation.
For January, the government lists 1.7 million people as ”marginally attached” to the labor force. That includes the 432,000 ”discouraged workers” and another 1.2 million unemployed who have looked for work sometime in the last 12 months but not in the last 4 weeks.
Now what do you think those people are really doing? Are they just sitting on the sidewalk in despair? Have they really given up hope? Or could that very process be the stimulant to cause a person to see new possibilities. We’ve all heard that the ”good” is the enemy of the ”best,” meaning it’s difficult to be motivated for something better when things are working pretty well.
But it seems that out of such gloomy statistics comes a new breed of self-starter, the ”accidental entrepreneur” – someone who never imagined having their own business until there seemed to be no other option. In the past few months I have seen airline pilots, physicians, human resource directors, CEOs, pastors and attorneys who have lost their jobs. A music industry executive has lost his job 4 times in the last 3 years. What are the chances of replacing that $130,000/yr position with another similar one? It’s still possible but the odds are not great. And the odds for ”security” and ”predictability” have essentially disappeared.
Yes, out of chaos and uncertainty, creativity is frequently born. A CEO is now a web site writer, a pastor is now an artist, an attorney is developing an executive training seminar, and an airline pilot now has his own cruise agency. All describe the increased sense of control and freedom. Maybe your disaster is actually God helping you find your wings.
The new CD, Turning Passions Into Profits contains 74 minutes of stories about these and others who were ”discouraged” and now are more than ”encouraged.”
”America has led the world in science and technology, but that may be coming to an end. With a looming engineer shortage in the United States and a corresponding engineering boom in China and India, we are seeing the consequences of our educational collapse.” There’s more...
Planning Your Future is an article written by Erin Malone. Erin is Editor in Chief of Boxes and Arrows. This morning Digital Web Magazine linked to her article. It’s an excellent piece. Have you got a five-year plan?
A couple of issues of BusinessWeek arrived at the same time this past week. Three things were covered which bare tucking away for future use.
First, and most amazing, is the news that major surgery in Bangkok, Thailand is often one third to half the cost of identical surgery in the USA. People interviewed talk about saving as much as 65% or 70% even after paying for air fare and spending a couple of weeks on vacation recuperating.
On a completely different subject is the notion that desktop Linux truly is making some inroads. Also, showing a substantial savings, the Linux operating system with Sun’s SmartSuite costs in the neighborhood of $100 as compared to roughly $600 for Microsoft’s operating system with Office. There could be real momentum building for the Java Desktop System.
Finally, there’s a great new book from Roger Lowenstein titled Origins of the Crash. If you have any doubt at all what caused the stock market bubble of the 1990’s, this should move to the top of your reading list.
Is reading the Bible silently or aloud considered anti-semitic? Is one reads one of the four Gospel accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus, is that anti-semitic? If someone says, ”I’ve made a movie about the last twelve hours in the life of Christ, and it is faithful to the accounts in the Bible,” is that anti-semitic?
Knowing the link rot is a distinct possibility, I want to quote from this article concerning Diane Sawyer’s interview with Mel Gibson. The interview is scheduled to be aired on Monday, February 16, 2004 on ABC. Here are the sentences I don’t fully understand:
The R-rated movie, set for release Feb. 25, details the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus. Gibson maintains it’s a faithful biblical narrative, but some worry that its depiction of the role of some Jews in the death of Christ may lead to an increase in anti-Semitism.
Among them is Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, who has seen the film twice.
Gibson told Sawyer the film was not anti-Semitic and was instead about ”faith, hope, love and forgiveness.”
”To be anti-Semitic is a sin,” the actor-director said. ”It’s been condemned by one Papal Council after another. To be anti-Semitic is to be un-Christian, and I’m not.”
The ”Primetime” program also includes an interview of Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Foxman told Sawyer he does not believe Gibson or the film are anti-Semitic but added that the movie ”has the potential to fuel anti-Semitism, to reinforce it.”
The point is that citizens, Roman and Jewish, were part of the crowd. Clearly, there was interaction between elements of Jewish life, faith and culture of the day and the government which was Roman.
I guess I’m confused as to how anyone other than those who are hypersensitive to a study of history can find fault with the telling or retelling of the events at this period of time. All of the whining about how someone – likely ill-informed – might interpret that history serves as a distraction from the far more powerful message of faith, hope, love and forgiveness. It is certainly more powerful than placing blame could ever be.
The only way to form your own opinion is to read the passages that tell the story:
Matthew 26-28
Mark 14-16
Luke 22-24
John 17-21
Then, begin to understand the alignment or the synoptic nature of the accounts.
These are far more learned ways to form an opinion, understand the point and be able to discuss the issues. Otherwise, critics are doing nothing more than shouting, ”Wrong answer!” without ever knowing what the original question really was.
Roland Tanglao links to Lisa Williams concerning her notions about a news aggregator that could be tuned to provide information consistent with your worldview. It’s an interesting notion and a worthwhile read. I particularly like the notion of ”lenses” in my worldview.
Such a tool might also make each of us more like we already are!
>From far and wide we’re seeing even more ”analysis” and writing that completely misses the point and the (often stated) objective of Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ. Faith, hope, love and forgiveness – the question has been asked many times and the answer has always come back to these. It’s a movie about the most incredible sacrifice of all time.
Here’s where World magazine links to Entertainment Weekly’s ”in depth” discussion. It’s time for someone to begin to ask each of these writers, ”what was your motive when you wrote your article about the movie? What were you trying to say? Do you think the article will harm your career? What do you say to your critics who say you are simply slanting your article to a group of readers who believe as you do?”
Over time I’ve spent way (I mean waaaaay) too much money on great audio systems. Speaker wire the size of garden hose and connectors that cost more than some components have been part of past systems.
Never have I spent anything approaching $3000 for a set of headphones. Nine hundred and ninety nine people in the world have that opportunity!
Taking a break this afternoon, I saw a show on TechTV called Invent This! This particular show covered Sanford Ponder, founder and principle designer of the IcoPod from Icosa Village.
If you haven’t seen this show or heard his story, you ought to take a look. Finding the alternative to conspicuous consumption, great toys and social climbing is truly the only way out of the rat race. Ponder broke the code!
I’m looking at the various designs and wondering why we’re not seeing them everywhere!
”Bostons Tech Superpowers is working on a top secret initiative for which it needs base stations: They’re looking for unused or broken AirPort base stations for an undisclosed project…”
Digital Web Magazine has posted the results of its 2003 Reader Survey. In it I think I’ve found the fatal flaw that has made web design and web standards such a mental block for me. I’m not in that magical 25-34 age group like the rest of you!
With an assist from InstaPundit who pointed me to Megan McArdle’s site, here’s my favorite comment concerning the implications of recent discussions about Senator John Kerry:
Most Democrats, including leaders of women’s groups, will continue to support John Kerry as long as Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy declare that they find nothing in Kerry’s personal life that would concern them.
We’ve got a couple of new ventures under development. Along with those come all of the usual incorporation, organization and formative tasks. Obviously, there are identity matters. Names, logos, web designs, etc.
Bob Lewis writes an Advice Line weblog for InfoWorld. He was asked about conflicting advice when it comes to searching for the career of our dreams. Take a look.
Do you want to be in the top ten percent in a profession that you love?
Last night I noted an article about tools for securing your PC. This morning, I’ve found that my copy of Ella for spam blocking is ”leaking.” Without a noticeable increase in overnight spam, I’ve awakened to more messages that made it into my inbox without getting caught by Ella. The article I linked to suggested that SpamBayes is tops in the field for blocking spam for Outlook users. It may be time to give that a try.
Then, from Silicon Valley’s morning email, I see that the author(s?) of the Mydoom virus is/are at work on variants. While I don’t like the thought of losing files or time to a virus, I despise the notion that I might be an unknowing participant in a spam scheme by allowing this into the PC.
If you’re not actively managing your PC with Spybot, Adaware, Norton Antivirus, ZoneAlarm (or a hardware firewall), Google’s pop-up blocker and spam protection, your computing experience is tedious and insecure.
* * UPDATE * * * Jon Udell wrote an article about SpamBayes for InfoWorld.
* * UPDATE 2 * * * Don’t lose sight of the antivirus recommendation called AVG.
CNET News is reporting that Google has selected Atom as the syndication mechanism for Blogger. I added an Atom feed to this weblog over the weekend. It sits next to the RSS 1.0 and 2.0 feeds in the sidebar.
I’m really not sure what the differences are between these feeds. I can’t tell you why one is considered ”superior” to the others. In fact, I can’t be certain that I know what makes an RSS feed or an Atom feed validate. I have spent no time analyzing the syntax between these three feeds.
There’s also a lot of confusion about how to alter feeds so that you provide an excerpt using Movable Type’s excerpt field or a full post using both the primary text entry box as well as any text entered into the extended entry box. How do you make any of these feeds include or exclude comments?
Sometime before Monday, I hope to spend some time with this article to learn more and begin to develop an ability to edit these feeds myself. It appears to me that there would be a lot of interest in a white paper written in language that non-coders can understand about the various feeds, how to write them and how to alter them.
If you have any interest at all in the things that underpin weblog designs, you’ve got to visit this link courtesy of hicks design. Amazing designs are displayed there.
I’d love to know who the designers are and what they charge for developing designs for other Movable Type weblogs.
At anything but ordinary is an entry pointing toward some tools listed in a Wired article. The tools are things that PC users need for antivirus, spam, firewall and other types of protections.
If you don’t have a specific, reliable set of tools that you understand and keep up to date, this article will give you great suggestions.
Youre no longer holding the hand at the wrist; now you weave your fingers together instinctively. I dont think its possible to do this, ever, without some voice in the back of your head steeling you for the day when she pulls away, and pulls away for good. Or at least for a few years. Four, ten, twenty what counts is that youll hold hands again at the end.
My favorite magazine is World magazine. Here’s an entry from the weblog as posted by Marvin Olasky:
Time, admit it
At World we’ve often challenged Time magazine to declare its ideology openly, but editors there are publicly coy. Comparing Time covers, though, is amusing. This week: a haggard-looking President Bush with the question, ”Believe him or not, does Bush have a credibility gap?” Last week: a bold, knightly Senator John Kerry portrait with the headline, ”What kind of president would John Kerry be?” Equal space for both candidates, hurrah. Time, of course, is free to be biased—why not admit it?
In an entry titled Newsweek Takes on the New Testament, Dr. Albert Mohler takes on Jon Meacham, who wrote the piece for Newsweek. As Mohler points out, one of the common bases for criticism of Mel Gibson’s upcoming movie is the use of the Bible as a history book. Few people are digging deeply enough to gather the facts.
The worst offender in this area is a writer by the name of Christopher Hitchens. Writing for Vanity Fair, he produced a piece called The Gospel According to Mel. The article had not been posted to Hitchens’s web site at the time of this entry.
Know in advance that he began with an agenda consistent with his past work. Here’s a link to an interview with Hitchens at secularhumanism.org.
If you are a designer of logos, Movable Type templates and know how to apply Movable Type as a content management system, you should drop a comment below or email me (see sidebar).
I’ve linked to the work that many of you have done in the past. If you’re interested in helping, let me know. We’re getting some proposals in place as we speak. It’s not a big job, but it has the potential to be a very visible site and your design or your firm will be credited prominently.
Everyone realizes that big companies have been driving solely for their quarterly numbers for many years. In spite of list of one hundred best places to work, these large public companies are often dreadful places to work.
The transfer of the corporate culture from the CEO’s office down through the ranks is like the old game of telephone. By the time it reaches a sales manager, it looks nothing like what the CEO intended. Or, maybe it does. The quarterly drive for numbers actually becomes a semi-weekly reporting process for the sales people at some of these large companies.
Within the past week, another one of the local phone companies has done a major house-cleaning. Gone are the key managers for the third time in less than two and a half years. This happened moments after they sent out an email asking anyone and everyone to provide information about ”deals you have working.”
Speaking with an executive with a new voice-over-IP startup, he made a very interesting comment. Essentially, he said, the traditional telecommunications industry is simply unethical. No matter what they may say to employees and customers about long-term relationships, customer service or respect for the individual, they remain completely focused on the next sales report. If you haven’t strong-armed someone into ”closing a deal,” you’re out.
This is the way of an industry that brought us ”slamming.” You remember slamming. It’s the practice of changing your service to some other service – particularly in the area of long distance – without your approval or knowledge.
If you are involved in the purchase of telecommunications services, no matter what you hear about the ”next generation” of telcos, be very aware that the ethics of the past infiltrate the future. Telecom employees hop from one provider to the next often and in predictable patterns. They carry with them the practices, behaviors, methods and ethics of the past.
Know who you are dealing with. Understand the company’s methods. Get the knowledge you need to make sound decisions in the face of confusing invoices, arcane terminology and grim sentences full of jargon and acronyms. Absent that knowledge, find someone you trust who knows the terminology and can steer you in the right direction.
If you want to know what the Democrats advocate and how they will attempt to alter policies to suit their tastes should they win the Presidency, you need to be reading Andrew Tobias’s site. As Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, it becomes more obvious with each entry how they want to go about winning the election, i.e. distort the actions and ideas of all others. It is also pretty clear what they’ll do in office, i.e. higher taxes, emotional stories to win tax-based support for each and every sad story and government-is-the-answer-now-what’s-the-question decisions in every area of life.
Here’s a link to some other links of nice web designs. As someone who is in the market for some help with a logo or two and some new Movable Type template designs, this is useful information.
For those of you who read here and are designers, let me hear from you if you’ve got some time during the next three weeks! We might be able to strike a deal.
You know who you are. This isn’t a cheesy contest with a blender giveaway at the end. This is a call for design know-how with a (modest) project budget!
The noise level about alternative platforms for content management has picked up recently. Alternatives to Movable Type are beginning to find their ways to market, however Movable Type has a share of mind and usage that will be hard to overtake.
Some of the interest in the ”other” tools is built on curiosity, tinkering and the ever-present desire to try something new. We’ll see if there’s enough sustained interest to take any significant number of users from Movable Type.
If you haven’t heard or read the story of the lifesaving club in a while, it’s always worth a refresher. Today’s world is full of ”lifesaving clubs” that believe you must do it precisely their way or the life isn’t really saved! Thanks to blogs4God for the link.
The Seven Policy Blunders That Changed the National Character
by Craig J. Cantoni
As global competition has shown, other nations can compete in natural resources, capital, technology and education. They can even replicate our form of government and economic system, as seen in the fact that the United States ranks only tenth on the Index of Economic Freedom, which is published by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal.
That leaves one true national competitive advantage that is very difficult to replicate and that, once lost, is virtually impossible to regain. It is our heritage of self-reliance, individualism, thriftiness, meritocracy and entrepreneurialism.
It is my contention that due to seven policy blunders, our national character has been transformed to dependency, collectivism, profligate spending, entitlement and bureaucracy. As a result, we have become risk averse and now prefer stability over change, government-reliance over self-reliance, wealth redistribution over wealth creation, the regulatory state over free markets, and bureaucrats over entrepreneurs. In other words, we have become the opposite of what we were a century ago, when we achieved the greatest advancement in standard of living that the world had ever seen.
There are hundreds of examples of the transformation, but in the interest of brevity I’ll give just two…
The first can be seen in the rhetoric of presidential candidates, including President Bush. Their theme is not what we should do for ourselves but what the government should do for us. It is a message of entitlement and dependency, a message that both parties now embrace.
Another example is the growth of jobs and professions that consume wealth instead of creating it. Government employment at the federal, state and local levels now stands at a record 21 million workers, or nine million more than in manufacturing. And millions of highly paid, high-growth jobs in the private sector are those that interpret and administer government regulations, such as tax accountants and lawyers.
Let’s turn now to the seven policy blunders, which are listed below in reverse order, with the biggest blunder listed last.
No. 7: Wage and Price Controls During World War II
This will require more explanation than the other blunders.
During World War II in 1942, the government instituted wage and price controls. To get around the controls, employers began offering medical insurance as an employee benefit. The government then institutionalized the benefit by allowing employees to receive medical insurance in lieu of pay on a tax-free bases. Later, the National Labor Relations Board institutionalized it further by ruling that medical insurance would be treated the same as pay for collective bargaining purposes.
This was a policy blunder because it mortally wounded a consumer market in medical insurance, made employees dependent on their jobs for the insurance, reduced the amount of pay that employees would have otherwise received, and eliminated the incentive of patients to control their health care spending. But worst of all, the blunder created a mindset in the American public that health care should be provided by a third party, unlike such other necessities of life as food, shelter, clothing and transportation. It opened the door for the government to be the third party.
As medical insurance and health care costs have skyrocketed in the absence of a consumer market, growing numbers of the public and the press have come to the wrong conclusion—that the problems with medical insurance and health care are due to the free market, when in actuality, the problems are due to the absence of a consumer market. As a result, they believe that the ultimate third party, the government, should control one-seventh of the nation’s economy through nationalized health care, not realizing that it was a government blunder 60 years ago that helped to create today’s problems.
Blunder No. 6: Medicare
The coupe de grace was dealt to a consumer market in health care by the passage of Medicare in 1965. About 90 percent of Americans who have medical insurance now get their insurance from a third party, either from an employer or the government. This is the reverse of the situation with other necessities of life, which are purchased directly by 90 percent of people with their own money.
Instead of focusing on the relatively small percentage of the elderly who are too poor to purchase their own health insurance, Medicare, like its sibling Social Security, gave an entitlement to all retirees, thus putting all retirees on the government plantation and creating a mindset among non-retirees that they do not have to save for old age.
Medicare proves that the public good is not served when a government benefit is given to people who don’t need it. Medicare has resulted in public immorality, not public good. The growing deficit between current Medicare revenue and current Medicare expenditures will have to be covered by future generations. That is a fancy way of saying that the wealthiest group of Americans, seniors, are robbing the cradle by sending their health care bills to children. Shame on us.
Blunder No. 5: Social Security
The linchpin of the New Deal, Social Security has the same problems as Medicare. It proves the axiom that an entitlement, once started, will expand far beyond its original purpose and will be politically impossible to roll back. It also shows how the national mindset has changed about government and business. For example, there was national outrage over the fraud at Enron, but there is not national outrage over the fraud of Social Security, which is exponentially greater than the Enron fraud. Enron executives will get what they deserve: jail. But no one will go to jail over the Ponzi scheme of Social Security.
Blunder No. 4: The Great Society
There are those who believe that Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program reduced poverty. There are others who believe that poverty would have been reduced quicker if the program had not stunted positive socioeconomic trends. But it is irrelevant who is right.
What is relevant is that the Great Society did not ask for anything in return for government handouts. It neither asked for work nor changes in behavior. Thus, it resulted in not only skyrocketing out-of-wedlock births and the atomization of two-parent families, but also, more importantly, a change in the character of a large segment of the American population.
Blunder No. 3: The Sixteenth Amendment
The passage of the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1913 authorized the income tax, thus setting the stage for profligate government spending, class warfare and government plunder.
Primarily because of the progressivity of the income tax, the majority of Americans now get more back in entitlements and government services than they pay in taxes. We have passed the tax tipping point, which is the point at which the majority of Americans can rob the minority and delude themselves into thinking that is fair and just to take other people’s money.
Such theft has become so accepted that there is no longer a moral debate about the income tax. The tax is a given. It is such a given that the public and the press do not question the efficacy and morality of the government taxing income once when it is earned and then again when it is saved for retirment and earns investment income. Our national thinking has been so warped by the Sixteenth Amendment that the public and the press speak in glowing terms about 401(k) plans and other provisions of the income tax code that allow Americans to save a portion of their income on a tax-deferred basis. Even the conservative business press does not question why the government has the right to tax our savings at all.
Our thinking has been turned on its head. Thanks to the Sixteenth Amendment, Americans have been led to believe that their money belongs to the collective to be redistributed as the majority sees fit. Income tax cuts are seen as taking something that belongs to the government instead of returning something that belongs to individuals.
Americans do not realize that although they have a Bill of Rights, they do not have a constitutional right to keep their money. There is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits the government from taking all of their money.
Blunder No. 2: Eroding the Constitution
Many Americans believe that the nation is a majority-rule democracy and not a constitutional republic. It is not their fault that they believe this. It is the fault of politicians who have ignored the original meaning of the enumerated powers and the General Welfare and Commerce clauses of the Constitution. They have subverted the Supreme Law of the Land and have broken their oath to uphold the Constitution. They have done so because the press and the judiciary have been willing accomplices.
For example, there is no constitutional authority for the federalization of education, but there was not a peep of protest from the establishment press or the judiciary about the unconstitutionality of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind program. Similarly, there is not a peep of protest when the federal government funds intrastate light-rail systems that have absolutely nothing to do with interstate commerce.
Let’s turn to the biggest blunder and see why there is not a peep of protest.
Blunder No. 1: The Centralization of Public Education
Much of the impetus for pubic education in the mid-nineteenth century was to stop the growh of Catholic schools and to indoctrinate Catholics in the St. James Bible. But after that initial period of tyranny, public schools got out of the religious indoctrination business and focused on the three R’s. And because pubic education was decentralized for its first 100 years, public schools reflected the mores of the local community and were under the community’s control.
Today, public schools are back in the indoctrination business. They are increasingly under the control of the federal and state government, as well as under the influence of teacher unions and other special interests. Public schools also are the purchasers of textbooks from a few national textbook publishers that publish the same politically correct, sanitized, government-approved gruel. The result is a government monopoly on K-12 classroom thought, which is delivered in the classroom by unionized, government teachers.
Because of the public education monolith, the vast majority of Americans believe that the seven policy blunders are not blunders at all. They believe the opposite: that the blunders are what made this nation great.
And that, my friends, is why the nation will not remain great.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
In the context and at the moment, I knew Mel Gibson’s effort was sincere. He had just been asked by Lee Strobel, ”What do you say about the youth. The movie is rated R, and you could have toned it down.”
Mel Gibson didn’t hesitate. ”Dude, I did tone it down.” The expression on his face told anyone who was watching that he understood what the last twelve hours in the life of Christ were like.
This was just one of the many moments in today’s interview at Azusa Pacific University in California that said Mel Gibson has deep reasons for having funded and made The Passion of the Christ. Another came when Gibson was asked what he’d like to tell people who are planning to go to the movie. The answer was simple, ”It’s hard to watch.”
The Church Communication Network (CCN) broadcast the interview from Azusa Pacific, and churches who wanted to take the satellite feed could hold events. At those events people were allowed to phone, fax and email questions.
Lee Strobel served as host and conducted the interview. Strobel spend a number of years at the Chicago Tribune and was an atheist for much of his early life. Since becoming a Christian he has written The Case for Christ, The Case for Faith and other testaments to his own search for truth.
With all of the early noise level about this movie focusing on whether or not it promotes anti-semitism, the answer came early in the interview. The movie is about forgiveness, love and sacrifice. This notion was supported by all the answers given throughout the interview process.
Here are some of the other highlights from Gibson:
I’ve been thinking about and discussing this project for twelve or thirteen years.
I didn’t really direct. A higher power directed. I just directed traffic.
Deal with Jesus for a year and you can’t help but become deeply affected.
I wanted to show his sacrifice for all sin for all time.
Evil is always going to show up as something attractive and alluring. Time shows that there’s something slightly wrong!
We had only an eighty-five page script, but it took 18 weeks to film it. Our plan had called for 10 weeks.
The movie is not about hatred. It’s about the opposite of that.
Two things happend after people view the movie. First, there’s silence as people sit there and just think. Second, they want to be with others and talk about it.
Paul Lauer, Marketing Director for Icon Productions, said that 2500 theaters will show the opening on February 25th. His message was, ”If we can impact Hollywood, we can impact the world.”
Here are some additional links for those who are interested in learning more:
If this entry has held your interest, I encourage you to go back to a September, 2003 article by Peter Boyle that ran in New Yorker magazine. It will challenge you to learn more. To get a sense of what Gibson was facing in the press about that time, take a look at Frank Rich’s article and Elizabeth Farah.
With 14:07 to go in the first half, the score is Mississippi State 6 and Ole Miss 4. Mississippi State’s coach has just been thrown out and one of Mississippi State’s stars has been charged with three fouls.
The refs are completely and totally out of control. They are miserable excuses for Division 1 NCAA basketball.
I have no idea how this game may end, but I’m hopeful that Ole Miss is physically and emotionally destroyed for the rest of the game. I also hope the fans for Mississippi State go absolutely nuts.
* * UPDATE * * * Mississippi State 80 Ole Miss 56 Final
With an investment of time, money and know-how in Windows that spans some ten years now, the temptation to go back to a Macintosh is ever present. I think the choices for the next laptop purchase boil down to these:
There have been a few private screenings of various edits of Mel Gibson’s new movie. Already, there is this much speculation, controversy and debate. Remember that some who are in the midst of the arguments and debate have not seen the movie or one of the early screenings. They have simply chosen to be ”offended” by something they haven’t seen.
Ash Wednesday is February 25, 2004. The movie will be released in over 2000 theaters. What will the discussion be? Will the message of the movie get lost? Will the message of a risen Saviour get lost? Will the message of those who are offended drown the Good News? The Cross, the sins of mankind and the rejection of his followers could not silence Jesus Christ two thousand years ago. A movie and its aftermath will not silence the message of Hope today. If anything, it may be used as an instrument of instruction and peace in a world that desperately needs both.
Someone suggested that Level 3 Communications has been denying this fact: ”despite being a broadband company, a bulk of its revenues came from potatoes and meat business of selling dial-up access for wholesale.”
Let’s consider that statement for a moment. What have they denied? Clearly, they have been listing their ”managed modem service” as a primary service for the past five years. It has always been prominent on their home page.
Each quarter they have reported their ten largest customers and the list of services that each of those ten customers purchased. Earthlink, NetZero (United Online) and AOL have been clearly established for at least three years as major customers.
As for ”a bulk of its revenues,” there has been no question about the demand for the service and the company’s pursuit of that business. I’m not sure what ”a bulk of its revenues” means, but the implication is that some very large percentage of the company’s annual revenue comes from the managed modem business. AOL’s announced reduction in that service – at the highest end of the estimate – is expected to amount to $150 million a year. That represents less than four percent (3.7%) of the company’s annual sales!
There shouldn’t be an implication that Level 3 has somehow been secretive or misleading. No matter how tough the communications business has been the past five years, Level 3’s executives have been completely forthcoming and truthful about the conditions in the market, the services they sell and the prospects for the company.
Losses to stockholders in all communications companies have been well-documented the past five years. Level 3’s stock price fell as the bubble deflated just like a lot of the other telecommunications companies. This does not alter the fact that many people have used and continue to use modems as they travel to access the Internet. Level 3’s end-to-end, IP network terminates those modem calls at Level 3 aggregation points and carries the traffic over their fiber.
An announcement that AOL’s reducing its use of the managed modem service with a possible impact on annual revenue of $100-$150 million per year is not something that completely undermines the company’s stated strategy. Remember, this is a company that did $988 million in consolidated sales for the fourth quarter of 2003.
For any serious investor or prospective investor, a careful study of this company’s information is easy to conduct because everything they’ve been saying is archived at their web site.
It would suit me just fine for about six months or even a year if I could somehow earn a (meager) living learning Movable Type, CSS, Atom, RSS, XHTML, validation, etc.
Every time I begin to scratch the surface of this stuff and peak at what’s underneath, my enthusiasm for it soars. I’m no graphic arts person. I’m no programmer. I’m not a software developer. I do enjoy learning how the various pieces and techniques fit together.
I’ve got at least a hundred ideas for how Movable Type could be applied where conventional web sites have been designed and developed at far higher costs. It would be great to know how to do something about all of those. I could work until I was eighty!
I think I’m going to add an Atom feed to this weblog. I’ve got to go prowling around and make sure I find the proper template that can be copied and pasted into a new MT template. I’m also wondering if there’s an icon for Atom feeds.
I still haven’t figured out how to show full posts in my RSS feeds when part of the post is in the extended entry portion of the Movable Type text entry box.
If any of you kind souls know of an existing tutorial about where to find and how to add an Atom feed and an Atom icon for syndication, your pointer would be welcome.
Yesterday we talked about the questions surrounding how to begin making this weblog validate. I pointed to tools. Perhaps lack of know-how is the single biggest cause of the 800 plus validation errors.
Whatever the cause and whatever the ultimate solution, Brad Choate certainly manages to make MT-Textile 2 sound inviting.
Just so everyone understands that my gripes about tools for writing valid weblog entries are tempered by a respect for how little of this stuff I understand, I’ll point to the CSS Depot courtesy of ETC. ”Translating” any of these CSS templates into a Movable Type template set is not something I know how to do. One must know precisely where to insert Movable Type’s many tags in order to make the CSS templates serve as the backdrop for MT’s templates.
...how on Earth is a layman supposed to get it right. I understand roughly ten percent of what I’m reading about the problems with the CSS validator and the ”box model hack.” If I reread all that I’ve read thus far, I might understand fifteen percent in four or five hours.
No matter how badly I’d like to pursue web standards and validation and such, when the most talented of the talented are having problems with it, how can a layman possibly get it right?
Remember, a lot of us just write weblogs. We’re not web designers or developers. All we want to do is use tools that help us be ”good citizens” with our markup, CSS, RSS and layout issues.
Much is being made of a recent story that suggests Mel Gibson’s new movie is likely to be further edited before its premier later this month. There’s an entry and a string of comments on the World Magazine blog.
We’re nearing a point where we must think again about the purposes for making this movie. Otherwise, this ”current event” will undergo exactly the same polarizing debate that every other current event in the news gets.
On the heels of mentioning MT-Textile 2.0 this morning, Andy Budd has made some tweaks to his own weblog and covers a few of the plugins that he’s implemented.
His entry makes it sound ”so easy,” yet I’m sure there are some gotchas awaiting those of us who are not as fluent with Movable Type, markup and validation matters. Still, the way he has his tweaks working together makes it tempting to take the risk and try to implement similar tools.
Long-time readers here know that my site doesn’t validate. In the best of all worlds, I’d figure out how to make it a truly valid CSS and XHTML Transitional design and keep it that way.
I have the impression that merely typing – as I am now – into Movable Type’s text entry box introduces some invalid tags. I’m not positive about this.
The dilemma stems from a need to learn one of two tools. Do I learn install and learn the new MT-Textile 2.0 in my pursuit of a weblog that validates? Or, should I learn TopStyle Pro and create all my entries there then cut and paste them here?
Again, the goal is to turn this site into a validating, standards-compliant web site. Yes, but how? Are either of these tools the ”key” to turning this site from one with over 800 validation errors to a validating weblog?
”Tom” wrote to Tobias and was pretty forceful in what he requested in terms of a response to some very specific questions about the Democrat’s view on taxation. You can read about it here and follow the link.
Now we’ve got some view into how Wesley Clark sees the tax picture, but – better yet – we’ve got a Craig Cantoni rebuttal.
Let’s Confiscate Wes Clark’s Pension
by Craig J. Cantoni
Presidential candidate and retired general Wesley Clark is running the standard Democratic class-warfare TV ads. In one ad, he says that he will make sure that millionaires pay their fair share of taxes.
As a millionaire and a former Army officer who served in the active Army and eight years in the Army Reserves, I have this to say to Wesley: Go to hell, you thief, sir!
Clark has been on the government payroll so long that he has no idea of what it is like to work in the private sector all of one’s life and save money for retirement in the face of confiscatory taxes. With his collectivist philosophy, he should have served in the Soviet army.
Clark has a government pension and government retiree health care, two benefits that he received on a tax-free basis over his military career. Being self-employed, I do not have a pension or a retiree health plan provided by the Army or by an employer. Moreover, the tax code has discriminated against me and millions of other self-employed taxpayers by not giving us the same favorable tax treatment for retirement savings and health insurance that Clark has received. Unlike Clark, we paid income taxes on the money that went into our retirement savings. In a real sense, we have subsidized Clark’s tax-free retirement benefits. Now he wants to thank us by raising the taxes on the investment income that our savings earn
My millionaire status comes from my retirement nest egg, which is the result of 30 years of working hard, living below my means, and saving what I could from what was left over after paying taxes that consumed half of my income. I’m so frugal that I don’t even have a cell phone. How does Clark want to reward me for a lifetime of saving in the face of high taxes? He wants to leave my wife and me with less money for retirement, less money to pay our medical expenses and less money to send our kid to college. At the same time, his pension is guaranteed by the government.
The pension alone makes Clark a millionaire. His financial statements show a military pension of $85,000 per year. If he draws the pension for 20 years, he will receive a total of $1.7 million, guaranteed, with no fear that the government will wreck the economy and destroy his nest egg. His pension is in addition to his other income, which was $1.5 million in 2002 from speaking engagements and his CNN commentary.
To borrow the Democrats’ favorite whine, it’s just not fair that millionaire Clark has a pension that the average working bloke can only dream about. In the interest of fairness, we should send government agents to his home, point an M-16 at his head and confiscate his pension. According to him and his fellow Democrats, it’s the American thing to do.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
Telecommunication services have become commodities in most segments. Clearly, residential phone lines are a commodity business. Long distance is a commodity in both the residential and commercial segments.
Local (CLEC) communications companies can’t get that through their marketing skulls. They continue to try to differentiate using some of the most arcane and (frankly) ridiculous terminology a business person ever hears.
At the top end of the communications spectrum where truly high bandwidth and services are sold, there are still some key points of differentiation. Service still matters in that arena. Being able to provision a coast-to-coast line in a matter of hours rather than months provides big advantages.
Unfortunately, the traditional communications companies continue to use heavy-handed ploys and negotiating tactics to lure customers. The methods are simply variations on the Worldcom phone call during dinner.
With the possibility that MCI will come out of bankruptcy in thirty days or less and Savvis making noise like this, there’s an opportunity for the industry to recover from its reputation for slippery sales tactics and techniques. Often these result from some distorted sense that they can find a way to differentiate commodity products. Eggs are eggs.
It’s unlikely to happen, but it’s something that would be welcomed by every phone service customer who struggles to understand the simplest of phone bills.
In a manner that has become typical of members of the Democratic National Committee, Andrew Tobias baited us yesterday with the notion that he’d be talking about What SHOULD the Top 1% Be Taxed? However, he never gets to that discussion because of his useless, extremist politics.
He does link to tomorrow’s column which is inexplicably already posted and dated February 4, 2004. You’ll find his version of the tax code described there.
Here’s a reader’s comment that finally got him to provide some detail about his view of taxes:
Tom: Not to derail your rhetoric with the cold hard facts, but your median American $38,000 wage earner does not pay ANY federal income tax. But that same wage earner, if s/he had children, would receive a refund via the Additional Child Tax credit. Perhaps you need to select a better example of the rich not paying their fair share. But your failure to directly address the final question is why so many of us simply disregard your position as typical liberal class warfare. If you truly believe our steeply progressive tax system is not steep enough (where the median does not have any federal tax liability but may well receive a refund anyway) why not simply lay your cards face up on the table so we can decide whether your position is to our liking? But rather than specifics, you resort to some line about how the percentage paid by the top was just about right under Clinton. Direct answer, Andrew: in your world, what percentages of total income tax paid should come from the top 1%, top 5% and top 50%. Should the bottom 50% owe any federal income tax at all? Should you have the mettle to print my message and address it directly, only print it in its entirety. Thanks again for the CICI tip.
This is an announcement in PC Magazine about NetSuite 9.1. NetSuite is essentially accounting and business management software by subscription and Internet access. You don’t license the product and copy it to your file server. You subscribe and access it via your Internet connection.
Otherwise, it is backed up, updated and maintained by NetSuite. None of that burden falls to the small business. Recently, I’ve become convinced that if the mainstream providers of small business accounting software don’t have this subscription-model on their financial and technical drawing boards, they are facing quite a struggle for survival.
Accounting applications are support-intensive. They require great care in setting up and maintaining the networks on which they run. Accounting software can be some of the most costly ”network diagnostic” tools that any company can buy. If a system is unreliable, multi-user accounting software will uncover its weaknesses.
Though many argue that the ”ASP model” doesn’t lend itself to the kinds of tailoring and customization that many mid-market companies need, NetSuite is steadily addressing these concerns.
In Fairbanks, Alaska, the newspaper is called the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. This article covers the recent announcment by Mid American Energy Holdings concerning the contruction of a 48-inch diameter natural gas pipeline that would run from Alaska’s North Slope to the Yukon border.
Estimates place the amount of gas on the North Slope at around 35 trillion cubic feet. This pipeline would have a design capacity of 4.5 billion cubic feet a day, and would cost $6.3 billion to cover 745 miles.
They want to complete it by December 31, 2010. Mid American is owned by Berkshire Hathaway. Wouldn’t it be a great adventure to spend the next five or six years working on such a project?
It appears to me that I’ve spend entirely too much time on the road (in the red) these last twenty years. However, to complete the picture, it looks like a northern road trip is in order (in the green). Where’s my Rand McNally?
In language a non-designer can easily understand, and with an example to demonstrate her point, the Scriptygoddess is planning a makeover. The question is whether or not it can be done exclusively with CSS functionality or whether tables may be required.
I’m very anxious to learn the outcome of this one, because her requirement about resizing the browser window is very reasonable and likely for most readers.
Tomorrow’s whine from Andrew Tobias, Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, is expected to be titled What SHOULD The Top 1% Be Taxed? The presumption in such a title is that a uniform flat tax applied across all income levels above a certain threshold is not the answer.
I want to hear any career politician answer the question, ”what is the appropriate amount of any person’s income that should be paid in taxes?” They are universally, one-and-all, fearful of such a question. I pay $19.75 to renew a driver’s license. I pay $108 to renew an auto tag. I pay property tax. I pay almost 10% in sales tax. What does the total need to be to satisfy those who’ve chosen to make a career out of politics?
Registered users of FeedDemon 1.0 will find a new beta version waiting for you at the Bradsoft site. Along with bug fixes and new features comes the first support for Atom 0.3 syndication feeds.
I’m still grinding on ”the project,” but I downloaded and installed this one. Nick Bradbury is doing good work. I simply must learn TopStyle.
It’s just very difficult for me to find any of the attributes normally associated with free, peace-loving faith when I read a story such as this. Looking back through modern history there is a long line of similar tragedies that happened in quite similar ways.
When a leader says, ”All precautions were taken to prevent such an incident, but this is God’s will. Caution isn’t stronger than fate,” questions should be fast and furious. Where’s the liberal media’s outcry about human rights, public safety and peaceful Islam?
I just came up for a breath of fresh air. Weekend work is taking its toll. I stumbled into this story. This excerpt is too good to pass up, and I hope they announce the capture during the Republican National Convention just to drive all the pundits, media and critics further to their extremes.
”The U.S. military said this week it is confident of catching bin Laden, as well as Mullah Omar, by the end of the year.
Defense officials in Washington said this week that the Pentagon is planning a spring offensive against Taliban and al-Qaida holdouts.”
I’m poking my head out of the deep water of this manufacturing system I’m building just long enough to recall that there is another world out there waiting. It’s going to have much greater appeal to me – that other world – once I can get my hands off this technology, software and design project. In spite of the frustrations with technology, here’s a rather interesting article.
At some point – in order to complete the next set of tasks that are facing me – I need to be able to go through these tutorials. Otherwise, I’m going to be getting the checkbook out and paying for help.
At 5:00 a.m. this day, getting to anything other than entering part numbers and sub-assemblies seems like a very distant dream. Last night many labor rates and codes were changed. Labor codes are the part of a bill of materials that determine how much each sub-assembly costs from a ”piece-rate” point of view. This is sheer drudgery.
If you have not seen Peggy Noonan latest op/ed piece for the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), find a way to get your hands on it. You’ll be glad you did.
”Let me assert something that I cannot prove with a poll but that is based on serious conversations the past few months with Republicans and also normal people: 9/11 changed everything. Yes, I know you know that. But it has even changed how people who usually vote Republican think about Democratic candidates for president. Our No. 1 question used to be: Can we beat this guy easily? But now we feel the age of terrorism so profoundly challenges our country, and is so suggestive of future trauma and national pain, that our No. 1 question has become: Is he . . . normal? Just normal. Is he stable and adult and experienced?
All I wanted to do was take a break from entering all of these part numbers. I fired up FeedDemon and what do I stumble into? Formulism.
Gary does a good job of summarizing the positions and the current efforts of this ”movement.” There is simply too much nonsense in the world for most people to ever really discover the Truth.
I’m told that had I read a bit further when I posted a link to Jenny Levine’s entry yesterday, I would have learned that the plan for the LibDB software is to do much of what I requested. Apparently, with minimal information up front, the database is going to have the ”smarts” to find a great deal of the information about the item you are entering. Focused on movies at the moment, the direction is seemingly toward a database for all types of personal collections and libraries. Details are here.
Speaking of slow, it’s just after 5:00 p.m. CST and Bloggerzone appears to be having some difficulties. They provide great hosting services so just hang in there until the situation is cleared (and thanks!).
Potentially light content days are headed this way.
Be patient if, on some days, the Regatta slows to a crawl.
* * * Update * * * Apparently, the Bloggerzone hosting service operated by Hosting Matters is having some intermittent problems that have got everything slowed right now!
...is opening day for the movie, ”The Passion of the Christ.” I encourage anyone who has the slightest interest in the movie, the story, the Savior or the politically-motivated criticisms that have and will attempt to distort the movie’s message – I encourage you to read several articles to get a sense of who is most critical and what their motives might be.
In the any list of articles you’ll find high praise as well. There is a significant possibility that an otherwise ”secular” medium can be used for great good. Read both sides of the discussion.
Here’s an article from LilacRose that appeared in this morning’s news aggregator. There are more articles at this web site. It won’t take you long to discover the true nature of so much of our so-called mainstream media.
Don’t allow a single article to influence your views. Take a look at the movie’s web site. Then, read as many of the articles as you can to gain some broader view of how the movie’s message will be accurately or inaccurately portrayed. In particular, you can learn much about the heart of Mel Gibson from this article.
Show me one positive idea that the Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee proposes in this screed. In the same manner as Michael Moore or Al Franken, he seems to think that the only way to help people make choices about elected officials is to demean one or more of them until we’re left with only the alternatives they select. It’s a slimey way to manage leadership selection for the most powerful nation on the globe. It is lasting testament to their character.
It use to be crass to the point of the ultimate faux pas to discuss paychecks. With the Freedom of Information Act and demands for transparency in corporate dealings, what people earn has become much easier to locate. Take a look at some of these numbers!
It’s interesting that on the page for those who earn $1 million or more, the names are mostly known celebrities. I hear stories all the time about plumbing contractors and small business people who are able to carry out $1 million or more.
Again, the key is how many people are served to the point of being willing to give you their money in exchange for what you have to offer them. How much demand is there for what you know how to do for others?
People are earning more – in come cases – a lot more! When the results are there, the return on effort can be very lucrative!
The Associated Press Updated: 4:50 p.m. ET Jan. 26, 2004
Summitts new contract extension, obtained by The Associated Press on Monday but signed in November, calls for an annual salary of $749,500, an increase of $74,500 from her previous deal…
Summitts guaranteed salary remains the third-highest at Tennessee behind football coach Phillip Fulmer ($1.78 million) and mens basketball coach Buzz Peterson ($769,500). [from MSNBC.com]
Medieval theologians listed ”seven deadly sins.” They were pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth. Though never called out in a simple list in the Bible, these remain the kinds of things that block our way. If you’ve not achieved what you’d like in life, consider shifting what you pay closest attention to.
Contrast those ”deadly sins” with the ”fruits of the Spirit.” That list is explicitly cited in Galations 5:22-23. How different would things be if we spent more time on love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control than on the seven deadly sins.
How different could your ability to earn and provide meaningful service to others be in 2004 if your focus shifts? Rather than a legalistic attempt at avoiding and condemning the wrong, focus on seeking and showing others the better alternatives of the second list. You’ll be amazed at the result.
Here’s the way the New American Standard reads:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Galatians 5:22, 23 New American Standard
Here’s the way The Message reads:
But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard – things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely. Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Galatians 5:22, 23 The Message
The only way we earn is by exchanging our goods and services for an amount of money of equal or similar value. Are the services and goods you produce exchanged for a sum of money that meets your needs? The only way to alter that condition is to increase the value of the goods and services you provide. Serve more and you’ll earn more. Find a way to meet the needs of an increasing number of people and your earnings will rise.
”In response to parent complaints that the public posting of an Honor Roll would embarrass (Tennessee) students without good grades…” [Overlawyered.com]
Marvin Olasky is posting some additional remarks from World Magazine’s interview of Phillip Johnson on the subject of evolution and the importance of the debate.
You might also be interested in this entry which explains how one group would like to be labeled.
Andy Budd was apparently called out for having validation buttons on his web site during a brief period when the site didn’t actually validate. This morning I had 824 errors when I ran the Rodent Regatta through the validator.
I type every character of every XHTML tag required to make entries here. I type every character of every ”img src=”http…”” tag that appears here. Still, I have 824 validation errors.
Until there is a tool that conveniently allows and enforces valid entries to be written without diverting my attention from writing to markup coding, I’ll be satisfied with my error count. It’s frustrating, but that’s just the way it is going to be until hitting the ”return” key in this Movable Type text entry box doesn’t force some sort of invalid ”p” tag, which is what I’m told is happening. Who knows? Does it really matter?
I’m at a point where the things that make up my personal library probably total between 5000 and 7500 books, journals, tapes, CD’s and movies. It’s always been my thought that the ideal way to create a database of this stuff would be to start with a master database (Amazon?) and simply check off the books that I own.
Once processed these checked items would be entered into a personal database (web service?) that I could then add truly personal information into. The date I purchased the item, whether it is autographed or not, how it is categorized in my library, etc.; these things would be entered manually resulting in a fully-populated database.
Handing me an empty database and suggesting I type all the titles, authors, ISBN numbers, copyright dates, etc., is not going to fly. For those who like the sound of such an approach, you might want to check out this entry from The Shifted Librarian.
This guy just made $810,000 for 2004, and it is only January 25th!
What goods or services will you exchange for money in 2004?
What is that exchange worth in the marketplace?
In the USA we value different kinds of things at very different rates of exchange. You won’t earn that much money teaching a classroom of third graders this year. You might earn that as a doctor, lawyer or business owner. The CEO’s of our largest public companies will earn that.
Bill Gates said there’s a solution to the spam problem coming within two years. Nothing prevents junk mail to my mailbox. A spammer who is willing to pay to have the messages distributed will likely continue to send the email. The only difference is the ”free” ride he’s getting right now.
CHICAGO, Jan. 20 /PRNewswire/—Sears Tower is expected to soon become one of the first commercial office buildings in the United States to have an in-building wireless system throughout, improving service for wireless phones and allowing for Wi-Fi computer access in offices on all floors of the skyscraper. Read more…
Tim Bray has found that merely dropping a hint that you might be considering a job or career change brings the opportunists out of the woodwork. Never do they have an offer of immediate employment, income or a match of work to your experience.
Instead, they’re offering a ”chance” to realize your dreams. Emphasize ”chance,” because it usually means something like, ”if you’ll do all of these things for me, look what ”might” happen to you, your career and your income!”
Rarely do I post an entry that doesn’t come back showing errors in pinging. I ping the sites that Jason mentions as well as blogrolling.com. I don’t want to know how the fuel injectors do their work, but I do want the engine to stop coughing.
Last night Neil Cavuto interviewed Jack Welch concerning Welch’s views of the candidates for the Democratic nomination. I only heard part of what Welch was saying concerning the ”four e’s.” This morning I see that Fast Company Now has an entry that explains what Welch was talking about.
Welch says he’s a Bush supporter, so this amounts to another example of Bush people thinking about which Democrat they’d pick if it has to be a Democrat.
This will bore some (many?) of you. Some of my recent experiences with technology have dealt with very arcane configuration parameters in a piece of software used for supply-chain work. If a company sells a widget that requires two sub-assemblies to be built prior to final assembly and there are pay-points or labor costs for each assembly and six or seven raw materials for each assembly, how do you make (this particular) software track that.
I haven’t done much of this kind of work since the mid-1980’s. You’ll recall how frustrated I became recently. There were many moments when I felt as if I was learning things I would never use again. They were one-off solutions to problems I didn’t even want to be solving. But, there’s always a silver lining…
This morning I’ve been tinkering with Movable Type and MT-Medic. MT-Medic is a nice tool for someone (like me) who is ultra-cautious about trampling around on the insides of a Movable Type installation. I don’t know why the configuration report from MT-Medic shows some different settings from the ones I know I’ve changed in mt.cfg, but it does. That’s a different subject.
Here’s what hit me: why am I enjoying mucking around in Movable Type, but not in a supply-chain software package? Several reasons come to mind, but the most important is, ”Movable Type is horizontal knowledge. Understanding how it installs on a web server and how permissions are set on files and how to make it behave as a content management system for virtually any business is radically different work from configuring a supply-chain package to handle a unique set of widgets.”
One of these is clearly horizontal knowledge that will be in demand for many years to come. The other is specific, vertical knowledge that I’m having to develop for a single client. It just feels better to be working on something that you might be able to apply over and over. Ultimately, the answer lies in doing work that fits this kind of requirement.
Cameron Mackintosh produced Les Miserables. Randal Keith was selected by Cameron Mackintosh to perform the role of Jean Valjean in the final Broadway cast. The final performance on Broadway at the Imperial Theater was held on May 18, 2003. It had run at the Imperial since January 12, 1987.
Last night, Randal Keith performed the lead role of Jean Valjean. In the original cast the first Valjean was performed by Colm Wilkinson in one of the most memorable portrayals of any Broadway role.
If you don’t know the story behind Les Miserables, it’s the lifelong struggle between justice and mercy. It’s a legalistic mindset always confronted by an obvious call for mercy. The metaphors for our lives are found in nearly every set, song and circumstance in the story. Here are some phrases that have been lifted from the various pieces:
If there’s another way to go
I missed it twenty long years ago
My life was a war that could never be won Valjean
By the witness of the martyrs
By the Passion and the Blood
God has raised you out of darkness
I have bought your soul for God! The Bishop of Digne
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed. Fantine
How can I ever face my fellow men?
How can I ever face myself again?
My soul belongs to God, I know
I made that bargain long ago
He gave me hope when hope was gone
He gave me strength to journey on Valjean
I have heard such protestations
Every day for twenty years
Let’s have no more explanations
Save your breath and save your tears
`Honest work, just reward,
That’s the way to please the Lord.’ Inspector Javert
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes! Enjolras
You will learn
Truth is given by God
To us all in our time
In our turn Valjean
One day more!
Another day, another destiny.
This never-ending road to Calvary; Valjean
There’s a grief that can’t be spoken.
There’s a pain goes on and on. Marius
And remember
The truth that once was spoken
To love another person
Is to see the face of God! Valjean, Fantine, Eponine
Bob Keeshan who played Captain Kangaroo was the first exposure to television for a generation of children.
He died today at the age of 76.
His show began its run in 1955 and stayed on the air for 30 years. Here’s an excerpt from the AP story:
In 1987, Keeshan and former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander co-founded Corporate Family Solutions, an organization that provided day-care programs to businesses around the country.
Keeshan believed children learn more in the first six years of life than at any other time and was a strong advocate of day care that provides emotional, physical and intellectual development for children.
”Play is the work of children. It’s very serious stuff. And if it’s properly structured in a developmental program, children can blossom,’’ he said.
Review and Excerpts from A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin
book review by Craig J. Cantoni
An outstanding book on the Middle East is A Peace to End All Peace, by David Fromkin. A nonpartisan work of pure scholarship written before the current Iraq war, it gives the history of European meddling in the Middle East during World War I and the few years following the war after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It should be read by all Americans, as it puts the Iraq war and the Palestinian issue in historical context.
Both sides of the political spectrum will find something to dislike in the book, thus attesting to its evenhandedness. Left-liberals will be offended because it is not politically correct and does not gloss over the religious fanaticism and tribal hatreds of Moslems in the region. Neocons will be offended because it reveals the past folly of nation-building in the region by the West, especially by imperialist France and Britain. And Zionists will be offended because it details the sordid beginnings of the Jewish state, including the influence of Jewish Bolsheviks and socialists.
The book leaves the reader with three disturbing conclusions: one, that Moslem enmity toward the West is understandable given the history of European imperialism in the Middle East, especially by the British; two, that the parallels between today and the early twentieth century are striking; and three, that it may have been a huge foreign policy blunder for the United States to follow in the clumsy footsteps of Britain and France in the region after the Second World War, thus redirecting Moslem enmity from Europe toward America.
Excerpts are below. Headings in bold are mine.
The Difficulties Encountered in 1918 by British Civil Commissioner Arnold Wilson in Creating a Country out of Mesopotamia (Modern-day Iraq):
While he was prepared to administer the provinces of Basra and Baghdad, and also the province of Mousul (which, with Clemenceau’s consent, Lloyd George had detached from the French sphere and intended to withhold from Turkey), he did not believe that they formed a coherent entity. Iraq (an Arab term that the British used increasingly to denote the Mesopotamian lands) seemed to him too splintered for that to be possible. Mousul’s strategic importance made it seem a necessary addition to Iraq, and the strong probability that it contained valuable oilfields made it a desirable one, but it was part of what was supposed to have been Kurdistan; and Arnold Wilson argued that the warlike Kurds who had been brought under his administration ”numbering half a million will never accept an Arab ruler.”
A fundamental problem, as Wilson saw it, was that the almost two million Shi’ite Moslems in Mesopotamia would not accept domination by the minority Sunni Moslem community, yet ”no form of Government has yet been envisaged, which does not involve Sunni domination.”
Gertrude Bell, working on her own plans for a unified Iraq, was cautioned by an American missionary that she was ignoring rooted historical realities in doing so. ”You are flying in the face of four millenniums of history if you try to draw a line around Iraq and call it a political entity.”
The Times (of London) on Iraq:
In a leading article on 7 August 1920, The Times demanded to know ”how much longer are valuable lives to be sacrificed in the vain endeavour to impose upon the Arab population an elaborate and expensive administration which, they never asked for and do not want?” In a similar article on 10 August, The Times said that ”We are spending sums in Mesopotamia and in Persia which may reach a hundred million pounds this year” in support of what it termed ”the foolish policy of the Government in the Middle East.”
Britain’s Quelling of Tribal Revolt in Iraq
The main population centers quickly were secured, but regaining control of the countryside took time. It was not until October that many of the cut-off Euphrates towns were relieved and not until February of 1921 that order was restored more or less completely. Before putting down the revolt Britain suffered nearly 2,000 casualties, including 450 dead.
When the uprisings in the Middle East after the war occurred, it was natural for British officials to explain that they formed part of a sinister design woven by the long-time conspirators.
In fact, there was an outside force linked to every one of the outbreaks of violence in the Middle East, but it was the one force whose presence remained invisible to British officialdom. It was Britain herself. In a region of the globe whose inhabitants were known especially to dislike foreigners, and in a predominately Moslem world which could abide being ruled by almost anybody except non-Moslems, a foreign Christian country ought to have expected to encounter hostility when it attempted to impose its own rule. The shadows that accompanied the British rulers wherever they went in the Middle East were in fact their own.
The House of Saud
Yet the First World War was barely over before the Cabinet in London was forced to recognize that its policy in Arabia was in disarray. Its allies—Hussein, King of the Jejaz, and Ibn Saud, Lord of Nejd—were daggers drawn.
Ibn Saud was the hereditary champion of the teachings of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, an eighteenth-century religious leader whose alliance with the House of Saud in 1745 had been strengthened by frequent intermarriage between the two families. The Wahhabis (as their opponents called them) were severely puritanical reformers who were seen by their adversaries as fanatics.
It was the spread of this uncompromising puritanical faith into neighboring Hejaz that, in Hussein’s view, threatened to undermine his authority. Hussein was an orthodox Sunni; to him the Wahhabis were doctrinal and political enemies.
A Statement by the Military Governor of Jerusalem, Ronald Storrs, about Non-Jews Inevitably Taking a Lower Place in Jerusalem as Jews Took Over:
”It will take months, possibly years, of patient work to show the Jews that we are not run by the Arabs, and the Arabs that we are not bought by the Jews….it is one thing to see clearly enough the probable future of this country, and another thing to fail to make allowances for the position of the weaker and probably disappearing element. The results of the changes will be more satisfactory and more lasting if they are brought about gradually with patience, and without violent expressions of ill-will, leaving behind them an abiding rancor.”
Winston Churchill on Arab Fears of Jewish Immigrants after Becoming Colonial Secretary in 1921:
Churchill further attempted to allay Arab suspicions by demonstrating that their economic fears were groundless. Jewish immigrants, he argued repeatedly, would not seize Arab jobs or Arab land. On the contrary, he said, Jewish immigrants would create new jobs and new wealth that would benefit the whole community.
Churchill’s Frustrations in Negotiating with Arabs:
Dealing with Middle Easterners such as these was far more frustrating than had been imagined in wartime London when the prospect of administering the postwar Middle East was first raised. In Churchill’s eyes, the members of the Arab delegation were not doing what politicians are supposed to do: they were not aiming to reach an agreement—any agreement. Apparently unwilling to offer even 1 percent in order to get 99 percent, they offered no incentive to the other side to make concessions.
A Churchill Statement in 1922 about a Jewish Plan to Build Hydroelectric Generating Dams in the Auja and Jordan River Valleys:
”I am told that the Arabs would have done it for themselves. Who is going to believe that? Left to themselves, the Arabs of Palestine would not in a thousand years have taken effective steps toward the irrigation and electrification of Palestine. They would have been quite content to dwell—a handful of philosophic people—in the wasted sun-scorched plains, letting the waters of the Jordan continue to flow unbridled and unharnessed into the Dead Sea.”
Winston Churchill’s June 13, 1920 Letter to Lloyd George about Palestine:
”Palestine is costing us 6 millions a year to hold. The Zionist movement will cause continued friction with the Arabs. The French … are opposed to the Zionist movement & will try to cushion the Arabs off on us as the real enemy. The Palestine venture … will never yield any profit of a material kind.”
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author and columnist. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
The last twelve months or have focused my attention on what church is and what it might have been intended to be originally. Fitting into the culture, appealing to its ”audience,” entertaining the masses…these are all things that some churches strive for and achieve routinely.
Some who favor a Bush re-election are paraphrasing the debates and theorizing about which Democratic candidate they would most prefer if a Democrat is to win the next election. Note the comments as well.
Late yesterday afternoon I went to an open house at the offices of one of the local exchange carriers (LEC) that makes are market here in Memphis. The office is in one of the upscale and technology-friendly office complexes built in the last four or five years. The open house was incredibly nice. The food was good. There was an obvious sense by many people there that a corner had been turned and things were on the rebound.
The reason for the open house was several-fold. First, following the meltdown, this particular LEC has hired some new people, expanded their office and has a new aggressiveness planned for the Memphis marketing efforts. Second, it was a sort of celebration. They didn’t have to file for bankruptcy during the plummet in order to be around today. I agree that there’s accomplishment in that fact. Third, they want to get the Memphis business community networking again and they want to be part of it.
Now for an observation or two about the downside…
Traditional telecommunications for the business user that spend between $2000 and $5000 a month in all forms of datacom and telecom is a commodity. Bread is a commodity. Sure, there’s some differentiation based upon who you deal with, but once a line is lit, it works or it doesn’t. Most users – particularly of the size mentioned – want to light the lines then forget them.
Too much of the conversation I heard last night was about ”how much better” this LEC is than others that might pursue a customer. Rather than focusing on how strong their team is, they kept trying to come back to some aspect of differentiation between their switches, their lines, their relationships with other carriers, etc. It just doesn’t make any difference.
They need to point to Sam or Sally and say, ”he or she is why we’re different! We’ve broken the code on how to identify your needs up front, turn your lines on quickly, keep them running at better than five nines of reliability and help you expand when you need to. But, everybody can do that. What they cannot do is put Sam or Sally in front you.”
The focus should have been on the team and the talent. It should have been about why I want my loaf of bread to come from Sam or Sally and not from the 7-11 or the Massive Mart.
The other thing that struck me, and Memphis is famous for this in some other industries as well, everybody there has been with three or four (or more) telecoms in the last five to six years. Few industries can rival telecom in the way that the same people move around between a baker’s dozen of companies all the time. At three different times in three completely different groups of people, I heard this line, ”We’re so glad to have him/her. S/he has worked for me two times before now.”
Here’s the more striking observation. One of the truly new network players was there. I got to spend some time talking to their CEO. He’s offering ethernet over a fully redundant fiber ring at fractions of the pricing that any traditional telecom can offer it. Critical mass for his company may be just around the corner – particularly if some private/public ownership issues can be resolved quickly. As he chatted, it was obvious in the eyes of some of the traditional telecom sales people that they had no idea what he was talking about.
As I move down this edit box for Movable Type, I see title, category, entry body, extended entry, excerpt, post status, text formatting, URLs to ping…
Stop right there. Why do I have a URL in that URL’s to ping field? I didn’t put anything there. On the entry I wrote this morning, somehow, something got filled into that field and I cannot get rid of it. Every time I try to update or add to that entry, it pings this ”unwanted” site. Have I been hacked? Earlier there were two URLs there, but I seem to have deleted one of them.
If anyone knows what this is all about, I certainly would appreciate an explanation!
* * UPDATE * * * I think I’ve figured this out. These pings are directed at the primary domain names for the people I had linked to. They are the normal Movable Type trackback pings. What threw me off was two-fold: first, the domain names were not the same as the names I thought I was linking to; second, I wasn’t aware that Trackback dropped those URL’s into my entry the way that it did.
There’s a set of nominations for the best weblogs in various categories right here. Though I’ve ”voted” a time or two in years past, I’ve never really thought of the awards as awards, but as sources of new sites for reading and learning.
If you’re just getting into weblogs or you merely read about certain subjects using weblogs as one of your resources, the nominees’ list might point you to something new.
As I plowed through my news aggregator this morning, the common theme of spam – both email and comment – began to appear in all kinds of places. First, I noticed SimpleBits suspending comments. Then, there was this at kadyellebee.
Following Dr. Dean’s rather annoying spectacle, it’s humorous how many writers of weblogs are now ”searching for an Internet candidate.” Does the Internet really need a candidate? Is the Internet the 51st state in the Union?
Do we need another special-interest group? How many special-interest groups are you a part of?
”For all Americans, the last three years have brought tests we did not ask for, and achievements shared by all. By our actions, we have shown what kind of Nation we are. In grief, we found the grace to go on. In challenge, we rediscovered the courage and daring of a free people. In victory, we have shown the noble aims and good heart of America. And having come this far, we sense that we live in a time set apart.”
They want me to think like a FedEx employee when FedEx should, instead, think like a customer. They should ask me what matters—speed or cost—and then figure out how to send it for me the fastest or cheapest way…
FedEx, competition to the US Postal Service, has turned into the US Postal Service.
In Search of Excellence came out in 1982 as did Out of the Crisis. Since that time we’ve seen untold numbers of business improvement initiatives aimed at – well – they were supposedly aimed at business improvement. How many thousands of articles have been written that in one way or another state that the only lasting business improvement is customer-focused.
Few companies understand how to see their operations through the eyes of their customers. Few executives ever personally experience the kind of service that his or her customers experience. When that happens you wind up with customer hassles that defy logic.
Lately, we’ve been chasing something called ”customer relationship management,” but we don’t want to say that so we call it CRM. Absent a heart for customers at the very top of an organization, this fad and all those before it cease to be business improvement initiatives. Instead they wind up in the long list of fads that were tried and found wanting. The problem is that few of them were every properly ”tried,” and even fewer executives had the ”constancy of purpose” to stick with them through highs and lows or the announcement of the next big business fad!
Serving customers is such a simple concept. It’s very hard work, but it is such a simple thing to understand. Unfortunately, in too many organizations, reciting and internalizing TheGoldenRule is just way too sophomoric for the intellectual standing of those who work there.
Of all the newsletters I receive via email, I probably get more in less time from Dan Miller’s newsletter than any other. While Dan is a career coach and focuses in that area with his newsletter, he also provides a wealth of wisdom, insight and ideas for starting or improving your own business. His newsletter is free. It arrives on Tuesday each week, and it is excellent.
I’m less concerned that my weblog doesn’t validate!
Howard Dean came in third in the Iowa caucus last night. Weblogs and many big media operations had said he was in the lead up until a few weeks ago. I didn’t here a single outlet suggest he’d finish third.
The bloggerati had already assured themselves that Dean was going to be our next President. He might still have a shot at it; I don’t know.
Here’s the gratifying thing about his loss. I feel better – not because of my views on leadership, government and politics! It’s because I got an affirmation that there is a relative minority of people who are truly ”on the web.” Sure, every company’s got a web site. Lots of people use email.
Yet, there are still a great many influential and powerful people who don’t have a web site or weblog, they don’t use email and they don’t get their information from web sources. Admittedly, this will change with time. For now, though, there’s not quite the stigma attached to being ill-informed about the web.
Certainly, candidates are using web sites or weblogs in new ways. Some will visit those sites and be influenced by them. However, with Iowa we see that other forces were at work at the same time that the Dean campaign focused intently on the weblog phenomenon.
Also, here’s an excerpt from Jeff’s entry titled Take Back:
Every one of the speeches tonight was a class act—except Dean. He didn’t come off as presidential. He came out screaming like a coked-up coach: in your face, a little scary.
”Among other things, the documents indicate that for internal IBM accounting purposes, a programmer in China with three to five years experience would cost about $12.50 an hour, including salary and benefits. A person familiar with IBM’s internal billing rates says that’s less than one-fourth of the $56-an-hour cost of a comparable U.S. employee, which also includes salary and benefits.”
Iowans are voting today in the Democratic primary for the candidate who they think is best qualified to lead the nation. Ha, ha, ha.
In reality, they are voting for the candidate who is best qualified to plunder the nation and give them free stuff in the form of farm subsidies, tariffs on imported agricultural products and more of other people’s money for education, Social Security and Medicare. They don’t care if the rest of the nation has to pay higher prices for food and if their entitlement bills are sent to future generations.
Sadly, Iowa does not have the market cornered in greed and self-interest.
Listen carefully to politicians from both parties in your state and you will see that the theme is the same. Other than such serious issues as national security, war and immigration, the theme is always about plunder. It is about the distribution of loot and not about liberty and personal responsibility.
At the sight of plunder, the lapdogs in the pack media salivate, bark their approval and wag their furry tails. Don’t believe me? Then try to remember one reporter who has asked a politician what he will do to advance liberty and personal responsibility, or why he thinks it is okay to take money from disfavored groups and give it to favored groups. Politicians know that they would be met with growls of disapproval from the pack media and be characterized as mean-spirited extremists if they advocated the founding values of the nation.
The standard exchange is like this:
Pack media: ”What will you do about the uninsured?”
Politician: ”I think it’s a tragedy that in the wealthiest nation 40 million Americans can’t afford health insurance. I will see that every person has health insurance.”
Pack media: ”Yap, yap. Lap, lap. Wag, wag.”
Now imagine this exchange:
Pack media: ”What will you do about the uninsured?”
Politician: ”I’d fix the problems caused by the government killing a free market in health insurance and health care 60 years ago. I’d make sure that there is a consumer-is-king market in health insurance and health care, like there is in food, shelter, clothing and transportation.”
Pack media: ”Grrrrrr.”
You will never hear the pack media ask a question such as the following:
”You advocate more spending on Social Security and Medicare. But a clerk with a young family who earns $84 a day at the local convenience store has about $12 of her earnings taken to pay the Social Security and Medicare of the wealthiest group of Americans, the elderly. Does this strike you as wrong?”
Or this:
”You advocate the nationalization of health care. To be intellectually consistent, why aren’t you advocating the nationalization of food, shelter and clothing? If nationalization is such a good idea, why shouldn’t all Americans buy their food at government commissaries, live in government housing and wear government uniforms?”
For sure, a member of the pack media will never write a story line like the following:
”Mary Jones, a twenty-something, is one of the 40 million Americans without health insurance. She spends $750 a year on double lattes and muffins at Starbucks, $1,125 on buying lunch at a deli instead of bringing a sandwich to work, $2,000 on $4.50 drinks after work, $1,820 on cigarettes, $5,700 on loan payments and expenses for her new car, $1,250 on concert tickets, $960 on cell phone charges, and $400 on CD’s. That comes to a whopping $14,005. If she spent $4,000 of that on a high-deductible, catastrophic health insurance policy, she could invest the remaining $10,005 in the stock market. If she did that every year for 40 years, she would have a nest egg of $2.8 million when she retires, assuming that the government wouldn’t confiscate most of it in taxes.”
Why won’t the pack media write such story lines? Why won’t it stop being lapdogs for the government and start being watchdogs for liberty and personal responsibility? Three reasons:
One, the pack media would have to know something about economics and about the moral, philosophical and historical foundations of capitalism and our constitutional republic. Such important subjects are not taught in government K-12 schools or in journalism school.
Two, such story lines would go against the pack media’s belief in redistribution and collectivism, which are fancy words for plunder.
And three, lapdogs live to please their master.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is not a lapdog. He is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). You can reach him at ccan2@aol.com.
If you’re reading RSS feeds with an aggregator, you might like to know that there is a real move to get government feeds set up. There’s even a weblog that will keep you informed about the progress.
Curt Rosengren writes the Occupational Adventure Blog. This morning I noticed an entry about writing down three lists of goals and reading the lists each day. The past ten years has made me skeptical to the point of cynicism about such methods. It could well be that it’s the cynicism that prevents the results from coming as they would were I a more open participant. There is, however, another side to whole goal-setting phenomenon – that is the ability to be resilient through the disappointments. I’ve seen missed accomplishments drive people to a level of performance far below that which they had before they wrote some goals on a piece of paper. It’s sad, but it’s apparently a very real condition.
Marvin Olasky posted some comments and a link to an interview with Anne Lamott. Until I read this entry, I had no idea who Anne Lamott is. I missed the interview when it originally appeared in World magazine.
What strikes me most about the entry are the comments left there. Many of them resemble the fictional tale of Jesus running for President. I’m also reminded of a comment made directly to me by one of the senior leaders of a major ministry. It went like this: ”Everything began to fall apart when our pastors began to preach ’the love of Christ’ rather than the consequences of ’hellfire and brimstone.’” I was, and remain, astonished. In so few words, he managed to capture the essence of the debate between the fundamentalists and those they label liberals. Both labels are wrong.
There is an arrogance in critiquing the faith of others that is so distasteful. Who can judge whether or not someone has a proper view of God at each point along the way of a Christian’s journey?
I can tell you one thing. Christians who fail to live up to their claims of devout faith in the workplace do more to harm the Good News than any other failure I can see. It was well-said by a dear friend this week when he said, ”you’ve never been really manipulated in business until you’ve been manipulated by a Christian who is manipulating you in the name of the Lord.”
His words were more colorful than those, but carried the meaning.
Don’t miss this interview with Nick Bradbury. Nick is a software developer who has great influence over the future of the web and weblogs by providing tools such as FeedDemon, TopStyle Pro and Homesite.
At Robert Scoble’s weblog I read that Nick uses a product/tool called Delphi to develop his software. That’s just another example of how each professional selects the tools that are right for their work. Artists pick water, oil, acrylic or other tools. Writers pick text or word processing software that suits them. Weblog writers pick from a variety of tools. Programmers are no different. From Java to Flash to .NET to Delphi and beyond, tools abound.
There’s a future book out there somewhere that describes how professionals from all walks of life selected and grew comfortable with the tools they use every day.
The switches/Pbx’s are ready. The 911 problem is largely solved. The networks exist. Now, the roll-out begins in a truly serious way.
Level 3 Communications has made a couple of recent announcements about its move into VoIP. Level 3 remains the ”carrier’s carrier.” You’re not likely to receive services or a bill from Level 3 in the near future; not unless you own or work for a major carrier of IP packets.
What remains an interesting dilemma in the history of American business is whether or not companies such as Raindance are the AT&T’s of tomorrow. There is little evidence to suggest that the copper networks of the legacy providers can be replaced by those same legacy teleco’s. The Rise of the Stupid Network indeed.
Sometime in 2004 I’m going to learn how CSS and PHP and standards and well-formed and valid and all of the other ”buzzwords” surrounding web design fit together.
For now, I think I’m supposed to be wowed by this. Click around on the links and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Now visualize that kind of technology applied to an entire web site. Ignorance of what it took to acoomplish it is the only thing stopping me from being wowed. Here’s the explanation page.
Here’s what I think you’re looking at. I think you’re looking at something that would make you think you’re seeing a photograph. Instead, I think you’re seeing a web page that was created using CSS and XHMTL.
As an executive who is very unlikely to ever be able to apply this stuff myself, I’m betting that the ”takeaway message” is, ”Be aware and insist on this sort of flexibility for every future web site you influence!” [originally discovered at redemption through standards]
Since July 22, 2003, Memphis has felt it’s inferiority complex returning. We couldn’t get the lights turned back on for two weeks – in July, in Memphis! This from the town that brought you strikes by garbage workers, James Earl Ray and Mud Island.
Now we’re seeing a mayor annoint himself king and a city council that resents it. This from a metro area that continues to have divided city and county governments. We have two mayors. We have two law enforcement groups. We have two court systems. We have two school systems. We have two sets of taxes.
We also have a coliseum, a pyramid and the FedEx Forum. This from an area with the highest personal bankruptcy rate in the nation.
A subpoena (yep, that’s what they called it) to jury duty took me to the coliseum today. I graduated from high school there, and it hasn’t changed much accept to age somewhat ungracefully. Out in the middle of the floor was a platform with a couple of folding tables on it. The judge’s name tag sat right in the middle of the table.
At 10:15a.m., the 8:00a.m. group still had its remnants out on the floor. I was not looking forward to what time my 11:00a.m. group might get to leave. At 11:10a.m. we got this proclaimation, ”I just checked out the front windows of the coliseum and I still see some cars lined up to turn in out there, so we’re going to wait a little while to give some more of the 11:00a.m. people an opportunity to arrive on time.” (I tell you, I can’t make this stuff up!)
One of the local jury commissioners grabbed the microphone about 15 minutes later, and had us stand as the judge walked to the center of the coliseum’s floor and climbed up on his makeshift bench. The judge proceeded to call us to order and make us swear to tell the truth, then said court was in session. (I guess the court is where the judge is.) He then lectured us about MLK, rights, voting and our responsibilities.
The roughly 1500 to 2000 people who had been invited were read the rules:
the sheriff’s deputies milling around weren’t there to answer questions; they were there for security
the most important aspect of the dress code is ”no shorts;” shorts are defined as ”anything you put on one leg at a time that doesn’t reach to your ankles” (I can’t make this up!)
you’re disqualified from jury duty for being a habitual drunkard, of unsound mind or if you’ve been convicted of an infamous crime
habitual drunkards are defined as those who carry their habit with them; producing a bottle would have gotten you out of jury duty today
you’re exempt from jury duty if you’re over 70, in the National Guard, a full time student or you’ve served as a juror in the last 10 years
three parking garages will offer you discount parking if you prove to them you’re there for jury duty; discount parking is $2.00 a day
as one selected for jury duty you’ll be serving in circuit, chancery, criminal or probate court
available dates for 1-week tours of (jury) duty were Feb. 16-20, Feb. 23-27, March 15-19, March 22-26
I’ll be serving on a State of Tennessee jury the week of March 15, 2004. By 2:00p.m. the jurors had left the building.
Two people have brought the concept of ”being American” to everyone’s attention this morning. James Lileks has heard the sniping at the President’s new space initiative and has some choice words.
”I wonder if we can embrace a big idea again. The moon shot was nonpartisan Kennedy dialed the number, Nixon talked to the astronauts. Politics stopped at the ionospheres edge; it was an American gambit. Id like to think we can do that again. I want to watch the Moon Channel with my daughter in 2010.”
Then, Bill Whittle begins writing the instruction manual for Building the Ideal American.
”Dear Valued Customer:
Congratulations on your decision to Build an Ideal American! By closely following the instructions set forth in this manual, your American should last from 8-10 decades and provide you and your family with endless fun and excitement, not to mention value. Because unlike competing nationalities, your Ideal American will not run, blanche, fade, buckle or collapse during emergencies or everyday wear and tear.”
Here’s a very non-technical view of upgrading to Movable Type 2.66.
Follow the prescribed steps for upgrading your particular installation of MT. If you are a user of MT-Blacklist, you should also go through the ”configure” option after upgrading your version of MT. Otherwise, I think you’ll see that you are not getting comment spam protection and/or you won’t be getting email notifications when comments are left.
Isn’t there some old joke about the IQ of those who cannot find a way to get out of jury duty? This is only the ”initial signing deadline.” I don’t think I’ll have to actually serve, but we’ll see.
For those who don’t have jury duty and have time to learn how to use a new tool, there’s a January special that will get you 25% off the price of TopStyle Pro.
What is a leader? As I use the term here, the job of a leader is to accomplish transformation of his organization. He possesses knowledge, personality and persuasive power.
How may he accomplish transformation? First, he has theory. He understands why the transformation would bring gains to his organization and to all the people that his organization deals with. Second, he feels compelled to accomplish the transformation as an obligation to himself and his organization. Third, he is a practical man. He has a plan, step by step.
But what is in his own head is not enough. He must convince and change enough people in power to make it happen. He possesses persuasive power. He understands people.
David Isenberg is the author of The Rise of the Stupid Network. When I was first investing in MFS Communications, UUNET and, later, Level 3 Communications, David’s Smart Letter guided some of my thinking. In fact, his work guided me better than did George Gilder’s much pricier advice!
Today, in a very few entries, David’s weblog summarizes the end game in telecommunications. He might not have consciously planned for these few entries to tie together so well, but they do. Take a look. There’s one about voice-over-IP. There’s another about how the legacy teleco’s are missing the boat. Another explains the thoughts of a former ”bell-head” who finally got it. Finally, there’s a proposal on the table for a meeting of smart people.
Writing for the Memphis Business Journal (subscription may be required), Ed Horrell offers some solutions to the problem of your entire organization appearing indifferent to the plight of your customer.
This old joke has been told a million ways and is relevant to almost that many technical support operations. It’s the reason I’m not willing to deal with trying to make a profit in technology advice any more. Once I’m on the front lines trying to help one of my clients with their hardware or software or other technology implementations, these are the kinds of answers I get. That’s for someone else, but not for me.
A helicopter was flying around above Seattle yesterday when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft’s electronic navigation and communications equipment. Due to the clouds and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter’s position and course to steer to the airport.
The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a handwritten sign, and held it in the helicopter’s window. The pilot’s sign said ”Where am I?” in large letters.
People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign, and held it in a building window. Their sign said ”You are in a helicopter.”
The pilot smiled, waved, looked at his map, determined the course to steer to Sea-Tac airport, and landed safely.
After they were on the ground, the co-pilot asked the pilot how the ”You are in a helicopter” sign helped determine their position.
The pilot responded ”I knew that had to be the Microsoft building because, similar to their help-lines, they gave me a technically correct but completely useless answer.”
If you want to read a (serious) alternative to such an approach, read this about Dr. Deming’s views on operational definitions. Consistent, uniformly-understood terms and vocabularies are essential to effective communication.
In the case of software support, it must begin with some understanding of what it means to the ultimate customer of the software when they are down. What does business interruption feel like? How do we get support people to develop some sense of urgency – not panic – about the state that they put their customers in when software doesn’t work.
I can hear it now, ”how do you define doesn’t work?” Well, let’s start with this: it doesn’t do what you, your manual and your volley of emails said it would do!
My expertise is in leading teams to bring about major changes in business or company performance. My expertise is as coach – not player. My work experience is in leading – not hands on tinkering with hardware, software or the guts of business systems.
Now I have a question of a most detailed nature. Yet, I don’t want geek-speak as part of the answer. I want straight-up business language that any profit-seeking business person can grasp.
What is the difference between Red Hat Linux and Mac OS X? The news surrounding SCO continues to get worse. Their CEO is using a litigious America to try and save his company from extinction. That appears to be the only explanation.
I’ve come to believe that in the truly small business of 25 computers or less, Microsoft’s products have become too expensive. They’re not too expensive to acquire. They’re too expensive to maintain and to keep updated.
Linux has a clear window of opportunity right now. It is unlike anything I’ve seen in the last twenty or so years of the personal computing industry. Are we talking about minor variations when we compare Mac OS X with Red Hat Linux and something like Lindows? Is there any way at all for these players to align to create a marketing and technical support juggernaut that could rival Microsoft?
For the purists out there who see a web site as valuable only if it is accessible, semantic, valid, standards-based, well-formed, etc., writing such a site is apparently quite easy. Much of the time, those who write sites that comply are writing about their site or others that comply.
I want to ”just write.” I don’t want to pause every time I use a contraction and try to remember what the code number for the apostrophe is.
A couple of those purists have told me to use Topstyle Pro as the editor for every entry I post. That way I can have a spell-checker, a validation-checker, etc. Nick Bradbury, Topstyle Pro’s author, links to a list of ”great software” where Topstyle Pro gets mentioned.
I promise to devote some time to learning enough about Topstyle Pro to determine whether or not it is practical to make it the editor used for all entries. Wouldn’t it be great if Topstyle Pro could somehow hide behind the text entry box of Movable Type and give me all of its grand and glorious benefits without my having to know whether or not it is ”right” for me to use italics this way?
To any of you who might have missed the comment received from Frank Patrick, you should pause and take a look. If you’ve ever had a computer do anything ”mysterious,” even for a moment, this short clip will entertain you.
On the frustrating subjects of the liberal media, nasty Democrats (all Democrats are not nasty, mind you, only some of them) and computers, James Lileks hits the ball out of the part this morning. I’ve been at this point more than once in the past week:
”Solution: place nail gun against eye, pointing up at a 45 degree angle; pull trigger.”
While this man is clearly declaring that President Bush is the most powerful man on Earth, don’t let his site or daily email be the first thing you read each day. It’s the wrong way to get your thought processes stirring each morning.
As Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee his style is consistent with their’s. He elects to obscure reality by continuing to lament his party’s loss in the 2000 election. It’s time for that party to stand for something other than opposition to the Republicans purely for opposition’s sake. What do you stand for? The answer has to be more than, ”We stand against the President on everything.”
Bill Whittle at Eject! Eject! Eject! is turning his attention to the culture war. Here’s an excerpt:
I have long maintained that the threat from Islamist terrorism, while real and potent, presents no long-term threat to an awakened and determined America. We are fighting—and winning that battle as we speak. Far more pernicious is the battle for the very idea of what this country is and should be, a culture war that prior to 9/11, we were losing and losing badly if for no other reason than the fact that we elected not to fight it at all.
What’s hard for me to grasp is how both sides can be losing. The Dean campaign is full of supporters who claim they want to ”take American back.” Ever since Charleton Heston’s speech at Harvard, the other side of the culture war has been trying to ”take America back.” Which is it? Are both sides losing? Are both sides unhappy merely because they haven’t won?
Here’s another excerpt that gives me some hope that people will begin to evaluate what all of the rhetoric is about:
So this is our new ground: the fight for the soul of our country as a haven for individualism, reason, science, morality, strength and responsibility in a sea of ships wrecked on the shoals of socialism, tribalism and political correctness. And if, at its best, my previous work was a call to arms, then the work we set out on now, together, will be more in the way of a repair manual.
Few would argue – from either side – about the list of attributes that Whittle calls out. Individualism is good. Reason is good. Science is good. Morality is good. The list goes on. The debate ensues when each side begins to develop its own definition of each of these terms in light of its greater agenda. We’ll see if there can be meaningful debate about the specifics of the culture war.
I’ve made it official. I’m in the middle of the end of the last technology project I do. It’s time for me to outsource these projects to younger, more patient and smarter kids. Part of the problem is clearly the attempt to run a particular product on such a wide variety of operating environments. That product is written using tools that provide the developer with a place to point when things don’t go right.
Even a single point of the finger is too many for me when we’re talking about the software that allows a business to take orders, ship products and invoice. In 2004, changing that software is an exercise in changing all four tires at 85 miles per hour. Business is fast. Slow-thinking software companies won’t survive.
I’ll see this one through to the end, but I’ll take a different approach for every future project. It’s a genuine shame to have excellent functionality and features to offer a business, but be unable to get to those because someone failed to pay attention to the details of making the software installable and maintainable in various operating environments.
This became official at 3:00a.m. this morning. No more! I’m done.
Well, I’ve just learned that for the second weekend in a row, I’m destined to watch a file server attempt to copy about a gigabyte of data in something approaching 16 hours. Following that pure human pleasure, I must watch the same server take another 12 hours to run a ”normal” installation from a CD.
At one point during mid-week, the server performed like you’d expect it to. The network administrator thought he had discovered the problem in a conflicting backup routine that was taking over the computer’s resources. That backup is not the issue today. The attempt to copy has already been running an hour and it’s not even 10% complete.
I hate computers! I vow never to allow computers to dominate my weekends, evenings, plans and enjoyment ever again! Ever.
* * * UPDATE * * * Part of the problem here is that there’s simply to much assumed knowledge. Software companies assume too much. Support people assume too much. Each of these people or companies write and speak in ”geek-speak.” They assume you know their vocabulary and you have the backdrop for the kinds of answers they provide. No wonder business people are so frustrated with I.T. and so many of I.T.’s failed projects. Learning to speak in ROI is the least of the problems facing technical people. I’ve got a degree in electrical engineering and can’t understand half of what some of these support people are saying.
Are we staring at different sides of the same elephant? Are we staring at exactly the same elephant? Are we staring at a rat and calling it an elephant?
Who can tell? Everybody seems to have their own slant on things and, living in such a highly tolerant place (read PC), we’re to be completely accepting of any point of view. Some of both sides of these arguments are hard for me to swallow!
This one deserves your attention if you’ve not already read it.
Too many of the initiatives for improvement become mere programs or fads because their regimens obscure the fact that things must get done. Sometimes – often in fact – this is the fault of the leader of the initiative. Sometimes, though, it is difficult to get beyond all of the rigors of the improvement methodology to actually accomplish real work.
In this book you’ll find ways to cut through all of that.
There’s a noise level of some magnitude surrounding the possibility that IBM is evaluating desktop Linux as an alternative operating environment for personal computers. To oversimplify, I see Apple’s OS X operating system as a version of Unix/Linux with Apples GUI in front of it. Perhaps that’s wrong.
It’s also my impression, though I’ve never touched one of them, that the various distributions of Linux come with one or more ”popular” GUI’s. Novell just bought SuSE. Apple (AAPL) is worth approximately $9 billion.
These valuations and the momentum that exists in this area would make for an attractive alternative to Windows if the politics of getting the right players together could be overcome. Plenty of consumers would make the switch. Had Apple announced something more significant than GarageBand and mini ipods, I might have made the leap to a Powerbook.
World Magazine’s blog cites the lone ”condition” that is attached to U.S. foreign aid. Clearly, the need for aid is trumped by the need to fight for the cause.
Berkshire Hathaway will start the day trading at about $86,190 per share. Level 3 Communications will start the day at around $6.32.
With the recent jump in stock prices, there are share values that are going to get out ahead of company profits. We’ve been there before. Don’t get drawn in at the wrong time or with wrong-headed notions about what it means to own a share in a public company.
These are businesses with exactly the same profit motives as the lemonade-stand in the front yard. Without those profits, a share of the stock should be worthless. If (when) interest rates go up, it is more difficult for many companies to make that earnings target.
Get in for the long haul. Don’t get in just for 2004’s jump! As Warren Buffett once said, (paraphrasing) ”I don’t think of myself as a trader of stocks, but as a collector.” Identify great businesses that you’d be completely comfortable owning in their entirety. Buy the stock. Hold it. Think like a business-owner, not a stockholder. Think like a collector, not a trader.
Have you ever had an opportunity dropped in your lap? Here’s the story of how one person found a fit with no effort.
I have to admit these seem rare to me. Seldom does lightning strike quite like this. However, it does happen. Be thankful for those times. They certainly beat having to ”sell” your way to opportunity and subsistence.
I spent an arduous day in a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award consensus meeting. There’s a lot that is good about the award’s criteria, particularly if you are looking at them from the perspective of a company that has never done anything formal about continuous improvement and quality.
However, the award process is like so many things our government does. If you really wanted something improved, would you ask the government to get involved?
The award is…
bureaucratic – to apply, to review, to document
paper-driven with endless forms
slow
subjective
government-oriented
long, run-on sentences
short on “why” and “how”
better than nothing
a strong proof-of-need if fairly applied
a process that misses the point
a process that overlooks why businesses exist
unclear about how organizations set priorities and manage projects
basically unfunded for implementation and scoring
your tax dollars at work
missing the metrics of today
a failed attempt at selecting which questions to ask
too many things to too many people
thought-provoking
a laborious effort in word-smithing and semantics
incongruous with respect to scoring points and answering questions
absent any assessment of corrective action methods
non-prescriptive to a fault
focused on self-esteem, diversity and benefit-of-the-doubt
All of us have an abundance of poor customer services experiences. I recently managed to burn through five dollars on four copies at a Kinko’s. I was then ridiculed by an employee of Kinko’s for not carefully monitoring the meter on the copier. I witnessed a fast-food worker who literally dropped a bag of food between the drive-thru window and an automobile without ever looking out the window. Eye contact with a customer was the last thing that employee had on her mind.
Phone assistance with most businesses is dreadful. Unfortunately, so much of the problem is a reflection of thinking at the top coupled with poor training.
In the coming weeks you’ll be hearing more about the new role of customer service, quality and business transformation for the year 2004 and beyond. Much of the old wisdom remains spot on. There are new communication techniques and new methods for instilling the right attitudes in today’s front-line employees. There are ways to prevent horror stories that damage image, reputation and performance.
Rather than remain offended by the declining state of customer service, I’ve resolved to start doing something about it in 2004. Stay tuned. We’ve got ideas, plans and a target audience!
I’ve got to put some additional work into a major project for a manufacturing client. There’s Baldrige work that will occupy a couple of more days between now and the end of February. There’s a call to jury duty that should be a single day of pain. Otherwise, we’re going to look seriously at the way to bring business transformation and improvement back to American business. Do you care? Does a business owner care? Does a customer service associate care? I think they do.
When I read essays such as this one, I realize that there is a key factor working in our favor as Americans. When it comes to our own livelihoods, we’ll do what it takes to keep the business here. It may take some sacrifices, but we have the same old pioneering, persevering spirit that we’ve always had as a nation. That’s something you just can’t get when your customer service inquiry is answered in India.
At a lunch meeting today, my reason for being in business all these years reappeared. It was as if the fog and frustration of the weekend was required for me to see a clearer, more meaningful way to earn a living and help people.
Only the initial germ of an idea emerged at lunch, but it was enough to stir all of the creative energy and enthusiasm I felt years ago when I first heard about excellence and quality as they apply to business.
We’ll see where this leads in the coming weeks. I’m confident I can go into tomorrow’s all-day Baldrige meeting with a far different attitude. If you’re interested in understanding a little more about the direction of all of this, I recommend you read this book before you return to work next Monday. Yes, there’s time. Just do it!
Here’s the difference:
Indifference – frustration, struggles and merely getting by
Level 3 Communications has filed a forbearance petition with the FCC asking that the agency reaffirms that legacy switched access charges do not apply to Voice over IP (VoIP).
While I’m digging out from the workslide, you can read this. There are many more excellent articles that will bring you up to date about this upcoming Easter release.
Baldrige work deadlines are upon us. A client’s aging network is taking fifty times as long to do anything as it should. The call to jury duty arrived (yes, your honor, I believe all those who associate with criminals are threats to national security). My long-time business partner is scheduled for his third round of chemotherapy today. Work is piling up. Posting will be light.
The third season finale of The West Wing was called Posse Comitatus. It was one of the best and most complex episodes to date. During the final moments of the show, dialog was largely suspended as various scenes played to a piece of music called ”Hallelujah.” At Tower Records I found Jeff Buckley’s CD with that song on it. In one of the great exceptions to frequent misfortunes, the CD was ”value-priced” at $7.00. It is a rare find when something one wants to own or have happen comes through and at a true bargain!
Here are the lyrics:
Hallelujah
by Leonard Cohen & performed by Jeff Buckley
Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to her kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Well baby, Ive been here before
I know this room and Ive walked this floor
You know, I used to live alone before I knew you
And Ive seen your flag on the marble arch
And love is not a victory march
Its a cold and its a broken hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Well There was a time when you let me know
Whats really going on below
But now you never show that to me, do you?
But remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew is Hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Maybe there is a God above
But all Ive ever learned from love
Was how to shoot someone who outdrew you
And its not a cry that you hear at night
Its not somebody whos seen the light
Its a cold and its a broken hallelujah
Yes, I’m still on site at one of my client’s businesses. It is now 6:45p.m. on Sunday night. All of this began at 8:35a.m. yesterday. A process just began which I estimate will take anywhere from 5 to 7 hours. At that point, I’ll be in a position to determine whether or not this client can use this software at 7a.m. tomorrow.
My bet is that all of this has been for naught and one night or weekend real soon, I’ll be doing all of this all over again.
I had drafted a fitting poor-poor-pitiful-me post for this morning. I deleted it. Clearly, this is not how I wanted the new year to begin. Yet, there’s no value in doing anything other than trying to forge ahead.
So, forge we will. I have at least two more all-nighters followed by a couple of weeks of baby-sitting and hand-holding as users of new versions of software question every color change, icon shape and screen layout that they see in a new version. These questions will be periodically interrupted by real problems associated with a new version of software which somehow, magically loses previous choices, defaults and options for its operating configuration.
>From there…well, something different has got to arise! I think I want to sell used airplanes.
No…a fireman….no…a movie star…no…a civil servant…no…I’ve got it! In the immortal words of Archie Bunker…”I want to be an entremanure!”
At this point I’m thoroughly exhausted, demoralized and any hope of making this a successful project is gone. Waiting on files to copy within an operating system is lost productivity. It’s waste. It’s Microsoft at its very worst. No operating system should require from 8:35a.m. until who-knows-what-time to copy a folder full of 1800 or so files and folders.
Somehow, computers see me coming. The days of preparation leading up to the effort I was to make today were all wasted. Nothing about the reason I was here today has been done. As I type this the server is still copying files. Clearly, a more knowledgeable computer person probably knows of some secret for copying files that would have allowed that portion of the work to be completed by 9 or 9:30 this morning.
The feeling of total failure and defeat from something so simple is just all-consuming. Worthlessness comes to mind. I started this day with high hopes for a great feeling of accomplishment by mid-day or thereabouts. Instead, I’m sitting here and no amount of effort is going to turn this around. What a sense of total and utter futility. There is no way to save face when things go this terribly awry.
Here’s the way my Saturday has gone, and many of my days in December were just as frustrating. While dealing with computers, operating systems and software has taken my career to a new low, it gave me time to read Kim’s article today.
Then, this evening, while continuing to wait on a silly computer to copy files, I remembered Curt Rosengren’s weblog. Wouldn’t you know it; he’s got several questions that might offer steps toward solutions to my dilemma.
Were I not completely alone in this office, I’d probably be unfit to be around!
File copying that started at 8:35a.m. this morning has continued and is still running at this moment. No, not multiple procedures – just one. Yes, I started a Windows NT 4.0 copy of a folder full of subdirectories and files at 8:35a.m. and it has run ALL day.
The work I came here to do is still ahead of me. I despise this type of work. I hate it with a purple passion. It is so totally counter-productive to any and everything – a gross waste of time. Now I understand why ”computer people” don’t have lives.
Trust me. Before 2004 is out, I’m going to have a life. This one is for the birds.
Your cows’ rights are about to be violated. Their privacy is at risk as well. Wired reports that RFID is coming to a cow’s ear near you. If that doesn’t make ’em ’mad’ I don’t know what will!
For some more interesting discussion of the RFID technology:
RFID Privacy – a link from Kalsey Consulting Group
Lessons Learned from RFID Field Test – a pdf file compiled from a field test of RFID via Slashdot
It’s now 3:20p.m. Files are still copying on that file server. I’m quite certain something is wrong, but I have no idea what. Once the copying of files finishes, I suspect I have a good 5 to 6 hours of work to do.
This is not how I want to spend a busy weekday much less a Saturday.
In my circle of friends and acquaintances are conservatives who would be deeply offended by this. In that same circle are Christians who would label it blasphemy. There are liberals in that group who would be offended – well, just because that’s what they do best.
If one reads it with eyes (and heart) wide open, you get some sense of what the real message might be. [thanks to Jeffrey Veen for the link]
For those of you who read My Saturday, you’ll be interested in this sequel. Files are still copying from one subdirectory to another. It is now 12:12p.m. That means that an old NT 4.0 server has been working on a simple copy of 1817 files and folders since 8:35a.m. this morning.
Within the past week or so, Robert Scoble linked to Tantek Celik’s entry which compiled a list of links that are helpful in improving and optimizing weblogs. There’s a follow-up entry as well.
The goal was to compile resources that could make markup ”smaller, simpler and more semantic.” In the first entry Tantek introduced something called XFN, which stands for XHTML Friends Network.
One of the first things he pointed to in the first entry is the preference for using <h1...h2...etc> tags in lieu of the break and strong and other tags. I’m all for becoming valid, semantic and well-formed. I understand those are things I should desire as much as being in shape. The challenge, as is often the case, is in the ”how.” How to start? How to be certain? How to continue to write without having the markup become the objective rather than the tool?
I guess it’s time to follow those links and see what the prescription calls for.
This is a fascinating cultural phenomenon. Speculation is rampant, not only in the media he cites, but in our culture. Just last evening I heard a televised discussion of welfare in the USA. One person looks at his paper and says, ”but only 1% of the budget goes to fund welfare needs.” The person on the other end of the discussion says, ”I don’t know where you get your figures, but 23% of the budget passes through HEW (apparently referring to the old Department of Health, Education and Welfare).
Neither party was interested in pausing long enough to educate themselves or the viewers. There were more important points to speculate about. Viewers of my personality type wanted deeper facts. Reconcile the numbers you’re discussing, then discuss them.
Deming’s work with businesses called for an agreed set of ”operational definitions.” If we aren’t speaking the same language, how can we communicate?
”This all sounds terribly simplistic, but in fact it’s simple rather than simplistic. To all teenagers (or parents of teenagers) reading this, it’s the best advice youll ever get: learn a trade. It really doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s a function which cannot be transported—and no, computer repair doesn’t count, because PCs are teeny little things which can be shipped easily, or trashed. Learn how to fix jet engines, or how to rewire a building, or how to pour concrete.”
It should be on the required reading list of every person from age 16 to age 100. He describes the way we must begin to think and act.
It’s 9:18a.m. as I write this. I’ve been working this morning since about 5:30a.m. I’m on site at a client’s place of business doing work that I seldom do.
This company is upgrading their business management software, but doing so on old file servers running Windows NT 4.0. A copy of a subdirectory – we’ll call it \AB1 – to another subdirectory we’ll call \AB2 is taking ”F O R E V E R.” There are a total of 1817 files and folders in \AB1. At the rate these files are copying, it will be late today before the real work of doing the software upgrade can begin.
Those who know me well understand what I mean when I say, ”I hate computers.”
What Craig Cantoni had to say leading up to the dawn of a new year is worth repeating monthly throughout the year:
My ticking New Year’s wish
by Craig J. Cantoni (Not for publication or distribution before 12-31-03)
As the clock ticks towards midnight, I have an unusual New Year’s wish: that every high school student read ”The Long-Term Budget Outlook,” published by the Congressional Budget Office earlier this month.
Although the purpose of the 78-page report is not to teach history, it could be used to teach students how FDR and LBJ built financial time bombs in the form of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that are set to explode in their generation. It could also teach how their parents and grandparents added dynamite to the bombs instead of disarming them. Tick, tick, tick.
The report makes this sobering conclusion: ”Unless taxation reaches levels that are unprecedented in the United States, current spending policies will probably be financially unsustainable over the next 50 years.” Tick, tick, tick.
Instead of the ubiquitous warning labels on products, the following warning label should be put on the one-dollar bill: ”Warning: It is harmful to the financial future of children to keep printing and spending these at a record pace.”
Based on current trends, federal spending will increase in the next 50 years from the historical average of 20 percent of Gross Domestic Product to somewhere between 32.8 and 52.9 percent. And that does not include state and local spending, which also has been rising faster than inflation. Tick, tick, tick.
Although I doubt it, students may have learned that the Constitution limits the federal government to certain powers and thus to providing certain essential services, such as national defense and a banking system. They might be surprised to discover in the CBO report that the share of federal spending on such services has declined from 68 percent in 1962 to 38 percent today, being replaced by spending on entitlements, which are not mentioned in the Constitution. Tick, tick, tick.
Perhaps if students read the CBO report, they will realize that presidential candidates who promise more goodies at their expense are evil people, not compassionate people. And maybe the students will question why their local government spends money on sports palaces, training facilities for out-of-state baseball teams, Taj Mahal school buildings, light-rail boondoggles, art subsidies, developer subsidies, and other nonessential expenditures.
Of course, like most New Year’s wishes, mine will not come true. Government schools are unlikely to encourage students to read the truth about government spending.
Tick, tick, tick.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, public speaker and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
David Carroll starts the new year with an explanation of how one’s world view must answer four questions. He also offers a point of view about how thiings came to be as they are.
Any thoughts you might have harbored that suggested we’d all get along in 2004 should probably be dropped. We won’t! Here’s a short excerpt showing why:
Has Bishop Chane actually read the Quran? Does he now mean to identify the Quran as the inspired and literally dictated Word of God as it is claimed to be by Muhammad and his followers? Does he now intend to identify himself with the teachings of the Quran? This would be the inescapable conclusion reached by anyone who heard his message.
But a more significant question intrudes. Has Bishop Chane read the Bible? In his first of these questions, Bishop Chane asked what God was thinking ”when the angel Gabriel was sent by God to reveal the Law to Moses.” The Angel Gabriel is identified by name four times in the Bible. In the only Old Testament references [Daniel 8:16 and 9:21], Gabriel is the divine messenger to Daniel. In the Gospel of Luke, the Angel Gabriel spoke to Zechariah [Luke 1:19] and to Mary [Luke 1:26]. Gabriel’s declaration to Mary that she, though a virgin, would conceive the Christ indicates the prominence of this angel in the Bible. Nevertheless, there is no biblical reference to Gabriel having anything to do with God revealing the Law to Moses. To the contrary, God revealed the Law directly to Moses at Mt. Sinai [Exodus 19:18-25].
The long-held belief of a close friend says that we should pass a law that forbids Congress from enacting any new law without first selecting two that will be removed from the books. In other words, you can have your new law, but you’ve got to pick two that you’re willing to forfeit.
A similar rule might be appropriate for law school graduates. However, given the current head-count, I’d suggest we graduate one for every eight we disbar. [Thanks to Overlawyered.com for the link]
I have this (ill-informed) sense that dealing with email and browsing the Internet on a cell phone or PDA is reminscent of accessing the first web pages over a 2400 baud modem. I use a Treo 300 with Sprint, but I’ve never tried to use its browsing or email capabilities. It’s used strictly to prevent me from carrying a phone and a PDA.
Having done no research at all, I have no idea how the 287 spam messages I get per day would be handled by the Treo. How do I make sure the handheld gives me only the messages I want? Must I have yet another email account to maintain?
In a recent op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal Robert Reich cited an interesting statistic to support the notion that the USA is not the only country ”losing” manufacturing jobs. The numbers were: In 1910 agricultural workers producing food for us made up 33% of the work force. Today, 3% of the workforce grows and produces our food.
His point was – and is – that productivity gains have accounted for most of the ”loss” of manufacturing jobs; not outsourcing to overseas producers. Think about how many industries where this is true. Better still, think of even a single industry or manufacturing sector where it isn’t true!
You’ll see the connection to these statistics if you read about Robert Scoble’s field trip to the pistachio farm. Rob Fahrni, who works on the operation’s I.T. needs, talks about further enhancements that Longhorn may bring.
Om Malik links us to a report on the status of some cable system upgrades. I’m on Time Warner’s Roadrunner service for most of my needs.
While speeds are good, reliability, dependability and customer service are woefully inadequate. Too many customer service people are merely there to appease. With virtually any outage they are as in-the-dark about what, where, when, how and why as the caller.
The True Cost of Public Education
by Craig J. Cantoni
Do you know what your family pays for public education? You probably don’t, because it is a number that the establishment media do not tell you and that the government and the National Education Association do not want you to know. If you knew, you might not put up with their incessant begging for more money.
If you own a home, your property tax bill shows how much of your property taxes goes to public schools, but that is only about half of what you pay.
The other half is hidden in your state and federal income taxes and other taxes, and in the cost of goods and services that you purchase from businesses, which also pay public school taxes through their income and property taxes. For example, when you have a sweater dry cleaned at the neighborhood cleaners, a portion of the bill goes to public schools, although your sweater doesn’t attend school.
While it is virtually impossible to know the exact amount that your family pays for public education, an approximation of the number can be determined by calculating the per-household cost of education in your state. To do so, divide the total state, local and federal money spent on public K-12 education in your state by the number of households in the state.
The cost will vary widely from state to state, due to wide variations in state education spending, which in turn are mostly due to wide variations in a state’s cost of living and per-capita income. And of course, what you actually pay in a given state will depend on your family’s tax bracket and home valuation.
To use my state as an example, the per-household cost of public education in Arizona is $3,137 per annum. If you have children in public school, that might seem like a bargain, until you realize that you and your spouse pay the cost over your entire adult lives and not just the 12 years that your children attend public school. Assuming an adult life of 60 years, the total lifetime cost, on average, is $188,220 per household. In high-tax states like New York, the cost is over $250,000.
In preparation for this article, I sent e-mails to 34 Arizona acquaintances, asking them if they knew the annual per-household cost for the state. All of them are highly intelligent, successful and politically active. Their answers ranged from a low of $600 to a high of $12,000. Many said they had no idea.
No doubt, the 34 acquaintances know what their house, car, utilities and groceries cost. But thanks to the government and media, they do not know what they pay for the big-ticket item of public education. Of course, it is impossible to make an informed buying decision about a service without knowing the cost, which is how the education establishment likes it.
By contrast, my wife and I know exactly what it costs to educate our son. We pay $4,000 a year in tuition and bus fees to send him to a local parochial elementary school, or $32,000 over eight years. We will spend an additional $28,000 to send him to a local Catholic college-prep high school for four years. The total of $60,000 is about one-third of the household cost of public education.
Public education is a raw deal for my family, because we get nothing in return for our household cost of $188,220, other than overblown rhetoric about the common good from well-off public school parents who take our money for their own good. But it is also a raw deal for most parents who send their kids to public school.
There are two children per family in Arizona (actually 1.97 children). Two children can receive an academically superior Catholic education for $120,000, or $68,220 less than the household cost of public education. The parents could contribute half of the $68,220 to the education of the poor and still come out $34,110 ahead.
Sure, someone can quibble over the numbers, but as I said at the beginning, an approximation is all we have in the absence of a government report that tells you what you actually pay. At least the Social Security Administration gives you a personal statement of what you have paid in Social Security taxes over your working life.
But don’t expect a report or statement anytime soon on what you pay in public school taxes. The government, the National Education Association and the establishment media know that there would be a public outcry if the true cost of public education were known.
Imagine frequent headlines such as the following in the Arizona Republic: ”School cost a record $188,220 per household.” Rich and poor parents alike would start demanding either a cut in education spending or a voucher for $188,220 that could be used at the school of their choice. Either way, the government and NEA hegemony over K-12 education would end.
We wouldn’t want that to happen—wink, wink—so let’s join the establishment media in keeping the number a secret.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
If those who want to ”take back” the country manage to get it back, will I have to pay you more or less in taxes? For those who believe that someone has taken their country, what is the appropriate amount of every dollar earned that we should pay to run the country as you see fit?
How long would it take to search Mississippi? Iraq covers an area equal to roughly 3.5 Mississippi’s.
There should be no surprise in the fact that we are beginning to find some stashes and some connections. They weren’t circled on the map for the reporters or the war’s critics, but they’re there.
In an area that size, there’s bound to be at least one more spider hole!
Shirley Kaiser posted an entry at Brainstorms and Raves on Sunday. She left a great comment for me after I pondered (aloud) the switch from the Berkley DB to MySQL as the underlying database behind this weblog.
Shirley’s a great designer and has provided a wealth of information for those interested in web standards and well-formed markup.
Simson Garfinkel, writing for MIT’s Technology Review, is getting hit with the comment spam problem. You’ll also find links to Simson’s other weblogs there.
Jeff Hecht did some of the best writing about the state of the telecommunications industry during the enormous run-up in stock valuations late in the 1990’s. He focused on the future of fiber. Now, he’s written a telling article about how fiber is being deployed for consumer use. [Note: Access to this article may require a subscription to the MIT Enterprise Technology Review newsletter.]
I believe this is true. I’ve not experienced much of it in my life, but that’s mostly because the ”how” of it is still a mystery to me. What does one do differently to ”change the inner attitudes of the mind?” How do you start?
Reports are flying around about whether or not Steve Spurrier resigned as the coach of the Washington Redskins. Whatever the case, it looks as if there’s going to be an opening in Washington.
Now, where will Spurrier land? If he goes back to one of the colleges, I suspect we’ll see a national championship from him in three years or less.
I’m becoming a regular reader of A Small Victory. One of yesterday’s entries, titled On Giving When It Hurts, shows the vast range of thought and emotion that underpins positions about major stories. It’s directly in line with what Lileks said. Fundamental to the thinking of so many is, ”how can we be giving and charitable to Iran if the Axis of Evil sticker is still affixed?” Answer: It wasn’t affixed to the people of Iran.
”My point? Simple: we live in an era of non-contiguous information streams. I believe one thing; someone else believes another and the bedrock assumptions are utterly contradictory. This is what drives me nuts about discussing current events with some people. Its like discussing the Apollo program with people who think it was all faked, or discussing archeology with those who believe the world is six thousand years old.”
Okay, let’s say some or all of this is true. I suspect it is. With that knowledge, or at a minimum, this, where were the parents when the kid called and said, ”Can I spend the night at Michael’s house tonight?”
How many of the parties involved in the MJ story are getting publicity they really want? I suspect ”all of them” is the right answer.
Reading Richard Caetano’s latest entry about the upcoming plant tour for Robert Scoble, I’m reminded of a friend who is in the business of selling semi-rugged, ruggedized, fully rugged and ultra-rugged laptops, tablet PC’s and vehicular computers. There are still harsh industrial environments out there where the machine you might pick up at Office Depot just won’t do the job.
If you’re a resolution-maker and breaker or a goal-setter, you might want to consider how you’re monetary goals for 2004 compare to similar goals or accomplishments in years past. Cass has found the site that can answer many of your questions about the relative value of a buck.
I owned 300 shares of WorldCom when the plummet began. I still have them. I’ve been an investor in Level 3 Communications and its predecessor. That’s how I got the WorldCom shares.
My belief about Level 3 and the future of telecom is that the old, legacy companies are very likely to go away. No matter how fast they deploy fiber-to-the-whatever (FTTW), they’ll always have old copper infrastructure that they must maintain – at least until everybody catches on!
Voice communication is no different in any way from the IP packets that make up music, a picture, my latest software download or the home page you are reading when you read this. Sure, there’s some front-end and back-end stuff to be done to be sure the packets are properly handled for real-time voice, but those issues are minor. If you don’t believe what I’m telling you, read this from David Isenberg’s weblog.
Reading emphatic comments about government and religion reminds me of just how little we really know about the founding of this country, what people believe and what certain words really mean. We think we know what they mean when they say something, but too often that’s a distortion based upon our own filters and experiences – both good and bad. We also love to label and categorize people based upon what they know, say or do.
2004 will see some changes in the way this weblog looks and performs. One of the things I’d like to move toward is valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Right now, when I attempt to do this, I get a string of errors that is pretty overwhelming.
There’s something in my main template or the CSS that is making every entry invalid. I’ve got a hunch that a few ”simple” changes will make lots of the errors go away, but I can’t put my finger on what needs to be altered.
In the comments following this entry on The Scobleizer Weblog is quite a debate. It’s a debate that is raging nationally as well. If you’ve not pondered these matters and developed your point of view, some of what is said there might push you one direction or another.
I think I need to change the underlying database for this weblog to MySQL. I know my host offers and supports MySQL. Why would such a change be necessary?
As I flip through the various plugins and scripts that are offered, I’ve found a high number that require the database to be MySQL.
I have no idea how I’d go about making such a switch? What’s at risk? Could I corrupt the entire weblog? Is a back-up sufficient to insure that I could import the entries back into a new MySQL database?
The more I write about this, the more it seems like a task for another day.
If you use Movable Type, you’ll be interested in this entry. Following the links in that entry I was able to save two OPML files to my hard drive, then instruct FeedDemon to set up channels in a channel group for all the Movable Type resources.
To do this, simply right click on the files and save them to your hard drive. Then, select set up new channels in FeedDemon, but choose the option that allows you to set up a channel (or group of channels) from an OPML file. Point to the files you saved and let FeedDemon do the rest. At that point you can read all of the sites that might help you with Movable Type in FeedDemon.
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,
To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion: Greetings.
My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up, and the rich in being brought low, because the rich will disappear like a flower in the field. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the field; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. It is the same way with the rich; in the midst of a busy life, they will wither away. Blessed is anyone who endures temptation. Such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.
The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel: For learning about wisdom and instruction, for understanding words of insight, for gaining instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity; to teach shrewdness to the simple, knowledge and prudence to the young let the wise also hear and gain in learning, and the discerning acquire skill, to understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.
More Mass Demonstrations for Bush Impeachment
by Craig J. Cantoni
(AP) Washington, June 8, 2006 – The largest demonstration ever held on the Capitol Mall continued for the second day, with even more groups joining those that have been calling for the impeachment of President Bush.
The President, who is secluded at Camp David, said that he remains committed to letting Americans save for retirement ”without being harassed by government agents and wasting money on lawyers and accountants.”
The demonstrations began when the President proposed that hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations from the Internal Revenue Code, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation and the Health Care Finance Administration be replaced by one sentence: ”It is legal for Americans to save as much money as they want for retirement, without ever being taxed on the income earned on the savings and without filing reports with the government.”
Many of today’s protesters wore black armbands in memory of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, who died of a heart attack on the Senate floor on Tuesday after learning of Bush’s proposal. ”Over my dead body!” were the last words that he whispered to Senator Tom Daschle.
Kennedy had triggered the Bush proposal through his successful effort last month to overturn the provision in the 2003 Medicare Reform Bill that had authorized Health Savings Accounts. The accounts allowed Americans to set aside a relatively small amount of money in tax-deferred accounts for their future health care needs, if they complied with numerous restrictions and reporting requirements. Kennedy and other Democrats saw the accounts as blocking their goal of nationalized health care.
Groups that previously had nothing in common have united in solidarity to impeach Bush. Wearing brown suits and shoes, 10,000 members of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants gathered by the Lincoln Memorial and sang ”We shall overcome.”
Around the Reflecting Pool in front of the accountants, an estimated 200,000 members of the American Federation of Government Employees joined in the singing. And over at the Jefferson Memorial, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor read the U.S. Constitution to 40,000 Gucci-clad members of the American Bar Association, to make the point that Americans have no constitutional right to keep their money.
At the other end of the Mall, the president of the Society for Human Resources Management handed an impeachment petition to Congressman Dick Gephardt on the Capitol steps. Signed by SHRM’s 130,000 members, the petition claimed that an estimated 10 million Americans will be out of work if Bush eliminates the regulations that are the sole source of their income.
To drive that point home, scores of financial advisors from Merrill Lynch, Wachovia Securities, E.G. Edwards and other financial firms demonstrated in front of the Treasury building. Financial advisor Pete Dombrowski of Sioux City, Iowa brought his 12-year-old daughter Megan. ”How does the president expect me to send Megan to college if I’m no longer needed by my clients to develop complex investment plans to avoid taxes?”
Protests were even held at the French embassy, where the French ambassador said that the United States would gain an unfair competitive advantage in world trade if it shifted millions of Americans from unproductive work to productive work. ”This could have a destabilizing ripple effect throughout the world,” he said.
Only one Bush supporter could be found. Retired history teacher Mary Carver sat in a wheelchair in front of the Smithsonian, holding a sign that read, ”Hooray Bush!” She explained that before she was born in 1913, there was no income tax and people could save as much money as they wanted without giving much of it to the government. ”This incentive to save is what produced the capital that improved our standard of … ”
Her history lesson was interrupted by a protester wearing a knit shirt monogrammed with the name, ”H&R Block.” Purple with rage, he ripped the sign out of her hand, threw it on the ground, and stormed off in the direction of the IRS building, where 35,000 tax preparers had gathered for a silent memorial in honor of Form 1040.
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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
I successfully upgraded this weblog to Movable Type 2.65 this afternoon. Please let me know if you see problems with comments, links, displays or anything else. Thanks.
>From a place other than The Bleat we get James Lileks’ recommendations for the President’s fans and foes. It’s a list of New Year’s resolutions. Thanks to Tim Blair for the link.
There comes a point in the reporting of deaths where all reason is lost. In America we value all life. A single life is exceeds our ”acceptable loss” meter.
The mass media, on the other hand, takes stories like ”the flu epidemic,” soldiers killed in Iraq, plane crashes and mad cows and completely distorts our views of what really happened. In a single temblor of about a minute’s duration, Iran has lost 20,000 (or more) of its citizens. That’s in a country with around 68 million people.
In this country, I believe we should index all reports of death to the most recent year’s deaths in automobile accidents. Why? We launch investigations when mad cows or natural disasters kill people. Yet, year after year, we go on driving like we’re invincible. Over 40,000 people die each year in fatal automobile accidents in a country with 290 million people. Yet, when an airplane crash kills 87 we get dawn to dusk media coverage.
...I asked someone what they would write if faced with a blank page and as few as ninety seconds to put something on paper. Too often that’s what it feels like to write a weblog entry. It must be just as grueling for the novelists, poets, screenwriters and columnists.
Yet, we write. Fortunately, I’ve not yet written anything quite as mundane as this, but I’m sure I’ve gotten close.
This morning my aggregator exposed the latest from a recently dormant weblog. Sounds as if a copy of Movable Type, a space heater and a few minutes of rearranging the clutter could bring her back. Alison has made Radio jump through hoops I was never able to master. I hope she’s back and blogging regularly.
In 2003 I’ve seen what it means for organizations to launch a youth movement. I’ve seen a 49-year old replaced by a 25-year old. I’ve seen a 67-year old replaced by a 37-year old. Another company’s ”young leader” will not hire anyone older than he is, but it’s because he sees those more experienced as a threat.
I’ve seen interview processes that clearly excluded consideration of any applicant over 40, while assuring that no litigation could result by making public denials of age discrimination in advance. In one organization I saw a person pushed aside for a younger worker only to have the experienced person leave and start a grand new effort of his own.
Warren Buffett has built a thriving business by buying companies run by people in their late 60’s, 70’s and beyond. In his 1996 Letter to Shareholders he remarked, ”It’s difficult to teach a new dog old tricks.”
With an aging population that is largely healthier than any prior generation that reached age 55 and up, we are facing an enormous weight of experience that is being overlooked, denegrated and undervalued by the latest 90-day wonders. Real business advantage will be gained by those organizations that learn how to take leverage the know-how of those prepared to work and thrive from age 50 to age 70 and beyond. Experience matters no matter how ”smart” the youth movement thinks it is.
Yesterday, I wrote about the need for improving the way I see who links to this site or visits here. I got a very nice comment back from Meg at Mandarin Design. If you haven’t visited her site and the weblog, you should.
My question was not a concern about getting linkage. Clearly, I need all the help I can get. Rather, it was yet another of my many questions about ”how all this stuff works.” It’s great to pose those questions here and get answers in comments. Now, it’s time to learn more about the answer Meg provided.
Here’s a reminder for all who think about goals and resolutions. Dan Miller suggests that they be done by the fifteenth of November every year. Mine seldom are.
More importantly, some of you will benefit from having Dan’s weekly email on your regular reading list. It’s free. You won’t get spammed by subscribing to it.
I get nothing for saying this, other than some satisfaction in knowing that someone who reads this, subscribes and follows Dan’s guidance will benefit greatly!
”I had several pieces of paper in front of me. I looked at one of them for a few moments, then put it aside. Having done so I picked up another piece and looked at it for a while”.
Soon, I’ve got to identify the best way to see who is visiting this site and who is linking to this site. I’ve got meters set up for traffic and they give abbreviated summaries. I’ve got a host account that provides some traffic information.
Every now and then, somebody links to this site and I see a reference to that in an RSS feed from Technorati. Other times, it goes unrecognized. This morning I noticed linkage from (I think) the Mandarin Designs site. A visit there did not tell me where or how a link from that site to mine had been set up. Perhaps, I need to better understand what Technorati is doing or can do for me.
I’ve downloaded Refer 2.1, and I’m pretty sure my host account provides everything I need to make it work. However, I don’t use MySQL for my Movable Type database. So, that’s out.
Anyhow, I want to be able to routinely answer the following two or eight questions:
Who visited today? This week? This month? This year?
Who linked today? This week? This month? This year?
Regular readers here know that I often post things to a category labeled ”faith.” Those entries will continue in 2004. You’ll continue to see links to on line debates and discussions of faith as a source of personal strength. You’ll also continue to see discussions of the faith-heritage of this nation and its founders. The majority of the signers of the Constitution were men of faith.
In 2004 you’ll see more discussion of Wi-Fi here. I’m a big believer that Wi-Fi has the potential to bring something comparable to ”fiber to the curb” to us much sooner than the horizontal boring machine can complete its work.
At any rate, you should start by thinking about this. Your home DSL or cable modem service is giving you ”best case” performance of around 500Kbps to 2Mbps. 802.11n, as discussed in the link, has the potential to deliver 100Mbps!
Those who know me well know just how unhappy I’ve been during most of 2003. The struggles have been long, arduous and many-faceted. Health, confusion, direction and resiliency – or absences of one or more of these – have presented most of the challenges this past year.
With this year’s Christmas gifts came some of the greatest gifts of all. They were wishes for my return to a happier place and time. Those wishes made my Christmas. They also prepare me for a completely new outlook in 2004.
Look for changes in the coming months!
For all who read here, I want to thank you for the tips, support and encouragement that come from writing here and interacting with you. May the new year see you prosper and thrive as in no prior year!
[NOTE: You may need an online subscription to see this. Link discovered at Halley’s Comment]
”But then I watch the steady campaign of the national news media to try to win this for the Democrats, and I wonder. Could this insane, self-destructive, extremist-dominated party actually win the presidency? It might-because the media are trying as hard as they can to pound home the message that the Bush presidency is a failure-even though by every rational measure it is not.”
I’ve long hoped that someone would emerge as the one who takes the lead in ”replacing” Bob Hope’s USO work. There’s a much, much deeper guy behind the television persona we get five days a week at 10:30 p.m. CST. This is great news.
You get used to it, the clerk said. I didnt know if she meant the song or the knifings in the breakroom. [The Bleat]
With threats that sound more real than before, read The Bleat and read this.
Apparently, they really want to get to us again. While so many are singing the praises of a decent year for stocks and business growth, there is still something fragile and tenuous about our recovery. Another blow – in any of several forms – could bring us to our knees once more. Now is a time for great trust. We simply have to trust the intelligence community. We have to trust what we’re being told. We have to trust God. As individuals, we have no ability to fend off the kinds of threats that international terrorists plot and plan.
I can deal with a lone idiot. So can you. When plots involving commercial aviation and foreign pilots are the methods of attack, what can an individual or a family do? We simply have to trust.
More from James Lileks:
”Like it or not, know it or not, weve always been about five days from a complete bout of transglobal nastiness since 9/11. It all depends on the provocation. But if nothing happens we may never learn what they stopped.
Who knows. Either we look back at the days of Orange with the same remote interest we have today when we see ration stickers in a Bugs Bunny commercial or the idea of gradiations of concern will strike us a luxury, a contrivance, a flimsy thing that marked the interregnum between the day the war began and the day it flared hot coast to coast. Im betting on the former. The worst rarely happens. Something just as bad often comes along, but its not what we foresaw or worried about. Then we learn that a short period of coping can be preferable to a long period of fearing.
It will end, one way or another. But there wont be any signing of papers on carrier decks; nothing that tidy. No Times Square parties. It began as a long slow subterranean process where the murderers gather and bond, and the end will be slow and constant and maddeningly indistinct. Imagine boxing gloves unraveling the strands of a thick wet rope; thats the next ten years. It wont make sense all the time. The narrative will drift. In 2031 the BBC will put out a 22 hour documentary on the War, and our children will think we all lived in an age of constant peril and heroism.
We will have to remind them that peril and heroism was reserved for those volunteered for a full ration of both. Most of us saw the war on TV. If we felt it at all, it was the pang we got when consulted our 401(k) statements. The stores were full of things; meat and sugar for everyone. The vast majority of Americans hardly felt the war at all and while that may have been a blessing, it didnt feel altogether right. There was something about Orange that said we should do something, and we had no idea what that might be.”
Best Software, Microsoft and Intuit have led the way in consolidating the accounting software business over the past few years. Here’s another announcement in which Best removes one more competitor from the field.
This is simply too amazing to risk losing to link rot. Instead, I’m quoting it here, in full, with attribution to Marvin Olasky for initially pointing it out and PCA News for running it.
Dear Friend,
Is there a good, non-commercial reason for this holiday madness? Is this annual multi-billion dollar global celebration just a quaint urban legend that clever businessmen have turned into the longest-running, most successful marketing gambit in the history of merchandizing? Or could there be something to this story that won’t die in spite of millions of man-hours over two millennia devoted to killing it?
Here is the logline for this Christmas screenplay:
A God infinite in all his attributes who is three persons in one, who created everything in the universe out of nothing, sends one member of that trinity to earth as a baby born to a young virgin in squalid conditions, fulfilling a 700-year-old prophecy (Isaiah 7:14). It’s a fantastic tale.
Baby Jesus grew up and became a vagabond rabbi with nothing more than the clothes on his back, healing the sick and the lame and resuscitating the dead before thousands of witnesses, promising an eternal life of inexpressible bliss for folks who believed he was who he said he wasGod (John 10:24-30). Yet he made no attempt to save himself from a horrible execution instigated by jealous co-religionists. Then, as if willfully shattering any hope of verisimilitude, the final chapter ends like the first began, with an unfathomable event for those who don’t think beyond human possibilities. Jesus came up out of the grave alive and was seen by hundreds of people before he rose magically up through the clouds, promising to prepare a place in heaven for the faithful and return one day. Is that a mind-boggling plot or what? Certainly no human mind could conceive such a narrative, and that may well be the best evidence indicating a divine origin.
What it is, is a love story: ”For God so loved the world” (John 3:16). The theme is love conquers all, even unrequited love, when the lover and prime mover is God. That is why it is called the gospel”good news” indeed. It seems timelier than ever now with hate in such high fashion.
Preposterous, you say? Is it possible for eleven men, Jesus’ closest followers, to stick to such an outrageous story”he rose from dead”at the cost of unspeakable persecution and grisly death, if it was a lie? Millions of people who believed the story through the centuries have met the same fate for refusing to mouth a denial. America’s founders risked life and limb in a hostile wilderness to establish a city on a hill based on the precepts of this story. Half died the first winter but the greatest, freest, most bountiful nation on earth grew from that faith-filled beginning. This story certainly has legs.
So here are the options available to you this Christmas season. You can believe this story and, in the words of its protagonist, spend eternity with God in heaven, or you can ignore it, laugh at it, or ridicule it and run the risk of eternal torment in a fiery place called hell. There is a third option: You can make a note in your Daytimer to give it some serious thought some time in the New Yearand set Uncle Screwtape up with a chance to claim another soul with his favorite strategyprocrastination.
Might not the veracity of this story, the longest running best seller ever written, be worth looking into now? And while you’re at it, why not read the source material rather than best selling fiction that profanely distorts the original story? Stop by most any bookstore on your way out of the mall and buy a Bible. If God really is, as stated in that book, it’s the best news the human mind could ever absorb. If it’s a fable consisting of several authors’ fantasies over many centuries that just happens to fit together, what have you lost by reading a great literary work? But if 200 plus prophecies over a millennium were truly fulfilled by a man called Jesus, the Son of God, as recorded in the Bible, denying or ignoring its reality places you in grave peril, my friend.
I suggest you start reading with an eyewitness account by Jesus’ best friend, John: ”[He] became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
It’s your choice to read and then consider his invitation. Jesus says the consequences are eternal. I am convinced to the depths of my soul that he speaks the greatest truth ever told.
With gratitude to God for his love and your friendship and a fervent desire to spend eternity with you both,
I am sincerely yours,
JD Wetterling
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JD Wetterling is resident manager of Ridge Haven, the PCA Conference Center and Retreat in North Carolina.
Ordinarily I don’t think of Time magazine as a publication with great insight, reporting or writing. However, they’ve done something right and deserve credit for it.
When they feature their annual person-of-the-year award, the issue gets play in other media outlets. This year, they chose wisely, and there cannot be too much praise for the job done by the men and women in our armed forces.
No matter how many at home choose to second-guess decisions made, the people on the ground and in harm’s way deserve our utmost support and appreciation.
Movable Type is the weblog software behind this weblog. It is installed on a server at Bloggerzone. This morning, there are two new entries about Movable Type at the Movable Type News web site.
Has the U.S. Crossed the Line Into Oppression?
by Craig J. Cantoni
It is easy to identify oppression in the extreme. Think of Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Pol Pot and Mao. It is not so easy, however, to identify less extreme kinds of oppression or to know when a government has crossed the line that separates liberty from oppression.
For instance, the Third Reich crossed the line long before Jews were incinerated in furnaces. It crossed the line around the time that it banned non-Jews from shopping in Jewish stores, thus depriving Jews of part of their income.
Has the United States crossed the line into oppression?
I am not raising the question because of the Patriot Act, the recent Supreme Court decision that limits political speech, the jackbooted SWAT teams that break down doors looking for dopers, the state harassment of cigarette smokers, the granting of privileges to some races over other races, the fining of drivers who don’t wear seat belts, the searching of automobiles under false pretenses, the expansion of federal power way beyond the enumerated powers in the Constitution, or other examples of what some people believe are abuses of state power.
I’m raising the question because of something that most people do not equate with oppression: taxes. To be more specific, I’m asking if the United States has crossed a line with respect to taxes that separates a free people from an oppressed people.
Almost all Americans would agree that the government wouild be oppressive if it confiscated 100 percent of income in taxes. But at what level of taxation below 100 percent does oppression begin and liberty end? At 75 percent? At 50 percent? At 25 percent? Surveys show that the majority of Americans in all socioeconomic classes think that taxes should not be higher than 25 percent.
Then what about 53 percent, which is how much of the year that the average American has to work to pay the cost of government at the federal, state and local levels? Is that over the line?
Some might look to the Constitution for an answer, but they won’t find it there.
Although the greatest political document ever written limits government power in other important ways, it does not limit how much of your money the government can take in taxes. You have such constitutional rights as freedom of speech, religion and self-defense. In addition, the government is prohibited from taking your land and house under eminent domain unless the taking is for a public use and you are reimbursed for the loss. But there is nothing in the Constitution or its Bill of Rights that would stop the government from taxing your income at 100 percent.
For example, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and indentured servitude in 1865. However, the amendment refers to the kind of indentured servitude that had its beginning on these shores in the early 17th century, when Europeans signed voluntary contracts with the Virginia Company to work for a specified time, often under draconian terms, to pay for their voyage across the Atlantic. It does not refer to today’s form of indentured servitude, in which citizens can be forced to work for the government for however long the government says they have to work for the government.
Or take the Sixteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1913 and authorized the government to tax income. It does not limit taxes. In fact, it opened the tax flood gates.
What about Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which authorizes Congress to levy taxes? Doesn’t that put a limit on taxes, since Congress is elected to office and has to bend to the will of the people? No, that doesn’t limit taxes. All it does is give the majority of voters (who are a minority of citizens) the right to tax everyone else at whatever level they want. If you are in the minority, you are powerless to stop those in the majority from taking your money for themselves. And if you resist, the government has the legal authority to throw you in jail.
You are even powerless to stop powerful special-interest groups that are not in the majority from stealing your money through taxation. Take seniors, who comprise about 35 percent of registered voters. They were able to pass the new Medicare bill that will place a tax burden on your children. For all practical purposes, you have no defense against the theft and are powerless to protect your children.
You also have no defense against others who receive income, subsidies, grants and loans at your expense, including Iowa farmers, sugar growers, unemployed ship builders in Philadelphia, mass transit riders, SSI recipients who scam the system, wealthy homeowners who build homes in flood plains or in the middle of tinderbox forests, and millions of other fellow citizens who have government agents take your money for their own benefit and convenience or because of their own stupid choices.
It is the great failing of the Framers of the Constitution that there is no line in the Constitution between liberty and oppression with respect to taxation. Of course, the Framers lived in an agrarian society in which wealth was represented mostly by land, not by numbers on a paycheck or electronic digits in a bank account. They could not imagine today’s industrial society in which so much wealth is not in land and is so easily expropriated by government agents.
Because it is subject to different interpretations, the Framers missed a chance to draw a clear line with the General Welfare clause of Article I, Section 8. Many constitutional scholars believe that the Framers did draw such a line, because it would have been contradictory for them to spell out the enumerated powers of the government and then to write the General Welfare clause to mean that the government can levy taxes for more than the enumerated powers. But other scholars use correspondence between the Framers after the Constitution was written to show that even they had different opinions about what the clause meant.
If the clause means—as I think it should mean—that taxes should only be levied against all citizens equally for government services that benefit all citizens equally, such as national defense, then there would be little chance that taxes would result in oppression. Why? Because people are not prone to vote to tax themselves into oppression but are prone to vote to tax others into oppression.
So, if the line cannot be found in the Constitution, where can it be found? It can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which of course spells out oppression in detail, including this grievance against the King of Great Britain: ”He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance.” Or this: He has imposed ”Taxes on us without our Consent.”
Did your child consent to pay the prescription bills of seniors? Did you consent to have 53 percent of your income taken by the government?
The Declaration also spells out the right of the people to alter or abolish an oppressive government and to institute a new government that respects the inalienable rights of life, liberty and happiness.
Have we reached that point? Has the United States crossed the line?
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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
It’s good to start the week of Christmas with a James Lileks entry. He’s back, though I found the work he did during his ”time off” to be compelling.
I’ve got way too much work to do this week. One of my clients is burning the midnight oil to keep up with the demand from one of his new customers. We’re building a new production management system for him. Faced with all of that, Christmas, deep hopes for 2004 and a heightened terror alert, it was great to wake up to a Lileks column first thing.
When, in November of 2004, it becomes obvious that the majority of American voters do not think this way, what will the losing side use as its set of excuses? Will it be election process abuses by the winners? Will it be some type of media distortion led by the winners? Will it be some conspiracy theory involving manipulation of world events to favor the incumbent party? Could it be that the majority of the American voters like the direction that the country is headed – both domestically and internationally? Are those who think that way ill-informed? Are they poorly educated? Is the level of frustration in the United States today comparable to frustration that led people to form a new nation? What answers are people really seeking that they are not getting?
Burkett has a ”no digital prints” symbol on his web site, www.christopherburkett.com. And that started me wondering: Does digital photography and image manipulation debase the true art of photography? Or is the digital camera a miraculous new tool that will allow photographers to achieve new levels of art?
When was the last time you spent any time with a good dictionary? Does the dictionary you use most often have the word ”Internet” in it? Do you have any idea how you would compare the dictionaries you find on the shelf at the bookstore prior to purchase?
If any of those questions interest you, Meryl has linked us to an article by YiLing Chen-Josephson that covers a method for evaluating and ranking dictionaries. Five are reviewed. One is picked.
I’m old enough to remember some FORTRAN, some original PC operating system wars and the first wave of Windows vs. Mac competition. Today, I found a book review posted earlier this week by Joel Spolsky. It covers the Unix and Windows debate as it relates to programming.
Many thanks to Frank Patrick who reported a problem with the comments feature of this weblog. I entered a test and got an error message and lost the comment, just as Frank reported.
The error message makes me think there is some relationship to my comment-spam protection. I’m awaiting a response to see if that is indeed the case. I’ll enter an update when I uncover the cause and have the problem resolved. Clearly, one way to fight comment spam is to simply delete all comments before they are posted!
Not my intent!
* * * UPDATE * * * Comments are fixed! I had improperly updated my installation of MT-Blacklist by copying only three files. Somewhere along the way, I failed to read a readme.txt file and missed the fact that there are a couple of more files that needed to be copied up to my server for a proper update. Please let me know if you get anything other than stellar results when commenting here!
Oh, and thanks to the estimable Jay Allen for the prompt response to my inquiry which boiled down to, ”why?” He knew and pinpointed what I had failed to do instantly!
In an entry titled The Dark Side of Pluralism World takes a look at The Pluralism Project at Harvard University. That’s hahvad for you sophisticates! Notice the comments while you’re there.
”It currently stands at 59 of the 100, according to today’s editorial in Investor’s Business Daily on legal reform (’Any tort in a storm’, Dec. 18)....”[Overlawyered.com]
We write weblogs for various reasons. Sometimes they become widely read and provide meaningful influence like InstaPundit or BuzzMachine. Jay Allen, on the other hand, has discovered that his influence, know-how and weblogging can serve better when focused on something other than politics.
I have two thoughts on that subject. To the extent that this weblog was started in response to September 11, 2001, it serves its purpose today regardless of what I’m writing about. While I wanted to learn something about the Internet, I had no idea how little I knew or what I’d be capable of doing on line in less than two years. While I write about my frustrations with politics and lawyers, I’m not really expecting to start any sort of meaningful dialog or bring someone to ”think like me.”
The Rat Race (aka Rodent Regatta in sophisticated circles) is a hobby, a frustration, therapy, a classroom for me, and a lark. At least Jay has found a way that he can truly serve. His contribution is not to be minimized because a politician doesn’t get elected on the strength of his influence!
(part of a point-counterpoint appearing in The Arizona Republic)
Since I don’t request payment for writing these columns, this won’t be a case of biting the hand that feeds me. But it will be a case of biting the hand that doesn’t feed me.
Does the media have a liberal bias?
For an answer, let’s look at examples of how this newspaper covers the news, which is the same way that almost all big-city dailies cover the news—namely, according to a formula taught in journalism schools, which of course don’t have a liberal bias (wink, wink).
– In a story earlier this year about proposed cuts in state spending, this newspaper quoted 12 people who were either government employees or on the public dole. It did not quote one taxpayer who was in favor of the cuts. Could it be that in a state of five million people, there is not one person who thinks that state spending is too high?
– A more recent story on proposed early childhood development programs followed the same formula. It only quoted individuals and advocacy groups that were in favor of the government indoctrinating kids at an even earlier age. It made no mention of scholarly studies and groups that question the value of such programs.
– Many ”news” stories on public education continue to say that the state ranks 48th in education spending. True to form, the stories quote the head of the teacher union but ignore the reputable studies that have called the statistic a canard.
– Coverage of light rail continues to conveniently overlook the fact that riders of the system will get a subsidy of over $8 per ride from non-riders. That means that an employee of this newspaper who commutes to and from work by light rail over a 25-year career will receive a taxpayer subsidy of over $100,000.
– The Goldwater Institute gets a ”conservative” label, but the liberal Morrison Institute and the leftist Children’s Action Alliance are left label-free. Reporters justify the disparate treatment by the fact that the Goldwater Institute admits that it is conservative but the other two organizations do not admit their ideology. In other words, deviousness is rewarded if it comes from the left.
Does this newspaper and other mainstream media have a liberal bias? Let me bite that left hand. Chomp, chomp. Of course they do, because their reporters do.
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Mr. Cantoni is an author, public speaker and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
Are the homeless and panhandlers visible in your community? I don’t mean behind the gates. I mean in are they visible in your general area of commuting, shopping, etc? Here are some excellent thoughts about how we help or hurt them with our ”chosen methods” of assistance.
If World Magazine or their weblog isn’t a part of your regular reading, cancel your subscription to Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report or People, Rolling Stone or Vanity Fair and subscribe to World. You’ll be glad you did.
Do you know about w3schools.com? I don’t recall hearing about it, though I admit some of the tips and suggestions people have given me over the past couple of years have gone under-explored. Scrolling through Rebecca Blood’s site this morning, I stumbled across it.
If you’re interested in standards-based web design, take a look!
With way too much work to do, a long-time business-partner who is seriously ill and pressures mounting, I’ve fallen way behind in my usual, daily reading list. However, needing a bit of peace, I’ve turned to some inspirational sites.
If you haven’t been reading the Real Live Preacher’s version of the Christmas Story, you can find the installments with these links:
Nick Bradbury has moved FeedDemon out of the ’beta’ and ’release candidate’ mode and into release 1.0. There’s a trial version available that will give you 30 uses of the product before it expires. I purchased mine last night at the introductory price of $29.95.
According to Digital Photography Review, Canon is going to introduce 20 new (compact) digital cameras during 2004. If you’ve been shopping and find the choices bewildering, it will get worse!
A voracious blob is devouring the nation of its self-reliance, common sense, wealth, competitiveness and freedom. But because it is amorphous and insidious, Americans do not realize how big the blob is and what a threat it is to their standard of living and way of life.
What is the blob, or Blob? The Blob is government bureaucracy and its bureaucratic offspring in the private-sector. Yes, something as boring and seemingly innocuous as bureaucracy is indeed a major threat to the future of the nation.
How big is the Blob? Well, because it is amorphous, its dimensions cannot be determined with accuracy. However, we can discern some of its features.
For example, we know that there are 21 million government employees at the federal, state and local levels. We know that there are 1.4 million words in the Internal Revenue Code, over 100,000 pages of Medicare regulations, and 676 pages to the Medicare reform bill recently signed by President Bush—to identify just a tiny fraction of the Blob.
We know from reliable think tanks that the cost of federal and state regulations is $1.6 trillion, or 17.2 percent of national income. Moreover, we know that Americans have to work until July 11, or 53 percent of the year, to pay the cost of government and the cost of regulations.
We know that the Blob has put American manufacturing at a serious competitive disadvantage in world markets. A recent report released by the National Association of Manufacturers and the Manufacturers Alliance shows that the United States has higher manufacturing costs than all major competing countries but Germany, largely due to the cost of regulations, lawsuits and health care. Of course, health care costs are high because the Blob destroyed a consumer market in health insurance 60 years ago.
We know that U.S. manufacturing employment has plummeted to a record low of 12 million workers while government employment has skyrocketed to a record high of almost twice as much. We know that private-sector union membership also has plummeted while public-sector union membership has skyrocketed to become one of the largest special-interest groups in local and national politics.
We know that many of the fastest-growing and highest-paying occupations in the private sector have been spawned by the Blob to cater to the Blob, including millions of accountants, lawyers, consultants, administrators and lobbyists.
We know that professions like personnel (human resources) used to help people and organizations become more productive. Now personnel people are de facto agents of the government, spending much of their time feeding reports to the Blob to keep it from devouring their companies.
It is not a coincidence that the more that the Blob has infiltrated the work place, the less caring the work place has become. Nor is it a coincidence that the largest human resources association, the Society for Human Resource Management, has grown in lockstep with the growth in work place regulations, so that it now has over 130,000 members. Other professional associations that cater to the Blob have seen similar growth and have just as many or more members.
We know that many of the Blob’s de facto agents in the private sector are Republicans. Because they make a living by catering to the Blob, they have been co-opted politically and no longer support the conservative principle of limited government.
Legislation like the recent Medicare reform bill is manna from heaven to the Blob’s many agents, who will be paid handsomely to interpret the gobbledygook that fills the bill’s 676 pages, including such indecipherable wording as the following:
”(a) Exclusion From OPD Fee Schedule – Section 1833(t)(1)(B)(iv) (42 U.S.C. 13951(t)(B)(iv)) is amended by inserting before the period at the end of the following: ’and does not include screening mammography (as defined in section 1861 (jj)) and diagnostic mammography.’”
We know that interpreting such gobbledygook is make-work, not real work. It is work that does nothing to make the nation more competitive and productive. In fact, it makes the nation less competitive and productive, for it has shifted some of the best and brightest Americans from producing goods and services of value to untangling red tape.
We know that about 25 million Americans are employed either directly by the Blob as government workers or indirectly as private-sector agents. Assuming an average pay and benefits package of $40,000 per worker, the Blob’s payroll totals $1 trillion, a staggering number that excludes the cost of office space, office equipment, travel expenses and other overhead necessary to support all of the Blob’s employees and agents.
We know that while our Blob is getting bigger, the Chinese, who had a blob beyond belief under communism, have put theirs on a severe diet. The Chinese now have more freedom than us in K-12 education and health care.
We also know that the Blob consumes something more valuable than money, time and talent. It consumes America’s entrepreneurial spirit, self-reliance, freedom and common sense. We cannot measure the loss of these things, but we have plenty of examples to show that the loss is huge.
My personal example is the 60 hours that I have spent since my father’s death six months ago filling out forms and speaking with his attorney and accountant. Thankfully, he had his assets in a trust that went to my mother, thus keeping her out of probate court and keeping the tax man at bay. But even with that, the regulatory maze has been a nightmare. Sadly, a man cannot leave his money to his family without his family jumping through regulatory hoops, and without high-paid agents taking large chunks of it for themselves in fees so that the government doesn’t take larger chunks.
Even intelligent, educated people do not understand why the Blob is growing. For example, author Diane Ravitch recently published her very disturbing book, The Language Police, which explains in horrifying detail how textbooks, curricula and tests have been censored by crackpot special interest groups and stripped of meaning, historical accuracy and intelligence. Yet as a former assistant secretary of research in the U.S. Department of Education, she advocates more educational authority being centralized in Washington.
Arrrrrgh! It makes me scream. Can’t she see that centralization makes it easy for crackpot special interests to get a small cadre of faceless bureaucrats to engage in censorship and issue diktats that affect 280 million people?
We know that most Members of Congress are attorneys and have never worked at the bottom of large organizations. Apparently, neither has Ms. Ravitch.
If she had worked, let’s say, at the bottom of a company of 20,000 employees, she would know how out of touch the executives at the top can become, and how powerless and frustrated the employees at the bottom can become over the inane policies issued by the top. Now multiply the inanity, powerlessness and frustration by a factor of 14,000, and you’ll get an idea of the Blob’s impact on the average citizen.
Why 14,000? Because the nation is 14,000 times larger in terms of population than a company of 20,000 employees. Thus, it stands to reason that politicians and bureaucrats at the top of the nation will be 14,000 times more out of touch than the executives and bureaucrats at the top of a 20,000-employee company. But that doesn’t stop them from issuing diktats about how much water a toilet should hold in Peoria, Illinois.
We are stuck in a vicious cycle. The more bureaucratic that the nation becomes, the more important that make-work becomes. The more important that make-work becomes, the more important that people who do the make-work become. The more important that people who do the make-work become, the more that government and industry are run by lawyers, accountants and bureaucrats. And the more that people in such professions run government and industry, the more bureaucratic that government and industry become.
That explains why so many government and business leaders only see the upside of centralizing authority to gain economies of scale. They seldom see the downside. For instance, there is a movement in Arizona to consolidate school districts into mega-districts in order to save money on purchases and overhead. But the advocates, most of whom have never done real work, do not see the impossible-to-measure impact that centralization will have on employee flexibility, innovation, accountability, morale and productivity. Nor do they see how centralization will make parents even less able to influence what is taught in their neighborhood school. And for sure, they are not aware that most mega-mergers in industry have not lived up to their rosy expectations.
In conclusion, can the Blob’s growth be stopped? No, it’s too late. Too many influential people get their power, wealth and status from catering to the Blob.
What’s the answer, then? There are two answers: First, start investing your money in countries with smaller blobs; and second, make sure that your kids become lawyers or accountants instead of doing real work for a living.
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The author of a book on bureaucracy and a former executive of manufacturing companies, Mr. Cantoni is a columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT).
As of noon yesterday a project I’ve been deeply involved with shifted from being one about cost variations to ”hurry, we must know what we’ve run out of by Monday!”
We were already trying to change all four tires at 85mph. Now, we’re going to try to do it hastily.
A piano teacher stood before a Sunday School department that was having a Christmas party and luncheon. The teacher had been invited along with one of her adult piano students. The student was now being introduced by the teacher as someone who gave as much back in inspiration as she took away in new music knowledge.
The teacher mentioned a time when one of her daughters was quite young, but recognized just how much the relationships between teacher and growing pianists meant. The insightful child said, ”Momma, I think God picks every one of your students just for you.”
The teacher related how she had reflected upon that many times. Over the years she realized that it was true. Sometimes God had sent a student because He knew this teacher could provide just what that particular student needed at that time in their lives. At other times, God put the teacher and student together because of something this student could bring into the teacher’s life.
Her adult student performed beautifully. Afterwards, one of the Sunday School class members who was also a biology professor at the local university remarked, ”That was an interesting story you told as part of your introduction. It’s nice that God selects your students for you. He can’t do that for me because I have over 300 students in some of my classes.”
The wise piano teacher smiled as she said, ”You know, you’re probably right. I bet several of those students just sneak into each class without God knowing they’re there.”
Looking suddenly puzzled and taken aback, the biology prof mumbled, ”Uh, I need to think about that.”
Trust me. Three hundred isn’t a challenge for God!
Long hours of intense project work lie ahead. We received the information required to complete a major project yesterday and will now go into deep seclusion to finish the work.
If days get skipped here, or if posting seems a little nonsensical, rest assured we’ll come back stronger when the work is done.
Just know that in the worst of all circumstances, it could be mid-January, 2004 before that happens. Under the best of all circumstances, we’ll be dropping something in here fairly routinely, but with no depth at all.
Never think for one moment that the people who read and write the Internet represent a valid statistical sample of the American voters. Jay Allen links us to why that’s the case.
As I reported earlier this week, we’re under a bit of year-end stress right now, so updates to the rat race for sophisticates – known as the Rodent Regatta – have been infrequent.
I’m doing work I don’t know how to do against a deadline that might be unattainable even by someone who knows how to do what I’m trying to get done. It’s all good, because apart from the deadline and the pressure, I’m enjoying the work.
We’ll post a bit more tonight and during the weekend.
Here’s the kind of thought process we’re going to be exposed to in every form of media for the next year. Here it is again. Blah…blah…blah… Democrats care about our country …blah…blah…. Republicans don’t …blah! I wonder how these folks feel when a liberal compares the two campaigns.
Expect some light days of posting between now and the middle of January. Planets, circumstances and client demands are aligned in just the way required to pull me under. You’ll see some activity here, so don’t give up.
There will definitely be some days when the rat race slows the Regatta!
If you write your weblog using Movable Type, you need to read Jay Allen’s latest entry. I’ve been using his product for some time now and really like it. I haven’t tried either of the ”updaters,” opting instead for manual updates. If you’re not participating in this effort by using comment spam protection and the comment spam clearinghouse, take another look.
I can only imagine how long it must have taken to assemble what amounts to a single weblog entry. Read carefully and you’ll find a wealth of resources and information at your fingertips.
I want to be able to convert a pdf file into a doc file. Why? Often I find a document style or layout that I like. I want to be able to produce future work using a similar style. Is there a way to convert a pdf file to a Word document along with all of the style and formatting information?
Second, I want to be able to produce a pdf file from an Excel spreadsheet or a Word document and sometimes even a text file.
Does the whole world know the economical secrets to these two tricks or must I buy one or more of these Adobe Acrobat products? Is there something comparable to Acrobat 6.0 Professional as there is between Photoshop Elements and JASC Paint Shop Pro?
I think time will tell this tale, but for now, if you’re a Dean supporter, you may want to read this. Note some of the comments as well. People are as sharply-divided and as indignant as I can ever recall.
There’s a long entry with updates concerning digital cameras, web-journalism, video file formats and shopping advice at InstaPundit. I like this quote from Glenn Reynolds: ”...an essential characteristic of a web-journalism tool is extreme mobility.”
Overhearing me complaining about taxes, my 12-year-old son said, ”Pretty soon they’ll start taxing trees.” I responded, ”Well, Chris, they already do. For instance, if you owned apple trees and sold the apples, you’d pay a tax.” He replied with the wisdom of a seventh-grader: ”Then I wouldn’t grow apples.”
Not wanting to discourage him from studying and trying to become a contributing member of society, I didn’t tell him about all of the taxes heading his way because of the profligate spending of today’s adults and their duly elected representatives—taxes that he will not avoid by not growing apples.
At least Chris won’t have to study indentured servitude in school, because he’ll experience it firsthand when he enters the work force and forks over more than half of his earnings to the government to pay for current government services plus the entitlement bills and deficit spending of the preceding generation. To compare, serfs in Medieval days forked over about a third of their crops and livestock to the Lord of the Manor.
It is said that the cost of liberty is high. But if it gets much more costly, we won’t be free. Over half of Bush’s huge increase in government spending has nothing to do with national security. Consider the following ghastly numbers:
– Current federal spending is $20,000 per household, the highest level since the Second World War, in constant 2003 dollars. On average, each household pays a whopping $16,780 in federal taxes, which leaves a deficit of $3,520 per household to be paid in the future.
– The above numbers do not include state and local spending and the hidden cost of regulations. When those are added, the total cost of government is over $28,000 per household.
– It is not surprising that the most socialized segments of the economy, health care and K-12 education, have seen the largest cost increases. Federal spending on education has increased 65 percent since 2001. Federal health spending has increased as follows: Medicaid, 24 percent; Medicare, 12 percent; and other health programs, 32 percent. The states have also seen huge increases in spending on health care and education.
– When my son reaches the age of 39 and is earning, let’s say, $80,000 (in constant 2003 dollars), he will pay $12,240 in payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, assuming that today’s rate of 15.3 percent doesn’t increase. But it will increase, because he will have to pay an additional $3,980 per year just to cover the shortfall in Medicare bequeathed him by previous generations. That comes to $16,220 in total.
– If Chris were to be allowed to keep the $16,220 and invest it, he would have a nest egg of $1,360,000 in 30 years, assuming an annual compound rate of return of 6 percent. If he were to earn a return of 10 percent, which is slightly less than the average return of the stock market over the last 30 years, his nest egg would be almost $3 million.
– The NEA and AARP are two of the most powerful shakedown artists, er, lobbies, in the nation. If they remain powerful, my son will pay even more than what his mom and dad currently pay in tributes to the teacher union and seniors.
– Chris said that he wouldn’t grow apples, but he may want to reconsider. Federal agricultural subsidies increased 76 percent over the last five years. Maybe the government will pay him to grow apples and let them rot on the ground. He could throw the rotton apples at greedy geezers, thieving teacher unions and plundering politicians.
As the foregoing shows, stealing has become as American as apple pie. Don’t tell my son or he may not want to do anything productive with his life.
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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
Thanks to Dane Carlson, we’ve got a pointer to www.dnsstuff.com. Finally, all in one place, the tools needed to tinker with networks the way they must be tinkered with to make them work.
I graduated from Mississippi State University. I’ve been a loyal supporter of the university for many years.
With that information solidly on the table, I have a few questions. Why can we investigate, arrest, conduct a trial, convict, sentence and begin a criminal’s imprisonment in less time than we can do similarly in the area of recruiting violations? Here’s what’s got me confused:
Mississippi State has been cooperating with the NCAA and assisting with the investigation for the past 2 1/2 years, the university said in a release.
There were no allegations of academic misconduct or of lack of institutional control, the most serious charge that could be brought by the NCAA.
In March, Mississippi State received a preliminary letter of inquiry from the NCAA which said it was looking into the possibility of those types of violations.
Please understand, I’m not suggesting for a moment that I have any clue as to whether the school, alumni, coaches or anyone else did anything wrong. What fries me is how long it takes the NCAA to do anything. Remember this one?
The other annoyance in all of this is that the penalties, whatever they turn out to be, will be imposed on a new coach and team members who were not at the school during most of the violations alleged.
If you haven’t been able to get started this fine Monday morning, this will certainly do one of two things. It will make you blow off the rest of the day in a full-tilt rant about politics in the USA; or, it will activate, energize and motivate you to get busy working for and talking about what you really believe about the state of this nation and how each of us can have a part in preserving what the Founders intended.
What’s unfortunate is that this is the way that the Democratic National Committee has determined that it wants to act. Otherwise, why would they have their Treasurer focusing on such absurdities?
Many months ago, I got caught up in a debate regarding ”funky” RSS feeds. I asked a question, never got an answer and then watched some enormous amount of time and energy get expended in the creation of some new type of weblog syndication technology. It, after much additional debate, got named Atom. I haven’t followed the daily ups and downs.
This morning I read this. Perhaps one the presentations mentioned will explain what it is, where it stands, whether the ”average” weblog author can use it, etc.
Isn’t it amazing that big media is wrong when your candidate is inaccurately portrayed, but the opposing candidate is wrong when big media distorts something meaningless?
They get it right when reporting on the opponent. They get it wrong when reporting on your guy.
Several of you noted that I’ve inquired about Shirley Kaiser in the past few weeks. In the wee hours this morning, I discovered this entry at Brainstorms and Raves.
Public speaking and writing a newspaper column on public policy issues have introduced me to a new branch of economics: Marxicon economics. It is a bizarre combination of Marxism and free-market capitalism that is embraced by a large number of conservatives.
A case in point:
I recently shared the dais at a meeting of conservatives with British historian David Irving, who has been both praised and vilified for his books on the Second World War and the Holocaust. He spoke about his books, and I spoke about the new Medicare bill.
Both of us had a similar sub-theme: that governments, including democracies, engage in propaganda to further the interests of those in power. My example was Health Savings Accounts, which Republicans are touting as a free-market provision in the new Medicare bill.
To show why it is not a free-market provision, I read excerpts from the 676-page bill, a bill that probably few members of Congress or journalists have read in its entirety. Written in a stultifying bureauclese that will keep judges, lawyers, tax attorneys, accountants, lobbyists, benefits consultants, financial advisors and government bureaucrats fully employed for decades, the bill is replete with wage and price controls, onerous reporting requirements, special considerations for favored political groups, and handouts for large corporations. It is the antithesis of a free market.
Worse, in a propaganda ploy, the bill pretends to be giving taxpayers something when in actually it continues the government’s practice of taking much more away than it gives. For instance, Health Saving Accounts will let Americans save money on a tax-free basis for health care expenses, after paying tributes to accountants, benefit consultants and others to interpret the legislation, which has more red tape than a manufacturer of Christmas ribbons.
But here is the rub: None of this would be necessary if the government did not tax retirement savings at all. The government is not being munificent by allowing us to save a portion of our savings on a tax-free basis through Health Savings Accounts, Medical Savings Accounts, 401(k) plans, SERPs, SIIPs, Flexible Spending Accounts, Rabbi trusts and various other mutations of the tax code. It is being confiscatory by taxing our income and then taxing the investment returns on what we save for retirement out of the balance. Contrary to what most Americans and the ignorant media believe, letting us keep a little of OUR money from the tax collector is not munificence.
Anyway, during the question-and-answer period at the end of Irving’s and my remarks, a conservative in the audience asked the kind of question that I have learned to expect from conservative audiences: ”Craig, what do you propose that we do about the obscene profits of drug companies?”
Marxicon economics had reared its intellectually inconsistent head and presented me with a speaker’s dilemma. Should I disembowel the questioner in public or answer in a way that would not turn the audience against me? I chose the latter course and answered as follows:
”Good question. It’s something that I would be happy to debate with you after the meeting, but your question raises the question of how ’obscene’ would be defined and who would define it. Also, if we accept that the role of government is to put a limit on drug company profits, then what would stop the government from putting a lid on the profits of any other company or on what you can earn as an individual?”
With that, historian David Irving jumped in with his British perspective, proving that someone can be an expert in one area and the opposite in another. He said that he agreed with the questioner.
I responded to David with a question: ”David, what has happened to the British pharmaceutical industry under nationalized health care?” He stammered a non-answer answer.
Of course, what has happened is that the industry has declined because it could no longer attract the capital to invest in research and development and produce lifesaving drugs at a price to provide investors with a satisfactory return on their investment and to compensate them for the risk of losing their money.
It is not unusual to encounter socialism among Europeans. Sadly, it is no longer unusual to encounter a mutant version of socialism, Marxicon, among American conservatives.
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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
People who read this stuff regularly know that I’m a conservative who is terribly frustrated with career politicians at the local, state and Federal levels. You’ll also recognize that one question remains out there, unanswered by Democrats or Republicans. In short form the question is, ”How much is enough?” The longer variation is, ”What do you believe is the appropriate percentage of every dollar I earn from any source that should be provided to the government in taxes including car tags, wheel taxes, driver’s licenses, property taxes, sales taxes, income taxes, social security taxes and all other forms of taxes and fees confiscated by the government?”
There is not a candidate in next year’s Presidential race who has answered or is prepared to answer this question. There is not a person who has run for office in the past thirty years who can answer that question. No one is prepared to boil the Federal budget down to something that could be understood or managed like the income and expenses of any other entity complying with GAAP standards.
I know I need a good handbook or course in civics. I’m quite sure – at a detailed level – that I have no idea how things got the way they are or why. Who handles Social Security – what department? Who’s got Medicare? There ought to be a one-to-one relationship between line items for departments and people around the conference table at a cabinet meeting. Reports of income and outgo ought to foot and cross-foot correctly. (Those are old bookkeeping terms for you Democrats out there!)
For starters, I want to see a pie chart. I want that pie chart divided into slices based upon all the money sent to the Federal government in all forms. I want to see operating budgets for the President and the White House, the Vice President, the Cabinet, the Supreme Court and Congress. In other words, the pie chart represents the cost or expenses associated with running each of these offices or departments and all the ”services” they claim to provide. A performance ratio ought to be the cost of the services delivered divided by the total budget of the department. Higher is better and means less ”government friction” scraping off money into the system.
The pie chart should show ALL the money. There should be no other money with any other label such as ”off-budget” or similar chicanery. From there every dime spent should be questioned. Some departments should be shut down completely.
The total of all the slices – the whole pie – should be the budget of the USA. Someone show me that. Show me that kind of thinking in the creation of a national spending and taxation plan. Manage this country’s finances in a way that the nation’s taxation and spending can be understood by anyone who has ever sat at a lemonade stand.
Here’s just one example of where the problems begin:
The President and Congress determine how much money they expect the Government to receive in each of the next several years, where it will come from, and how much to spend to reach their goals—goals for national defense, foreign affairs, social insurance for the elderly, health insurance for the elderly and poor, law enforcement, education, transportation, science and technology, and others.
What if they’re wrong about what they ”expect” to receive? Nobody budgets that way. They should ask, ”how do we spend 10% less next year and improve the services we provide?” Absent what I’m suggesting, we wind up with a national situation that looks exactly like California’s situation, only there will be more zeroes.
Here’s another example of a problem:
The 2004 Budget was transmitted to Congress on February 3, 2003 and covers the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2003.
Let me be the first to suggest that you not wait until early May of next year before preparing your 2004 spending plan!
Clearly, there are excuses and reasons for the way the process has become distorted. Bureaucracy and size are two of the reasons. It’s time to get serious about solving the problems. That won’t happen with more career politicians interested only in preserving the status quo. It won’t change with strident campaign slander and rhetoric. It won’t change with this guy shooting his mouth off either!
The sadness is real for many Americans on this day. Perhaps, it is not so real for the Internet generation.
Maybe we’ve lost the ability to hand down history without revising, extending and altering it.
All I know is that the next Presidential election might be the most important one since the founding of this nation. On that election turns the very fate of a nation. Our existence as an experiment in what it means to be a democratic republic could hinge on who we pick to lead.
* * UPDATE * * * Contrary opinions are fine and the comments are welcome. Critical comments substantiated with facts are fine. Comments laced with opinions that are not supported by facts or that have disrespectful treatment of a person, our nation or what it means to be a patriotic American will be deleted.
Why? Because we make the rules here, and being disrespectful breaks most of them.
This may have been the biggest weekend for spam that I recall. While I haven’t been measuring carefully, it seems to me that from around 5p.m. on Friday to 7a.m. on Saturday, I often see 175 to 250 emails. Yesterday, I found roughly 390 emails in my spam folder.
Since then, it has only gotten worse. In less than an hour this morning, I got 57 emails which were spam. Fortunately, ELLA is capturing all of them; but, even in an era when the cost of bandwidth is falling, the enormous waste is mind-boggling.
Ian’s Messy Desk is on my regular reading list. A couple of entries caught my eye, and they might be of use to some who are new to weblogs and to the possibilities of the Internet. First, is an entry titled Tip#88 The 101 Things Mozilla Can Do That IE Cannot. Within that entry you’ll find the link to the complete list of 101 things.
The second entry takes you to plenty of useful links for learning about weblogs. Remember, weblogs aren’t mere vanity sites any more; they’re viable tools for lots of business, professional and serious communication needs.
Among the dozens of improvements and additions that people are hoping for in Movable Type Pro or a new version of Movable Type, there can only be one number one priority. That has to be spell-check. I’m a decent speller. In the haste of thinking and typing, I type the wrong letters.
Finding a typo or spelling error a day later is the worst. I want these entries spell-checked right before they are posted. All other new features will be bonuses if we get a spell-checking feature.
”In the military, there are no excuses-the consequences of not being at the right place at the right time can be disastrous,” Cohen says. Therefore, the military always focuses on a customer-centric performance metric. ”I think the commercial world often loses sight of the end customer.”
It comes from Morris Cohen a professor in the Operations and Information Management Department at Wharton.
Tolerance and dogma. Doctrine and freedom. Conservative and liberal. Fundamental and advanced. Works and faith. Judgment and grace. Justice and mercy.
What do these pairs of ”opposing words” have in common? They describe the debate that has long raged among people of faith. No one has been able to resolve a single one of the debates in anything resembling a conciliatory way.
Churches split. Denominations split. Denominations look down on other denominations. Religious leaders rationalize their own public ridicule of other leaders. People fight, persecute and die over matters of religious doctrine and disputes.
There is a constant through it all. God saw the fall of the Roman Empire. God saw His creation. God saw the fall from the garden. God saw Presidents assassinated. God saw the Crusades.
God sees the crimes of Islamic fundamentalists. God sees the Massachusetts legislature. God sees our elections. God sees our leaders.
God sees the scientists studying things we couldn’t imagine even ten years ago. God sees our ethical dilemmas. God knows our hearts. God understands a nation’s debts. God sees our sickness, our confusion, our worries and our dreams.
God also sees two of His people wrestling with their own attempts to understand and communicate God’s love to a needful world. If you read this, you’ll understand how one of the two men views the work of the other.
Never forget that the God that has seen all of recorded and unrecorded history will still be viewing it long after this country is consumed. Someone said, ”as a commercial culture, we think more about what we buy than what we read.” Never was that statement truer than when it is applied to matters of the faith. In America today it’s also a fitting assessment of so many church-goers. In too many lives the church is merely one part of the shrewd person’s network. Like the business lunch, the country club or the Tuesday night Bunco game, ”church” becomes just one more of the tools of the social climber.
Just remember that while God is viewing history, He also determines how it will play out. The end of recorded history on this earth is uncertain only with respect to a specific date and time. Otherwise, God has given us His creation, His Son and His directives for how we are to live and how we are to treat one another. The judging is His to do.
If you never do anything in the first place, you can pretty much remain anonymous. If you accomplish a little something, you’ll get your fifteen minutes of fame.
If you become a hero of sorts, anonymity flies out the window and it’s as if you have to do less to reclaim it. There are times when even that approach will not free the real celebrity from those who prefer to view achievers rather than achieve.
I don’t read comic strips. Oh, I read the occasional Far Side, BC or Peanuts, and of course Dilbert, but a daily read of the comic strips wasn’t and isn’t in my regimen. However, via Jay Allen’s site, we get a pointer to a story about the creator of a strip called Calvin & Hobbes. His name is Bill Watterson. The story is well worth your time.
You’ve tiptoed into the weblog waters. You read two or three that interest you. What you’d really like to have is some way to read the ones you like when they update, but you have no idea what RSS means or what a news aggregator is.
Maybe blo.gs is a solution for you. Dan Cederholm gives a nice discription of the service at SimpleBits.
...need to broaden your horizons. One way to do that is to read some things that you might ordinarily bypass. The InstaPundit suggests you go vote at Wizbang.
I suggest, while you are there, that you bookmark some of the sites or subscribe to their RSS feeds. If you don’t have an RSS feed reader/news aggregator, get one and tune in. It will become like a customized newspaper to you.
If listening to people argue about the culture wars is growing tiresome, consider checking yourself into the Infinite Hotel. Make certain that you also read the comments. You just might learn something or you might recall something you learned long ago!
One of the influences that caused me to begin this weblog, Dan Bricklin, has a report on a computer scientist who is working on making computers out of biological molecules.
In preparing for 2004, I had anticipated setting up some new categories. One of them was going to be used to separate items related to web design from all the other ”technology” entries.
Well, this entry, called If Filmmakers Were Web Designers II, was just too good to lose in all of the other technology posts, so it gets the distinction of being entry #1 in a new category called ”web design.” Finally, I realize that even the best of the designers recognize that there is more to the work than mere adherence to standards. There’s a subjective side.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t stick to the standards and build an attractive site. You absolutely can.
The liberal media – intent on catching anyone with whom they don’t agree doing something wrong – is reaching new lows.
Did anyone think for an instant that you feed 600 soldiers by carving individual turkeys?
Isn’t grabbing a center-piece and walking around with it fairly consistent with a guy trying to bring some good humor and cheer to a group of people fighting for the principles of freedom?
Are liberals so at a loss for what needs to be said and done that they use a photograph from a Thanksgiving dinner in Baghdad to criticize the leader of the free world?
Answers (for any liberals who might be reading here): No, yes and yes.
* * UPDATE * * * : I just learned that Glenn Reynolds posted an entry about this early this morning. He’s got some other photos, too!
Imagine for a moment that two presidential candidates were on the campaign trail espousing state-sponsored murder, with the Democratic candidate advocating the murder of all heterosexual white males and the Republican candidate advocating the murder of all Hollywood atheists. There would be a moral outrage, and decent citizens would conclude that it would be immoral to vote for either candidate. They would not conclude that it would be moral to vote for the Republican candidate because his platform would result in fewer murders.
Now picture a scene from real life.
Picture presidential candidate Howard Dean and President Bush advocating state-sponsored theft, as both of them do and as virtually every Democratic and Republican politician does. Instead of moral outrage, the candidates receive cheers and are praised in the press as compassionate people. Even self-described conservatives turn out en masse to vote for Bush, justifying their vote on the belief that he advocates less theft than Dean.
Why the difference? Why would there be moral outrage over the advocacy of murder, but there isn’t moral outrage over the advocacy of taking money from some people and giving it to others?
Some might answer that there is not a moral equivalency between state-sponsored murder and state-sponsored theft—that there is not a social good in murder but there is a social good, let’s say, in taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor.
There are two problems with that argument. The first is the fact that most of today’s state-sponsored theft is not limited to taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor—not that taking from the rich and giving to the poor is justifiable. Over half of government revenue is taken from some people and given to other people. It is utter nonsense to believe that all of that redistribution is only going to the poor.
The fact is, there are thousands of government programs that take money from some people and give it to other people, irrespective of whether they are rich or poor. One example is the recent expansion of Medicare, an entitlement that is funded through intergenerational theft. Whether rich or poor, retirees are sending the bill for their health care to future generations.
It is intellectually and morally inconsistent for voters to somehow believe that it is moral for seniors to use the state to steal money from their grandkids but immoral for seniors to sneak into their grandkids’ bedroom and steal their piggybank. Hiring an armed robber to steal on your behalf is just as immoral as doing the stealing yourself. Likewise, voting for a politician to steal on your behalf is just as immoral as hiring an armed robber.
Let’s turn now to the social good argument.
The problem with the argument is that it is a collectivist argument. It places the good of the collective, or society, above the good of the individual. It is not good, for example, for my 12-year-old son to face the prospect of spending much of his working life as an indentured servant of the state, or collective, because of the profligate spending of earlier generations. If you think that his indentured servitude is a social good, then I think that my fist in your face is also a social good.
Today’s convoluted thinking about the social good stems from a concept of society that is embraced by socialists and was foreign to this nation at its founding.
What exactly is this thing called ”society?” It is an abstraction. It is not something tangible like an individual who has certain inalienable rights. Putting the good of an abstraction above the good of real individuals invariably results in individuals losing all or some of their rights.
The dictionary defines society as a nation or a group of people with shared values. But what values? Is it a value in a democracy that the individual is less important than society and thus can have his rights and money taken by the majority? If so, that leaves the individual vulnerable to the whims, passions and self-interest of the majority. The U.S. Constitution was designed to stop the tyranny of the majority.
What about helping the poor? Moral people help those in need, but not by robbing other people. The same holds true for society as a whole. A moral society helps the poor because it consists of moral individuals who help the poor. A society cannot be moral if it consists of immoral individuals who take their neighbor’s money for themselves or for someone else.
Which brings me back to the initial question: Is voting immoral? The answer is yes, if voters vote for something immoral.
Is voting for Democrats and Republicans immoral? The answer is yes, because both parties advocate state-sponsored theft.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
In any other context, this would be seen for what it is—an Orwellian transformation of our culture with religious liberty sacrificed for the sake of a well organized group of moral revolutionaries. But, in our current day of moral revisionism, all this is packaged as the new moral enlightenment.
I’m not smart enough to be enlightened. I’m not smart enough to understand that what I think is decay is actually some great awakening. I’m not smart enough to understand how a nation where anything and everything is okay is different from Sodom and Gomorrah.
This just might be my next toy. Without putting any thought whatsoever into the technical design details of what I’m about to say, I have a suggestion for digital camera makers.
Give us the ability to upgrade the resolution of these cameras in much the same way we can upgrade the memory of them. I don’t want to scrap my camera body annually because the resolution increments by a couple of million pixels every year.
CSS, web design, web standards, XHTML and validation haven’t been on my mind lately. I’ve been writing and posting, but not contemplating much about what makes for valid or well-formed markup.
Every once in a while, Jeffrey Zeldman drops an entry out there that is so full of links to tools and resources, that you can’t help but take notice. Once I do take notice, I realize just how far I’ve got to go before I understand any of this stuff.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who was deeply moved by the way Sylvester Croom handled his introductory press conference at Mississippi State University. ESPN continues to cover the story. In a world of big money sports, fierce competition on every front and repeated scandals, this is a guy you want in charge. He seems to have the perspective that he’s got five years (or less) to influence some 17-and 18-year olds for good. I hope he can retire from Mississippi State in 20 or 30 years a happy man.
Yesterday the President signed a bill that says the government will be spending more money on nanotechnology. At least, I think that’s what it says. Howard Lovy does the best job of covering the story here.
I’m interested in nanotechnology. There was a time when I was very interested in NASA and our manned space flights. The only problem is I’m never completely certain what I think our government (the people in case you’ve forgotten) should be paying for.
LilacRose is learning how to do photo-editing. Next year is my year for this. It’s on the list of goals, tools and skills for 2004.
What is amazing is that she picked such a worthy subject, but she was much too kind to him. This one is worthy of seventh grade treatment with a magic marker – mustache, horns, etc. Why this country has met the needs of so many for almost 230 years, but will never be ”good enough” for this clown is beyond me. Hmmm…clown – big nose, floppy shoes, tearful eyes.
Why must he deface the founding principles, the founding documents and the very definition of one nation, under God? Better still, why can’t this great nation look back at him and say, ”No! If you don’t like it, go found another nation built around the beliefs you espouse.”
World Magazine uses an old story to illustrate the tests that a new constitution will face in Iraq. Think about the differences between those who fled Europe seeking (religious) freedom only to be followed for a time by those they were trying to escape.
Now think about the culture to which a constitution is being added in Iraq. Are the people of Iraq ready for self-government? Can they peacefully work through the issues that we’ve got ”miles of lawyers” working on every day?
This year, close to Christmas, marks the 21st year since my dad passed away. He was my best friend and my strongest ally. Not a day has gone by that I’ve not wished for him in some way.
Those thoughts came flooding back this afternoon when I read one of the recent entries at Frank Patrick’s weblog. Our prayers go out to Frank and his family.
It’s always tough to know how much to discuss between the personal and business arenas where, as Frank calls them, the barriers are often rigid. Frank is an advocate for open, transparent business improvement methods. I think it is safe to say, we need more collaboration, compassion and teamwork in our workplaces and less competition, ranking and judging of team members. We need to understand the things that underpin our interpersonal relationships.
It’s hard to do, but I believe Frank is one of the folks who can do it and can help others do it as well.
Imagine living under this invisible cloud that permits all types of computers and other electronic devices to connect to fast connections to the Internet wirelessly. That’s what wi-fi is.
Here’s an entry over at Wi-Fi Networking News where Cisco says wi-fi’s bugs and security risks have been resolved.
Jonathon Delacour gave me some help when Daughter #1 went to Australia. Things like how to make AC adapters for American appliances work properly in Australia were on my mind.
Today, Jonathon is asking who feels the impact of info-overload and how do you deal with it? Answers: I do and I don’t. I just keep pedaling.
It was the serendipity of the Internet that led me to his entry by way of his mention of the Leica camera.
If you need some help with the introspection it takes to set goals for a new year, take a look at an entry posted on this day last year. Follow the links and you’ll discover how some other people have gone about the process of seeking out their passions.
Wi-Fi Networking News points to a story about another town getting a wi-fi cloud. This time it’s Cerritos, CA, and the installer appears to specialize in wi-fi for municipal users. Reading between the lines, this looks as if it was completely cost-justified because of the needs of city employees, but with a little tweaking, it became a profit-making venture that the entire community could take advantage of.
Weblogs aren’t reserved for pictures of kitties any more. The notion of a ”personal web site” has come a long way. If you still watch Dan Rather and find his reporting insightful and accurate, stop reading and move along. If, on the other hand, you believe the ”big media companies” carry biases and distort their reporting based upon those biases, there’s hope.
A weblog called Right Wing News has lists of so-called warblogs grouped into categories of winners. In the weblog world, a warblog gained that label based upon its focus on national and international political debate at about the time we first began to talk about going to war. Remember, many weblogs sprung up, as did this one, shortly after 9-11-2001.
Anyhow, if you’re trying to learn more about what weblogs are and can be, take a look at some of the award winners at Right Wing News. You might find something more worthy of your time than the 6:00 news!
Finding a truly worthwhile entry first thing in the morning is great. This morning I came across Gary Petersen’s entry titled Great Bible Study Tool.
I read weblogs based upon a set of channel groups that are set up in FeedDemon, my news aggregator. I much prefer to start my day with useful and uplifting information rather than the latest rant on some topic.
During December, we’re going to change things up a bit. You’re going to find some new categories for entries. I’d like to add some additional RSS feeds for the categories. I’ll also be editing the About page to indicate what kinds of things will get attention during 2004. Still learning and improving!
I met someone today. I didn’t get to shake his hand. I didn’t get to see him face to face; but, I felt as though I got to know a bit about him and how he thinks.
He was on the spot. He was being tested. He was being broadcast around the world. Yet, he said, ”it’s not about me.” Too infrequently do we encounter people who honestly say, ”it’s not about me!”
It’s a tough business coaching college football. It’s not the steadiest of career ladders one can climb. Yet, in a few, brief comments, I felt as though we met a winner who could be with us for a long time to come!
If you’ve got time, click on the 30-minute video of Sylvester Croom’s press conference at Mississippi State University.
Under federal rules in place today, VOIP traffic is generally classified as an information service and exempted from the access charges imposed on traditional telecommunications services. With VOIP technology, voice signals can be digitized, broken down and transmitted as ”packets” over IP networks and are, in essence, indistinguishable from other streams of data traffic.
Some industry participants have argued that access charges should be imposed on VOIP traffic, but Crowe said such a move would be ill-conceived.
”Today we have an irrational patchwork, in which charges vary by type of carrier, type of communication, and type of geography,” he said. ”It’s simply not a sustainable system. The commission should make clear as a matter of national policy that the de facto status quo will exist until inter-carrier compensation is addressed broadly.”
I haven’t seen an update at Brainstorms & Raves in quite some time. A couple of weeks ago, I emailed Shirley and I haven’t heard back – not that I’m entitled to a reply, but I was inquiring about her welfare at that time.
There was a time when she posted to and answered questions at the FeedDemon news server. I haven’t checked there, but if any of you know that Shirley is doing fine and is just busy, please add a comment here.
If Shirley is actually reading this, pardon me for being nosey, but you and your work are missed.
Roy Disney and others are leaving the board of directors of Disney. Some are taking pot shots as they go. Let’s keep an eye on how Mr. Buffett views these developments.
Glenn Reynolds (The InstaPundit) has pointed us to some great resources for understanding, learning about and catching up with the debates that are happening in the world of nanotechnology. I cannot help but believe there are phenomenal possibilities underpinning all of the technology that carries the ”nanotech” label. As the debate unfolds, you’ll want to stay tuned, because there’s not a single field of endeavor that wouldn’t be touched by those possibilities.
Career politicians and political operatives have become annoying. On one side is a group that wants more tax dollars, but they won’t say how much of each dollar we earn is enough for the government.
On the other side are those that claim big government is wrong, but they succeed in making it bigger every year.
In protest, we begin electing Jesse, Arnold and, potentially, Kinky.
It is going to be quite a day when we find our traditional politicians standing on the outside looking in and wondering how they lost their jobs. Will Kinky and Barbra be on opposite sides of the aisle?
If you thought your faith was your refuge or your opportunity to commune with God in peace, you might be wrong – or not. Here’s a set of reasons for one group to beat another group over the head with a doctrinal hammer. Oh, how we love to fight about stuff.
”And by the way, do you think it was a coincidence that Bush showed up in Baghdad just hours before Hillary Clinton?” [Dave Winer]
Yes, I do.
And, by the way, do you think it was a coincidence that Hillary would decide to visit the troops at nearly the same time as the President?
No, I think it was cold, calculating politics on her part. In fact, it bordered on being a violation of national security if she learned in advance, in any way, of the President’s trip.
Having received quite a lot of negative email concerning his daily messages, Andrew Tobias has recently gone to a new tactic. He embeds his ultra-liberal, Democratic party message with information that his readers originally signed up for.
Let me explain. Tobias has long been one of the truly terrific writers about anything involving money. Writing in a style that anyone can understand, he explains complex matters in amusing and understandable ways. Often, his messages move beyond money to anything that a reader might find interesting about products and services that are convenient or that save money.
Some years back, Andrew Tobias took on a much more strident tone in his criticism of anyone and everyone who is not a Democrat. So today, we get an interesting (layman’s) guide to how iTunes figures out what’s on a CD. However, it is followed by a rant about some Bush administration policy concerning stem-cell research.
I’ve been browsing the web a bit and have seen some galleries I like. I’m not just talking about the great photos I’ve seen. I’m talking about the way some types of gallery software or gallery scripts seem to work.
One of my favorites involves some type of javascript which runs when you click a link. A photo window opens with navigational links for that particularly gallery.
If anyone is familiar with the tools available for adding those capabilities within a Movable Type weblog, I could use a few pointers.
Politicians, especially Democrats, talk about tax fairness but never talk about tax morality. That’s because their notion of a fair tax is really an immoral tax, for it is based on theft—on some people taking money from other people for themselves. Let’s look at examples of moral and immoral taxes and four principles to use in determining which is which.
The first example is gas taxes. Gas taxes are a moral tax if the revenue is used for roads. The taxes are moral because the users of the roads pay for the cost of the roads and do not take money from nonusers.
On the other hand, gas taxes are an immoral tax if part of the revenue is used to subsidize riders of light rail, as is being done today. It is wrong for mass transit riders to take the money of car drivers and other taxpayers instead of paying the full cost of their ride in fares.
If you think this is a minor matter, think again. Someone who takes the typical light-rail system to work everyday over a 25-year career will receive $100,000 in ”subsidies,” which is a euphemism for ”stolen money.”
Direct taxes and fees are the most moral way of paying for government services, because the users pay directly for the services and cannot stick their neighbor with the bill. An example is a water bill based on household usage. An opposite example is a hidden telephone tax in which city dwellers subsidize the telephone service for expensive vacation homes in rural areas.
This leads to our first principle of taxation:
PRINCIPLE ONE: Direct taxes and fees are the most moral way of funding government services.
Of course, it is not practical to charge citizens directly in taxes or fees for many government services. In such cases, general taxes are necessary, and the following principle applies:
PRINCIPLE TWO: General taxes are moral if they are taken from all citizens in equal proportions and used to the extent practical for the equal benefit of all citizens—for the true general welfare, in other words.
An example of the above principle is taxes for national defense.
Some would argue that taxes that fund what they see as an unjust war are immoral. They would have a point. But in such a case, the war would be immoral, not the taxation. This leads to a third principle:
PRINCIPLE THREE: The morality of taxes should be judged separately from the morality of the use of the taxes.
Applying this principle in the national defense example, the use of the taxes, war, may be immoral, but the taxes are moral, since they do not take money from some citizens for the benefit of other citizens.
Contrast this with Medicare taxes for prescription drugs. In this case, the taxes are immoral, because they are a form of intergenerational theft. They take money from younger generations for the benefit of the retired generation. However, the use of the taxes, buying medicine, is not immoral, for there is nothing wrong with seniors buying medicine.
Similarly, it is moral for citizens to help those in need. Not only that, but a case can be made that it is immoral for someone not to feed the poor and care for the sick. But this is a separate issue from the issue of taxation. Not only is the government lousy at distinguishing the truly needy from the phony needy, but it is not moral for the government to force some citizens to support other citizens through the tax code. Which brings us to our fourth principle:
PRINCIPLE FOUR: Compassion and charity are personal and religious matters, not matters for the tax collector.
Violating the four principles has resulted in over half of government revenue being taken from some citizens for the benefit of other citizens. Politics has become a gigantic Monopoly game in which the objective is to have the government take someone else’s money before the other person has the government take your money. Stated differently, over half of government activity is involved with theft. Thus, the power and reach of government and politicians would be cut at least in half if the four principles were followed.
Violating the principles also has resulted in uneconomic decisions, wasted capital and rising costs. When someone else is picking up the tab, cost is no object to the recipient. It is not a coincidence that the two most socialized areas of the economy, health care and K-12 education, are the most inefficient and costly.
Admittedly, there are gray areas with the principles as there are with any philosophy of government. In such cases, the best course of action is to discuss why the foregoing principles apply or don’t apply, and then to vote on the issue. That is quite different from what happens today, when there is no discussion of guiding principles and voting is based solely on self-interest.
What about public education? Is this a gray area?
The answer is no. Public education taxes are clearly immoral.
Sure, a case can be made that public education benefits all citizens by ensuring an educated populace—that the use of the taxes is moral. However, the ugly fact is that the taxes are immoral, for they are based on theft, and a huge theft at that.
Take two families with four school-age kids. Let’s say that Family A will pay $80,000 in public school taxes over a lifetime; Family B, $100,000. The kids of Family A attend public school, for a cost to the school district of $400,000 for 12 years. The kids of Family B attend parochial school, because their parents want to exercise their right of religious freedom and pay dearly to exercise that right.
Under this very real scenario, Family A gets a fivefold return on taxes (ROT), because it will pay $80,000 in taxes for a $400,000 benefit. Family B gets a thoroughly rotten ROT of zero, although it is saving the school district $400,000 on top of paying taxes of $100,000, for a net benefit to the district—and indirectly to Family A—of $500,000.
There are a number of practical ways of eliminating or at least reducing public education theft: 1) Users of public schools could pay a direct tuition to use the schools; 2) states could issue education vouchers to be used at the school of one’s choice, public or private; or 3) private school parents and homeschoolers could get a tax credit for the public school taxes that they pay while their kids attend private school or are homeschooled.
Of course, those who take other people’s school tax money would whine about the unfairness of the three options. Which leads me to conclude with the following tax maxim, or ”taxim” for short:
TAXIM: Citizens who take other people’s money always say that it is unfair to stop them from stealing.
Don’t believe the taxim? Listen to Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of HAALT. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
U.S. Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ) was one of the conservative holdouts on the Medicare bill who ended up voting yes after being pressured by President Bush and other Republicans. On a radio show with me after the vote, he tried to justify his vote by saying, among other things, that the bill’s provision for Health Savings Accounts is a free-market innovation.
Congressman Franks and other Republicans have a strange definition of ”free market.” Of course, Democrats have always been clueless.
HSAs are about as ”free market” as industry was in the Third Reich. When Hitler was asked why he didn’t nationalize German industry, he replied that he didn’t have to, because he controlled the industrialists. Similarly, HSAs will be controlled by the government.
The government is pretending to be benevolent and munificent by allowing citizens to save a portion of their income on a tax-free basis for their future health care expenses. In reality, Uncle Sam is confiscating our income and our savings in taxes and then letting us have a little of our money back. It’s akin to an armed robber who takes your wallet, watch and car, and then decides to let you keep the watch. Only a moron would say, ”Thank you, generous thief, for giving me such a nice watch.” And only an economics ignoramus would call such an exchange a free market.
Sadly, there are a lot of morons and ignoramuses in America, thanks to government schools, which are not about to teach students about free markets, economics and how the government deceives the public into thinking that it is giving them something when it returns a small part of what it takes.
Income is taxed twice in America—once when earned and once again when saved. And those who live below their means and save money are penalized in other ways. Because of progressive taxation, entitlements and other forms of income redistribution, they are forced to support those who live beyond their means and don’t save money. The construction worker who buys a Hyundai every 10 years ends up having his savings taken by the government and given to the construction worker who buys a fancy extended-cab pickup truck every two years. Democrats call this social justice. Republicans call this free markets. I call it stealing.
When there was a lot less government stealing in the early 20th century, there was a lot more saving. And because there was a lot more saving, a lot more capital was available for investments in industry, jobs and productivity improvements—in the things that grow and economy and improve the standard of living.
Today, we have a disincentive to save because the government taxes the hell out of savings. Worse, we have become so morally bankrupt that we are taxing children who don’t vote and are not of working age. For example, we are sending a $20 trillion bill for today’s entitlements to future generations.
Merry Christmas, kids.
Chew on these numbers: If the projected revenue shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare were paid off today, the government would have to seize half the nation’s household wealth or increase the payroll tax to 22.4 percent. Of course, we’re not going to pay off the shortfalls today. Instead, we’re going to send the shortfalls to our kids and turn them into indentured servants of the state.
Shame on us.
Many Republicans favor HSAs and their tax-code cousin, 401(k) plans, because many Republicans are CPAs, tax attorneys, benefits consultants, stock brokers, financial advisors and human resources managers. Instead of doing productive work that grows the economy and closes our trade deficit, they will make money from deciphering HSA regulations, just as they have earned a nice income from deciphering 401(k) legislation.
The following is an example of what the six-figure-income decipherers will be deciphering in the HSA legislation:
”(h) EXCEPTION FROM CAPITALIZATION OF POLICY ACQUISITION EXPENSES.—Subparagraph (B) of section 848(e)(1) of such Code (defining specified insurance contract) is amended by striking ”and” at the end of clause (iii), by striking the period at the end of clause (iv) and inserting ”, and”, and by adding at the end the following new clause: (v) any contract which is a health savings account (as defined in section 223(d)).”
Incidentally, the legislation will follow you to the grave. For example:
”(I) REDUCTION OF INCLUSION FOR PREDEATH EXPENSES.—The amount includible in gross income under clause (i) by any person (other than the estate) shall be reduced by the amount of qualified medical expenses which were incurred by the decedent before the date of the decedent’s death and paid by such person within 1 year after such date.”
Congressman Franks and others don’t seem to realize is that all of this gibberish, and all of the leeches who feed off the gibberish, would go away if the government would stop taxing people’s savings and start letting them invest their own money as they see fit for their old age. That, Congressman Franks, is not only a free market but also a free country.
I still put the Stars and Stripes in front of my house and am proud of serving my country as a Vietnam-era artillery officer. But my patriotism is for the America of yesteryear, not for the nation of thieves that it has become today.
It is time for lovers of liberty to read the first page of the Declaration of Independence, the page that says what people should do when ”any Form of Government becomes destructive” to liberty. Hint: It does not say to vote for Health Savings Accounts.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
He had to know the opportunity was coming. Assuming an offer was made on Friday, what are the factors that must be reviewed to come up with a decision.
Is the NFL job on ”auto-pilot?” Is the college job too much work? When I was considering some candidates, Croom looked like a perfect fit.
With Stoops now headed to Arizona, Jimbo Fisher (apparently) staying put in Baton Rouge and no other names mentioned, we’ll have to see how Arizona’s turnaround compares to Mississippi State’s. So, in November or December of 2003, both schools change coaches after several consecutive losing seasons. How will they compare in 12, 24 and 36 months?
Joe Ely has been drawing analogies between the practical items we see and use every day and the theories that make up an improvement methodology known as lean thinking or lean production or lean manufacturing.
He’s found one of the best illustrations of a lean system in his refrigerator.
Everybody knows that you really shouldn’t decorate for Christmas until after Thanksgiving. Doesn’t everybody know this? Isn’t that a rule or something?
If not, it ought to be. There should also be a rule about not having Halloween costumes and Christmas decorations on display in a store at the same time.
”You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a firefly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer’s heart.”
I’m on record as saying the President did NOT go to Iraq for political gain. He went for the reasons he said he went. He boosted morale. He showed the Iraqi people our resolve. He showed the terrorists that we can fly one of the biggest airplanes in the world right into Baghdad and move POTUS through the streets.
There are those who simply cannot muster enough patriotism to see that their definitions of ”journalistic responsibility” are flawed. In their minds ”being a reporter” is the highest calling. Yet, callings typically come from God and so many of these people are not only unpatriotic, they are void of anything but faith in themselves. [links from Blog-World Magazine]
The World Magazine Blog is on top of those who are candidates for the worst reporting of the year. A couple of key examples are provided. If these were sports awards, the candidates would be receiving ”Just Shut Up” awards.
I can’t stop reading about the secret trip to Baghdad. It’s appealing to me to learn that we can still keep secrets. I’m not one of the ones who believes that any secret kept is a license to subvert.
Rather, this move to meet the troops for Thanksgiving strikes me as far more of a morale boost and foreign relations gesture than a political maneuver. That’s just me. While I see the by-products of political advantage, I don’t see the move as concocted solely for political gain.
For those who’d like to challenge me on my notions, read this first:
Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue
(The Angry American)
by Toby Keith
American Girls and American Guys
We’ll always stand up and salute
We’ll always recognize
When we see Old Glory Flying
There’s a lot of men dead
So we can sleep in peace at night
When we lay down our head
My daddy served in the army
Where he lost his right eye
But he flew a flag out in our yard
Until the day that he died
He wanted my mother, my brother, my sister and me
To grow up and live happy
In the land of the free.
Now this nation that I love
Has fallen under attack
A mighty sucker punch came flyin’ in
>From somewhere in the back
Soon as we could see clearly
Through our big black eye
Man, we lit up your world
Like the 4th of July
Hey Uncle Sam
Put your name at the top of his list
And the Statue of Liberty
Started shakin’ her fist
And the eagle will fly
Man, it’s gonna be hell
When you hear Mother Freedom
Start ringin’ her bell
And it feels like the whole wide world is raining down on you
Brought to you Courtesy of the Red White and Blue
Justice will be served
And the battle will rage
This big dog will fight
When you rattle his cage
And you’ll be sorry that you messed with
The U.S. of A.
’Cause we’ll put a boot in your ass
It’s the American way
Hey Uncle Sam
Put your name at the top of his list
And the Statue of Liberty
Started shakin’ her fist
And the eagle will fly
Man, it’s gonna be hell
When you hear Mother Freedom
Start ringin’ her bell
And it feels like the whole wide world is raining down on you
Brought to you Courtesy of the Red White and Blue
As State fans despair, Mississippi State is now faced with the withdrawal of one of the (supposed) leading candidates to be the next football coach. Now, everybody seems focused on this guy.
This football program needs a strong leader. It needs a disciplinarian. It needs someone who knows how to instill resilience. The challenge is enormous.
I re-read this about five times. It says what I thought it said the first time through it.
”Here’s the short form of Hutton’s book, published by Norton early in 2003 but largely drowned out by the war drums. ’What happened in the last 25 years is that America’s center of gravity-politically and culturally-has moved to the right. It’s moved the whole international common sense to the right…’”
It’s 4:47 a.m. and I spent about 30 seconds deciding whether or not to get mad about this or go back to bed. I’m going back to bed. Anyone who can look at the past 25 years of American history and find that we’ve moved to the right has probably missed a few episodes of Will & Grace or overlooked a sitting President who chose to thumb his nose at impeachment or…
I’m going back to sleep! I have little tolerance for drivel out of Harvard and London masquerading as deep insight.
At Blogcritics.com is this assessment of President Bush’s trip to Iraq without so much as an invitation to the Democratic candidates or most of the reporters. Don’t get mad – just keep reading!
The tenth annual ranking of the nation’s safest and most dangerous cities is now out and in the news. Morgan Quitno Press in Lawrence, Kansas does the study and announces the awards.
The Morgan Quitno Safest City Award is based on a citys rate for six basic crime categories: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft. All cities of 75,000+ populations that reported crime data to the FBI for the six crime categories were included in the rankings. Final 2002 statistics, released by the FBI on October 27, 2003, were used to determine the rankings.
Memphis is #11 of 350 cities when it comes to most dangerous
Memphis is #4 on the most dangerous list when looking at cities above 500,000 in population
San Jose, Austin, Portland and Seattle rank in the top 10 safest big cities
In a sure sign of measurement weirdness, Memphis did not make any of the 281 spots on the most dangerous metro area list. Strange! In 2002 the metro area was #1 on the list of the most dangerous.
Robert Scoble performed an admirable service when he posted some opinions about how retailing of computer products should be changed. I talked about it here.
A little like political polls where no one you know has been polled, the decisions about how a retail establishment should be designed, trained and provisioned to serve customers are too often made in the ivory tower. Real people with real wishes would steer the ship a different direction!
Were I tasked with the same chore, I’d also point to many of the tools for business improvement (TQM et al). One simplistic, but revealing technique might be done rather quickly. It can be done easily with the individuals on a project team or (less easily) with the team as a group.
You merely ask the ”why” question five times. The probability that you’ll be at or very near root causes after the fifth why is a near certainty. If you do this as a group, it requires some facilitation skills and some ability to synthesize consensus. Done with individuals, it requires some talent in identifying the similarities in the responses from different people.
Fanblogs.com dropped this little number in my news aggregator a little while ago. If true, this means that Tuberville was likely gone even before the outcome of the Iron Bowl. So, the coaches’ revolving door at Auburn will keep on spinning.
Maybe the next Auburn coach needs a clause in his contract that allows him to ban Lowder from all future involvement with the program!
Gizmodo says a company has an RFID tag that they can inject under your skin. Here’s my deal for said company:
You or any customer for your product have the right to inject your RFID transponder under my skin in exchange for your assurance that you or they will pay for my healthcare costs for the rest of my life, no questions asked. I’ll walk around with your little tag, but I want to be paid for all the conveniences it provides to you and the companies who decide to avail themselves of it.
Here’s the start of a nice piece of history about the Thanksgiving holiday. You should read all of it.
The holiday police are at it again—looking for violations of the nation’s new policy of separating faith and civic celebrations. The same folks who will soon be trolling courthouse squares looking for manger scenes are now calling on Americans to have a happy Thanksgiving . . . but leave God out of it.
Thinking about organizing your entries into categories can be carried to whatever level of detail you choose with popular weblog software. I think Tim Bray is suggesting that the reasons for all these categories may not be entirely certain at this point, but there’s sure to be a good justification for it in the future.
Then, read Lunch Insurance, a Cato Institute analysis by Gerald L. Musgrave, Leigh Tripoli, and Fu Ling You. Seriously, what would you eat for lunch if Uncle Sam had you covered?
Last night, as part of a school assignment, I took my son to an exhibit on aviation. There was only one display at the exhibit that spotlighted ethnicity, and true to form, it was about Italians—Italian pilots to be exact. How embarrassing and insulting to feature my ethnic group and no others, as if it was surprising to the organizers of the exhibit that Italians have enough intelligence to fly an airplane.
There was a front-page story the same day about Italians in the Arizona Republic, which is the largest-circulation daily in the Gannett empire next to USA Today. The story was even more embarrassing and insulting than the exhibit. Fortunately, I was able to throw the newspaper away before my son could see it and think that there is something wrong with his ethnic heritage.
The story said that Italians are a minority, because they represent only 6 percent of the United States population, have olive skin, are not Anglo, immigrated to this country speaking a foreign language, and took menial jobs that no one else wanted. It went on to say that Italian students have difficulty adjusting to college life, due to their minority status and due to the fact that they are often the first member of their family to attend college and don’t have anyone to explain the ropes to them. Accordingly, Arizona State University singles them out for special hand holding, apparently assuming, as the organizers of the aviation exhibit did, that all Italians are inherently inferior because of their ethnicity and can’t make it on their own.
Isn’t that the definition of racism? Whatever it is, I find it very troubling that when my son goes to college, he will treated differently, solely because he has a vowel at the end of his name. That’s not why my impoverished grandparents immigrated to this country.
Thank goodness I was not treated differently when I went to college, even though, as the son of working-class parents, I was the first Cantoni to attend college. Had I been singled out, I might have grown up with an ethnic chip on my shoulder and viewed myself as an oppressed minority the rest of my life.
Okay, time to come clean. The exhibit and newspaper story were not about Italians. They were about Hispanics, who outnumber Italians in Arizona by a factor of four but are mislabeled as ”minorities” by the establishment media, the government, corporations and universities.
The question is, why don’t Hispanics feel insulted and embarrassed over being patronized and treated as inherently inferior to other ethnic groups?
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and leader in equal rights for 30 years. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
In a fit of something-or-other I posted a rant yesterday. A book titled Unprepared To Do Business has been in my subconscious for ten or fifteen years now. My experiences trying to talk to the so-called business improvement experts has helped me write no less than three or four more chapters.
Then, this morning I read Robert Scoble’s terrific essay about the retailing of computers, IKEA and how customers really think. It reminds me of the early to mid-1990’s when I was working with pcorder.com (now merged into Trilogy). The goal was to create a sales tool for salespeople who were doing consultative sales with prospects on configured items. From there the goal was to provide a kiosk-like front-end that would prompt the customer through the consultative process.
This whole drill went as far as to determine how quoted products could be compared to sold products at a multi-vendor distributor. From those comparisons, the manufacturers and the distributor could begin to extract demand forecasts. In a world where product allocations were common, the information would have been more valuable than the products sold; at least for a period of time.
Why can’t the sale of all technology be more like the experience at IKEA or an Apple Store? Why can’t a retailer provide a broader selection of products than those selected by the purchasing agent? Why can’t there be an effective answer to the question about differences between $1300 and $3000 laptops?
By the way, how much better is a $3000 laptop than a $1300 one?
* * * UPDATE * * * Robert took the time to address the questions about features, functions and benefits in the pricier laptop computers, even though they were somewhat rhetorical. During the height of the PC distribution industry (circa 1980-1995) I owned one of the PC distribution franchises and later served in an executive capacity with one of the major franchisors. Robert’s advice is right on the mark.
Gizmodo is reporting that Amazon is selling the Treo 600 phone, PDA and camera device for $249 when you activate service with Sprint. This raises the question of number portability. If someone has a Treo 300 with Sprint, can they keep the existing number and move to the new Treo 600?
The final release candidate (i.e. beta software) of FeedDemon 1.0 RC4a is now available for download. Nick Bradbury has done an outstanding job with this product.
If you’re at a loss to know how to use RSS feeds, you might take a look at some of these. They may give you a quick view of just what kinds of sites include RSS and what’s possible.
Dave Winer of Scripting News fame used some of his time in front of a Stanford University classroom yesterday to talk about weblog authors who do not reciprocate when another blogger links to them.
A lot of companies begin and cease with never so much as a clue as to why. The reason is simple most of the time. They are unprepared to do business.
If you open at 8:00 a.m., then be ready to take customer calls at 8:00a.m. If you are a retailer, make sure your clerks know how to make eye contact and say, ”thank you for your business.” While I don’t frequent many drive-thru food lines, the last one I visited had a clerk that was uniquely gifted with an ability to open the window and poke a bag through it without ever looking in the direction of the person to whom they were handing the bag.
Lately, my frustration has been quality and business improvement consultants. Emails, discussion board postings and phone calls to this sorry lot go unanswered. It’s as if they’re afraid someone is going to learn what they know and take business away from them.
But, there’s more to it than that. In too many cases they are as devoid of business excellence as those they criticize.
The ones I’m trying to talk to stand to make some serious money if they simply act interested. The problem is they all have superiority complexes, but without good reason. If they continue to fail in the simple ways of business, their expertise in more complex work will be wasted.
These Six Sigma Black Belts, Lean and Deming experts are acting as if they have the only lifeline to business excellence and success. Yet, many of them wouldn’t know how to make a marketing plan or respond to a sales inquiry if their livelihoods depended on it.
I’m about ready to declare that the consulting methodology elitists are vacuous inbreds who talk only to themselves about how the rest of the business world doesn’t ”get it.” The tools in their toolkits can be learned by anyone. Nevermind their clever little labels and initials for one another. Either they are good business people or they are not. Either they are people of their word or they’re not!
I admit to not knowing much about the details of what Sam Ruby is reporting. I know enough to know that he makes setting up a new server sound awfully easy. It sounds so easy as to be tempting. No, not today, thanks!
Taxpayers are footing the original bill for a town to pay someone to bring in a wireless network. Then, taxpayers can choose to subscribe to the network for $35 to $120 per month. Apparently, there’s no competition and everybody’s happy in Nevada, Missouri. [Wi-Fi Networking News]
We search for our keys. We search for jobs. We search for approval from friends, family and the Joneses.
What’s happening is really a desperate search for meaning within the power, position and prestige we hoped would come from material pursuits. Finer clothes don’t do it. Finer vehicles don’t do it. Finer homes don’t do it. More powerful jobs don’t do it. Fancy titles from companies that lay people off by the thousands never will do it.
What can give meaning? What gives hope? That’s just the problem. ”What” isn’t going to quench the kind of thirst that gnaws at people!
This morning, I’ve seen two statements that prove how feverishly people look in all the wrong places:
”The DaVinci Code is nonsensical, but its sales attest to a craving for belief of some kind.”
”More to the point, the very existence of The Pet Psychic as a program on national television and the success of What the Animals Tell Me indicates with crystal clarity the fact that millions of Americans are trapped in patterns of spiritual darkness and confusion.”
For those of you who don’t keep up your weblog reading over the weekend, you don’t need to miss the piece titled WMDs Found In Medicare Legislation by Craig Cantoni. Here’s a clip to get you started:
”The nation is facing two threats. The first comes from nations and terrorists that hate us and possess weapons of mass destruction. The second is from a different kind of weapon of mass destruction, a more insidious kind, the kind that is slowly but surely destroying us from within through mass entitlement spending, mass bureaucracy, mass taxation, and mass consumer and government debt.”
As Cantoni points out, ”This is one of the most important articles I’ve ever written.” He’s right. I agree. Read all of it!
Yep, this was in parenthesis in paragraph one, and it just gets better from there.
(Wife looked knuckle-chewingly fine; cant blame her for dolling up, since most of the people at the party would be Brazilian. How that nation got gifted with such physical fabulousness Ill never know.)
For those who might not have understood the title of the entry just before this one, there’s a passage from the Old Testament that explains the story. The people had figured out how to make bricks. With that technology, they envisioned being able to build anything! ”We have the technology…”
Then they said, ”Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built.
And the Lord said, ”Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”
So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused F33 the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.
I’ve read Michael Crichton’s Prey. I’ve read the infrequent magazine article about nanotechnology. I’ve read Bill Joy’s article titled Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us. I’m fascinated by the concepts and theories that swirl around what might be possible. Understand, it isn’t yet possible, but it might be.
To start your week, take a look at Howard Lovy’s NanoBot weblog and see an illustration of The Space Elevator.
A quote from Craig Cantoni: ”This is one of the most important articles I’ve ever written. If you agree, please distribute, publish and post as you see fit.”
WMDs Found In Medicare Legislation
by Craig J. Cantoni
The nation is facing two threats. The first comes from nations and terrorists that hate us and possess weapons of mass destruction. The second is from a different kind of weapon of mass destruction, a more insidious kind, the kind that is slowly but surely destroying us from within through mass entitlement spending, mass bureaucracy, mass taxation, and mass consumer and government debt.
Examples of the second type of WMD can be found in the 678-page Medicare reform bill being debated in Congress. The bill reads as if an enemy wrote it to strangle the nation in red tape and to bring us to our knees with the army of bureaucrats, lawyers and consultants that will be needed to interpret what the legislation says, including the second paragraph, which is quoted below:
”Except as otherwise specifically provided, whenever in division A of this Act or amendment is expressed in terms of an amendment to or repeal of a section or other provision, the reference shall be considered to be made to that section or other provision of the Social Security Act.”
Huh?
It’s downhill from there. Consider this gem on page 22:
”The coverage is designed, based upon an actuarially representative pattern of utilization, to provide for the payment, with respect to costs incurred that are equal to the initial coverage limit under subsection (b)(3) for the year, of an amount equal to at least the product of—
”(i) the amount by which the initial coverage limit described in subsection (b)(3) for the year exceeds the deductible described in subsection (b)(1) for the year; and
”(ii) 100 percent minus the coinsurance percentage specified in subsection (b)(2)(A)(i).”
I believe that the foregoing says that some faceless bureaucrat will determine reimbursement rates based on an ambiguous formula after subtracting deductibles and coinsurance.
Naturally, the bill caters to politically influential special-interest groups. An example is on page 395:
”SEC 614. IMPROVED PAYMENT FOR CERTAIN MAMMOGRAPHY SERVICES.
”(a) Exclusion From OPD Fee Schedule.—Section 1833(t)(1)(B)(iv) (42 U.S.C. 13951(t)(B)(iv)) is amended by inserting before the period at the end of the following: ”and does not include screening mammography (as defined in section 1861 (jj)) and diagnostic mammography”.”
In other words, breast cancer is more important to the government than testicular cancer.
The bill violates every precept of sound insurance. For example, on page 159 it says: ”The issuer of a Medicare supplemental policy may not discriminate in the pricing of such policy, because of the health status, claims experience, receipt of health care, or medical condition…” Translation: Those who have lived healthy lives will be subsidizing those who have spent their lives smoking, drinking, eating fat-laden foods, engaging in risky sex and not exercising.
Of course, this is in keeping with the immorality of Medicare and other entitlements. Such programs are based on the notion that those who have lived beyond their means all of their lives and not saved for old age have a right to the money of those who have done the opposite. The notion is so widely accepted that no politician or mainstream journalist ever asks an elderly person the following question when he whines about not being able to afford medicine: ”What kind of cars did you buy during your life and how often did you buy them?”
The fact is, the average American can build a nest egg of about $300,000 over a lifetime simply by buying inexpensive compact cars, keeping them for 120,000 miles, and not buying them with borrowed money—versus buying more expensive cars every few years on credit. That’s more than enough to buy medicine in old age.
The nation has a priority problem, not a health care problem.
The Medicare reform bill also continues the government’s practice of wage and price controls. For example:
”The PDP sponsor of a prescription drug plan shall take into account, in establishing fees for pharmacists and others providing services under such plan, the resources used, and time required to, implement the medication therapy management program under this paragraph. Each such sponsor shall disclose to the Secretary upon request the amount of any such management or dispensing fees. The provisions of section 1927(b)(3)(D) apply to information disclosed under this subparagraph.”
Or this:
”The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission shall submit to the Secretary, not later than July 1, 2005, a report on adjustment of payment for ambulatory payment classifications for specified covered outpatient drugs to take into account overhead and related expenses, such as pharmacy services and handling costs.”
The foregoing language could have been lifted directly from a commissar’s manual in the former Soviet Union, where central planning resulted in mass starvation under Stalin and bare store shelves under his successors.
American apparatchiks will continue to make doctors indentured servants of the state and to have the state come between doctors and patients. Consider:
”Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission shall submit to Congress a report on the effect of refinements to the practice expense component of payments for physicians’ services, after the transition to a full resource-based payment system in 2002, under section 1848 of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395w-4).”
I wonder how the American sheeple would feel if there were a Payment Advisory Commission in Washington that set the pay for their occupations.
Apparently, doctors in Alaska will be getting a break from the appartchiks:
”(G) FLOOR FOR PRACTICE EXPENSE, MALPRACTICE, AND WORK GEOGRAPHIC INDICES FOR SERVICES FURNISHED IN ALASKA.—For purposes of payment for services furnished in Alaska on or after January 1, 2004, and before January 1, 2006, after calculating the practice expense, malpractice, and work geographic indices in clauses (i), (ii), and (iii) of subparagraph (A) and in subparagraph (B), the Secretary shall increase any such index to 1.67 if such index would otherwise be less than 1.67.”
The bill allows certain payment adjustments and disallows others. For example:
”If the adjusted allowable risk corridor costs (as defined in paragraph (1)) of the plan for the year are at least equal to the first threshold lower limit of the risk corridor (specified in paragraph (3)(A)(i)), but not greater than the first threshold upper limit of the risk corridor (specified in paragraph (3)(A)(iii) for the plan for the year, then no payment adjustment shall be made under this subsection.”
Translation: Blah, blah, if you’re a health care provider, blah, blah, you better give large campaign contributions to politicians, blah, blah, if you want more money, blah, blah.
What are the administrative costs of the 678 pages of gobbledygook? For sure, the costs will be ten times more than government estimates, which never include the costs imposed on the private sector and on individuals. Nor do the estimates include the opportunity costs; that is, where the money could have been spent if it were not spent on red tape, including on plant and equipment to make the United States more productive and competitive in world markets. And for sure the estimates do not include the cost of tens of thousands of the best and brightest Americans shifting from productive work to the make-work of interpreting regulations, litigating the regulations, consulting on the regulations, and writing computer software to administer the regulations.
Anyway, the following is what page 623 of the bill says about the startup administrative costs of Medicare reform. Note that the section is referring to startup costs, not the ongoing costs or the cost of the expanded entitlements themselves.
”There are appropriated to carry out this Act (including the amendments made by this Act), to be transferred from the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund and the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund—
”(1) not to exceed $1,000,000,000 for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; and
”(2) not to exceed $500,000,000 for the Social Security Administration.”
When my poor grandparents immigrated to the United States from Italy in the early 20th century, taxes were about a third of today’s. If they needed medical care, they simply walked into a doctor’s office or drug store and paid the doctor or pharmacist with cash or a chicken. There were no intermediaries, and there were not 678 pages of new legislation on top of 120,000 pages of existing Medicare regulations. But there was a high savings rate, as there is in China today.
Medicare reform has sown more seeds of our eventual economic destruction.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT).
A wise person I know once said, ”Those intent on ’pushing the envelope’ with new social and cultural values have learned that they can progress much quicker with their agenda if they can get us to laugh at something. Think of the things that couldn’t be done or said on television three, ten and thirty years ago, and then think of how the topics became ’okay.’”
She’s right. They got us to laugh at stuff. Sit-coms led the way with all kinds of humorous treatments of otherwise tragic human conditions and choices.
If any of that makes sense to you, then don’t miss this article about Michael Moore, Al Franken and Molly Ivins. Max Goss is a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written a terrific piece for World Magazine. Here’s the title and tagline for Max’s outstanding essay:
They’re Not Kidding
by Max Goss
FEATURE: Three best-selling liberal authors have come up with a clever tactic: Use humor to shield hate, cynicism, and unsupported accusations. Those who object just don’t ”get the joke.”
RSS feeds are the underlying syndication technology of weblogs. Without being forced to browse to every weblog that interests you, a feed reader allows you to use the ”Really Simple Syndication (RSS)” feeds of weblogs to keep up with what’s being written.
For the uninitiated, think of it as vaguely similar to email, but without the spam and you decide who you’re getting feeds from. You might rather choose to think of a feed reader as your own personal newspaper with exactly the front page stories you want, followed by other stories in whatever priority order you want.
There are many RSS feed readers or news aggregators as some people call them. Many of them are free. An outstanding free aggregator is SharpReader, now available in version 0.9.3.2.
I use FeedDemon in its current beta edition. Soon, it may not be free.
As with any field of endeavor the web design and development industry carries technologies, jargon and definitions that are unique. Knowing these and being capable of discerning which are important, which are fads and which are just meaningless distractions is the nature of the web design business.
Steve Fossett and Richard Branson, who have flown balloons around the world, now want to use a radical new jet design to travel around the world in 80 hours.
Designed by Burt Rutan, who is in the hunt for the X Prize, the GlobalFlyer is expected to start its journey with five times its own weight in fuel!
The picture you see in this entry is of Voyager, a prop-driven design that Dick Rutan flew around the world – nonstop!
* * UPDATE * * * Thanks to Steven Vore for the correction in the comments. I’ve reworded to entry for clarity.
I want my content manager – either MT or MT Pro – to be the tool that helps me produce valid, accessible, well-formed markup. As silly as it may sound, I’m still puzzled by why [strong] is a better tag than [b] when it comes to valid XHTML. MT puts the [b] in your entries if you use the small icon for bolding in MT’s entry-editing box. I quit using it when someone told me that [strong] is the more appropriate or valid tag.
I want to learn this sort of thing, but I want to know that there is some sort of like-mindedness between authors of tools like Movable Type and tools like TopStyle.
These are the folks I count on to teach me the ”right” way to produce web site content. Their tools ought to help me do the ”right” thing.
I like the new design of the Lockergnome site. I admit I’m not a daily visitor there, and I read the newsletters I get in batches rather than as they arrive.
However, through all of that, I didn’t realize that Meryl was involved, but this entry makes me think she is.
Perhaps this is some new change or maybe she’s always worked on Lockergnome or the newsletters.
Do any of the readers of this weblog know Shirley Kaiser? The last post I see at her (fantastic) weblog dates back to October 28. I’ve sent a single email of inquiry, but it could easily have gotten caught in a spam filter.
I’m missing the Friday Feast entries. If one of you knows something about her absence from the blogosphere, please let me know.
I’ve not read a book by either of the Clintons. I’ve not read a book by anyone who at any time served in the Clinton administration. At least, not until now.
I’m part of the way through Robert Rubin’s new book. It is about decision models and a way of thinking probablistically in a world where so many people seem so certain that they have all the answers.
Even the staunchest conservatives among you will enjoy the way complex decisions get thought out in terms of probabilities.
FeedDemon is the tool I use to read several hundred weblogs. I subscribe via FeedDemon to the RSS feeds from each weblog. Multiple times each day, I can use FeedDemon to catch up on what any single or any group of similar weblogs might be saying about a topic of interest.
If this technology is foreign to you, you might want to take a look at this new tutorial. The author of FeedDemon, Nick Bradbury, pointed it out.
If your life is back to normal since September of 2001, and you have more important things to do than keep up with current events, the media’s distortions and boring politics, then you must read this. If things still trouble you, read it. Whatever you do, don’t go to sleep tonight without reading every word of it.
You know what? Michael Moore is right. There are many Americans who are ignorant of the world around them. And theyre all TV news producers. Two big bombs in Istanbul, and whats the big story of the day? Following around a pervy slab of albino Play-Doh as he turns himself into the police.
There are hundreds of rumors and lots of speculation swirling around the notion that this guy will be the next football coach at Mississippi State University.
Rumors are rumors. However, if I were sitting in the current coach’s chair and was asked, ”who should we look at?” here’s one thing I would point to:
2000: LSU 45 Mississippi State 38 (OT)
2001: LSU 42 Mississippi State 0
2002: LSU 31 Mississippi State 13
2003: LSU 41 Mississippi State 6
The guy knows how to get an offensive game plan together!
Imagine with me for a few moments that you are traveling across the USA in a covered wagon. It’s the early 1800’s. There are six other families with you who are also traveling in wagons.
Your little band of adventurers is traveling with some cattlemen moving a small herd westward. They’ve got two covered wagons with them. At dusk, these nine wagons pull into a clearing near a stream and set up camp for the evening. There are nine children in this group – six ranging in age from four to nine, one infant and two toddlers. All together there are twenty-one adults.
You’ll be at this camp until dawn, when you’ll be ready to travel again. What do you do with the evening?
Here’s a thought…
Many of the people that crossed and populated this country were people of faith. A Bible was one of the only books that they might have owned. In those years, protestants read the 1611 translation of the King James Version(KJV) of the Bible.
Traveling across the country was fearsome business. Threats were plentiful and prayers for safe passage were far more than lip service.
OK…I’ll get on with it. This isn’t really about pioneers; it’s about Bibles, theologies and how our thinking gets muddled. How does a weary man or woman crossing the country with only a Bible to read in the evening get to theology like this or this?
I’m not personally capable of reading a KJV version of the Bible and concocting some new, man-made theology from it. Who does this stuff? Why do they do this stuff? Where do the distortions creep into truth?
I’m well aware of how complex the ancient Biblical manuscripts can be. I’m also aware of how simple the Gospel message really is. Those kids and other adults traveling with that group of pioneers had all they needed to understand the saving grace of God’s Free Gift. They were not impeded by all of the twentieth century ”scholarship” which clouded that simple, but powerful message.
Clearly, we wouldn’t have Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Catholics, etc., were it not for historical disputes over what the Bible is telling us. Yet, isn’t the simplicity of that original message of salvation all that we really need?
Who decided it needed to be more complex than that?
”If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
I used to believe that contemporary liberals (really illiberals) were intellectually inconsistent. I was wrong. They are quite intellectually consistent, as a recent experience of mine showed.
The experience was sitting on a panel with a bigwig from the American Civil Liberties Union, an executive from the Consumer Federation of America, and the legislative director of a local of the Communications Workers of America—all contemporary liberals. I was the only classical liberal, if you will, or conservative in the image of the Founders. In today’s vernacular, that makes me a small ”L” libertarian.
The panel was put together to discuss and debate the FCC’s proposed rules that would permit more consolidation of media ownership and more cross-ownership between the broadcast and print media.
The contemporary liberal, er, illiberal, panel members were against the new rules, for their stated reason that the rules would result in a greater concentration of ownership and thus less diversity of political viewpoints.
The purpose of this article is not to demonstrate where their assumptions, facts and beliefs were wrong, but suffice it to say that history shows that there was less diversity of political viewpoints after the advent of modern-day FCC regulations than before. For example, under FCC regulations, the three ”monkey see, monkey do” networks of ABC, CBS and NBC had a virtual monopoly on television news for decades. That monopoly has been busted with cable television.
Anyway, back to the issue of intellectual inconsistency.
At first blush, the illiberal panel members seemed to be intellectually inconsistent in three areas:
One, they were concerned about fewer media conglomerates having greater control over political speech, but they were not concerned about a much more serious issue in a free society: the government having a monopoly over K-12 classroom thought.
Two, they were concerned about family newspapers being sold to such media giants as Gannett, but, being illiberals, they support the inheritance tax, which is the reason that many family newspapers cannot afford to pass the business to the next generation.
Three—and I’m not making this up—they discussed the idea that a possible solution to their imagined problem was for the government to get into the newspaper business or to use the tax code to punish TV stations that do not cover local news to the degree that they think is appropriate. In other words, because of their purported love of the First Amendment, the illiberals believe that the government should be in the business of regulating speech. This is the same convoluted line of thinking behind campaign finance and clean election reforms in which the government dictates how much money citizens can give candidates and when they can engage in organized political speech.
Intellectually inconsistent? Not at all. The foregoing is not intellectually inconsistent because of three underlying illiberal beliefs: Government is good, business is bad, and citizens are stupid and need to be guided by paternalistic illiberals.
It doesn’t matter to illiberals that the government engages in coercion and business does not, that governments throughout history have killed hundreds of millions of people and businesses have not, or that people cannot easily change government regulations but can easily change news sources in a free market.
Illiberals may be intellectually vacuous, but at least they are not intellectually inconsistent.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
When one considers all of the fads, methods and techniques that attempt to improve businesses, technology has to be considered. Virtually no improvement intiative can proceed without gathering metrics from the information system or without altering the information system to support the altered way of working.
Sometimes leaders make an attempt at improving a business by technology alone. Results of these projects are sub-optimal at best. This is particularly true if the changes are driven solely by the requirements placed on the processes by the new technology.
RFID is one of those technologies that may be a solution seeking a problem. Clearly, the acclaimed benefits are many. Also, the ”threats” have been well-documented. The truth will likely see many failed RFID projects simply because no clear statement of what we’re trying to improve ever gets made.
There’s a solid commentary and a link to an article at Wi-Fi Networking News about the future health risks associated with cell phone usage. It is indeed a shame that we have to wait so long for the results of the study when cell phone use is ramping so rapidly.
Some weblogs are not in reverse chronological order. It makes for interesting reading that way, but it’s not the tried-and-true reverse chronology that the medium has been known for.
Here’s a sampling of the posting times for the first three entries at Scripting News today:
”Apparently college students are showing up to campus with so many gadgets these days that some colleges and universities are starting to have problems supplying enough power to dorms…” [Gizmodo]
[WARNING: Follow these links all the way, read the comments and you’ll stumble into some foul language and some convoluted logic.]
Good morning! LilacRose leads off the day with some linkage to some confused folks. If your faith is weak, you will feel threatened or challenged by some of what gets discussed. If your faith is strong, you’ll see a longing world still searching aimlessly to recreate (in its own image) The Garden of Eden that man violated.
I’ve never found the slightest bit of evil in a loving parent saying to a child, ”Don’t do that, or this will happen.” Consequences are not evil.
As I read the choices of words and the approach to faith that is discussed, I kept seeing the word fundamentalist. Perhaps God is great and good. Perhaps fundamentalists are small, weak and maybe even evil.
Amy Wellborn at Open Book found an article in the New York Post about The Passion of Christ, Mel Gibson’s upcoming movie. The article reports the views of five people who saw the movie. Here are links to each: 12345.
There’s an editorial from Rabbi Daniel Lapin here.
There’s another way to think about what Dr. Albert Mohler covers today. Here’s a fundamental question: Can a person forced to work on a university campus that screens and filters every thought through the political correctness filter be trusted? Can an otherwise honest person get their honest thoughts into the public venue from a university setting intent on enforcing political correctness?
Among those who are not blessed with material abundance is a nasty tendency to try and win the lottery. This is happening even in states where there is no lottery. They’re not buying tickets, though. They’re seeking to gain at someone else’s expense.
People have become so desperate to keep up with their perception of what the Joneses are doing, getting or becoming, that they’ve begun to stretch the limits of reason. No matter how many times we are told, ”money will not make you happy,” it doesn’t stop our society from an energetic pursuit of the free lunch.
Unfortunately, lawyers have become partners and, too often, leaders of these pursuits. If they’re not smart enough, lucky enough or energetic enough to achieve something on their own, these people find attorneys who will assist in the hyena-like feeding frenzy around someone else’s kill.
You can learn a great deal about a person by watching how they respond when God asks them to give something up. You can tell even more about a person when you realize how strongly they believe God wants them to have more and to give nothing up.
The life of privilege seems to them to be one of the signs that they have been blessed with God’s favor. Few ever examine whether they are a product of their own maneuvering, or whether God has simply allowed them to accumulate when He actually desires more from us.
Too often materialism is allowed to be the idol in a person’s life. The arrogance of so many of those who have much is surpassed only by the vigor with which they defend their right to have and possess.
I’ve used computers all my life – well, beginning in college, but that was long, long ago. I’ve never built one – a college or a computer.
Gary Petersen is building a new PC and provides some information about where to get certain things. He also links to some AMD resources for those interested in the real nitty-gritty of installing things like processor chips and heat sinks and such.
What caught my eye was Gary’s discussion of just how the order cycle went with each supplier. I live in the town where FedEx was founded and is headquartered. They coined the phrase, the information is as important as the shipment, or something very similar to it.
I’m fascinated by how businesses do and don’t go about designing processes that insure they can meet their claims. What has to go on behind the scenes of a business to make certain they have what they say they have, they can ship it when they say they can ship it and they can provide information about where your order stands when you need it? Those things seem so trivial, but those that can pull this off to ”five nines” of reliability are few and far between.
Were I to dedicate the rest of my working life to an endeavor, it would be to help people and businesses remove hassle from their work processes and build excellence and dependability into them. As W. Edwards Deming often asked, ”By what method?” Too few can really answer that question.
It’s like having a librarian who doesn’t read books or understand the Dewey system categorising your reading and telling you what you can read based on their worthless biases.
”But whatever you do, or whatever is done to you, on November 13th 2003, you were the little girl with blue shoes who carried unthinkable goodness across the street.”
Jeffrey Veen has linked to some weblog/web site analyses done on the 2004 Presidential candidates’ web sites and weblogs. He closes his remarks with, ”...not one of the sites validates. But then again, neither does mine right now.”
Mine doesn’t either. The challenge is knowing where to start. I’ve been making every entry valid for quite some time now. At least, I thought I had been. However, if you set Movable Type to display the most recent seven days of entries, the index.php page consists of those seven days worth of entries along with sidebars, blogrolls, etc.
Tilt. I can write a valid web page. I’m not yet ready for the whole CSS, templates in Movable Type, valid XHTML 1.1 Strict thing. Well, I’m ready for it. I just don’t know how to do it, yet.
Would they be fighting this way if someone were merely reading history aloud? Is it the fact that history is being told in a movie that infuriates them? Is it that the history is being told at all?
So, here’s the deal. A contest was held in which web designers and developers were asked to redesign a popular web site. There were entry rules. There was an entry deadline. There was a panel of judges. Oh yeah, there were sponsors and prizes, too!
Here’s what strikes me about all this. Ultimately, it was ”visual appeal” and ”useability” that differentiated the top-scoring designs from each other. Many folks got it right when it came to valid HTML and CSS, cross-browser functionality and accessibility.
Unless I’m misunderstanding this, the judging boiled down to winners distinguished from losers on the basis of the subjective scores. The objective scores were at the maximum for each of the award winners.
I’m hoping that Built For The Future, the site that put this contest together, will now conduct a contest that specifically focuses on sites built using Movable Type and the templates that reside ”behind the scenes” of Movable Type weblogs and web sites. For me, that would be as instructional as anything they could do.
I’d want the same rules to apply. Valid CSS and valid XHTML 1.0 or 1.1 would be essential.
I think some people must believe that the freedom to speak out about anything should also extend to any symbolic gesture that they choose to substitute for actually speaking. In other words, freedom of speech also means freedom to act in any way they deem appropriate.
If you want to spend your own money to buy a flag and burn it, you are certainly entitled to do so. If you want to simply light your money on fire complete with the ”In God We Trust” printed on it, you are also entitled with rights that allow you to do that.
Were you to decide that your ”rights” to free speech also include the ”right” to set fire to some national monument, then you ought to meet some resistance.
Christian people love to label other people – and themselves to some extent. For a nearly exhaustive, and certainly exhausting, look at labels, you can read this. There is apparently some comfort in being able to classify, categorize and name an individual’s spiritual genus and species.
If those labels aren’t comforting enough to you, take a look at the U1-5 classifications. Perhaps you’ll feel better about being in one of those.
Or maybe it would help to know this:
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:7 New Revised Standard Version
Apparently, there’s a big conference coming to Phoenix, and to support the conference goers, there’s going to be a really big network. In fact, it’s called the biggest network in the world. This was reported yesterday on Wi-Fi Networking News.
”If molecular manufacturing is possible, then how about an Apollo-style project to build the thing before somebody else does it first—a nation or group that does not trouble itself over issues like societal and ethical implications. If it’s found to be impossible, then let’s permanently incarcerate the idea for the crimes of breaking the laws of physics and crying ”goo” in a crowded policy theater. Then we can finally give the nano name completely over to the chemicals, manufacturing, biotech and defense industries—with no underlying, pioneering sense of purpose other than to make lots of neat stuff and loads of money.”
Craig Cantoni says, ”Someone sent me a confidential transcript of a recent strategic planning meeting of the top brass at the Arizona Republic. Just kidding, but if such a transcript did exist, it would read as follows:”
Transcript of Arizona Republic Strategic Planning Meeting
By Craig J. Cantoni
(For Internet Publication)
CEO: I want to open our annual strategic planning meeting by reviewing some numbers. Our circulation dropped 3.7 percent for the six months ending in September, in spite of being in a high-growth state. As you know, we’re the highest circulation daily in the Gannett empire next to USA Today, which saw its circulation rise only .7 percent. During the same period, the Wall Street Journal saw its circulation increase 16.1 percent. Can anyone explain this and suggest what to do about it?
Managing Editor: The explanation is that newspaper readership among young people is dropping like a rock across the country. We’re doing three things about it:
First, we’re dumbing down the paper to try to attract young readers. Our front page is an example. One-third of it is now short news summaries, and two-thirds of it are snippets of lead stories that are continued on jump pages. It is designed to appeal to young readers with Attention Deficit Disorder, who like to get their news from the Internet and TV, and who haven’t acquired the wisdom and discernment that come with age. Sure, the tactic will disenfranchise older readers, well-educated readers and readers who like to read the paper over breakfast without turning the page every five seconds. But who cares about them? They’re not the nation’s future.
Second, we’ve continued our tactic of disenfranchising conservatives and attracting liberals, because young readers tend to be liberal. As the old saying goes: If someone isn’t a liberal when he’s young, he’s heartless; and if he isn’t a conservative when he’s older, he’s brainless. Mary’s human resources department has done a great job in hiring older liberal reporters who think like young people. Nice going, Mary.
Our recent series on Arizona’s taxes is an example of how we are appealing to liberals. It’s been the talk of talk-radio. Conservatives say that it only presented the liberal side of the tax issue. Of course it did. That’s why the series said that the state is being robbed of revenue because Arizona doesn’t impose the same level of taxes and fees as other states. If we wanted to appeal to conservatives, we would have quoted some of them about their silly belief that the government robs people instead of the other way around. Of course, we rarely quote a conservative man on the street about taxes, but we frequently quote state workers, public university professors, public school teachers and other recipients of government money. The young and brainless don’t see through this ploy.
Editorial Page Editor: And let’s not forget that the editorial board is doing its share of the heavy lifting. Following the lead of my predecessor, Keven Willey, the board continues to endorse higher government spending about 10-to-1 over spending cuts.
Chief Financial Officer: I know I’m new here, but why in heaven’s name would we purposely disenfranchise conservatives, many of whom own businesses and advertise in the Republic? For that matter, why would our advertisers want us to appeal to younger people who don’t have much money to spend instead of older and better educated people who have a lot of money to spend? It seems to me that we should produce a product that appeals to the widest audience possible. After all, aren’t we in business to make money? Besides, unless I’m mistaken, young people eventually grow older and wiser.
Managing Editor: You’re a great CFO, Jack, but you’re not a newspaper guy.
Marketing VP: I agree with Jack. We have the technical capability to produce different editions of the paper for different market segments and to charge wealthier subscribers a higher price for the content that they want.
Managing Editor: Whoa, Jim, you’re not a newspaper guy, either. You’ve never been a journalist. Virtually every reporter on staff believes that a newspaper has a higher calling.
Marketing VP: And what’s that?
Managing Editor: It’s to be a progressive force for diversity, justice, fairness, redistribution, mass transit, environmentalism, a planned economy and a world government.
CFO: I’m becoming ill.
Managing Editor: And I’m getting sick of your rabid capitalism, you right-wing extremist.
CEO: Now, now, boys. Can’t we all just get along?
Managing Editor: I’d be happy to get along, but only if these outsiders mind their own business and stop trying to interfere with editorial content. Even if we wanted to change the progressive mission of the newspaper, we’d have a rebellion in the newsroom. And even if we wanted to replace our news staff, it would be impossible to find enough reporters who understand economics and know the moral, philosophical and constitutional foundations of capitalism and our constitutional republic. Heck, even our business columnist doesn’t understand such stuff.
CFO: Why couldn’t we hire reporters away from the Wall Street Journal?
Managing Editor (guffawing): And end up with another Julie Amparano?
CFO: Who’s that?
Managing Editor: Someone who was a similar national embarrassment to us as Jayson Blair was to the New York Times. We hired her from the Wall Street Journal because of her Spanish surname to pander to Hispanics. We later discovered that she was concocting sources and writing fiction to make readers believe that Hispanics have suffered as much discrimination as African Americans and have it worse than other immigrant groups.
Human Resources VP: Excuse me for interrupting, but we’re going to get in trouble someday for violating long-standing discrimination laws that prohibit basing hiring decisions on race and ethnicity.
Chief Counsel: Naw, Mary, we have nothing to worry about. The EEOC looks the other way if we do it under the guise of diversity.
Marketing VP: Speaking of diversity, our strategy of hiring Hispanic reporters to cover Hispanic issues isn’t working. Mexican-Americans comprise about one-fourth of Arizona’s population, but they read the Republic even less than young people.
CEO: That’s why we bought a Spanish newspaper.
Marketing VP: Which was a good decision. But I’m raising a market segment issue about the Arizona Republic, not about our Spanish newspaper: If in the name of diversity we hire Hispanic staffers to appeal to Hispanic readers, why in the name of diversity don’t we hire conservative staffers to appeal to conservative readers?
CEO: That’s easy to answer: Gannett measures how we’re doing in racial diversity but not in ideological diversity.
Editorial Page Editor: And let’s not forget that we have a token conservative in editorial board member and columnist Bob Robb. We also have guest columnist Craig Cantoni who writes for the community edition. He’s a strategic planning consultant and has a Texas newspaper as a client, a paper that has seen circulation and advertising grow during the recession. He wants the Republic to grow and prosper, but we ignore him because he’s not a newspaper guy. Between him and Robb, that makes two conservatives out of a staff of 200, which is about as much ideological diversity as Gannet will tolerate.
CEO: Excuse me, Jack, it looks like you’re reading something instead of paying attention.
CFO: I’m reading the Wall Street Journal.
CEO: Oooo, pass it to me when you’re done.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
CPA Online is pointing to an Infoworld article about a set of announcements from Intuit. Apparently, QuickBooks is getting new versions and new editions.
Now if only Intuit’s site could get a makeover so that we could easily find something there. Here’s the page where they show the four editions as starting at prices that range from $99.95 to $3500.
If I once again buy, join or start a company that does something besides think and advise, I’ll use a couple of techniques to build a sustainable, excellent business. Those techniques derive from the teachings of W. Edwards Deming and Philip Crosby.
The following is about vouchers and was published by the Arizona Republic on Nov. 12 as half of the weekly point-counterpoint between Craig Cantoni and his teacher opponent.
The antidote to group-think
By Craig J. Cantoni
In 1921, at the urging of the Ku Klux Klan, Oregon passed a law requiring compulsory attendance at public schools. Four years later, the Supreme Court overturned the law, saying: ”The fundamental theory of liberty on which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only.”
My mother was born that year to poor Italian immigrants, who could afford to send her to parochial school because taxes were much lower than the confiscatory levels of today. Now, 82 years later, the nation has de facto compulsory public school attendance, because most parents cannot afford to pay their taxes and to also send their kids to private school.
As a result, the government has a monopoly over classroom thought. Worse, the thought is delivered by one of the most powerful special-interest groups, teacher unions. The standardization of children has been achieved.
But the forces of conformity and group-think are not satisfied with only controlling K-12 education. The public school establishment and its allies in the media, including reporters and editors of this newspaper, are now advocating ”early childhood education,” which is a euphemism for the government beginning the standardization at an earlier age.
Fighting these formidable forces are homeschoolers, advocates of vouchers and education tax credits, and other defenders of liberty and educational freedom. They are maligned as extremists and weirdoes by the group-thinkers for not succumbing to group-think.
That alone is reason enough for me to support their efforts, but I also find them to be better informed than the forces of conformity. Refusing to swallow the politically correct mush put out by the government, by teachers unions and by the mass media, they are indeed a threat to the establishment.
It is telling that the establishment does not want the American sheeple to know the full history of public education in America, especially how educational freedom was replaced with coercion and hijacked by special interests. For that history, independent thinkers have to go to other sources, such as the Cato Institute (www.cato.org), which recently published an excellent paper on the subject, ”Our History of Educational Freedom.”
Warning: Reading such material can be hazardous to your reputation. If you depart from government authorized group-think, you’ll be called an extremist and weirdo.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, public speaker and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
Two websites that might add some life to your day can be found here and here. All of us, at one time or another, have worked in a company or situation where the cynicism of both of these sites was reality.
Do you have ideas about how to prevent that cynicism and build places that encourage joy in work? Few company leaders and owners do. Even fewer seek the sort of help that can bring about the transformation from despair to joy.
Finding companies that are willing to invest in the transformation is nearly impossible. If an idea, method or approach doesn’t immediately raise revenue or lower costs it is of no interest in most places. The exceptions are extremely rare, and enduring businesses are becoming a relic of the past.
The weight of my travel/computer bag results more from adapters, cords, cables and just-in-case accessories than from the devices I actually carry. Here’s a start in the right direction, but the problems need to be overcome.
Payback politics is vicious. It is also wrong. It isn’t what The Founders had in mind. At best it’s a distraction from the real work that needs to take place in this country.
At worst – well, at worst it undermines the very foundation on which this nation stands. The vindictive attitudes held by so many are aptly illustrated here.
This guy claims he’d pay $7 billion to unseat President Bush, but only if someone would give him ”a guarantee.” I still like the idea of substituting ”the people” every time we’re tempted to say ”the government.”
Two signs mounted precisely where liberal media, Hollywood and the elitists believe they should be. One says, ”DUMMIES.” The other says, ”ENTERTAINERS.”
Ronald Reagan was wrong when he said that the government is the problem. The problem is the word ”government,” not the government. If we stopped using the word and used the words ”every American” or ”people” instead, we would have more liberty and less gov …. Whew, I almost used the word.
As an example, politicians who want nationalized health care say that the government should give every American free health care. But since the government consists of every American, that’s as senseless as saying that every American should give every American free health care. It’s similar to saying that every American should give every American free food, shelter and clothing.
Imagine Ted Kennedy giving a speech on health care without using the G-word:
”My fellow Americans: Since the holiday season is approaching, I propose a national Christmas, er, holiday, gift exchange program in which each American will give his neighbor a gift certificate for health insurance for a year. That way, health insurance will be free to all Americans and health care costs will stop rising.”
Sounds silly, doesn’t it? But that’s exactly what Ted Kennedy is saying when he says that the government should provide free health insurance to all Americans. Of course, what he really means is that some Americans should pay the health insurance bills of other Americans and that politicians like him should decide who pays and who doesn’t.
Presidential candidate Howard Dean also believes that some Americans should pay the health insurance bills of other Americans, although he doesn’t say it that way. Instead, he says that the government should pick up the tab. But if he were an honest man and didn’t use the G-word, he would give a speech as follows to his beloved southerners in the hollows of South Carolina:
”Mah feller South Car’linans: Ah propose thet we give some South Car’linans free health insurance by stickin’ other South Car’linans wif th’ bill, ah reckon.
Thet means thet eff’n y’all got a beat-up pickup truck wif a Confederate flag in th’ rear window an’ sillowets of naked ladies on th’ mud flaps, yo’ kin spend yer money on a nu crew-cab pickup an’ take it t’ NASCAR races wifout wo’ryin’ about how yo’ll pay yer medical bills. I’ll jest send th’ bill t’ yer neighbo’ who wawks hard an’ saves his money, the jackass.”
Or imagine Dick Gephardt giving a speech on the budget deficit:
”My fellow Democratic spendthrifts: When people spend more than they make, people end up in debt. Therefore, to get the people out of debt, I propose that the people spend more. That way, the economy will grow and we’ll have full employment.”
Or as Gephardt’s cousin Elmer Fudd would say: ”Since we are shooting too many silly wabbits, I pwopose that we shoot more silly wabbits.”
Which is why politicans won’t stop using the G-word. It keeps the public from seeing that they have the economic sense of Elmer Fudd.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
There seems to me to be a relationship between what Rick Warren is suggesting and what Real Live Preacher wants. I don’t perceive that Rick is trying to build a large, fabulously complex organization. He’s trying to solve five big problems. He points to small groups and local churches as the ones who can solve those problems.
There’s something consistent in both of these messages!
The Ten Most Overpaid Jobs In the U.S. and every selection belongs on the list. Were it expanded to an even dozen, we’d add most entertainers and 99 of the lawyers.
By now, surely, you see that this weblog is about the rat race or the hamster wheel that too often occupies our time. I’ve said before that so many people drive to a workplace they detest thinking about their dreams. Arriving there, they hang those dreams on the coathook in the back seat and go to work.
At the end of the day, they return to their cars, reclaim their dreams while driving home only to collapse into a chair and sedate their minds with television or worse.
”I now believe that I know why God is blessing this book in such an unusual way. It is more than just a message that God wants to get out to everyone(which is huge). I now also see that God is using this phenomena to expand the platform for us to mobilize thousands of local churches for global world missions through the PEACE plan.
Right now about 5,000 more churches are doing the 40 Days of Purpose campaign, and now the program has been adopted by corporations (like Coke and Walmart) sports teams (like the Oakland Raiders and Green Bay Packers, NASCAR drivers, and the LPGA) schools, civic clubs, and even prisons. Last week, Paul Harvey told everyone to go buy a copy of PDL on his ABC radio broadcast. He said ”This is one of the most insightful books I’ve ever read and I will read it again…and again…and again.” In 2004 we expect over 15,000 more churches to participate.”
Rick Warren’s idea has been on my mind all day. I posted the first entry about it very hurriedly this morning. Reflecting on what he’s suggesting – complete with a methodology – I see hope. For some time now, I’ve felt the world was spiraling in a direction and at a pace that was unstoppable.
Things that have concerned me most recently include:
What does Al Qaeda know that makes them willing to start terrorists’ attacks in the country that is their primary source of funding?
Why must all of American politics give into the mudslinging, big-money and take-no-prisoners style of campaign rhetoric only to take office and make decisions that perpetuate big government?
Why are all religious denominations in such a state of disarray and infighting?
Why has Israel been able to restrain itself from an all-out pursuit of Palestine’s leaders, territory and terrorists?
Are things as bleak as they seem or am I simply getting old?
Why are so many people afraid for Mel Gibson’s movie to tell history as it happened?
What is the world’s greatest need in times such as these?
Perhaps I’m the only one who was initially confused, but maybe not. Jay Allen moved the MT-Blacklist information to a completely new weblog. He also set up an RSS feed that allows you to see individual entries that amount to additions to and deletions from the Master Blacklist.
The questions that hit me initially were:
How do I keep my copy of MT-Blacklist up to date?
What do I do with his clearinghouse entries that show additions and deletions?
Finally, how do I handle a comment spam when I receive it?
Here are some answers:
Periodically, you can simply click on the link for the master blacklist, copy its contents and enter them using the ”add” button in MT-Blacklist.
If you don’t want to refresh the entire blacklist, simply copy any entry from the MT-Blacklist weblog into the ”quickadd” line in your copy of MT-Blacklist.
If, in spite of all of your best efforts, you get a comment spam, notice at the bottom of the email that MT sends, and you’ll find a link that takes you directly into MT-Blacklist. In a couple of clicks you can clean up the spam comments and make the proper additions to your own blacklist.
Some of you feel as though this is giving away the magicians tricks. I’m also concerned about that, but I also know that under the present architecture, we need to combine the various blacklists to have any hope of defeating yet another form of spam.
Rick Warren is author of The Purpose Driven Life. He is also pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA.
If you’ve ever wanted to make a real difference in the world, this is one of those chances. Sure, you can do it without following this particular approach, but think of the impact such a method might have.
Here’s an excerpt:
”During the five weekends of November, we’ll teach five messages on the P.E.A.C.E. plan: a strategy to have every small group in our church, and then tens of thousands of small groups in other churches, become engaged in solving the five biggest problems in the world: Spiritual Lostness, Lack of Godly Leaders, Poverty, Disease, and Lack of Education.
These giant problems are so big that neither the governmnent, nor all the NGOs (non-government organzations) can tackle them. There is only one group large enough to tackle these global issues- the Christian church in all its local expressions around the world.
Nothing else can compare to the distribution channel of the millions of churches around the world. Even in villages where you cannot find a clinic, a store, a school, or a post office, you can often find a church.
The PEACE Plan will address these five ”giant” problems by Planting new churches… Equipping leaders… Assisting the poor…Caring for the sick… and Educating the next generation.”
Wi-Fi Networking News points us to an article by Jim Louderbeck that talks about the integration challenges associated with handing off cell phone calls to VoIP on Wi-Fi networks and back.
This has been on my mind all day, but I couldn’t put it into words. Thankfully, James Lileks has a gift for using just the right words in the best way imaginable. What he says still worries me, but it feels better to have it out there.
This Riyadh bombing story would be cause for a brief dank gust of saudenfreude if the damage hadnt been so horrible. Will the Saudi newsmagazines run covers that say Why Do They Hate Us or, more accurately, Why Do We Hate Us? Its a blue-pill / red-pill moment for the Saudis; it reminds you if you needed just a jab that history is moving swiftly around us. And it would seem to be an act of audacious stupidity by Al Qaeda this isnt just biting the hand that feeds them. This is biting it, tearing it off, chewing it up, and blowing smoke rings with the bone powder.
And it makes me wonder: They stick the shiv in the ribs of their richest and most enthusiastic backers.
One of the best books I’ve ever read is about hubris. Here’s what the dictionary says about hubris:
Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance: There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris (McGeorge Bundy).
I’m watching two businesses fail before my eyes. They are both great businesses. They’re going to fail because their leaders won’t listen. That’s hubris.
In both cases there are people who don’t want their lifestyles disturbed – even temporarily. They cannot see that their lifestyles will soon be altered forever and unfavorably. They also don’t want to consider the possibility that change is required to allow their companies to survive. They currently believe that you cannot argue with success. While I’m not putting a timeline on either company, I’m convinced that neither business will survive under current management using habitual methods.
The best book I ever read on the subject of hubris is about incredibly smart people who got so caught up in their own intelligence and their methods, models and mathematics, they failed.
In a mad dash to learn CSS, XHTML, web standards, valid markup, accessibility, the semantic web and dozens of other names and acronyms related to web design and development, I fall behind.
In an announcement I missed when it first rolled by Avaya has agreed to purchase Expanets for $152 million. This puts Avaya squarely in the systems integration business.
The design must use valid tableless XHTML 1.0, CSS, and it must meet WAI Accessibility level 1. JavaScript, GIF, JPG and PNG images may be used. Server scripts, databases, and plug-in based media are not permitted. Designs containing animated GIFs and Flash are acceptable, but will face tough scrutiny to ensure that they are accessible.
I’m not a web designer or developer. I write a weblog and toy with learning things like standards, CSS-based design, XHTML and such. However, I can tell you that these debates are growing enormously confusing to those of us who don’t rub shoulders with the high muckety-mucks of the Internet.
I understand some of the rationale for not having a design built in HTML tables. I also understand the value of having a web site that is accessible to as many devices and browsers as possible. I can see the wisdom in separating style and content – if that is reality at all.
But, when the gitterati of the web can’t decide precisely what’s allowable (valid XHTML 1.0) and what’s not (server scripts, databases, and plug-in based media), it becomes difficult to write a weblog.
I feel like I’m trying to build a house here and the architects keep debating about whether I should be using 10 or 16-penny nails.
”In the real world, we are usually operating with partial, inconclusive or context-sensitive information. When we have to make a decision based on this information, we guess, extrapolate, intuit, we do what we did last time, we do what we think our friends would do or what Jesus or Joan Jett would have done, we do all of those things and more, but we almost never use actual deductive logic.”
Jakob Nielsen bills himself as a usability expert. His website is at useit.com. A contest has been under way to come up with a new standards-based design for Jakob’s web site. There are 53 entries and you can now see them here. Results of the contest will be announced on November 14, 2003.
I spent a little time in a $125,000 automobile yesterday. Specs say it will go from zero to 60MPH in something shy of 5.5 seconds.
It was an amazing piece of technology, and as an engineer and technology consultant, I found it to be truly exceptional. My conscience bothered me the whole time I contemplated such a car.
Tony Campolo first addressed the issue of Christians, money and economic status back in the early 1990’s. Since then he has been asked to talk about the subject many times. His talk titled ”Would Jesus Drive a BMW?” has become somewhat distorted by the media, critics and those who simply try to distort any and everything said by Christians.
Those are the same people who misquote the Bible and Christians with ”money is the root of all evil.”
Lust for money brings trouble and nothing but trouble. Going down that path, some lose their footing in the faith completely and live to regret it bitterly ever after. 1 Timothy 6:10 the Message
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. 1 Timothy 6:10 King James Version
I’ve always found arguments against learning skills to be specious. ”I’m a whatever…I shouldn’t have to learn that.” That sort of thinking is just silly.
As for writers, some more definitions are needed. By writing, do we mean recording words on paper? Do we mean typing? Do we mean publishing our work on the Internet?
It’s interesting to read a couple of opposing views at Tim Bray’s site. One may not be a programmer to do his or her job, but they are often typists. How is that different?
Further, take any of the last three or four versions of Microsoft Word and look at what’s hiding under the surface in all of the option settings. What skill is it that allows a writer to know just which settings are required to produce the finished product?
Technology gets better. It gets revised, improved and updated. It comes in new versions. That’s a good thing, unless you’re oblivious to how dependent your organization has become on technology.
Failing to understand why your primary business computer shouldn’t also be your family computer for three kinds of digital cameras, surfing obscene web sites and weekend gambling is just short-sighted. It’s even more short-sighted if your primary business computer is five or six generations old and still running Windows 98SE with none of Microsoft’s critical or recommended updates. I saw this situation today at a client’s site.
There’s no budget for technology. It’s thought of as something that they buy one time, turn it on and it works. But, when it doesn’t work it’s a crisis of international proportions. Their servers are out of date. The employees are coping in outrageous ways with outdated PC’s.
There is so much to do. There is no I.T. staff leader or trusted advisor. There is genuine fear of paying an outsider any hourly rate to keep the technology up to date and running well.
One of these days, the thinking will change. It’s not likely I’ll be around to see it at this particular company!
In the USA we have long pursued a practice of making penalties fit crimes. We also began our judicial system with the belief that proper, swift justice would deter others from committing the same crime.
Now we turn to radical Islamists. The death penalty is perceived as a reward to them. So, what is the worst form of penalty for someone who considers death a badge of honor. What brings about the ultimate shame?
I’m sick of every bit of world news being about what these factions have done to our military, and I’m sick of the traitors in this country using the actions of the Islamic radicals to undermine our own values. It’s time to take the gloves off and get down to business – media, leftists, traitors, naysayers and global image notwithstanding.
There was a time in this country when treason could be used to describe behavior and offenses without some outcry about political correctness, partisanship or ”fair play.”
Here’s the clip that appeared in my RSS feed reader:
Theological liberals control most of the old-line divinity schools and denominations, and now they have established another think tank. The Center for Progressive Christianity may be progressive—but it isn’t Christian.
This clip refers to Dr. Albert Mohler’s daily entry to his weblog.
In honor of Frank, I’m pointing to an entry about the Theory of Constraints as it applies to elections and polling places.
Seriously, it is no secret that Frank is a big proponent of TOC as the primary method of bringing about lasting improvement in organizations. Joe, who got a link early this morning, closes the day with another one. His thoughts provide an understandable example of how TOC can be applied in every area where a process needs to be streamlined.
At Berkshire, wanting our fees to be meaningless to our directors, we pay them only a pittance. Additionally, not wanting to insulate our directors from any corporate disaster we might have, we dont provide them with officers and directors liability insurance (an unorthodoxy that, not so incidentally, has saved our shareholders many millions of dollars over the years). Basically, we want the behavior of our directors to be driven by the effect their decisions will have on their familys net worth, not by their compensation. Thats the equation for Charlie and me as managers, and we think its the right one for Berkshire directors as well.
To find new directors, we will look through our shareholders list for people who directly, or in their family, have had large Berkshire holdings in the millions of dollars for a long time. Individuals making that cut should automatically meet two of our tests, namely that they be interested in Berkshire and shareholder oriented. In our third test, we will look for business savvy, a competence that is far from commonplace.
Finally, we will continue to have members of the Buffett family on the board. They are not there to run the business after I die, nor will they then receive compensation of any kind. Their purpose is to ensure, for both our shareholders and managers, that Berkshires special culture will be nurtured when Im succeeded by other CEOs.
One of the spammers who is accosting weblogs is doing so with pointers to somebody called ’lolita.’ Jay Allen is on the case and has a warning for lolita.
Three cheers for Joe Ely. He connects dots that few, if any, advocates for specific improvement methods will ever connect. He looks back in time to determine who and how improvement was done before improvement fads rained down on business like consultants! W. Edwards Deming (with one ’m’) provided so much wisdom in his 7 deadly diseases and 14 points.
The success of any improvement initiative is often highly dependent upon the depth of information available to those participating in the effort. That information derives from data which is often locked deep inside some arcane accounting, production or business management system.
A rare gift is the ability to take that raw data and turn it into actionable information that fosters knowledge and leads to action. In the smallest of companies such information is in Quickbooks, Excel and Access. In larger companies, it can be deep inside proprietary information systems that only a select few in the business really understand.
The September issue of the AICPA’s Journal of Accountancy has one of the best overviews of information and accounting systems that I’ve ever seen. It does an excellent job of segmenting the marketplace and matching products to those segments. The author, Randy Johnston, is to be congratulated.
Via TopStyle Blog (and others) we get a link to a super article about how personalized news is allowing each of us to decide what is important. The local 10 p.m. news on television last night was completely and totally worthless.
At least a third of the broadcast I watched dealt/dwelt with a story about a 14-year-old girl whose baby was shot while she trick-or-treated. The baby is in critical condition. Half of the people interviewed could not be understood by anyone who speaks English as their native tongue.
It’s not that I want to be oblivious to certain stories. I simply want a say in what gets the most attention in my news coverage. RSS feeds and tools give me that capability.
This morning between 3:40 a.m. and 3:42 a.m. I got 10 comments from the same individual. All of them were spam of a filthy nature and all of them were scattered back through old entries.
I thought that MT-Blacklist was going to block this sort of stuff.
Here’s what I’ve done. I manually entered the email address and the URL for this creep into MT-Blacklist. Then, I had MT-Blacklist clean up my weblog. Finally, I published my blacklist because I believe there is a feature that allows MT-Blacklist users to share these lists.
Questions:
Why didn’t MT-Blacklist stop this attack?
Is there something more that I’m supposed to do to make MT-Blacklist work well?
Am I supposed to be doing something to update my own blacklist from elsewhere?
Thanks in advance to any of you who have experience with this sort of thing.
Earlier tonight I came downstairs and found him in the dining room, on the floor, on his side, staring at the wall, which was about 2 inches from his snout. Hes not dealing with this very well.
Joe Ely just returned from attending Productivity, Inc.’s 2003 conference on Lean Management. His first report about the conference is up.
I’m only now digging into the essence of lean thinking and its relationship to other methodologies for improvement. Needless to say I was a little stunned to learn that one of the companies highlighted prominently in the book filed for bankruptcy in 1999.
I believe this has been the case with participants in many of the faddish methods including some that Tom Peters and others highlighted. Running a business that is successful across many decades is tough work. If you doubt this, I encourage you to locate even a handful of companies that can show even thirty years of uninterrupted return on shareholders’ equity. They are rare indeed. Take it out to fifty years and you’ll find less than a handful of truly enduring businesses.
Incredibly, I’ve just learned of a feature in Movable Type that I had no idea about. I’ve been using this product for over a year now, and my efforts to post photographs in this weblog have taken many, many steps.
The photo and the accompanying link that you see in this entry were done with a couple of clicks in Movable Type. In many ways, this is a test of the feature.
In some other ways, I really do need about a month away!
Wi-Fi Networking News has been the single most comprehensive tool for uncovering the information one needs in the field of wireless networking and the 802.11 series of wi-fi standards. If the wi-fi info you seek is not at the site, there’s a link to a place where you’ll find it.
The Real Live Preacher uses his highly dramatized interpretation of scripture and provides a glimpse of truth from another perspective. He dramatizes passages from Matthew and Mark.
You’ll find it in Part 2 of The Smallest Person In the World. If you missed Part 1, it’s here.
I was asked to shade the truth about some important matters by a person in another company on Friday. I replied, ”No.” I amplified my ”no” with some additional choice words. The world has simply become far too obsessed with making people ”feel” good regardless of how stupid, wrong, self-defeating or moronic their words and actions become. We want an ”undo” button for every thought, action and word we unleash.
Thankfully, there’s a remnant of people who understand personal responsibility. They know the difference between good and bad. They understand that ”we’re doing the best we can” sometimes isn’t good enough. They respect excellence because they know you don’t simply attach the label ”exellent” to something thereby making it so. Something lousy is lousy whether we call it excellent or not.
It’s 3:00 in the morning and I’ve just read Telling the Truth About Radical Islam at LilacRose. I encourage you to do the same and come face-to-face with those areas where you shade the truth or shy away from the truth about any subject due to concerns about political correctness, polite society or making someone ”feel” good.
Apparently, the use of CSS, well-formed markup and adherence to standards now permits stylistic excellence as well. Part 1 and Part 2 of Douglas Bowman’s Sliding Doors of CSS explains the what, why and how.
* * UPDATE * * * I’ve just learned, via the FeedDemon site, that Lockergnome has been redesigned using CSS, XHTML and web standards.
Two open letters follow, one to Education Secretary Rod Paige and another to Senator Ted Kennedy.
Dear Secretary Paige:
Although it wasn’t your intent, your op-ed in the October 30 Wall Street Journal helps to explain why today’s graduates of government schools cannot think critically and logically.
The op-ed began with a recital of how much government school spending has increased under the Bush administration. To quote: ”President Bush has increased K-12 education spending by 40% since he took office. That’s more in two years than it increased during the eight previous years under President Clinton. In raw terms, this president has increased education spending by $11 billion.”
Then in the following nine paragraphs, you stated the truth about education spending—that there is little relationship between increased spending and academic achievement.
Your logic would read as follows as a syllogism: Wasting money is wrong; increased education spending is a waste of money; therefore Bush did the right thing by increasing education spending. Hurts the brain, doesn’t it?
Or try this: Republicans are the party of small government and low taxes; Bush increased government spending more than Clinton; therefore Bush is a true Republican. Ouch!
I will keep your op-ed in my files and take it out whenever I have misgivings about the financial sacrifice that my wife and I make to exercise our religious freedom and send our kid to parochial school.
Sincerely,
Craig J. Cantoni
Dear Senator Kennedy:
I am very sorry to hear that you are still fighting your demons, especially the ones about inheriting your wealth, connections and political office from your philandering, bootlegging daddy, who also pulled strings to get you into Harvard. It must be very difficult to know that you earned little of your status and power on your own. Your feelings of guilt and inadequacy probably explain why you recently came out against so-called legacy admissions to universities.
Incidentally, your dad and my grandfather had a lot in common. My grandfather worked as a coal miner when he immigrated to this country from Italy. Chances are, the coal that he mined was used by your dad to fuel the boilers in his mansion. And my grandfather was also into moonshine like your dad. During Prohibition, he made wine in the cellar for personal consumption.
Anyway, back to the legacy issue.
You want universities to begin reporting how many of their admissions are legacy admissions; that is, admissions that are made because a parent attended the same university or gave money to the university.
I went to my copy of the U.S. Constitution and could not find an enumerated power that authorizes the federal government to enact such a regulation. Nor could I find a basis for such a regulation in the Federalist Papers or any other writings of the Founders. Perhaps you were sleeping during history class at Harvard or looking up a classmate’s dress when the Constitution was covered.
Of course, your secret agenda—other than exorcising your demons—is to build a case for affirmative action for government-favored groups that vote Democratic, especially Hispanics and blacks. Since it is mostly whites who get preferential treatment from universities based on legacy and endowments, you think it logically follows that it is okay to give preferential treatment based on race. You and Education Secretary Rod Paige think alike: illogically.
Your Harvard intellect fails to grasp the difference between a race-neutral practice that has a racial effect and a race-based practice that has a racial effect.
A legacy admission is a race-neutral practice that does not violate the Constitution. Universities are colorblind when they grant legacy admissions. Affirmative action, on the other hand, is a race-based practice that violates the Constitution, irrespective of the intellectual somersaults of Sandra Day O’Connor. Universities are not colorblind when they give extra admission points to certain races.
Both practices have different effects on different groups, but their starting points are radically different.
Am I going too fast for you?
Take my son as an example. He is the first Cantoni since his great-grandparents immigrated here who will have the wherewithal to attend an Ivy League school. Unlike you, he is not lucky enough to have a parental legacy that will give him an edge over other applicants. That doesn’t bother me at all, primarily because I don’t want him to attend an Ivy League school and be indoctrinated in the kind of politically correct nonsense that you espouse. But even if it bothered me, I wouldn’t want the federal government to do anything about it. I’d simply write it off as your forebears having more money than mine.
Affirmative action is a different matter. It means that the son of a Mexican immigrant can jump the line over my son, the great-grandson of an Italian immigrant, solely on the basis of his ethnicity. Now that bothers me a lot, enough to want to grab my pitchfork and storm your family castle in Martha’s Vineyard.
If that sounds extreme to you, please keep in mind that you’re the extremist. You took an oath to uphold the Constitution, an oath that you ignore. The Consitution clearly prohibits the denial of rights based on race. It is completely silent about advantages that accrue from wealth.
Incidentally, you and your party also favor estate taxes. That means that you want the government to take a part of the nest egg that my mom and dad saved and invested all of their working-class lives. Reminder: You’re the champion of the working-class. Wink, wink.
Most members of your party favor the estate tax for egalitarian reasons, believing in equal outcomes and in the use of state power to achieve equal outcomes. Other members of your party—and, sadly, many Republicans—favor the estate tax because they believe in a meritocracy. They believe in people starting on a level playing field and earning what they get in life. But if these people had ever taken a course in critical thinking, they would understand that their beliefs logically lead to the state rearing children or killing parents. Why? Because one’s success in life depends on parental influences more than inherited money.
Take you as an example. Even if daddy Joe had not given you a dime, you would have still benefited from his connections and the Kennedy name. Or do you believe that you would have become a U.S. Senator on your own merits and did not have an enormous advantage over my father, who was raised in a two-flat on Dago Hill—sorry, but that’s what we call it—in St. Louis? If you think that, you should stay away from the liquor cabinet.
Sorry, but the legacy of connections and power that you inherited from your daddy is going to follow you to the grave, regardless of how much you pontificate about fairness on Capitol Hill. If you had had the courage of your convictions, you would have resigned your senate seat, changed your name to something with a vowel at the end of it, given all your money to charity, moved into a bungalow in the North End of Boston, and did honest work for living.
Sincerely,
Craig J. Cantoni
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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
If you’ve read Warren Buffett’s article and you want to make your own contribution to solving the trade deficit, read this article and reconsider any agreement you might have made to manufacture, program or offer teleservices via offshore outsourcers. You’ll prevent problems such as this. You’ll likely save money even though your original justification for going offshore looked so airtight.
Here’s an excerpt:
Cultural differences are a major hurdle to effective project management. Start with a word like ”yes.” Americans usually think yes means a person agrees with a statement or a question, while Indians will often use the word to confirm they understood what the speaker was saying, not that they necessarily agree.
In the October 26th issue of Fortune magazine, Warren Buffett collaborates with Carol Loomis on the subject of the trade deficit, its problems and a possible solution. If you like to learn, this one teaches.
It’s available here if you have a subscription to Fortune. Otherwise, you might try this link.
As a Jew and a learned man, Senator Joseph Lieberman certainly understands the horrors of the racial genocide of the Third Reich and the class genocide of the Bolshevik Revolution. He should know better than Howard Dean and the other leftist presidential candidates that both ugly scars on human history began with a belief that the state was more important than the individual. That’s what makes his support of the tyranny of collectivism so inexplicable.
Lieberman outlined his economic platform in the October 27 edition of the Wall Street Journal. It is a collectivist, class-warfare platform. Like all forms of redistribution, it would use government power to forcibly take property from some citizens and give it to others. Specifically, it would take money from a small minority of higher-income citizens and give it to a large majority of lower-income citizens. Under his plan, couples earning more than $200,000 would see their taxes increase, and couples earning $200,000 or less would see their taxes decrease.
The Bolsheviks and Nazis also began thier reigns by confiscating property for state purposes—noble purposes in the twisted minds of those in power.
Of course, Lieberman is in no way advocating what the Bolsheviks and Nazis did next: send selected groups to the gulag and concentration camp. But make no mistake about it: Once the camouflage of his flowery rhetoric is stripped away, Lieberman is recommending tyranny—not the tyranny of a dictatorship, but the tyranny of the majority. Unlike the nation’s founders, he believes that if enough citizens band together, they have the moral and constitutional right to rob other people, especially if the others are part of a small demonized group.
Lieberman took 22 column-inches to justify his plan, but it can be summarized in 18 words: He proposes lowering the taxes of 98 percent of taxpayers and raising the taxes on the top 2 percent of taxpayers. In other words, he is saying that 98 percent of taxpayers have a right to the money of a small minority. It does not matter to him that the top 2 percent of wage earners already pay more than 35 percent of all federal income taxes.
One of Hitler’s first actions upon becoming the German chancellor in 1933 was to declare a one-day boycott against Jewish shops, thus depriving the owners of a portion of their income. At the time, Jews were a small minority, comprising about 6 percent of the German population.
There was no outcry in Germany or the rest of the world over the boycott. We know what came next in the absence of an outcry: German Jews were denied the right to vote, to marry gentiles, to own property and, finally, to live.
Virtually every American would say that the boycott was immoral, unfair and unjust. Why would they say that? Is it because they know about the atrocities that came later? Or is it because the boycott was immoral, unfair and unjust on its face, irrespective of the atrocities that followed?
I believe the latter—that it was immoral, unfair and unjust on its face for 94 percent of Germans to deprive 6 percent of Germans of part of their livelihood. It logically follows, then, that it is immoral, unfair and unjust for 98 percent of Americans to deprive 2 percent of Americans of part of their livelihood.
Some would say that this is an apples-to-oranges comparison—that there is not a moral equivalency between the confiscation of income based on race and the confiscation of income based on wealth. Of course, many of those who would say this are the same people who believe in racial preferences—in giving favored races preferential treatment over less-favored races.
Others would say that it is immoral, unfair and unjust for the wealthy to have too much money and not share it with the poor. In fact, that’s what Lieberman suggested in his op-ed. He called his plan a ”tax fairness plan.”
The problem with such thinking is that 98 percent of Americans are not poor and unable to provide for themselves. Only 10 percent or so do not have the mental or physical ability to provide the necessities of life to themselves or their families. But Lieberman is not saying that the state should give 10 percent of Americans other people’s money. Nor is he saying that 10 percent should be helped through private charity. He is saying that the state should forcibly take money from 2 percent of Americans and give it to the remaining 98 percent, which, under his plan, includes couples with a combined income of $200,000. That’s a strange and expansive definition of fairness.
Having painted himself into an intellectual corner, Lieberman tried to escape by talking about the dramatic increase over the years in the regressive payroll tax, in health care costs and in college tuition—costs that are borne, he said, by the middle-class. In doing so, he left footprints of wet paint all over his economic platform.
Lieberman’s rationale is wrong for two reasons. First, the middle-class does not consist of 98 percent of Americans and those earning up to $200,000. Second, although Republicans share much of the blame, his party is mostly responsible for skyrocketing payroll taxes, health care costs and tuition. Democratic presidents enacted Social Security and Medicare, both of which rely on intergenerational transfer payments and are truly Ponzi schemes. Moreover, it was a Democratic president who destroyed a consumer market in health insurance 60 years ago through a misguided policy that made workers dependent on their employers for health insurance. And Democrats more than Republicans have advocated expansions of the student loan program and increased subsidies to education, both of which have resulted in the cost of education increasing three times faster than inflation.
With paint brush in hand, Lieberman went on to rail against the declining share of taxes paid by corporations. He did not say that corporate taxes are simply passed on to consumers in higher prices for goods and services.
Lieberman uses these extraneous issues to hide his true belief. Like other Democrats and an alarming number of Republicans, he believes that your money belongs to the collective, to be doled out by the state based on the whims, class resentments, selfishness and moral turpitude of the majority of voters and the party in power.
In view of history, it is inexplicable that a Jew would want the state to have so much power.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
A few weeks ago, during some preparatory seminars for this years Baldrige Examiners’ work, an experienced quality engineer was asked, “What course of study would you advise for a young person interested in pursuing the field of quality?”
Without hesitation, he said, “I’d suggest an undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering followed by Master Black Belt certification in Six Sigma and a rigorous study of ‘lean methods’ for anyone – young or old – interested in quality.” With just a little extra prodding he suggested some books. One of them is Lean Thinking by James Womack and Daniel Jones.
If you enjoy the study of customer service, business improvement and the methodologies that can be used to bring about performance excellence, this one belongs on your reading list.
But Kohl said scientists observed the biggest such explosion in 30 years shortly before 6 a.m. EST Tuesday. It produced a particle cloud 13 times larger than Earth and hurtled through the solar system at more than 1 million miles per hour.
Not related to this website despite its name, Overcriminalized.com is a new site from the Heritage Foundation ”devoted to challenging and ultimately reversing the harmful trend by government to criminalize more and more ordinary activities.”
FeedDemon is currently my news aggregator/RSS feed reader of choice. I probably have 15 channel groups containing 20 or 30 channels each.
Yesterday I experimented with ”direct” posting from FeedDemon to Movable Type thanks to some information from Jakub Kazecki.
After I reported decidedly mixed results with the effort, Jakub was kind enough to leave a comment that offers some alternatives and improvements to the method I was using yesterday.
According to Gizmodo IBM’s got some new high-end Thinkpads with great specs. I can’t stop reading about all the enthusiasm for OS X 10.3 Panther from Apple.
Release Candidate 2 of FeedDemon is now available for download. There’s a great list of additions, changes and fixes for those who are keeping track of how this fine piece of software is advancing.
For those who are facing a career or job change, I’d suggest starting with an indentification of your own personality profile, skills and passions. A couple of ways to get this information are described here. You can also turn to the ever-useful What Color Is Your Parachute? for tools that will uncover this kind of information.
If you’re interested in becoming an expert in a field, use Ed Horrell’s books and weekly emails. They are tops at teaching you how to begin writing, speaking and offering consulting advice in a field of your choosing.
I’d also recommend Dan Miller’s excellent 48 Days to the Work You Love web site and materials. These are particularly useful to those who definitely want to go to work for someone else.
Po Bronson’s book is less a workbook and more a thought-provoking analysis of how others faced the decision described as What Should I Do With My Life?
Scene: History Class at Beijing University, Beijing China
Speaker: Professor Chou Yeng
Date: October 26, 2150
I’m going to lecture today on how China surpassed the United States as an economic and military power 75 years ago. I’ll begin by discussing the factors that contributed to America’s downfall but were not the primary reason for the downfall. Then I’ll conclude with the primary reason.
Five factors contributed to the downfall:
1. ENTITLEMENT SPENDING:
By 2030, entitlements consumed 70 percent of the United States budget. This left the American government with inadequate military resources to defend itself against the enemies that it had made through military interventionism and against the enemies that it had made by virtue of being number one and holding Western values. Ironically, because of entitlement spending and progressive taxation, the United States eventually became more socialistic and less entrepreneurial than post-Mao China.
2. LACK OF SAVINGS AND INVESTMENT
The entitlement spending and the corresponding high taxes on income lowered personal savings to a rate that was one-fifth China’s rate at the time. This in turn left the United States with inadequate capital to fund investments in industry and productivity improvements.
3. TARIFFS, SUBSIDIES AND INFLEXIBLE LABOR LAWS
Over time, the lack of investment capital resulted in lower per-capita income and a declining standard of living. These in turn increased demands for tariffs on imported goods, subsidies for uncompetitive American industries, and strict labor laws that had the misguided purpose of protecting American jobs—all of which made matters worse. The United States stopped being a haven for capital from foreign investors, who shifted their money to China, where it got a higher return.
4. DIVERSITY
Immigration had been a strength of the United States during the latter half of the19th century and early 20th century. It had been a source of cheap labor, of outstanding scientific and entrepreneurial talent, and of new ideas. But by the 21st century, when immigration had morphed into multiculturalism and group rights and privileges, it had become a source of friction, resentment, divisiveness, and litigation. At the same time, China exploited the fact that it was 92 percent homogenous and had a formal and informal network of Chinese business contacts and investment sources not only in Asia but also in North America.
5. THE MANHATTAN DIRTY BOMB
The United States never recovered from the dirty bomb that spread radioactivity across lower Manhattan and the heart of the nation’s financial district in 2025. The ensuing panic and financial turmoil caused more harm than the bomb itself. Just 24 years before, a handful of Islamic extremists had destroyed the World Trade Center and caused the United States to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on security, military campaigns and nation-building. But that was a drop in the bucket compared to the trillions that were spent as a result of the dirty bomb—expenditures that coincided with increased entitlement spending. The United States had never learned from the World Trade Center. Due to nostalgia for high-density downtowns and a growing political movement against what was then called ”suburban sprawl,” the United States kept too much of its financial industry concentrated in vulnerable downtown Manhattan instead of spreading it out in safer suburban locations across the country.
Now for the primary reason for America’s downfall: nutritional labeling in restaurants. No, I’m not kidding.
In 2003, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration first considered mandatory nutritional labeling in restaurants as a way of countering the obesity of Americans. The FDA’s thinking was symbolic of what the United States had become. It had become a soft, paternalistic nation of big-bellied citizens who could no longer think for themselves without the government’s help.
Years before, the United States had mandated nutritional labeling on packaged food. The nation got fatter afterwards. So what did United States do? It advocated mandatory food labeling in restaurants, believing that the nation would get skinnier as a result. The government had become a government of obtuse fat heads. Instead of being a government that knew how to grow an economy, it had become a government that knew how to grow food labeling bureaucrats, food labeling consultants and food labeling lawyers who would file lawsuits on behalf of obese clients.
At the same time, restaurants in China were skinning live snakes at restaurant tables to satisfy the demand of patrons for fresh snake meat—without skin or nutritional labels.
The now defunct Wall Street Journal ran an article on October 23, 2003, about the restaurant labeling. I have it here. The article quoted a deputy FDA commissioner, who said: ”What the public really wants to do is get a reality check … to have an adequate nutritional program that does not make them overweight.”
That statement says it all about what had happened by the early 21st century to American self-reliance, individualism, common sense and initiative. Americans no longer had the intelligence to understand that overeating was making them fat, not the lack of an ”adequate nutritional program.” Americans no longer understood that steamed broccoli has less calories and is more nutritious than deep-fried chicken wings. A nation with such widespread stupidity and dependency did not deserve to rule the world—and it no longer does.
Any questions?
In the next class I’ll be covering why the United States followed in the footsteps of France, Germany and Great Britain.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how will it be made salty again? It is good for nothing anymore, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men. Matthew 5:13 NASB
You are like salt for all mankind. But if salt loses its saltiness, there is no way to make it salty again. It has become worthless, so it is thrown out and people trample on it. Matthew 5:13 TEV – The Good News
Dr. Albert Mohler suggests a book for those interested in how Christians have and are making accomodations for the popular culture. Here’s a quote from his essay:
”Wolfe traces the pattern of church-swapping and denomination-switching. This ”circulation of the saints” is a pattern tied to consumerist religion. Worship is no longer dictated by theological conviction, but rather by personal taste. Heavily influenced by an entertainment culture, modern evangelicals are looking for worship that is experienced with the thrill and excitement of the latest musical styles and video technology.”
Fights about religion have been some of the most brutal fights throughout history. Sometimes those fights were about matters of right and wrong. Other times they were about power, position and prestige.
Every major denomination and religion in the world today is fighting about something. If we’re not feuding along political lines, we’re feuding over ”the role of women.” If not that, we’re fighting about public symbols of religious belief.
Gary Petersen has found three of the links to ”scholarly” criticisms of The Message Bible. Stacked behind my desk are 17 different Bibles. I refer to each and every one of them from time to time in my studies. The Message is there along with the others.
I’m anxious to hear what Gary has to say about The Message and the articles that are critical of it. I’ve come to the conclusion that The Message won’t replace my New American Standard Bible for every day reading and study, but I’ll refer to The Message often as I do the Today’s English Version (Good News) and many other translations and paraphrases.
Eugene Peterson did not set out to distort, confuse or undermine the original meaning of the Bible. His ministry through many decades proves that. People can parse his words and probably should. However, if those same people will take their little charts and expand them to 10 or 12 translations, they’ll discover just how much room for interpretation exists.
As an example, get 15 Greek scholars in a room, give them some ancient Greek literature and you’ll often get 17 translations of the same passages. What were the motives of each of the 15 scholars as they translated? Were they trying to skew, deceive and obscure the real meaning? I think not.
If you’re at all interested in what some of our limousine liberals did, you can read this. It’s obvious, at least to me, that they spent somebody else’s money rubbing shoulders and brushing up on the latest causes. That would be that set of causes that can so emotionally charge a discussion that they can get the media begging and pleading for them for free.
Where ’www.myblog.com/cgi-bin’ is the URL of your MT installation.
After doing this, you’ll be able to right click on a news item and select ”Blog This News Item” to post to your MovableType blog directly from FeedDemon.
* * UPDATE * * * This method of posting directly from FeedDemon to Movable Type does not allow you to specify what category you want to assign to the entry. It also required some alterations (for my site) to the command line.
”Sony, Sharp, Pioneer, and Kenwood are working together on a new line of stereo systems with Ethernet ports that can download music directly from the Internet without requiring a PC.” [Gizmodo]
If you’re not aware of this new feature at Amazon, it might come in handy.
Search Inside the Book is the name of the feature. Amazon has over 120,000 books consisting of 33 million pages and they are searchable by individual words.
A couple of new articles explain more of what’s going on as Mel Gibson finishes his movie and prepares it for release. Some of this relates to what has changed since the project was originally announced. Then, there are the details associated with making sure the movie gets seen. Here are some things that I believe have ”changed” since I first heard of the movie:
English subtitles will be used; originally the movie was going to be released in the ancient Latin and Aramaic without subtitles.
I’ve seen no definitive word on historical facts left in or out of the movie, though there has been lots of debate and lobbying for such alterations
Yesterday was a very long day. Members of one of our project teams have been working on the shop floor of a small manufacturing operation to determine specific quantities of raw materials consumed in the manufacture of finished goods. All of this is toward the objective of setting up an inventory management and production scheduling system for the client.
Directing the project is one of the family members who owns the business. Documents provided in spreadsheets and notes were supposed to provide the ”facts” about how things get made. Yet, our project team was finding completely different information on the shop floor working with guys who have been making this stuff for 10 to 20 years.
We were faced with the classis example of ”it’s not what you don’t know that hurts your business; it’s what you know that isn’t so.”
Fortunately, after a somewhat detailed presentation of our findings, we were able to convince the fellow who had so much tied up in his own notes and spreadsheets. He agreed that his company would be far better off built around a system of information that was true and accurate rather than information that was intuitive or seat-of-the-pants.
All the spreadsheets in the world couldn’t substitute for a tape measure and a walk through the manufacturing facility to where the raw materials were actually stored. The meeting could have gone either way, but wisdom prevailed.
I have an important meeting this morning. It is very likely to define for me some key objectives for the balance of my career. It’s hard to visualize how a single meeting could be quite that profound, but it turns on a very key principle: ”Do we manage and lead organizations with facts or not?”
On the front page of the Drudge Report this morning is the following quote with no links:
”Director Mel Gibson has opted to market and distribute his controversial film ’The Passion of Christ’ through his own company, Icon Entertainment, the LOS ANGELES TIMES is reporting on Wednesday. The film will be released nationwide on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2004. Developing…”
Notice the title of the movie has been changed in the last week or so.
Dane quotes Forbes which quotes researchers who asked people why they hired a milkshake. Notice this one didn’t make Dane’s Diet Blog.
Gathering requirements for any project or improvement initiative is a critical success factor. Unless the technique is right, important dimensions of the needed change will be missed. There are some clever and useful tools for uncovering customer requirements. Applying these techniques thoroughly will prevent the need to turn to marketing and say, ”Please come up with a marketing program that will make them want our new, improved stuff.”
I’ve been behind on my weblogging – both reading and writing. Yesterday, I noticed that FeedDemon’s first release candidate was out. However, I also noticed that, due to some significant changes, entries in FeedDemon would be lost…unless…
This is where I found my way around recent procrastination. I was able to quickly skim the three or four channel groups that are most important to me and, finding an entry I might want to read carefully or write about, I right-clicked on it and selected the option for ”copy to News Bin.”
Effectively, this creates a channel group of future entries or future reading. Once done, I upgraded to FeedDemon RC-1. I like it and you will too!
”According to Robert H. Bork, the American constitutional order is being subverted by an elite of judges. In his new book, Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges, Bork takes on the judicial usurpation of politics, culture and morality.”
Apparently, during my prolonged distraction from weblogging, FeedDemon has moved to Release Candidate 1. I haven’t yet installed it, because I’m so far behind in reading recent feeds.
As I understand it, if I install RC1 now, I’ll lose all the entries that are currently in my beta installation of FeedDemon. I’ll read some more before installing RC1.
”Went to the Shiner Circus on Saturday. Or rather: Cirque de SoLame. Oh, I shouldnt be so critical, as my mom always said; I did have fun, and clapped enthusiastically, but it didnt really feel like a circus. It felt like Vegas Lite.”
Mississippi State University’s long-time football coach is retiring at the end of this season. It is Larry Templeton’s job to select and interview a list of candidates for the position.
Before listing people, Templeton should make a list of the skills and character attributes he’s searching for. Here are a few tips:
someone who understands the methods of bringing discipline into the lives and work habits of guys who are 18 to 22 years old
someone who has the personality to attract talented athletes to a university
someone who understands the game of college football in 2003
someone who understands the business of college football in 2003
someone who wants to build a program and not just a quick turnaround
someone who understands how to represent a university in all areas of public life
someone who has been a part of a team that wins and knows how to teach what it takes to win
At this point in the season, here’s my short list:
anyone who wants to beat Tommy Tuberville in any way at any activity under any circumstances at any time
Philip Greenspun is seeing technology from the perspective of one who just spent time defragging drives. Trust me. There are few people who do this. We often find business PC’s in disastrous shape because of the bit rot so common in Windows PC’s that have a few miles on them. We need a Moore’s Law of ease of use!
Yesterday, I lost nearly an entire day. I took a laptop to a client’s office and attempted to join it to their Windows NT 4.0 domain without losing that PC’s ability to join the domain to which it was normally attached. As of this moment, that laptop can’t join either domain. No email is available for it, and none of the files stored locally are accessible.
It now has nine or ten user profiles on it with a complete set of documents and settings folders for each. This is all as a result of trying to use that laptop on the client’s network to do a project. DNS, DHCP settings, IP addresses, gateways, user names, passwords, domain names… There has to be a better way!
Powerful people are aligning to prevent Mel Gibson’s movie from getting distributed. Many are still hopeful the movie will not be made. Others are trying to insure that the movie gets changed.
I set up a Google News Alert that drops lots of links about Gibson and the movie in my inbox each day. The web site See the Passion continues to track the many articles that are getting written.
Good morning. Blogging will continue to be rather light this week as I clear my head of a funk and catch up on a couple of projects that need my undivided attention.
The Palestinians don’t really want to start this sort of mess. There is some thought that the only reason Israel has been as restrained as they have in recent days is due to U.S. influences. Now, the leash will get a bit longer or it will be removed completely.
”Those crazy drivers who deliver Domino’s pizza? They hold the 5th most dangerous job in America, dying in accidents at an annual rate of 38 per 100,000.” [Philip Greenspun Weblog]
Like each person changing the locks on his or her door, everybody is talking about unwanted email and methods for stopping it. Some are worried about the conventional email barrage that seems to be escalating.
I’m not usually a fan of the great, centrally-planned cooperative solution, but somehow we’ve got to reestablish a bit of law and order on the information superhighway.
If people are willing to accept the heat in whatever way it is applied, why shouldn’t people be allowed to speak their minds? All these public apologies, resignations, firings and the like are direct results of a society that has lost touch with what it really means to be diverse.
Those who argue for political correctness and diversity welcome anyone who believes as they do. Otherwise, you are insensitive, cause hostile work environments and are ostricized from certain circles of influence.
History is history. Facts are facts. There’s more to ”truth” than ”what someone can make a jury believe.”
There’s more truth in a few statements that some people find politically incorrect than the PC-police want to acknowledge. Their analytical method guages polical correctness first. Only after that judgment is made is there some remote possibility that they would examine the truth.
It looks as if I’m going to have to take steps to prevent or manage filthy comments. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about comments that are counterpoints to something I’ve said.
Rather, the unwanted and impolite filth that some have chosen to add to my weblog of late. Had I a few more skills at tracking the culprit, I’d take every step legally available to me.
Unwarranted, unsolicited slime amounts to defacing private property. People who do it here are going to get the maximum amount of follow through that I can muster. In the meantime, I’m going to see what I can learn about preventing the mess.
There is a nasty tendency in human relations today. It says, ”never acknowledge or quote anything your opponent says.” If you’re a conservative, never quote a liberal. If you’re a Democrat, never quote a Republican, except to argue with his or her point. If you and your peer are ”competing” for the same promotion, acknowlegde nothing good about them, their work or their ideas.
Somehow this just seems all wrong. It’s also boring. Some of the funniest stuff you’ll hear comes from clever, bright people on the opposing side. None of this is limited to politics. It happens in the technology debates. It happens in social circles. Venemous and rancorous mudslinging is getting us nowhere.
There is a gridlock in so many places. No movement forward is evident. I’m not sure how we get back to bipartisan politics and civil discourse, but it is time. Now for an example of someone who would never be conciliatory in any way with any member of the Republican party.
Okay, here goes. I cannot imagine myself being any more opposed to a candidate or having greater opposition to the views and approach of a candidate for office than I have with Al Sharpton. However, the way this rolled off the tongue, well you be the judge:
Tony Blair and George Bush had a meeting; acted as though it was a world summit two guys in a phone booth, acting like the whole world had met.
I keep hearing great things about Fujitsu’s ultraportable laptops. Gizmodo talks about the updated Lifebook P5000 from Fujitsu.
This is the kind of product that would allow me to move all of my applications and data onto the laptop and, given a suitable wi-fi cloud, do my work from anywhere.
Ask Yahoo wanted to track down the salaries of the governors of the fifty states. They weren’t all that successful. I tried to track down the salaries of the CEO’s or directors of state lotteries for those states that have lotteries. I got only partial information.
This sounds like an excellent job for a properly categorized weblog. It could capture the salary and fringe benefits of state and municipal employees. Remember, in many states, the highest paid person on the state’s payroll is some football or basketball coach at one of the state universities!
If you publish your weblog or even a full web site using the content management features of Movable Type or TypePad, you’re using products from Six Apart. The founders of Six Apart are Ben and Mena Trott.
They appeared on CNN’s Headline News. It’s worth watching. This is a link to a 3.6MB Quicktime formatted clip of the appearance.
Nancy Goering, posting at Glenn Fleishman’s site, provides a link to an article that sounds like something I’d write about web standards or maybe even Wi-Fi. In other words, something written by someone who just didn’t have the terminology straight or the concepts clearly pictured in their brains.
The question remains: what is the bill of materials that is required to connect ’x’ number of users in a five square mile area with a wi-fi network? Clearly, the user needs a wi-fi card or wi-fi-ready PC. From there, I assume there’s a conventional wireless access point. From there, what? 802.16? Something else? Fiber to the WAP?
She follows that article with another that hits closer to home. Cincinnati is planning a metropolitan Wi-Fi cloud. I’m not a fan of taxes to build these things, but I am a fan of the notion that a strong WISP in a city might offer a serious alternative to the monopolistic attitudes of many cable companies and DSL providers. Small businesses and home owners would be the big beneficiaries.
The most important link and information in the entire article is this, ”... said Esmie Vos, founder of MuniWireless.com, an Amsterdam-based Web site that tracks Wi-Fi projects worldwide.” I glanced at the web site and I’m hopeful that it will connect me with someone who can describe for me what it takes to put wi-fi over a five square mile area. From there I can begin to understand the complexities of the ”typical” municipal or campus wi-fi project.
Whew. I thought for a minute that Susan had been attacked by the thought police.
I’ve decided not to read the Bible anymore. There’s so much sex and violence, I just don’t think it’s appropriate material for anyone. Can you believe some people encourage their children to read the Bible?
Now this sounds interesting. Jeffrey Zeldman has linked to Carrie Bickner and the fact that she’s got a new book coming out. It is called Web Design On A Shoestring.
I wonder whether or not the principles covered in the book also apply to small business sites and weblogs. The concept is terrific. I spoke with a small business owner last week who had spent $200,000 for a web site that never became operational. He then spent $50,000 with another designer/developer who had the site operational in less than 60 days. Today, he believes everything he got could be built from concept to ”go live” for $5,000.
Within the past week or two, I learned via a comment that I should be encoding certain types of punctuation when I write for this weblog. That ensures that the page validates properly.
My confession is that it is simply too much trouble right now. I use Movable Type’s text entry box to type all of my entries. I also hand-code every blockquote, img, and a href tag. Remembering the precise number for an apostrophe (I think it was 8217) and opening and closing quotes is a nuisance. It is particularly annoying when, somehow, Movable Type or IE manages to figure out what I meant and renders the final page correctly for viewing.
Call me lazy. I’m sure someone out there is inconvenienced by my slothfulness. However, until I understand why the 8217 rendering of an apostrophe is identical to, better than or worse than the &apos method, I’m just going to write.
Wait. That’s not enough. I need to understand the difference AND I need to learn to write my entries in TopStyle with full validation and all the other fancy stuff PLUS I need those scripts and plugins that make everything look so good without having to think about every 8217, 8220 and 8221.
Peter Eschenbrenner on the FeedDemon News Server made an OPML file out of the list of attendees at BloggerCon 2003. I was able to create a Channel Group just for the attendees.
One of the best things to come of BloggerCon for this non-attending blogger is the new list of (serious) webloggers I was able to add to my aggregator.
Gizmodo reports that Treo 600’s are shipping. $599 seems to be the price tag. No word, yet, as to whether or not Sprint will offer and customer loyalty incentive or upgrade plan for Treo 300 owners.
I remember when a Daytimer refill carried a cost of a whopping $16.95 each year. Now, we’re faced with a PDA improvement every six months, but the tariff is more like $600.
”The Bush RSS feeds are a total mess. At the Day 2 community session Joi Ito said the usual, ’we work together well in the weblog community.’ It’s not true. We work terribly together. I wish someone would explain to me why a user like the President of the United States has to have such a jumble of formats. Does anyone else care how hard it’s going to be to move this mess forward? (Impossible, actually.) I’ve really tried to get people to play together. Didn’t happen. At least we can be truthful about our failures, as it gets too late to fix them. I’m afraid, at the technology level, it’s business as usual, and not much win-win. Our shame. Blogger, Movable Type, I’ll take my share too. Maybe we can have a grown up conversation about this some time, and try to make the best of a very bad situation.”
I’m very interested in RSS feeds. I’d love to know why some RSS feeds display graphics in FeedDemon, but others do not. I’d like to know how to set up RSS feeds for categories. I’d like to know how to set up RSS feeds that show:
the first part of an entry
an excerpt of an entry which I think relates to Movable Type’s excerpt box below the text entry box
entries with comments
In other words, I need to understand more about RSS. What I’m curious about from Dave’s entry is what makes the RSS feeds at George Bush’s weblog a ”mess?” Is it the fact that there are multiple RSS feeds? Is it the formatting of those feeds? I have no hidden agenda, nor do I have any viewpoint at all on the topic. I know there has been acrimonious debate about RSS feeds, but I don’t know what makes one a ”mess.” Anything anyone can point me to that explains the background of Dave’s statement would be greatly appreciated.
Rob Fahrni is still fighting the DNS battles. As a user of Hosting Matters and their Bloggerzone hosting services, I can suggest them without reservation. They’ve been terrific. Just a thought if the DNS problems can’t get resolved fairly soon. Try the Big Kahuna.
Once you have a weblog and know just a few of the basics associated with posting entries, you’ll discover the rest by reading other weblogs. The folks at Six Apart run a weblog called Six Log. They’ve posted an interview which makes a good starting point for the morning.
There is such a strong frustration level with DSL providers as well as cable companies offering ISP services via cable modem that I have to believe a wide-area Wi-Fi cloud would be something people would get excited about. I’m not talking about the cloud in the airport lounge, or the cloud at Starbucks and Borders.
I’m talking about a wi-fi cloud that can be economically built over a metropolitan area. What is the bill of materials that is required to build and staff a dependable, affordable WISP?
I’m open to any and all advice that doesn’t involve used Pringles cans for antennae.
Not since the venerable HP 200LX Palmtop running DOS 5.0 have I seen a PDA that I really like. I carry a Treo 300 right now. I’m considering the Treo 600, but I’m still waiting for a full-featured, subnotebook running Windows XP Professional in a tablet or laptop configuration.
Mel Gibson is experiencing what Hollywood has been doing to Christians and their beliefs for decades. One quote is, ”Even if it makes money, it’s not ’Titanic.’” No sign that crass thinking has left Hollywood.
Does calling the customer service department have to be a bad experience? There are countless examples of customer service departments that exist to mask the problems a company is facing with a product or service. ”We didn’t produce it correctly, so we’ll just have to gear up to take the calls from customers and send field service people to fix it.”
Think of the waste embedded in that last sentence. Two entire departments exist on a scale completely out of line with what would be required were products and services built from the idea to the delivered goods with quality in mind.
Unfortunately, the problems seldom stop there. Call centers are being managed using telecommunications technology that is almost guaranteed to provide a bad experience for the caller. Hold times are miserable. Linkages to vital information systems are poorly conceived.
Predictive analysis should allow any call center to alter the hold times and the handoff’s that customers are forced to endure. It is not a difficult matter to keep a historical record of a customer’s calls so that the CSR who takes the next call can see the recent calls and outcomes from the same customer.
Are CEO’s so busy with ”more important stuff” that these matters don’t belong in the executive suite? Every day small business owners solve these kinds of problems or they go out of business. Why isn’t the head of Wal-Mart or the head of HP or the head of Time Warner concerned about how the customer experiences their products and services?
Philip Greenspun puts the notion of direct financial gain from a weblog into perspective. Adam Curry noted in a somewhat offhanded manner that he had made several million dollars as a result of his weblog by promoting and connecting to others who needed his involvement.
...to Shirley Kaiser’s work because this is simply some of the best content in the world of weblogging for those who are interested in the effective construction and management of a weblog.
Now she follows that up with some help for those (doesn’t everybody?) who get comment spam. I found one this morning that dates all the way back to the first couple of hundred entries on this weblog.
If you want to improve your weblog, there are two primary things to do. First, improve its content. Second, follow Shirley’s tips for making your weblog more useful to your readers.
Those occupying the truly rarefied air in the blogosphere met at ”Hahvad” yesterday. There were lots of great comments and discussions. There were lots of technology problems.
I wish BloggerCon organizers and network folks could get the webcast squared away. This is an important milestone along the weblog growth curve, and those of us who are not there can’t get a reliable audio or video feed. Glenn Reynolds, whom I had hoped to listen to on the BloggerCon webcast, has mentioned the need for wi-fi everywhere. He’s right.
I spoke to a company yesterday that is in the business of providing a ”wireless backbone” for a small town or metro area. However, the technology is not wi-fi. It’s fixed wireless technology. Any WISP could use this technology as an alternative to whatever bandwidth they have, but the user or consumer would be a subscriber to that WISP’s services.
In other words, we’re still searching for the truly wide-area wi-fi solution. Is it 802.16? Which providers are ready to enter into a project right now for wide-area wi-fi?
The essence of (serious) weblogging is that it can replace ”big media” as a source of not only stories, but of which stories are worth noting. It’s better said at BloggerCon 2003:
Big room in Harvard law school. Picture on the wall of Rosa Parks integrating that bus.
Forgive me for this comparison, but-we aim at our own small upset of the balance of power here. In a world where web publishing is easy, fast, and widespreadin a world of weblogs-the big guys lose the power to decide which stories get spread around and which get buried.
All of this relates to BloggerCon 2003 and my attempts to listen to the conference webcast and learn:
Does anyone have an OPML file of the conference attendees’ RSS feeds so that I can subscribe to all of their weblogs in a single Channel Group in FeedDemon?
Has anyone managed to get the webcast to come through well? I have lots of what sounds like 60hz hum and drop-outs.
When I run netstat -a from a command prompt on a Windows XP machine, what should I see if all is well? This question will be going to my friend Steven Vore with a screen shot. Something is causing near incessant activity on my cable modem.
Bloggercon is not a technology conference, its focus is on the sociology of blogging.
I have been asked why I, as a hard-core technologist, am here. For me there is a big future of weblogs in the academic research world. The whole cycle of paper writing and reviewing is way too long. Reporting on research while you are doing it is is important.
Read Scripting News every day by visiting the site or by adding the RSS feed to your news reader. Read it until you understand some of the veiled references to past events. Don’t give up. Keep reading. You’ll get a clearer picture of the kinds of things that are going to be significant on the World Wide Web of tomorrow.
Life along The Way can be tough. It can be fun, too. It can be exciting, but it can be tough. Real Live Preacher understands this.
Without sermonizing, he makes it clear that concrete, perfectly clear answers aren’t always given. Perhaps, they’re given and we miss them. Perhaps they’re delayed. Often, they’re not given.
Through all of that he remains genuine. If he’s not part of your regular reading list, he ought to be. There’s not enough ”genuine” around any more.
The medium that is weblogging has been thoroughly scrutinized and reviewed in its brief life. One comparison that is frequently made is with other forms of media – particular those that report the news. Newspapers, radio and television have developed policies and practices that guide their involvement in advertising.
Weblogs are a new venture as far as advertising and advertisers are concerned. Today, Jason Kottke links to several great pieces of information about how Google is approaching the advertising business.
The FeedDemon RSS feed brought Wendy Peck’s article about CSS to my attention. Those of you following along at home as I learn XHTML and CSS might find her article worthwhile.
Nothing works without access. Yesterday a guy backed his cable television truck up to a pole in my back yard and worked on the cable. When he finished and left, my home didn’t have cable modem service.
Today, after 9 phone calls and conversations with 13 people, I’ve got my cable ISP service restored.
OK. You’ve got a weblog. You’ve got an idea. You’ve got enthusiasm. What are you going to do about those times when you have nothing to say?
The weblog world consists of writers and readers. The best of each is also one of the other. So, how do you become a writer who can rather quickly read a selection of weblogs without having to browse to each one of them individually?
There is so much going on right now. Steven Vore pointed to a weblog (and person) that’s new to me. Curt Rosengren is a Passion Catalyst (sm). He helps people who have gotten to that point in their lives where they’re saying, ”Hey, wait a minute; this isn’t the playground I signed up for…”
Those are topics near and dear to the Rodent Regatta. So many people are going through life without a clue as to why they are here. I’ve suggested Dan Miller’s materials many times here. We wrote about Rachel Lucas’s search and discovery in the area of finding a passion.
I look forward to reading Curt’s weblog. Now, my passion is around here somewhere…
Ray Ozzie at Groove Networks, Inc. discusses the alternatives to email for collaboration. This morning I found 187 pieces of spam had been dropped by Ella into my spam folder. That’s about six hours of accumulation unless it’s Saturday. Then, it would have been 287!
Digital Photography Review is reporting that Canon has issued a firmware update for most of its latest digital camera lineup. Now, using industry standards, you can connect a Canon camera directly to any printer equipped with the PictBridge standard for direct printing.
Rob Fahrni has helped with some of my very earliest questions about weblogging. His weblog is called At The Core. Lately, Rob has fought some really messy DNS errors with his webhost. Consequently, his weblog has sometimes been unreadable in anything other than a news reader.
This morning I was posting away when I got a trackback ping from a ”Rob at CrabAppleLane.” First thought, Rob Fahrni has made some changes and I’m getting notified. On second look, however, this is a different Rob. This Rob is in Louisiana, not California. His weblog is called CrabAppleLane Blog, and the Rodent Regatta is his pick for Blog of the Day. I’m truly honored. I’d like to thank the members of the blogosphere and…
Anyhow, you can see how it was initially confusing to see Rob, crabapple…you get the picture.
BloggerCon is the conference on weblogs that begins Saturday at Harvard, but is already stirring up lots of publicity. Take a look at this list of attendees.
Let me explain what you are looking at for people new to the weblogging world – also known in some circles as the blogosphere. In the first column is a small coffee cup icon representing a special link that automatically subscribes users of Radio Userland’s software to the RSS feed of that particular weblog. The second column is the usual xml icon for the RSS feed. The third column is the name of the weblog or person. The fourth column is the organization or weblog that the person is representing.
Read this to learn more about RSS feeds and how you can subscribe to them and speed your reading of weblogs.
Modern management can’t work in public education
By Craig J. Cantoni
(published in the Arizona Republic on October 1, 2003)
Can such modern management techniques as TQM (total quality management), SPC (statistical process control) and employee empowerment help to transform public schools into high-performance organizations? Based on my 30 years of experience in transforming low-performing organizations into high-performing ones, the answer is no.
It is no because public schools do not have the following prerequisites for high performance.
First, they do not have a unifying mission or purpose that is embraced by all employees and that gives the organization focus.
Because of politics, the mission of public education is fuzzy and constantly changing. Some say the mission is to teach the three R’s. Others say it is to teach students how to think. George Bush says it is to leave no child behind. The Arizona Department of Education says it is to pass standardized tests. The teacher union says it is to increase teacher pay. Sports enthusiasts say it is to have a winning football team. The Left and the Right say it is to indoctrinate students in their respective ideologies. This newspaper and other media say it is to spend more money. And do-gooders say it is to be a social welfare agency.
Second, public schools do not have competition. Without the fear of losing customers, there is little impetus for overturning the status quo.
Third, public school employees are not held accountable for bad performance. Teachers can thwart management’s attempts to hold them accountable by running around management to their union, which in turn will run to legislators for protection.
Fourth, without being held accountable for measurable results, teachers and other employees cannot be given increased freedom to make decisions on their own or as members of a self-directed team. Public schools are the opposite of high-performing factories, where the workers on the line are held accountable for decisions that used to be management’s responsibility, including such decisions as hiring and evaluating coworkers.
Last, teachers are squashed under the weight of a multiplicity of overseers and second-guessers, including local administrators, district administrators, county administrators, state administrators, federal administrators, school boards, state legislators, Congress, unions, parent groups, consultants, textbook publishers, colleges of education, and the media—all of whom have conflicting goals and agendas.
In summary, modern management techniques cannot work in a Rube Goldberg contraption that is designed for inefficiency, ineffectiveness, bureaucracy and political meddling.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, public speaker and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
“The Passion” continues to draw people into a debate and the movie won’t be released until next year. My impression is that no one has seen the final version of the movie. Further, those that have seen rough cuts and pre-release versions have seen only parts of the total work.
Yet, what is really being debated is not the movie itself. Rather, people are actually debating recorded history. Others are seeking to revise that history. Still others, also through revisionist thinking, are seeking political correctness. We know all of this only from the articles that have been written about the movie, the people debating it and the disputes among the writers.
Gary Petersen points to an entry at Post Modern Pilgrim that covers anger, unanswered prayer and our failure to understand hardships. There are helpful words there.
Lots of folks are unhappy with Mississippi State football, and the coach is catching more heat than ever before. I’m not convinced that football programs at places like Mississippi State are not going to experience four to six-year cycles that are simply inevitable.
With so much young talent on the current team, Coach Sherrill has some far brighter days ahead, but he’s got to get through the pain of the rebuilding. If he doesn’t survive the pressure, some new, young coach will reap the harvest, then face the same scrutiny when the program turns downward again for three or four years.
It is the circle of life in college football at small schools.
“Then I looked at the screen and saw the dozens of folders full of thousands of emails, the Web browser parked at a Wiki, the chat icons, and the RSS aggregator. Feeling a little overwhelmed, I looked around the room and saw the newspapers, the magazines, the TV, and a pile of unanswered (physical) mail, as well as Lauren’s and my cellphones charging and the land-line on the sideboard. All these are about moving messages around. So I ask: which is the right one to use?”
Often we’re told to wait a couple of months because something new is coming to replace the product we’re considering. There was a time when the wait was roughly a year or perhaps six months.
Gizmodo reports on three new Palm PDAs. Gizmodo also mentioned the prospects for a Canon G6 digital camera. This would hit the market only a very short time since the G5 was announced and it followed the G3 by only a few months.
Then, there’s the new Canon Digital Rebel. How might a G6 stack up against it in price:performance?
Dane Carlson is seeking advice about which diet to use. He’s even set up Diet Blog to help those interested in the latest dieting technology, fads and methods.
If you’ve got some background with diets and some advice, he’s waiting for your comment!
Ding. Ding. Ding.Bells just went off and lights have come on (or is it bells came on and lights have gone off?). Shirley posted about the best comment I’ve ever received today.
She sheds lots of light on why we see what we see in IE6.0, Opera and Mozilla. She also enlightens me as to how the “big-time” bloggers are producing their entries and achieving some of the effects with such ease.
Her admonition to stay the course is well-received and valid. What her comment does is motivate. Not only do I understand what she’s saying, but it makes learning some of the (boring) fundamentals a little easier, because I can see the pay-off in the future.
I played the organ for many years. My teacher figured out early in my music training that I needed to be “entertained” every once in a while. By hearing and watching a more experienced organist (my teacher), I was much more likely to delve into my music theory, music history and the pedal work. The reward was going to be worth the pain!
Shirley’s comment struck me the same way. I can now plow ahead with Elizabeth’s book confident that it is taking me to a new way of working and thinking about each and every entry or each and every page I’ll add to this weblog in the future.
Yesterday, I had an opportunity to be semantic or use good semantics or be a member of the semantic web – whatever. I wrote an entry using the term RFID. I surrounded it with [acronym][/acronym] tags as I had read you’re supposed to if you’re worried about such things as well-formed, validating, semantic markup.
However, the rendered version of my entry did nothing with those tags. I had seen them used here, and found a small question mark appeared over the acronym which was underlined with a dashed underline. I was viewing the page with IE 6.0. Yet, when I viewed my own page in the same browser, nada. Still digging for the answer to this one. My hunches are that this has something to do with either the page encoding or the CSS. Those are only hunches. One interesting twist to this is that the home page shows the dashed underlines, while the entry viewed alone using its permalink does not show the dashed underlines. This makes me suspect CSS is at work on the home page, but not on the individual entry pages. Again, just a hunch.
I use a lot of contractions when I write and speak. I have just learned that if I’m going to be well-formed, validating and semantic (or whatever), I must start typing these characters (without the hyphens) “&-#8-2-1-7;”anywhere that I need an apostrophe (aka right single quotation mark).
Wow, that is a lot to type. It will restrict my ability to write the way I speak. I will now say things without contractions to avoid putting seven characters here when I previously used only one. Something tells me that others are writing their Movable Type entries in another tool and pasting them into the Movable Type text entry box for posting. Even the best of the best don’t (oops, do not) really want to type 7 characters where they once typed one.
Am I supposed to do this same encoding with commas, periods and hyphens? I just viewed source over at Zeldman’s and found that he is not encoding those three. However, there are plenty of ”right single quotation marks” or apostrophes! Something tells me I’ll be learning TopStyle Pro in the very near future.
* * UPDATE * * * I just viewed a couple of pages in Opera. Same effect. The home page renders acronyms with a dashed underline and displays a question mark when you hover over the acronym. On the entry page (permalink) alone, no dashed underlines show up.
Question: Do users of Opera have it set to ”Identify as MSIE 6.0?” Or, do you have it set (in preferences) to ”Identify as Opera?”
Now that I think of it, it might be that same impulse that keeps me nosing around in the Bible, looking for something this modern world cannot give me.
For many years we’ve worked with distribution businesses in all areas of process management and strategy. Technology improvements have been big parts of that work.
Right around the bend is RFID and some other 3-letter acronyms. Simon Phipps has titled his entry Orwellian E-Tags. In it he links to some of the current thinking (and worries) about technologies with potentially harmful side effects.
Then, take a look at More on Friendly URL’s at Brainstorms & Raves. Within this article are links to the background articles that provide an understanding of ”the problem,” and some possible solutions.
”The biggest challenge may be for senior management to extend its focus to the more difficult (and, for some, less exciting) world of business process innovation.”
”Today is an auspicious day, Technorati is now tracking over one million weblogs. We hit 100,000 back on March 5, and 200,000 on April 6nbsp; We hit the 400,000 mark on June 21. Technorati is currently tracking about 7,000 new weblogs per day, which means that a new weblog is being created approximately every 12 seconds. And I know we’re not catching them all….” [Sifry’s Alerts]
Wouldn’t you love to find some $20.00 item that each and every one of these bloggers needed?
Yesterday, Philip Greenspun suggested, ”Let’s Bash Microsoft Today.” He’s received 71 comments as of the time that I’m writing this. (It’s Sunday morning about 8:30 a.m. CT.)
>From the Toledo, Ohio newspaper comes this article about Mel Gibson’s upcoming movie The Passion. The article also tells the story of Jennifer Giroux and her website.
My hope for all of this is two-fold. First, and paramount, is that the movie is used by God to turn people back to Him. Second, and less lofty, is a hope that the movie will cause scholarly discussion of history. If the four gospels are not perceived by some as sufficient records of history, let’s openly discuss some of the other records that exist.
Dave Winer is one of the parents of this weblog. He’s written an interesting essay that looks back on why some of the conflicts seem to arise in the technical and developer worlds. As in any area of thought, we divide ourselves into camps. We set up competition. We draw battle lines. We defend our turf. At some point the battles cease to be about the subject, and they become personal. Dave does a good job of thinking much of that through.
If you go to Blogtree and look at the left side of your screen, you’ll see the parent weblogs for this one. I learned how to use Radio Userland and something they call ”upstreaming” before I learned to use FTP software. In other words, Radio Userland marked my first attempt to put something on the Internet. Actually, I had toyed with a product from Trellix that later was sold to Globalscape, but that’s another story.
A consistent, real presence on the web began for me with Radio Userland. Then, I stopped using it. There was really on one reason I stopped. I simply couldn’t depend on the product. I lost 3 lengthy entries after doing precisely the same thing I had done for all the other entries. Those three simply vanished. Then, I suffered a lengthy outage due to upstreaming problems. I began to see that something in the product wasn’t as rock solid and dependable as I needed and wanted it to be, or it required know-how that I didn’t have.
Those factors had nothing to do with Dave Winer. In fact, appreciation for Dave’s work made me stick with Radio Userland longer than I might have otherwise.
There’s a weblog conference coming up during the first week of October. It’s called BloggerCon. Dave Winer is behind the planning and preparations, but Dave is enlisting lots of great help from speakers, writers, bloggers and experts is diverse fields.
Today, we get another link to Michael Feldman’s work. The title is What Makes a Blog a Blog? For anyone interested in using a weblog as a format for their writing, Michael’s article provides insight into just what weblogs really are.
There’s good news – after a huge amount of work – at Brainstorms & Raves. Those who robbed from her have taken her content off their servers, and it sounds as if someone may have lost their job over the matter. It’s a shame that she had to go to so much work just to protect her original work.
I’ve been going through websitetips.com and there is an enormous amount of material there. I’m afraid to copy an idea I find in someone’s web page source for fear that it is proprietary to their know-how and expertise. These people had copied thousands of links and pages!
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about best ways for learning:
(X)HTML
CSS
web standards
accessibility
PHP
well-formed markup
the semantic web
I realized that there are several key boundaries on this effort. First is how I (or anyone) learns. Would I learn by lecture? Would I learn by doing? Would I learn by examples? Would I learn by understanding the history of HTML and XHTML?
Second is how those methods need to change depending upon what the subject is. The process of learning American history from 1600 to 1776 is far different from learning the syntax associated with well-formed, semantic markup.
A third boundary on the process involves what one wants to do with the acquired knowledge. In the case of the (X)HTML, I want to know how someone starts with Notepad and ends up with a body of work like this.
I want to understand what skills and know-how these people bring to the work they do on something like CSS Zen Garden. How do they do this? What thought process do they go through? How much trial and error is there? What tools ultimately come into play beyond Notepad? How long does it take to do one of these designs?
I want to learn the relationship between that blank document in Notepad and a Movable Type weblog that uses a set of templates, plugins and scripts to produce an end result that validates, is accessible and meets the expectations of today’s web experts in these areas. Mostly, I want to know that when I make entries to a Movable Type weblog that has been designed with those things in mind, I’m not ”invalidating” the work with each and every entry.
Then, it hit me. There’s an alternative to staring at a wall of books about web design, XHTML and CSS at the bookstore. I can’t select the good from the bad or the accurate from the inaccurate there. I simply can’t know which is which.
...and the resources that these people and sites point me to
What I’m doing by ”limiting” myself to these resources is narrowing the universe of opinions, suggestions and prescriptions to a manageable set that I can trust. It’s a little like selecting a single university from all available, then selecting a college or department within that university and then selecting a major from the many possibilities.
Tools that will come into play for me are:
Topstyle Pro (and its set of tutorial and recommended resources)
So what prompted all of this? I’ve had too many masters. I’ve had too many ”trains of thought.” I’ve confused learning with browsing. Most of this became apparent when I realized just how much help I can get from Shirley Kaiser’s sites alone. Websitetips.com is full of tutorials, tips, essays and the like.
I didn’t realize that such deep resources were in there until she got robbed. Between the tools and resources listed in this entry, a little help from some friends and some focus, I’m going to gain some skills with this stuff.
Now, all we need is a syllabus that takes us through these things in a meaningful and logical order!
Rather than point to individual links at Jeffrey Zeldman’s site, I suggest that anyone who is interested in matters of CSS, web standards and the like, go visit the September 26, 2003 entries.
In one of Warren Buffett’s letters to shareholders he says that if somehow a genie could grant him any wish at all, he’d wish that he be told where he’s going to die. Then, he’d never go there!
University indoctrination and conservative stupidity
By Craig J. Cantoni
(For Internet publication)
While conservatives smugly and mistakenly believe that they are winning the ideological war because they control talk-radio, the presidency and Congress, their kids are being indoctrinated in leftist thinking in a new and more insidious way on college campus, where 90 percent of professors vote Democratic, according to surveys.
Everyone has his own definition of stupidity. My definition is this: Stupidity is paying tens of thousands of dollars to have your kid receive an illiberal education instead of a classical liberal education and to see your offspring enter adulthood thinking like Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.
The new method of indoctrination was described in the September 21, 2003, edition of The Arizona Republic. Of course, the Republic portrayed the method as a positive change and not as indoctrination, probably because journalists have the same left-leaning worldview as professors. True to form, the Republic did not include any opposing views.
Like all effective indoctrination, the new method seems innocuous on the surface. It entails offering ”integrated learning” programs that tie together what is learned in separate courses in separate academic disciplines. For example, an integrated learning program might teach the interrelationships between economics, history and literature.
Arizona State University has three such programs. One is Multicultural America.
No, I’m not making this up. And, no, the university is not offering it as a parody of the politically-correct, anti-intellectual, multicultural claptrap that has been taught on universities.
These people cannot help themselves. It’s some form of mental illness.
The other two programs are War, Culture and Memory; and Human Disease and Society.
In the War, Culture and Memory program, according to the Republic, ”students are studying how nations at war often dehumanize the enemy through propaganda, art and literature.”
Wow, how profound!
The Republic went on to say that the program shows how Americans characterized the Japanese in W.W.II as ”apelike, inhuman, brutal creatures.” It also shows how the Japanese did the same thing. In other words, the program implies that there was a moral equivalency between America and Japan.
No doubt, the program does not include the following facts from the disciplines of history, political science and economics:
History: The program does not include the facts about the brutality of the Bataan Death March; the torture of American prisoners by the Japanese, including ghastly medical experiments in which organs were removed until the prisoners died; and the Rape of Nanking, where the Japanese raped women, cut fetuses from the wombs of living women, and threw babies in the air and then speared them with bayonets on the way down.
Political Science: The program does not include the common ideological thread between the autocratic regimes of Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union and the Third Reich—namely, that each had a culture and tradition of putting the state before the individual, similar to how modern-day American liberals (really illiberals) want to put the state before the individual.
Economics: The program does not include the fact that that individual freedom cannot exist without economic freedom, which is anathema to professors, who favor collectivism and disdain capitalism, free markets and the profit motive.
How do I know that the program does not include the foregoing facts? Because I have guest-lectured to senior business classes at Arizona State University. Even business students have a bias against capitalism and are ignorant of the moral, philosophical and historical foundations of capitalism and our constitutional republic.
It is axiomatic that if leftist claptrap is being taught in individual course in individual disciplines by leftist professors, then a program that shows the interrelationships between the individual courses and disciplines will also be leftist claptrap if it is taught by leftist professors.
Of course, you will never see a program on college campus that shows the interrelationships between leftist claptrap and leftist claptrap. Conservative parents are too smug and stupid to demand such a course.
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
James Lileks got a new Macintosh (you must scroll down and see the photo). Tim Bray got a new Macintosh. If someone (yes, one specific individual) would resign from Apple’s board of directors, I’d get a Macintosh.
Overlawyered (by way of others) brings us the news that Wilbur Wright might have been hounded to his grave by litigation. Unfortunately, letting this news get out is probably causing some lawyer somewhere to contemplate suing the heirs of…
Shirley Kaiser is an excellent designer and developer of web content, web sites and the templates that underpin weblogs. She’s also enormously helpful to those with questions about matters of the web.
This morning, expecting to find another excellent Friday Feast, we learn that Shirley has had her content stolen and copied. Read what she has to say!
Tom Yager is technical director of the InfoWorld Test Center. He wrote an op/ed piece titled Don’t Let Tech Extremists Suck You In. It contains excellent advice to anyone forming their own opinions about technologies or working in organizations where debate leads to a decision that requires support from everyone whether they were an original supporter of the ”winning” technology or not.
Tonight I completed Chapter 4 of Elizabeth Castro’s book. I’ve been creating all of the pages she suggests by hand. Many of mine are better than the one’s at her web site because I’m changing the titles so that they agree with the corresponding section of the book.
Another wish that I have is that the book wasn’t cluttered with quite so much of the ”wrong way” to do things. For example, if there is a preferred method when trying to decide between [i] or [em] or [span class=”emph”], let’s pick the right one and leave the others alone. It’s fine to know that people who developed web sites once had to take all those things into consideration, but today, some of the answers must be more obvious. Remember, the direction seems to be:
XHTML
CSS
web standards
accessibility
PHP
If these are the things we’re pursuing, then let’s simply list the tags that are available for us? Otherwise, CSS becomes the answer.
* * UPDATE 2 * * * The West Coast & Alaska Tsunami Warning Center apparently updates a text file that can be found here. At 6:28 p.m. CT, that file says the following: "TO ALL TSUNAMI WARNING SYSTEM PARTICIPANTS
SUBJECT: TSUNAMI WARNING BULLETIN - FINAL
BULLETIN NUMBER 3
WEST COAST AND ALASKA TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER/NOAA/NWS
ISSUED 09/25/2003 AT 2217 UTC...THE TSUNAMI WARNING AND WATCH STATUS IS CANCELLED FOR
BRITISH COLUMBIA AND ALASKA...EARTHQUAKE DATA:
PRELIMINARY MAGNITUDE: 8.0
LOCATION: 42.1N 143.6E - HOKKAIDO, JAPAN REGION
TIME: 1150 ADT 09/25/2003
1250 PDT 09/25/2003
1950 UTC 09/25/2003"
This morning I saw where Ben Domenech was unhappy about being without power for eight days. This afternoon, I noticed that Meryl Yourish has some choice things to say about America’s and Americans’ disaster preparedness.
When we got hit on July 22, 2003 at 7:30 in the morning, no one noticed. The national media didn’t notice. The mayor of the city left town. The local utility turned down at least one offer of utility help. We didn’t have lights, refrigerators or Internet access for two weeks. During much of that time we were without reliable land lines or cellular phone services.
[Oh, and Ben, between the Instapundit’s link to you (and mine), I bet that hit counter looks like the meter on a gas pump spinning around.]
I know of some organizations that so thoroughly ruined their sales forces that the people they call salespeople today lost their ability to see anything from a customer’s perspective a decade or two ago. Yet, each day they plod to work and call themselves salespeople.
I’m still an INTJ. Steven Vore is also an INTJ. Take the test and see what your profile looks like. There are sixteen possible combinations or profiles.
Here’s what the score said: Your Type is INTJ which stands for Introverted Intuitive Thinking Judging. (That’s my ”bloginality”, too.)
No matter how hard we search for the person who will do something totally outrageous for money or for the cameras, we’re simply not going to top what lawyers will do for money on any given day.
Don’t go another moment believing that you cannot find a lawyer who is willing to sue anybody for anything anywhere at any time for any reason. It makes no difference what your legal dispute might be. It makes no difference that you really have no legal dispute. Somewhere, there’s an attorney who will help you concoct any scenario you want to try and extract money from someone else.
”Only a person with zero friends would want to bother with file sharing. Which is why we can now say that the RIAA is the world’s leading promoter of friendship!” [Philip Greenspun Weblog]
v.chiseled, or chiselled chiseling, or chiselling chisels or chisels
1. To shape or cut with a chisel.
2. Informal.
a. To cheat or swindle.
b. To obtain by deception.
Trust me when I tell you that the tale you read here is not limited to the Internet advertising business. It has become a ”shrewd” way of doing business for far too many people and companies.
I’ve fallen behind in doing my homework and assignments in Elizabeth Castro’s book. I’m going to read some more tonight and do the pages in the morning.
Why am I behind? Excuse #1: I updated the firmware in my Linksys WAP11 wireless access point and haven’t been able to get onto the Internet wirelessly in several days. Excuse #2: I grew weary of reading so many variations of how to do something in (X)HTML without really knowing which one to use when I wanted to post something here. So, I continue to post wrong entries using [strong] or [em] or [br /] to preserve the ”look” of an entry, all the while knowing there’s probably a far better way.
Excuse #3: I hate being wrong. It’s arrogant and self-absorbed, but I’d rather know how to do something than to try and interpret what someone has written only to discover that what I’ve done isn’t what they meant at all. Excuse #4: The real world has made time for study short in the past week.
Sometimes capturing customer requirements can be an art. Gathering feedback about change initiatives can be equally difficult when talking to busy coworkers.
Steven Vore has discovered a teriffic article about applying tablet pc’s to the problem. This one has so many variations and applications.
Out of the blue comes the notion of an ISSN number assigned to an Internet publication. The details can be found in an essay by Joe Clark as pointed out by Jeffrey Zeldman.
I paid $19.95 for ELLA today. There were only three or four days left on my trial version and the product has clearly helped manage the spam. I use Outlook.
ELLA doesn’t block or prevent any email from getting to me. It simply, but wisely, moves spam to a spam folder.
I’ve got to do a bit of work on making certain that ELLA’s rules and my own email rules in Outlook have no conflicts. Overall, if you’re battling lots of spam, you’ll like ELLA.
Here’s a test. You gather 200 friends and acquaintances in a room-the sort of people who attended your wedding or might attend your funeral-and you clink a glass. The room goes silent. You announce: ”I’ve just quit my job! I’m starting a company!” Watch the immediate reaction. In some communities, people will burst into applause. In others, people will stare at their shoelaces, check their watches and go home. Thriving communities applaud the bold risk-taker.
Carol Coletta has done as much as anyone to try and stimulate a Memphis culture that is as different as can be when compared to Austin, Seattle, San Jose or Denver. Her SmartCity radio program, web site and weblog are strong attempts at awakening a stodgy old river town.
Yesterday, I picked up a link to a New York Times article at Philip Greenspun’s site. In it Jane Tanner reported that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway had recently purchased Clayton Homes, Inc. of Maryville, TN for $17.5 billion. WRONG. The company was purchased for $12.50 per share or $1.7 billion.
Minor error, right? Just a typographical error? After all this is just the business section of one of the most widely-read newspapers in the country.
>From Jayson Blair to Howell Raines to Frank Rich, I see distortion, obfuscation and lousy journalistic standards. It’s time we wake up and realize that our media outlets have agendas largely unencumbered by integrity.
”You can see the lips of the Clinton handlers move when Clark advocates their radical, left wing, blame-America agenda of failure. This guy is a sock puppet. He and his handlers want to redefine patriotism to make sure that it includes the rants and the rages of the hate-America crowd.”
I’m not quite certain what’s going on here. Dane Carlson has started posting to something he calls his ”bookmarks.” Is this simply a category of entries? It carries its own RSS feed.
Jeffrey Zeldman points to four more sites that have made the leap to CSS, web standards and accessibility. Be patient I’m getting there. By 2009 I should be able to spell XHTML and CSS.
Several quotes have caught my eye recently, and while they were written about entirely different subjects, it’s interesting to me how many questions remain unanswered with anything resembling precision. Let’s start here:
Quote 1: ”I would argue for considering electrical engineering over computer science (I’m sure a lot of people will howl over this one). I’ve never trusted the level of discipline of computer science as a field, and my years in data communications has only reinforced those views…”
”I’ve also found an electrical engineering education to be far more pragmatic than computer science.”
from a participant on the Motley Fool’s discussion boards
Then, from Philip Greenspun’s site:
Quote 2: ”People who are serious about getting the job done on time and under budget will use tools such as…”
Quote 3: ”It seems there are four or five ways to do any and everything when writing (X)HTML markup. There must be at least that many ways just to italicize or display a word or phrase in bold type. Surely, there’s a way to cut to the chase and say, ’For well-formed, standards-compliant, accessible, semantically-preferred markup in 2003 using the most recently downloaded browsers, do it this way!’”
Steve Pilgrim
in a moment of utter frustration while studying XHTML
My educational background as an undergraduate was in engineering. There was a field in which precision was vital. Creativity was fine, but at some point, bridges had to carry the load, circuits had to deliver the electricity and chemical bonds had to hold.
I’ve elected (finally) to embark on a course of study in standards-based XHTML, CSS, PHP and the accompanying technologies. My goal is to understand methods that lead to development projects being designed on time and on budget. Every effort in XHTML coding does not have to be a new ”work of art.” Left to the eye-of-the-beholder method of development, nothing is maintainable, transferable or readily understood by those who follow the original development.
Among the three groups in Dr. Greenspun’s class, I’m hopeful someone will identify some ”best practices” and ”best methods” along with ”best tools” for the job at hand. After all the goal isn’t the code. The goal is whatever the code is designed to do – process, store and/or move data. This could mean many things. More efficient telecom networks, improved inventory management systems, better PDA’s or safer cars are all results of software engineering.
It’s simply time to bring some of the engineering rigors and disciplines to the field!
”Basically, I am going to go round the country, live on stage, backed by a video wall, and talk about the things weve been talking about here: optimism. Reason. Hope. Individuality. Responsibility. Freedom.”
”Mike thinks and I agree that based on the comments we get here in this tiny, tiny slice of America that would be you fine people that this country needs a pep talk, needs to be reminded of its greatness and goodness in these anxious days when the only voices we hear are preaching doom, despair and failure.” [Eject! Eject! Eject!]
Do we really want to open up the Pandora’s box of suggesting that any faith may demand the removal of material that it finds offensive from the doctrines of any other faith?
One of the most powerful articles yet for understanding the backdrop against which Mel Gibson decided to make ”The Passion” can be found in last week’s New Yorker magazine. That’s the September 15, 2003 issue.
Peter J. Boyer wrote an article titled The Jesus War. If you want to understand what motivated Gibson to make the movie, and, if you want to understand the forces that are being aligned against him, this article is for you. I found it reprinted on line here.
What I’ve learned is that Boyer’s article is bookended by two op/ed pieces by Frank Rich of the New York Times. One of those ran on August 3, 2003. The other ran yesterday, September 21, 2003.
I read a poem today. It describes so much of the rat race that we see around us each and every day. It also spells the consequences out rather plainly.
Written many years ago, one finds these words describe the pursuits we see all around us. We rush so to keep up, but with whom and why?
How far are we from the expectations set for us?
Take a look at these words:
The Church Walking With The World
The Church and the World walked far apart
On the changing shores of time,
The World was singing a giddy song,
And the Church a hymn sublime.
”Come, give me your hand,” said the merry world,
”And walk with me this way!”
But the good Church hid her snowy hands
And solemnly answered ”Nay,
I will not give you my hand at all,
And I will not walk with you;
Your way is the way that leads to death;
Your words are all untrue.”
”Nay, walk with me but a little space,”
Said the World with a kindly air;
”The road I walk is a pleasant road,
And the sun shines always there;
Your path is thorny and rough and rude,
But mine is broad and plain;
My way is paved with flowers and dews,
And yours with tears and pain;
The sky to me is always blue,
No want, no toil I know;
The sky above you is always dark,
Your lot is a lot of woe;
There’s room enough for you and me
To travel side by side.”
Half shyly the Church approached the World
And gave him her hand of snow;
And the old World grasped it and walked along,
Saying, in accents low,
”Your dress is too simple to please my taste;
I will give you pearls to wear,
Rich velvets and silks for your graceful form,
And diamonds to deck your hair.”
The Church looked down at her plain white robes,
And then at the dazzling World,
And blushed as she saw his handsome lip
With a smile contemptuous curled.
”I will change my dress for a costlier one,”
Said the Church, with a smile of grace;
Then her pure white garments drifted away,
And the World gave, in their place,
Beautiful satins and shining silks,
Roses and gems and costly pearls;
While over her forehead her bright hair fell
Crisped in a thousand curls.
”Your house is too plain,” said the proud old World,
”I’ll build you one like mine;
With walls of marble and towers of gold,
And furniture ever so fine.”
So he built her a costly and beautiful house;
Most splendid it was to behold;
Her sons and her beautiful daughters dwelt there
Gleaming in purple and gold;
Rich fairs and shows in the halls were held,
And the World and his children were there.
Laughter and music and feasts were heard
In the place that was meant for prayer.
There were cushioned seats for the rich and the gay,
To sit in their pomp and pride;
But the poor who were clad in shabby array,
Sat meekly down outside.
”You give too much to the poor,” said the World.
”Far more than you ought to do;
If they are in need of shelter and food,
Why need it trouble you?
Go, take your money and buy rich robes,
Buy horses and carriages fine;
Buy pearls and jewels and dainty food,
Buy the rarest and costliest wine;
My children, they dote on all these things,
And if you their love would win
You must do as they do, and walk in the ways
That they are walking in.”
So the poor were turned from her door in scorn,
And she heard not the orphan’s cry;
But she drew her beautiful robes aside,
As the widows went weeping by.
Then the sons of the World and the Sons of the Church
Walked closely hand and heart;
And only the Master, who knoweth all,
Could tell the two apart.
Then the Church lay down at her ease, and said,
”I am rich and my goods increase;
I have need of nothing, or aught to do,
But to laugh, and dance, and feast.”
The sly World heard, and he laughed in his sleeve,
And mockingly said, aside-
”The Church is fallen, the beautiful Church;
And her shame is her boast and her pride.”
The angel drew near to the mercy seat,
And whispered in sighs her name;
Then the loud anthems of rapture were hushed,
And heads were covered with shame;
And a voice was heard at last by the Church
From Him who sat on the throne;
”I know thy works, and how thou hast said,
’I am rich, and hast not known
That thou art naked, poor and blind,
And wretched before my face;’
Therefore from my presence cast I thee out,
And blot thy name from its place.”
Richard Dawkins has been one of the most vocal critics of anyone claiming Intelligent Design over evolution as a way to explain how all of this came to be.
Now Dick (do you suppose he minds if I call him Dick?) has decided that those who believe as he does should be called ”brights.” Just as our culture has referred to those who practice homosexuality as ”gays,” Dick wants atheists and secularists to be known as ”brights.” He’s written about it for Wired magazine.
First, if you’re uncertain about where you stand on the theory of evolution vs. creation, you might want to consider these books:
>From there, we’re left to decide where this debate fits in the overall culture war that exists in our country today. When I read Dawkins’s books, I find myself thankful that men like him don’t have the courage that the Founders of this country had. We were in no danger of this country being founded as a Godless nation because only those with the courage of their convictions were prepared to fight and die to see those convictions preserved.
Those who now want to lob shots at the Founders’s beliefs and the underpinnings of Christian thought can only hope to remove all mention of God from our public debates. They don’t really have the courage to go found the island of Alecbaldwinia and populate it with people who want a culture they prefer!
Wi-Fi looks like one of those technologies that will survive its own investment bubble. Though investors flocked to the technology believing there were riches for those in early, the winners have largely been those who make and sell the hardware associated with Wi-Fi. Advances continue with the technologies.
Installers make whatever they make when swapping their time for dollars. National services like Boingo, Wayport, Sprint, T-Mobile and others are largely without Wi-Fi profits.
Last week I took a look at an idea that may have some merit. Just as many rural communities get their cable television service from their local utility company, Wi-Fi appears to be another service that can be profitable there.
Here’s the way it would work:
A new venture we’ll call NewCo is set up to share in the operation and revenue associated with a Wi-Fi service. A small municipality grants access to water towers or other ”high points” for placement of access points and antennae.
Because the municipality or its utility cooperative already sends monthly bills to consumers, wi-fi can become another line item on the invoice along with water, electricity, natural gas and cable television services.
NewCo funds the capital investment on the front end, then ”shares” in the revenue by providing tech support hotlines and network maintenance services. The municipality or the local utility wins because they can offer a new service and collect a new stream of revenue with little or no capital cost up front.
The Mayor’s happy. NewCo is happy. Consumers get a broadband cloud over their community for a monthly fee that is 15% or 20% cheaper than their current DSL or cable options, and they gain mobility.
Robert Scoble’s Sunday essay is titled Why Microsoft Won’t Beat Six Apart. Whether you are a veteran of the weblogging world or just getting started, it will give you a sense of just where the state-of-the-art in weblog tools is positioned and why it is likely to be advanced by the same players who got us to this point.
Last week’s announcement of the (3)Flex services was accompanied by a set of technical papers in the left sidebar. They are definitely worth your time if anything you do or anything you invest in involves the future of bandwidth.
some of the worst wars have been fought. One recent war is currently limited to a war of words. The discussion of recorded history, the Crucifixion and the movie The Passion between now and Easter of 2004 is likely to sound a lot like what you read here and in the comments that follow it.
I would simply ask this: ”What does each party stand to gain or lose by distorting truth?”
The Purpose-Driven Church preceded The Purpose-Driven Life. These are the books by Rick Warren. I read the first several years ago while reviewing strategic planning methods used by religious institutions – churches, seminaries, international ministries, etc.
More recently I read the second. Like The Prayer of Jabez, I worry about books that gain wide audiences so rapidly. I also worry about anything or anyone with quick and pat answers.
Tonight, I see where Gary Petersen has expressed some similar concerns, but he’s about to embark on the 40-day journey. I look forward to what he has to say.
Today I made it up through p.70 of Elizabeth Castro’s book. I understand a portion of what I covered.
For now, the workbook I had started will remain private. There’s really nothing that I’m doing other than copying from the book into Notepad and saving the files.
If I begin to learn something or do something that I think has any value to readers here, I’ll let you know. Otherwise, you might want to reread this.
* * UPDATE * * * A better way to say this is: I’m learning, but slowly. I’m learning things the majority already knows and understands and uses daily. For now it would be better if I didn’t clutter your mind with my struggle to understand the difference between [div class] and [div id] and why you can open a [div id] nest lots of [div class] in it and then finally close the [div id]. See, I told you it ought to remain private.
I’m not quite certain why Rebecca Blood posted this today, but it’s interesting. As the intradenominational wars have raged and factions staked their ground, an 83-year old Southern Baptist minister has said to me, ”through it all the Mennonites might be closest to ’getting it right.’” I had no idea what he meant until I began to dig deeply into their history and current beliefs.
There are some aspects of web standards that are difficult. If you’ve had even a toe in the waters of WYSIWYG tools or HTML tables for styling the layout of a page, web standards will take you to a completely different way of thinking. Dig very far at all and you’ll run across a lot of negatives. [WARNING: Some strong language!] When the negatives come from some of the truly gifted web developers, you pause.
Then, when the outlook is darkest, you’ll stumble into some clear air and be able to recall why you launched the standards-based education to begin with. Thanks for the link, Jeffrey Zeldman.
For two days (or close to two years) I’ve been frustrated by each and every approach that I’ve taken to learn (X)HTML. However, within the past 24 hours, I’ve seen congruence between my respect for ”quality” and the emphasis placed on web standards for the long-term good of organizations.
Now, if I can begin to grasp this word ”semantic...” and the thinking behind The Semantic Web. (hmm…May, 2001…I’m only two years behind!)
With reports of as many as 3.5 million people without power, it’s obvious that some of these people will spend the next two or three weeks waiting in the dark. When Memphis lost power for two weeks in July and August, the heat was simply stifling.
A generator can help a little. Flashlights help. Being able to get ice helps. Use your grill and cook a bit. Get a fluorescent lantern if you can find one. Change your day to one that runs from sun-up to sun-down.
You have one advantage. Whether your local officials handle things correctly or not, your plight has already gathered national attention. Help is on the way. The country knew nothing of the 338,000 people without power here.
Has any single profession had a larger impact on our work places, our homes or our culture? I leave it to you to decide whether you are better off with what those trained in jurisprudence have wrought.
What an interesting experiment it might be to restrict any lawyer from running for any Federal office for the next fifty to one hundred years. Dreamin’, I’m always dreamin’...
How can anyone who has children be a diplomat? Theres no more instructive example of the basic facts of human nature than the daily life of a three-year old. [The Bleat]
I wonder if Dick Grasso ever learned XHTML. For $140 million he had to be rather good at something. Somehow I doubt it was well-formed, valid XHTML.
I got two pages finished in Elizabeth Castro’s book yesterday. (I’m so proud.) I filled only a single page with questions during those two exercises. Needless to say, new workbook pages might be delayed.
With progress like that I’ll be coding my brains out sometime in 2005.
My efforts to learn XHTML and CSS will take a different turn today. I’m going to begin working methodically through Elizabeth Castro’s excellent book.
The workbook I’ve been producing will change to reflect my attempts to follow and complete the exercises in the book. I’m not sure when Day 7 will be ready, but keep watching. For the experienced among you, this will be hilarious. For those in the same boat that I’m in, it will be merely comical.
Trying to learn web design and development at my age and with my background brings this to mind:
Doan’t Be What You Ain’t
Lyrics by Edwin Milton Royle from the Musical ”Moonshine”
performed in New York in 1905
De sunflower ain’t de daisy,
And de melon ain’t de rose.
Why is dey all so crazy
To be sumpin’ else dat grows?
Jes’ stick to the place you’s planted, and do the bes’ you know,
Be de sunflower or de daisy,
Be de melon or de rose.
De song thrush ain’t de robin,
And de catbird ain’t de jay.
Why is dey all a-throbbin’ to outdo each other’s lay?
Jes’ sing de song God gave you, and let your heart be gay.
Be de song thrush or de robin,
Be de catbird or de jay.
Chorus:
Doan’t ye be what you ain’t,
Jes’ you be what you is,
Ef a man is what he isn’t
Den he isn’t what he is.
Ef you’s jes’ a little tadpole,
Doan’t you try to be de frog.
Ef you’s de tail doan’t you try to wag de dog.
Jes’ pass de plate ef you can’t exhort and preach;
Ef you’s jes’ a little pebble,
Doan’t ye try to be de beach.
Ef a man is what he isn’t, den he isn’t what he am,
And as sure as I’m a-talkin’ he isn’t worth a ___
Doan’t ye be what you ain’t,
Jes’ you be what you is.
Ef a man is what he isn’t,
Den he isn’t what he is;
And as sure as I’m a-talkin’,
He’s qwyne to git his.
For the layperson or business person dealing with technology, Glennda Chui has written a good article for getting a high level view of the pros and cons of nanotechnology.
I wish the article provided links to some of the additional resources she suggests. It is unclear at this point whether we will ever have our hands directly on nanotechnology or simply the products produced by it. Few ever touch an Intel chip, but everyone uses products and services that have been enabled by those chips.
Here’s a link to the article by Bill Joy that was mentioned. A google search will uncover quite a discussion of Joy’s article and the point-counterpoint that ensued.
I’ve read Crichton’s book and find elements within it that I not only believe are possible, but just as likely as thugs releasing worms, trojan horses and viruses onto the Internet.
For both the good and the bad, this technology needs to be tracked. Money will be made. Vast amounts of money will be made. Wrong will become right once more as it has with so many tools and technologies.
The difference with nanotechnology lies in just how much is at stake.
Earlier we mentioned Sun’s new drive to offer alternatives to Microsoft’s notions about the approach and costs associated with information technology. Some details are out.
One interesting aspect of this is that Sun appears to want to pursue companies with 1000 employees or more. ”Partners” can chase those with fewer employees. The pricing reflects a dramatic advantage for Sun when comparing a 20-person business that outfits each desktop PC with Microsoft Windows and Office or Sun’s Java Enterprise System and Java Desktop System.
At first glance it would appear that an annual update to the Microsoft approach with 20 people might be 20 times $350 or $7000 as an annual cost to keep the software updated. Sun’s approach seems to call for 20 times $150 or $3000 to keep the 20-person company up to date.
What am I missing here? I think I’ve actually estimated the cost of the Microsoft updates at a rather low price considering that Exchange, Windows Server and potentially some other server-side software might be the comparable components to what Sun is going to offer.
How on earth can Sun offer ”60 hours a week of support?” I’m confident that has to be a misprint. At minimum wage, 60 hours a week represents 3,120 hours per year or well over $15,000. There’s an error there somewhere.
I have a friend who makes a living selling no products at all. He simply configures small office networks and maintains them. He only works on Microsoft’s products. He’s really good at what he does. How will Sun’s alternative approach degrade the fees he can collect? Will Microsoft lower their fees? Will network administrators like my friend lower their hourly rates?
I remember a time when Gartner said something like, ”small businesses spend between 1% and 3% of sales per year for their I.T. expenses.” Every three years or so, they face a capital cost or they trend to the 3% number and expense everything.
In a small business this must cover fees for software, hardware, outside assistance, tapes, CD’s, virus software subscriptions and new batteries for the battery backups, etc. Doing the arithmetic, we see that’s only $100,000 to $300,000. In a business with $5 million in sales, you can cut those amounts in half.
Sadly, most small businesses don’t track I.T. costs separately from paperclips and coffee cups!
A couple of things have caused a fairly decent jump in readership here in the past ten or so days. Many of the new readers are nonbloggers or new to the concept of weblogs altogether.
There is a conference coming up on October 4 & 5 at the Harvard Law School. It’s called BloggerCon. Experienced and rookie bloggers are going to be doing presentations and break-out sessions on a variety of topics of interest to the weblogging community.
Dave Winer, who is directing this very first BloggerCon, has asked Michael Feldman to do a session titled Weblog for Beginners. Here’s an outline for that session.
Take a look at that outline and you’ll begin to see what kinds of things you should think about as you prepare to join the blogosphere. Once you’ve selected a tool for weblogging, you’ll discover the real power of the medium is in the syndication of your weblog and the ability to subscribe to other syndicated sites via a news or RSS feed aggregator.
Don’t be misled. Currently, all of my weblog work is done using two applications that I touch each day. One is Movable Type and the other is FeedDemon. You can abbreviate your learning curve in Movable Type by using its sister tool known as TypePad. Other add-ins or useful tools are listed at the bottom of the sidebar of this weblog.
The learning curve for doing basic entries in a weblog and using a basic aggregator to read other weblogs is not steep. It’s a far easier trek than trying to learn Excel or Word.
News alerts can come to your email inbox via Google. Go to the News Alerts page at Google. Enter the name of an individual, a company, a product, your favorite team or anything else that you might search for on Google.
Google’s News Alerts will send you an email when news about that item happens. They won’t spam you and you can discontinue it at any time.
For a friend who just became a reader of this site, I’m doing a bit of homework on current ultraportable or subnotebook offerings from the top manufacturers of such products. His (and my) requirements for a product in this class include:
runs Windows XP Professional
more concerned about portability and less about typing
more concerned about browsing and email and less about processing power
PDA browsing just isn’t there yet, so the product needs to offer more conventional browsing and email while being very small
to the extent that many desktop features are present, so much the better
What other products or manufacturers should a mobile professional be considering? Is it time to give serious looks at the table PC’s for truly mobile computing? Maybe Peter’s got some answers over at Gizmodo.
Here’s a link to the category at Gizmodo that covers laptops/notebooks. Also, here’s the PDA link.
On this day, September 16, 1620, the Mayflower left Plymouth, England with 102 passengers on board and a crew of approximately 30. They left England seeking to rid themselves of the religious persecution in Europe. Their voyage would take 65 days.
It would be another 179 years before they would be known as Pilgrims. Until then, they were the Leiden Separatists, but fewer than half of the passengers were actually from the Dutch town of Leiden. They were the Separatists.
Read the Mayflower Compact and you’ll see what was on their minds in 1620. Follow that with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and any ten documents, letters, speeches or pamplets of the day. Were these people really seeking to deny God or rid themselves of His place in their lives?
Do you honestly believe that this is a nation originally founded by people who did not acknowledge God? If so, why have we gone so long as a nation that acknowledges God in so many ways. If not, why are we seeking to become a God-free nation now?
One of the people who got me started with an interest in web design and development was Dan Bricklin. Today, I learned that Dan now has an RSS feed.
Looking for a simple web site development tool, I originally found Trellix and followed that product as it became Globascape’s CuteSITE Builder. I still have licensed copies of it and CuteFTP Pro from Globalscape.
Reading Dan’s site I learned of Dave Winer. In January 2001 I took my first plunge with Radio. With only a few interruptions due to technical or disaster-related outages, I’ve been writing ever since.
You’ll recall, if you’ve been keeping up with The Saga, that one of the folks who reads this weblog managed to get my difficulties escalated within HP. Well, I’ve had several conversations with folks at HP who seem genuinely interested in trying to help me.
When I got the first call from HP’s customer satisfaction people I pondered what my position should be. I had just about made up my mind to say, ”I’ve spent entirely too much time just trying to make a $2500 laptop boot up correctly. Unless you plan to replace this computer with a product with updated features and functionality that sells for around $2500, I’m not interested in pursuing this matter.”
Then…
well, I caved. Last Thursday, I let a guy talk me into doing an ”in-place” upgrade of the Windows XP Home operating system using my Windows XP Professional CD. Understand, HP wasn’t doing anything. They simply told me what they’d suggest I try.
So, during much of the weekend, I’ve upgraded the laptop to Windows XP Professional and installed many of my applications on it. So far, it has only locked up three times, which is a significant improvement from the way it has been behaving.
I’m supposed to call HP tomorrow to report my findings. Yet, the jury is still out on whether I keep this machine or not. It’s nearing time to upgrade some features anyway.
I’m still in the trial period with Ella, but as things stand right this instant, I’m likely to purchase it in the next few days. This morning, having been off all night, my PC picked up 128 email messages from the mail server. 97 of those were spam. Ella got all 97 of them with no errors – no leakage of spam and no flagging of valid email. I was impressed.
Unless some of you bright readers can tell me of a better solution or value, the $19.95 for Ella seems like a bargain.
What are you here for? Not here as in at this site, but here as in taking in air. Why are you here? What do you do that makes a difference? What’s your purpose for living? If you’re unsure, you need to change that immediately.
Trust me when I tell you that your purpose will not be found in whether your football team won or lost yesterday. Your purpose will not be found in whether your XHTML code validates or not. Your purpose will not be found in berating a federal judge for declaring atheism as our national religion. Those are simply the distractions from your purpose.
If you are searching for significance and meaning and purpose, don’t waste one more day. For that matter, don’t waste another hour. Discover your purpose in life and set about fulfilling some of it each and every day.
Some of you have asked me what I’m doing about security of my own PC’s and networks. First, I use Norton’s Antivirus products. For servers, you have to use their Corporate Edition. I prefer Norton’s products to those of McAfee for pure virus protection.
Second, my networks sit behind a firewall. I currently run Microsoft Windows Server 2000, but I’ll be upgrading to Windows Server 2003 fairly soon. PC’s run Windows XP Professional. All versions of Windows have all service packs, critical updates and recommended updates installed.
Third, I use Google’s toolbar 2.0 to block all popup ads while browsing the Internet.
Fourth, I recently switched to Ella for managing spam at PC’s. Ella trains on the front end by having you point to 10 or 15 examples of spam, 10 or 15 examples of ”newsletter” emails that you want, but you want to read later and 10 to 15 examples of normal, safe Inbox email. I’ve been impressed with the way it works so far.
I run Microsoft Office 2003 (beta) and Ella is working fine with it.
Finally, I have an array of backup procedures. Most are automated. Several are ad hoc backups that I run to CD’s periodically. Veritas Backup Exec is my preferred method for tape backups.
Klepto-nation
By Craig J. Cantoni
(For Internet publication)
There is a good reason for the Ten Commandments being verboten in the public square: One of the commandments, ”Thou shalt not steal,” is at odds with the klepto-nation that the United States has become.
Astonishingly, transfer payments account for over 40 percent of government spending. One hundred years ago, they accounted for only two percent of government spending.
Of course, the words ”transfer payments” are a euphemism, a fancy way of saying that the government is taking money from some people and giving it to other people. Transfer payments are theft, but not the kind of theft that you can defend yourself against.
If an armed robber breaks into your home in the middle of the night, you can bash him in the head with a baseball bat, you can shoot him between the eyes, or, if time permits, you can call 9-1-1 and have the police bash, shoot or arrest him. It is your God-given right and moral duty to protect your family and property.
But what recourse do you have if a thief has hired a government agent to rob your family? What do you do, for example, if a wealthy, blue-haired elderly neighbor asks the government to take money from your kid for her medicine, as the AARP crowd does through Medicare, a program that depends on intergenerational theft? If you use force to stop the neighbor, the government will throw you in jail. Similarly, the government will throw you in jail if you use force against the government agent.
In both cases, the local media will portray you as the criminal instead of the true miscreants. And if you speak out against such theft, as I am doing now, the media will portray you as an extremist and portray the thieves as moderates or progressives. Morality has been turned on its head. So has the founding principle of this nation.
The nation was founded on the principle of limited government—on the noble idea that the primary purpose of government is to protect people’s lives, property and liberty. Today, 40 percent of government power is directed at stealing people’s property on behalf of other people. Then, if the victims resist, the government takes their liberty and even their lives.
Government-sponsored theft is not any less immoral because it is done through majority vote. Voting to take your neighbor’s property is exactly the same, morally speaking, as putting a gun to his head and taking his property. Both actions are based on force—indirect force when done in a voting booth and direct force when done at the point of a gun.
Why do so few Americans see it this way? Probably because 90 percent of them have been brainwashed in government schools about the general welfare. They believe that the general welfare means government handouts, programs and entitlements that benefit them personally instead of benefiting all citizens equally, as is the case with national defense. They have not been told by schools, the media and politicians that stealing is stealing, regardless of how it is accomplished.
What about the Biblical injunction to help the poor and care for the sick? Well, I happen to believe that people have a moral responsibility to help other people who cannot help themselves, but I do not believe that people have a right to help themselves to other people’s money, no matter what their personal situation may be. And I certainly do not believe that politicians and government bureaucrats know from afar who is deserving of other people’s money.
In any event, it is in the self-interest of politicians and bureaucrats to keep expanding the number of ”deserving” people. And contrary to what George Bush believes, true compassion is voluntary, not coerced by ”compassionate conservatives.”
Since 40 percent of government spending is transfer payments, at least 40 percent of politics is over transfer payments—over who gets other people’s money. This more than anything has fueled special-interest politics, which in turn has injected billions into political campaigns, which in turn has triggered campaign finance legislation, which in turn has restricted the free speech that is necessary to throw the thieves out of office and stop the thievery.
The do-gooders who want to take money out of politics are the same people who make money the raison d’tre of politics through their advocacy of transfer payments. Do-gooders are not good at connecting dots.
Since both Democrats and Republicans now believe in legal theft, the motto of our klepto-nation should be changed from ”In God we trust” to ”In thievery we depend.”
* *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
I’m not a web developer either, but I enjoy learning.
For those of you who have never been behind the scenes of a Movable Type weblog, those are buttons associated with the management of a Movable Type weblog.
I cite this as an example of the kind of design I want to build into the next version of this weblog.
I like the following:
Smaller rather than larger text
Muted rather than gawdy colors
Narrow rather that wide columns of text to read
Clever use of features to get multiple archive options
Clever use of plugins/CSS to make ”typical entries” easy
A small calendar rather than solely a list of archives
Design based upon web standards
Specifically, XHTML and CSS-based design
I’m adding sites that I like to a reading group inside my RSS aggregator. If you know of sites that specialize in designs like I’m describing, please leave a comment below.
Just to give you an example of how much I like smaller rather than larger, I use a 15” monitor set at a resolution of 1400×1050. Things get pretty small at that resolution.
On October 23, 1993 Mary Baechler’s article appeared in the Wall Street Journal. It was titled Tom Peters Ruined My Life.
On October 15, 2001 I wrote an article titled Mary Baechler Changed My Career for The Daily News in Memphis, TN.
Both of these articles focused on how the awareness and study of customer service practices and total quality altered our working lives. In Mary’s case Tom Peters provided a message that she needed to radically change the way she and her associates dealt with customers.
Today, I learned that Mary’s company is to be auctioned by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Mary’s company makes and sells baby joggers – the racing-styled stroller for parents who don’t want to give up running when the little ones arrive.
Here’s the reason for pointing to this:
If any of you know of anyone who wants to own a great business with committed and capable people already in place, you should let them know about this opportunity. Mary’s business is located in Yakima, WA.
AIMS test questions you’ll never see
By Craig J. Cantoni
(For Internet publication)
The results from the 2003 Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards test were published on September, 3, 2003, showing that 79 percent of eighth-graders failed the math portion of the test, 45 percent failed the reading portion and 54 percent failed the writing portion.
The AIMS test did not include the following questions but should have.
Question: You have 100 Asians, 100 Hispanics, 100 Blacks, 100 Anglos and 100 Italians. They all have equal family income and attend schools with equal per-pupil spending. Who will get the best test scores?
Answer: The 100 Asians.
Question: Why do Asians get the best test scores?
a) Genetic superiority
b) Kung Pao chicken
c) Race-normed tests
d) Studying encouraged by two married parents
Answer: d) Studying encouraged by two married parents
Question: In his book, ”The Ten Things You Can’t Say in America,” African-American Larry Elder writes about going to a Los Angeles library in a poor neighborhood and finding Hispanic kids outside the library hanging out. What did he find inside the library?
a) Books
b) The homeless
c) Governor Gray Davis looking at help-wanted ads
d) Asian children studying
Answer: d) Asian children studying
Question: In the early 20th century, Italian immigrants faced discrimination and were known as wops, dagos and greaseballs; yet they quickly assimilated and climbed the socioeconomic ladder. What was different back then?
a) Diversity, affirmative action and preferences hadn’t been invented.
b) There was no Head Start, bilingual education, Great Society, School Lunch Program, Social Security, New Deal, Medicare, Medicaid, KidsCare, free preschool, free tutors, U.S. Department of Education, National Education Association, or bike helmets.
c) Class sizes were large, per-pupil spending was low, teacher salaries were low, taxes were very low, and kids who misbehaved got whacked with a ruler by the teacher and then again by their married parents when they got home.
d) All of the above.
Answer: d) All of the above.
Question: If parents refuse to take full advantage of a free education for their children and see that they study and behave, what should public schools do?
a) Give the students free private tutors and preschool.
b) Dumb down the curriculum and ask for more money.
c) Blame the problem on racism and poverty.
d) Let them graduate and get into college through preferences.
e) None of the above.
f) All of the above
Answer: If you have common sense, the answer is e) None of the above. If you’re a liberal Democrat and beholden to teacher unions, the answer is f) All of the above.
Question: What do Cuba and American public education have in common?
a) They both believe in a free lunch.
b) They both depend on coercion and collectivism.
c) English is a second language in both.
d) The poor children of both can’t escape.
e) All of the above.
Answer: e) All of the above.
Final Question: Why aren’t newspapers truthful about the real causes of low test scores?
a) Because it’s easier to copy press releases from the teacher union and the education establishment than research the facts.
b) Because most reporters are liberal Democrats and have a kinship with unionized teachers.
c) Because the truth is the first casualty of political correctness.
d) Because journalism professors are just as leftist as education professors.
e) All of the above.
Answer: e) All of the above.
* *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and the grandson of poor Italian immigrants who whacked their kids. You can whack him, figuratively speaking, at ccan2@aol.com.
”The rope-twirling humorist Will Rogers summed up the political thoughts of many of his fellow Americans with a memorable quote: ’This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as it does when a baby gets hold of a hammer.’”
I agree with most of what Blunden says in this article. I also believe that small businesses are perfectly positioned to take advantage of marketing techniques free of phone calls at dinner time. From the beginning of commerce as we know it, small businesses have used word-of-mouth techniques to spread their messages.
>From casual networking to the country club to the parking lot after church, good business people have been visible to their communities. Harvey Mackay has written more than one good book on the techniques that are effective and legal.
Depending upon when you’re reading this, you can look to the right at the top of my ”Reading List” in the sidebar and you’ll see a big red ’x.’ It will be right next to Alan Cornett’s name.
I’m using a feature of Blogrolling.com that allows a graphic of some sort to be placed next to the links for sites that have had recent updates. Users of blogrolling.com can select the time frame for the ’recently updated’ feature.
Does anyone see something that is causing that big red ’X?’ I’ve looked and can’t find the cause.
Are there plugins or other alternatives for maintaining a blogroll. As I contemplate a redesign of this weblog, I might consider improvements to the way I maintain blogrolls.
I questioned how Movable Type might be placing tags into entries when I use the text entry box as my primary editor for weblog entries.
Last night I viewed the source for the entry in question and I learned that Movable Type is properly placing paragraph tags around the paragraphs when I type here. In other words, I’m not putting any tags into this entry when I’m simply writing.
Some people, apparently, format every entry they post in some other editing tool and simply copy and paste the text and markup into Movable Type’s text entry box. Perhaps, that’s the surest method of getting a weblog that validates.
Two other sets of feelings surge through me as well. First, there is a deep, deep resentment, anger and venom for the cowards who call themselves martyrs or terrorists or whatever euphimism they select. Second, there is total frustration with those among us who have such short memories.
For any member of the media, the Democratic party, the Republican party or those empty-headed naysayers who would like to live in Alecbaldwinia, think back. Think of the quiet, confident, calm resolve of our nation’s leaders during the days of the attack and it’s immediate aftermath.
This remains a time when those truly loyal to the United States of America, the principles of the Founders and the hope of a democratic republic must remain united in our commitment to rid the world of terrorism.
”The picture at the top of this page is a sliver taken from a 9/11 camera feed. Its the cloud that rolled through lower Manhatttan when the towers fell. Paper, steel, furniture, plastic, people. The man who took the picture inhaled the dust of the dead. Somewhere lodged in the lung of a New Yorker is an atom that once belonged to a man who went to work two years ago and never came back. His widow dreads today, because people will be coming and calling, and shell have to insist that shes okay. It’s hard but last year was harder. The kids will be sad and distant, but they take their cues from her, and they sense that it’s hard – but that last year was harder. But what really kills her, really really kills her, is knowing that the youngest one doesnt remember daddy at all anymore. And she’s the one who has his eyes.
Day 6 of the Web Design Workbook: Learning XHTML is now in place.
It raises more questions than it answers. I’m still trying to make distinctions between the (X)HTML code that is being produced when I type in Movable Type’s text entry box and the code that I produce by hand in Notetab Pro or TopStyle Pro.
A simple example is in order…
If I type a sentence like this and press the ”enter” or ”carriage return,” I move to the next paragraph of text like this.
What did Movable Type insert into the markup to make this render as a new paragraph?
These are the same kinds of questions I’m having about heading tags and what gets produced when CSS is in use and how tags get formatted when there is no CSS around.
Some days it feels like you are taking several long steps backwards. I’m sure I’m going to really like tools such as TopStyle and CSE Validator, but both seem to have very long learning curves; or, is it simply my continued ignorance of XHTML coding?
Every once in a while you run into a truly class act. I have. I’ve never talked to this fellow. We’ve exchanged emails and we’ve posted some comments on our respective weblogs. He’s better at this than I will ever be.
Steven Vore is his name. He lives near Atlanta, GA. Out of the blue and without any prompting, Steven managed to escalate my HP problems to a manager of customer satisfaction for the Americas. I’ve already had two phone calls, and I’m expecting a third.
Steven’s actions and those of the person I’ve talked to remind me of my first experiences with HP back in 1974. There was a quiet confidence that HP had truly outstanding products and the people were there to make absolutely certain you knew and understood both the product and what HP could do for you.
At this point I have no idea where all of this might be headed, but Steven Vore has gone way above and beyond the call of duty for a mere acquaintance. I’m most grateful for his efforts on my behalf. There are literally dozens of companies that would fire five to get one person with Steven’s level of commitment! Thanks and thanks once more!
To top it off, he read my luncheon dialog and contributed his own story. It’s a sad, but true part of the web design industry.
Distribution is a tough business. Computer and technology distribution is a really tough business. Run by people who often look to other technology companies for business practices, the distribution of computers and technology should resemble a grocery produce distributor’s operation.
Both sell perishable goods. The only difference is the produce distributor’s inventory begins to smell at the end of the second day on the shelf.
Too few in the PC distribution industry ever grasp this key concept.
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, GOD showed up and said to him, ”I am The Strong God, live entirely before me, live to the hilt! I’ll make a covenant between us and I’ll give you a huge family.” Overwhelmed, Abram fell flat on his face.
Then God said to him, ”This is my covenant with you: You’ll be the father of many nations. Your name will no longer be Abram, but Abraham, meaning that ”I’m making you the father of many nations.’ I’ll make you a father of fathers—I’ll make nations from you, kings will issue from you. I’m establishing my covenant between me and you, a covenant that includes your descendants, a covenant that goes on and on and on, a covenant that commits me to be your God and the God of your descendants. And I’m giving you and your descendants this land where you’re now just camping, this whole country of Canaan, to own forever. And I’ll be their God.”
Genesis 17:1-8 The Message
God continued speaking to Abraham, ”And Sarai your wife: Don’t call her Sarai any longer; call her Sarah. I’ll bless her—yes! I’ll give you a son by her! Oh, how I’ll bless her! Nations will come from her; kings of nations will come from her.”
Abraham fell flat on his face. And then he laughed, thinking, ”Can a hundred-year-old man father a son? And can Sarah, at ninety years, have a baby?”
Recovering, Abraham said to God, ”Oh, keep Ishmael alive and well before you!”
But God said, ”That’s not what I mean. Your wife, Sarah, will have a baby, a son. Name him Isaac (Laughter). I’ll establish my covenant with him and his descendants, a covenant that lasts forever.”
”And Ishmael? Yes, I heard your prayer for him. I’ll also bless him; I’ll make sure he has plenty of children—a huge family. He’ll father twelve princes; I’ll make him a great nation. But I’ll establish my covenant with Isaac whom Sarah will give you about this time next year.”
The design caught my eye. I’m aiming for something decidedly understated when the redesign of this weblog takes place. We’ll be moving from red and bold lines to somethingsubdued and lighter.
”Here are the conditions: it has to work on Movable Type, be XHTML Strict, and have a look that works across three sites (this one, LazyWeb and Book of Blog). It also has to deal nicely with images inside the entry, and I’m a biiiig fan of nice typography. Despite what Cory says, curly quotes are sweet. Anyhow, I’m looking for a global look’n’feel that I can extend across all three sites and any more I think of in the next year or so.
You can recode my templates, use MT plugins, PerlScript, PHP, anything but Flash, and extra points will be given to designs that keep the bytecount down. Netscape 4 need not be supported, but I get an increasing number of hits from mobile devices, so bear that in mind.”
Now it’s time to learn how to get there from here. Some of us don’t have the traffic to command this sort of attention, but we’ll get the checkbook out!
Friend #1: ”What have you been doing in the midst of new projects and too much work?”
Me: ”I’ve gotten interested in the underpinnings of the Internet and what the cutting-edge thinkers are visualizing for the future.”
Friend #2: ”Yeah, our guy just reworked our web site, but it seemed like a waste of money to me.”
Friend #3: ”What kinds of things are you calling underpinnings; stuff like multimedia and grid computing? I read something about that on an airplane last week.”
Me: ”No, it’s more fundamental than that. I’m looking into web standards and ways to build web sites that are easier to change, easy on bandwidth consumption and less costly to extend as an organization’s needs grow.”
Friend #2: ”Just get a copy of FrontPage. Nothing could be more standard than that. Microsoft controls all that stuff, you know.”
Today will be a rather usual business day. There might be a slightly heightened sense for any ”breaking news,” but we must never lose sight of the fact that we have enemies that think, plan and remember in decades and centuries, not months and quarters.
”JOSH FIELEK WRITES that for-pay wifi providers could learn a lot from cellular companies in terms of interoperability and roaming. I’ve thought the same thing, though I’m not convinced that for-pay wifi is a workable business model anyway.”
One of these days I hope to pay a single bill for all of the IP packets I send or receive. Some of those packets will be used to build movies. Some will be reassembled to produce a cellular phone call. Others might be local or long distance phone calls from a ”land line.” Still others would be used to assemble email and web sites from the Internet. I don’t want a different invoice from each of the companies that might handle a few of my IP packets.
Rachel Lucas dealt with her spyware/adware problems yesterday. Now, about that RSS feed…
Rachel’s site would become a read-first-thing-every-morning site if I could simply drop that RSS feed in my Favorite Channels group in FeedDemon. Right now, when I view her site in FeedDemon, I get only eight entries that date back to September of 2002.
It is to be expected that Level 3 Communications, Inc. might not be mentioned in an article such as this. Level 3 carries all of its traffic – voice and data – over an end-to-end IP network.
Because of the history that exists between Level 3 and WorldCom, Cerf’s omission of any mention of Level 3 sends huge signals.
[DISCLAIMER: We’ve owned some Level 3 shares since 1998 and have added to those holdings annually.]
Bob Evans, editor at InformationWeek, has written an excellent editorial concerning Jeffrey Parson, that 18-year old who unleashed Blaster or something like it.
And for the clincher, Katie or Oprah will lower her voice and lean forward and perhaps even put a hand ever so gently on his knee as the riveted audience watches breathlessly while she intones, ”Jeffrey, if you had it to do all over again, you wouldn’t unleash that virus, would you? And-look at me, Jeffreyyou’ve learned your lesson and been punished enough already, haven’t you?”
Business Week has an article about Level 3 and an interview with Jim Crowe, the company’s CEO.
One interesting quote:
”Cohan has expressed fears that Level 3 could at some point face the tough choice of either a bankruptcy filing or turning control over to creditors, a fate that overtook another high-flying wholesale telecom provider, Williams Communication Group last spring.
Level 3 stated in its latest report that it remained in compliance with all loan covenants. But Cohan wonders why it hasn’t published the particulars of those covenants—a step he believes would be useful for inquiring investors. Level 3 says it did in fact publish those particulars last August but hasn’t done so since.”
If this buy Cohan would do his homework he discover just who the creditors of Level 3 are. Bonds have been bought in a big way by the likes of Warren Buffett, Walter Scott (the company’s chairman and a member of Buffett’s board), Legg Mason and Longleaf. These are parties who have an interest in seeing the company flourish. They are not ”take-over” artists.
Would we have as many security problems, spam problems and pop-up problems if somebody else’s products had dominant market share or is Microsoft exposed simply because they’re everywhere?
Is Linux really more secure or would it also be hard hit if Linux with Mozilla or Opera had 85% market share?
”BROOMFIELD, Colo., September 9, 2003—Level 3 Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq:LVLT) today announced it has signed a customer agreement with Hughes Network Systems (HNS) to provide interconnect services to the public Internet for SPACEWAY, its next generation satellite platform, launching service in 2004.
Under the terms of the contract, HNS is purchasing (3)CrossRoads Internet access and (3)Center Colocation services from Level 3 in the U.S. The services include connectivity directly to the public Internet for SPACEWAY managed traffic and access to a high-speed terrestrial backbone for operational related information. In addition, HNS plans to colocate several antennas directly on Level 3’s backbone, thereby eliminating costly local loop infrastructure and optimizing the performance of its service.”
There’s a lot to this…
Level 3 has methodically added each of the major providers of Internet services to its customer list. Behind the scenes your traffic winds up on Level 3’s network even though you call, cable modem or DSL your way onto the Internet.
As each company reviews the cost of ”build-it-and-do-it-ourselves,” they discover that Level 3 can carry the packets far faster and far more economically.
Sometimes photographs simply cannot provide a complete view of devastation.
That’s the case with the photos of Memphis after the storm hit us the morning of July 22, 2003.
Around the corner from me, one of the city’s oldest oak trees toppled in the front yard of a neighbor’s home.
The storm hit around 7:15 in downtown Memphis after crossing the Mississippi River. By 7:35a.m. power was off for 338,000 customers of the local utility company.
The thumbnail to the right points to a fallen tree. It had a flower bed around it.
That flower bed wound up perpendicular to the ground.
Electricity to my home was restored on August 4, 2003 around 6:00p.m.
That’s thirteen days without power.
However, as the photo linked from the thumbnail on the right will show, being without power was the least of the worries for so many.
The house in the photo was struck and almost sliced in half by two trees. The family who lives there is still in a hotel and construction has not yet begun to repair the house. The fellow who owns this house was standing in the den eating a bowl of cereal and looking out his back door. He looked up to see the trees falling. Fortunately, no one was injured.
At my church, we lost 14 trees. This is about the average size of the ones that were lost.
Debris from the clean up is still burned each evening. When the wind and atmospheric conditions are just right we can smell the smoke.
There are still many limbs hanging in the trees. They are likely to fall this winter if we have any snow or ice at all. A light breeze recently brought many of those types of limbs down.
Some of the big names in weblogs are mentioning the 100MPH wind that roared through Memphis on the morning of July, 22, 2003. Most of the remarks follow a weekend New York Times op-ed piece. Tennessee’s master-blogger is 400 miles from where the damage was done.
Those of us on the low-volume end of the blogging spectrum sounded off, but our weak signals weren’t heard. There are still photos to come!
Today, I’ve added Day 5 of the Web Design Workbook, aka Learning XHTML. For some reason, this page is not validating. I’ll be combing through it trying to find whatever errors I’ve made.
This page also has a crude Table of Contents for work done up until now.
* * UPDATE * * * After closing the paragraph tag preceding the [ul] tag, the page validates just fine. I’m learning. It seems that [p] tags get opened and closed a lot by those who write web pages to web standards!
I think I’m missing out by not using plugins with this Movable Type weblog. I see a great feature on a weblog from time to time, and I think about how much markup had to be written to get the feature. However, there are apparently quite a few plugins that do the heavy lifting.
Showing the depth of my ignorance, I offer this excuse and question for why plugins haven’t been used here. Don’t plugins conflict with one another? Is it possible that plugins might step on one another if the wrong two or three are installed on the same weblog?
My concern dates all the way back to the TSR (terminate-stay-resident) days of the DOS operating system. Let me explain.
In DOS days lots of little programs, utilities and helper applications came out that would boot up with your operating system and sit resident in memory waiting to be called on. I saw lots of computers in those days that eventually stopped booting properly because of all the memory that those TSR’s were using. Worse than the memory-utilization were the TSR’s that conflicted with one another.
I understand that plugins are not about memory management. However, can you get a weblog so tricked up with foxtails, mudflaps and curb feelers that it stops working properly?
I suspect not, but I’ve been cautious because of my ignorance. Now a couple of great uses for plugins get pointed out. One handles the problem of absolute vs. relative URL’s – something I have no clue about.
Another handles cited links. There’s a redesign in this weblogs future and I want plugins to be a part of it.
”Some of the statistics are enough to perplex even those aware of the problem. A Barna poll indicated that at least 12 percent of adults believe that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. Another survey of graduating high school seniors revealed that over 50 percent thought that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife. A considerable number of respondents to one poll indicated that the Sermon on the Mount was preached by Billy Graham. We are in big trouble.”
Seminars and workshops, like vacations, just put you so far behind. It’s my belief that vacations aren’t to give relaxation from the work you’ve been doing, but to allow you to rest up for all the work that piles up while you’re out.
While you’re waiting for me to return to normal levels of posting, you might want to ”revisit XHTML” along with FeedDemon and WebStandards.org. Either that, or go take a look at the Friday Feast over at Brainstorms and Raves.
I’m going to go back and edit an entry or two. First, I’m going to edit this one. I’ll be using the guidelines found here. I’m not editing for content. I’m editing the markup.
Then, I’m going to edit this one. I understand the principles behind the recommendations that have been made. The most troubling thing is that I was using a plain vanilla copy of Movable Type, and I was using the standard editing features associated with the text entry box. What the comments have tought me is that I must plan to hand edit every entry in order to be certain that the entry has all of the attributes that the best designers advocate.
My only difficulty in doing this rests with CSS and the headings tags. Using my own lingo, it appears that CSS ”programs” each heading tag to cause text to look a certain way. If what I’m trying to do to a title or heading isn’t achieved by one of my ”pre-programmed” headings, I don’t know how to alter it. I’m sure there’s a way using [div] or [id] or some other tag, element, value or attribute, but my knowledge hasn’t progressed that far.
I think this extends to the positioning of the heading as well. I believe you must have pre-ordained that a certain [h] tag is centered in order to center a title or heading. Anyhow, I’ll be digging into this some more this weekend.
Thankfully, this latest phase of my Baldrige work will end today. If you needed something done really well or you needed to improve something to a new, higher level of performance, would you ask the government of the United States to do that for you? The Baldrige Award is all about the government’s notion of what a quality process should include.
There’s some good in the material. There’s also some bureaucracy that’s laughable. I’ll be back on track tonight or tomorrow.
Yesterday, during the Baldrige work, I met a man who believes quite staunchly that Lean is the only way to go. “No other methodology for improving a business is better than Lean.” His Bible is a book by Womack and Jones titled Lean Thinking, 2nd Edition. He said 2nd edition about eight times, so something apparently just wasn’t right about the first edition.
It’s fascinating to me how quickly people take positions that rule out everything except the concepts or beliefs that they hold. We see it in culture wars, in web design, in religion, in politics and the list can go on for pages.
All of my questions relate to those I asked yesterday. Is the way I inserted the quote above proper, semantic, well-formed, valid and whatever else it is that designers think we should be seeking?
Take a look at the title in this blockquote. Was there some sort of [id] or [div class] tag that should have been used to center, bold and break the three lines of that title or heading? Aren’t these merely additions to or overrides of the CSS that ”governs” this site? In other words, every blockquote may not have a title or heading that is centered. Some, like the quote from Churchill above, will have a closing link or reference.
How do those who know what they’re doing handle this? Perhaps the advice is to avoid using blockquotes at all.
It’s Tuesday night about 10:30 p.m. I’ve just finished the case study for the 2003 Baldrige National Quality Program Examiner’s Certification Course. If you read that mouthful, then you know what’s wrong with the award and the underlying scoring system.
I’m not pleased with what I’m turning in tomorrow, but it’s all I plan to do until the real applications start coming in. I’ll be in the certification sessions for the next two and a half days. From my point of view, there are three things wrong with the process…
First, the application should be submitted in a different format. Second, the examiners should not have to spend time transcribing words from the application into a scorebook. Third, judging a business based upon a panel of 10 examiners’ (judges’) opinions isn’t right.
Add to these things the cost, time and distractions from running the business and I find that several other methodologies are far better for improving a business. Unfortunately, Baldrige is the award brought to you by the U.S. government. The best tool I’ve found in the whole ordeal is Are We Making Progress?, a simple questionnaire any business owner could use to get feedback. It’s free, available for download and self-explanatory.
Now, when the results don’t look like you want them to, don’t turn to Baldrige.
”I have a dead parrot hanging from my neck. Or at least I must have one, judging from the looks of shock and disgust that I get from people.
Carl, a conservative Republican, gave me the look the other day over coffee. He was praising President Bush for getting tough on public schools through his ”Leave no child behind” federal mandates.
I responded, ’As a conservative, shouldn’t you be opposed to the mandates, because they’re unconstitutional and counter to everything that the Founders said about states’ rights and enumerated powers?’”
”In a flash, a look of disgust came over Carl’s face as if he was thinking, ’Yuk, Cantoni has a dead parrot around his neck.’
After the look slowly receded from his face, he asked, ”Do you want the teacher union and public schools to continue to shortchange our kids?”
”Of course not, Carl,” I said. ”But I believe the fundamental problem with government schools is that they are coercive. In the face of all of the bureaucracy, incompetence and politics associated with government schools, they continue to have a monopoly over K-12 classroom thought, only because they force people to pay school taxes even if they don’t use the schools. In our constitutional republic, the solution to coercion should not be unconstitutional coercion.”
Carl slid his chair back as if the parrot had developed a bad odor. Saying he was late for an appointment, he shook my hand and said good-bye, while looking around furtively to see if any of the other patrons had noticed that he was with a guy with a rotting, stinking parrot around his neck.
A similar situation occurred with Sue, a liberal acquaintance. Sue gave me the dead-parrot look during a conversation in which she was speaking enthusiastically about a light-rail line planned for Phoenix. I triggered the look by saying, ”The light-rail line is unconstitutional, because some of the funding comes from the federal government, which has no constitutional authority to fund a line that has nothing to do with interstate commerce or with the general welfare of the country. Incidentally, light rail doesn’t do anything to reduce traffic and pollution, and it is so uneconomic that it depends on non-riders to subsidize riders to the tune of about eight dollars per ride.”
To Sue, I not only had a dead parrot around my neck, but I had also morphed into a right-wing extremist wearing jack boots and a swastika. I had instantly become a more disgusting version of Himmler, a narrow-minded reactionary who was against all progress and, to top it off, had a deceased feathered friend hanging on his chest.
Funny thing, but I saw Sue as the extremist, along with Carl. Like most Americans, Sue and Carl put efficacy before the law. Carl believes that centralizing education authority at the federal level will fix the problems in local school districts. To him, constitutional issues are irrelevant if federal mandates are effective. Similarly, Sue believes that light rail will reduce traffic and pollution. To her, constitutional issues are irrelevant if light rail is effective.
The Supreme Court feels the same way about racial preferences. If the preferences are effective at furthering diversity, whatever that means, the preferences do not violate the Constitution, although they do violate the Constitution. Such intellectual contortions have not been seen since the Supreme Court caved in to FDR’s threats over the New Deal.
Carl and Sue do not care if the Constitution is violated in those instances where the Supreme Law of the Land is unambiguous, such as federal control of education. But, paradoxically, they do care deeply about issues where the Supreme Law of the Land is ambiguous, such as abortion.
Carl would not think that I had a dead parrot around my neck if I said that abortion is unconstitutional. And Sue would not think that I had a dead parrot around my neck if I said that it was constitutional. But both of them would think that I had a dead parrot around my neck if I said that since the Constitution is not clear on the issue, state legislatures, not the judiciary, should decide the matter.
The troubling fact is that the three branches of government and the majority of citizens now act as if the nation is a majority-rule democracy and not a constitutional republic. If a majority wants President Bush to fix the problems in their local school, then that is what he should do. If a majority wants the federal government to fund a light-rail line, then that is what it should do. If a majority wants legislators to defer their constitutional duty to the Supreme Court on the abortion issue, then that is what they should do. And if the majority wants the government to take money from the minority for themselves, then that is what it should do—and does through the progressive tax code.
Meanwhile, the establishment media goes along with mob rule. I have sent scores of e-mails to scores of reporters and editors, asking them why they never raise constitutional questions in their coverage of such issues as federal education mandates and federal funding of light rail. Silence. No doubt, they think that I’m a fruitcake with a dead parrot around my neck.
My only solace is that I know that if the Founders were alive, they’d all have dead parrots around their necks.”
* * * *
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He and his dead parrot can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
A validator will tell you that the structure of your markup is correct (or not); it says nothing about whether youre using tags properly, or semantically, or accessibly, or whatever.
Now I’ve forgotten what we’re in pursuit of. Is it validation? Is it semantics? Is it accessibility? Is it well-formed markup? Is it separation of structure from format?
Don’t miss Shirley Kaiser’s latest work. It’s titled Semantics, Markup, and Standards, and it addresses many questions that puzzle those of us who are new to this whole web design process.
This morning I added Day 4 of the Web Design Workbook I’ve been playing with. The pages don’t look good, but all four of them now validate properly. Unfortunately, I don’t have the knowledge to say whether or not there was a better way to do the markup so that they validate and comply with ”good form.”
Additional entries may be rather sparse until late this week. I’ve got a big project that will take most of the rest of today and virtually round-the-clock work from Wednesday through noon on Friday. Day 5 of the workbook may have to wait until then.
Were I the diligent public servant I ought to be, I’d be focused intently on my Baldrige work. It’s due by Wednesday.
However, at the urging of others, I’ve stripped out all of the [br /] tags from the Introduction of my workbook about learning XHTML. Shirley has shown me what’s possible once I learn how to add CSS to each of these pages. I think that’s when the margins can get reset to something narrower and the headings can be set correctly.
This morning, I used tips from some emails to produce Day 3 of the XHTML workbook. To my great surprise the page called Day 3 validated as XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
Going back to edit the Introduction and Day 2, I wasn’t so lucky. The changes I made to those did not cause them to validate. The changes also hosed up the way the sub-heading and document heading appear on the rendered page. I guess my markup is now correct, but something else has to be done to make it look decent.
I also didn’t strip out all of the [br /] tags which I’ve been using to narrow the width of the column of text. There’s something about that being non-semantic or unsemantic or flawed semantics or some other semantics about semantics. More tomorrow. For now – ENOUGH!
My respect for Mark Pilgrim’s ability to produce a book on line in thirty days has soared. I can’t produce a valid paragraph and he used daily entries to create an online reference guide about Accessibility. It was all valid, accessible, looked good and provided great navigational links between subjects, pages, sections, etc.
In the midst of learning HTML and discovering that there’s now a hierarchy to how tags get nested, I’m puzzled about the RSS feed for this weblog. Two questions:
Does anyone know why the links inside an entry don’t show up as links in FeedDemon?
Can anyone tell me what I should change in my RSS 2.0 template to get the extended entry to appear in the RSS feed?
I wish there were a way for me to paste some HTML markup here without it rendering. I’d like for you to see five different sources for the first 8 or 10 lines of supposedly valid web pages. The sources are from:
They’re all different. They have different line lengths. They have different elements. Some have empty lines in them. It’s all quite confusing. Yet, everything I read tells me these lines of code are absolutely vital.
Another thing that amazes me is that all these web designers apparently do so much development work that they’ve got all the (X)HTML syntax memorized. It’s truly astonishing that so many people apparently know how to sit down to a copy of Notepad and, with no Internet access, pages to copy or cheat sheets, they can develop a standards-compliant web site.
The more I work at trying to figure this stuff out, the less confident I become that I’ll ever master those abilities. What’s even more baffling is what must be missing from my own methods of learning or memorizing (maybe it’s just a lack of intelligence) that prevents me from getting my brain around this stuff. At no time and on no subject in my career have I ever had this much difficulty.
It’s gone from being maddening to becoming a bit frightening. I’ve been studying all morning and I still cannot figure out what to change to make the Introduction and Day 2 validate.
Entries like this one serve to keep me aware of just how far behind I’m falling with each passing day. No amount of knowledge-breakthrough is going to allow me to catch up with all this stuff. What on earth is XSL?
After a very long day yesterday trying to learn about XHTML, I find myself with very, very deep respect for everyone who has a web site. I don’t know what the folks that do this studied or how they learned, but I realize that there is a gigantic body of knowledge that they’ve mastered that I’m really struggling to understand.
As you can see from today’s chapter of my XHTML Workbook, I’ve taken a couple of steps backwards.
The formatting of Day 2 isn’t correct. The work on the Introduction still doesn’t validate. The Day 2 document has even more validation errors than the Introduction.
I’ll use today to continue to dig through each of those and figure out how to correct them. I never dreamed that so many people had mastered this stuff. I’m quite certain that there are very few other fields of endeavor where so many experts exist. If there are indeed as many as a million or two weblogs, that’s an amazing number of people to have achieved a deep understanding of a subject.
For my educational background and IQ, this stuff isn’t easy, intuitive or obvious in the least.
I’m back at square one. Thanks to the kind help and suggestions from Shirley Kaiser and Steven Vore, I’ve decided to take a completely different approach to learning HTML, XHTML, CSS, etc.
The work began this morning. It’s taking the form of a Web Design Workbook. The Introduction can be found by clicking here. Unless I burn out on this approach, I plan to add to the workbook as I add to my understanding.
Clearly, I’ve already hit one obstacle with The Introduction and I’m off to try and figure out what went wrong. Once I know, I’ll document that and try to keep you up to date.
I’m headed to Mississippi State University this morning. There are several reasons, but having the middle daughter there is the primary one. I’ll also be doing some work with the campus’s Wi-Fi capabilities. It will be a fun day.
Going to sleep in despair about XHTML was awful. Awaking to some positive news was great.
When I get home, I want to read this and follow the links.
Semantics? All I’ve been trying to focus on is syntax.
Walter Mossberg provides business person with an understanding of technical matters. His reviews don’t show super close-up photos of the power supply of a computer, but they talk about the things that are important in using or applying products. You can make decisions about what to own by using Walter’s reviews.
Yesterday he provided an update to his ongoing information about laptops. Laptops Have Dropped to Under $800, if You Don’t Mind the Weight offers his latest thinking on some lower-priced computers. He’s big on HP and, as you may know, I’m not. Walter will get an email right after this entry is posted.
This entry is number 3000. In so many ways it is just as frustrating as the prior 2999. Since January 13, 2002, I’ve been trying to learn how to hand-code entries in weblogs. Lately, I’ve been trying to learn how to write valid XHTML code, tags, whatever you call it.
I love weblogs. I hate not understanding what’s under the hood of Movable Type, CSS, XHTML, RSS and all the rest of the alphabet soup. I’m at a loss to know how to learn more effectively. I stare at so much source code and a thousand times a day ask, ”Why did they do it that way?” Sometimes it’s even more basic, ”What does that mean?” Frustration – that’s what it means.
January 13, 2002 is now nineteen and a half months ago. People get advanced degrees in that amount of time. Here I am still struggling to understand what all the tags mean, much less when and how to apply them. Books, tools, websites, editors, standards, validators and all the rest become such a blur. There’s got to be an effective way to learn this stuff. It makes me feel like an idiot to not ’get it.’
To think I started this because I thought it would be fun to learn.
I’m going to use this entry to try to illustrate for myself and others an example of what web standards permit. Using CSS you can define rules for a series of ”heading” tags – h1 through h6 – with h1 being the largest and boldest. While I never specified to the designer of this weblog what I wanted the headings to look like, here’s how CSS causes them to appear:
Here’s what h1 looks like.
Here’s what h2 looks like.
Here’s what h3 looks like.
Here’s what h4 looks like.
Here’s what h5 looks like.
Here’s what h6 looks like.
But, this raises questions…
First, what if I wanted each of the headings to be used for something other than headings. What if I simply wanted to mix fonts, sizes and emphasis in my writing? Could I specify a different font, size and emphasis level for each of these? I think those who are advocating web standards, CSS and XHTML will answer, ”yes.”
Second, doesn’t this remove the risk that I might put something in a weblog entry that would invalidate the whole page? If I properly define these ”headings” for the type of writing and emphasis I expect to be doing, can’t I insure that everything is valid CSS and XHTML?
Here’s a sentence that needs some emphasis
on a few words followed by something that needs to be
emphasized a different way.
* * * UPDATE * * * Well, as you can see, none of that was expected. I have no idea why the various headings are so radically different from one another. I also don’t understand why the sentence is broken up into sections based upon having different heading tags in it. I had hoped that I might be able to use this feature (is it a feature?) to select something like h6 for small courier type that could represent XHTML markup that I wanted to ask questions about. No such luck.
This isn’t what I expected to get after reading Zeldman’s book last night. Now, where’s that tutor I need so desperately?
* * * UPDATE #2 * * * I just viewed the source code at www.zeldman.com. I find use of the tag called ”code.” So if I want to illustrate how I caused this portion of this sentence to look different from the rest of the sentence, can I use the [code] tag? We’ll see.
Lately, I’ve been doing some work with a group that is focused on the Baldrige criteria and the Baldrige National Quality Program. People getting their first glimpse of any type of methodical improvement process get excited. It’s fun to watch.
A couple of people in this group of twenty-five or so have been involved with the Baldrige methodology for several years. They are zealots.
Philip Crosby often said, “If quality is nothing more than common sense, why isn’t quality more common?” One variation was, “Common sense isn’t so common any more.” Frank Patrick captures the essence of this in a nice table.
Where am I going with this?
Service is lousy in the USA today. This follows many years of applying technology, building call centers, improving the precision of manufacturing, chasing all manner of management fads, etc.
Yet, far too many products and services still fail to meet even minimal requirements for customers. Worse, we see that the “returns process” for defective products is often the last place that ever gets any “quality” attention. If you were frustrated with the product, just try to deal with the group responsible for taking it back or fixing it!
Asked the question, “which methodology would you use to bring about dramatic transformation in an organization,” Frank Patrick would answer TOC. I might answer Deming, but I’d hedge my answer if I could. Some of my recent contacts would shout Baldrige. Others might call out Six Sigma, BPR, Juran, Crosby, balanced scorecards, and many others.
Others would launch into a discussion of specific tools that might be a part of several of these methodologies. Do you have a favorite? Have you seen or participated in the results of one or more of these efforts? Would you select a different technique for a small, entrepreneurial organization as contrasted with a large, bureaucratic organization?
Microsoft is running a trial of something called PC Satisfaction. It sounds as if it might be the solution for protecting SOHO networks and individual PC’s.
There’s no way to have an interest in web standards, design processes and all things XHTML and CSS without wishing you could be fly on the wall at some of these discussions.
I haven’t kept up with 35mm SLR’s the last year or two. Does any reader have a suggestion for a good starter camera? I’ve got a daughter who has some coursework that requires that she buy a 35mm.
She’s enthusiastic about it, so I’m leaning toward something a bit above a totally manual camera. Anybody got anything good or bad to say about the Canon EOS Rebel GII? (Thanks in advance.)
Oh, to know enough to understand what this is telling me. There are so many things I want to do to this weblog. The emphasis is on ”I want to do them.” Sure, I could hire a web designer, but what I really want to hire is a tutor. I define a tutor as someone I can send (endless numbers) of emails to or spend an hour on the phone with. I need basic understanding plus deeper knowledge of how to comply with web standards, what things mean in Movable Type, what the pieces of an RSS template mean and do, how to rewrite this simple website using webstandards and CSS, etc.
You know, more important than any of those things, I need a tutor to guide me in how to learn. That’s it – that’s the deal. I need someone who can help me focus on which books are best, which tools are best, how to structure my knowledge. XHTML first or Movable Type details first? CSS first or web standards first?
I don’t want to outsource much more than the graphical design. I admire the people with an eye for great-looking design. I respect them. I recognize that I need them. For everything else, I want to learn enough to be able to understand what’s under the hood of this Movable Type-based weblog.
Yesterday, I noticed that the folks at Macromedia have released Studio MX 2004 with new versions of Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, etc. In Zeldman’s book I read this last night:
The latest versions of Dreamweaver and GoLive are sophisticated, powerful, and standards friendly. But you will still want to edit some of their output by hand to avoid classitis and divitis.
Obviously, Zeldman’s comment was written before Studio MX 2004. Yet, I suspect his comment stands. Furthermore, there’s still value in understanding the hand-coding of CSS, RSS, XHTML, etc., because, no matter what tool you ultimately migrate to, it’s clear that being able to ”read mark-up” is a vital skill in all of this web design stuff.
So, I’m looking for a tutor who can help me create a syllabus with all the appropriate textbooks, tools and web sites for effective learning. I’m prepared to be ”self-taught,” but I’d like to do it as efficiently as possible without buying endless references only to find that they contradict one another.
A tutor is someone who says, ”I’ve looked at lots of stuff and here’s what you need:”
Notepad
TopStyle
Jeffrey Zeldman’s book
Movable Type
a web host
a photo editing program
...and whatever else belongs on the list
I can comply with that. Then, I need a tutor who can say something like, ”here’s how I learned this stuff:”
First, you need to learn this tool using this resource as your guide. Email me if you have questions.
Second, set up a ”play site” in Movable Type that isn’t visible to the public by doing…
Third, with a ”play site,” you can now experiment without exposing your trials-and-errors to the world
Or, perhaps a tutor would say, ”Don’t edit your entries in Movable Type, edit them in TopStyle and then copy-and-paste them into Movable Type’s edit box.”
...and so on. (This is my own list of bizarre notions – not the actual list I’m seeking from someone in-the-know.)
Anyhow, this business of how to go about learning is what I’m after. It isn’t so much a money issue as it is a time and efficiency issue. What’s the shortest distance between two points for rank beginner with a strong desire to learn and use this stuff?
Montgomery, AL stands as one of our historic testing grounds for some of the most important legal decisions this country has faced in the past fifty years. Now, in 2003, the courthouse at Montgomery beckons a nation to take sides over the cornerstone of America’s laws, the Ten Commandments.
There’s quite a difference this time. We’re not seeking freedom for a single race, equal treatment for a people or a change in our thought processes. This time the stakes are much, much higher.
This time we must be very careful as we look to what our decisions really mean and what our choices may lead to. Now is not the time to get blindsided by the law of unintended consequences.
Because the Ten Commandments represent the underpinning of our rule of law, we must be very careful about how we determine whether they ”go or stay” in our legal endeavors. Without the moral certainties given it by the Ten Commandments, the law, which is already contested at every turn, becomes eternally pliable and no dispute ever ends. All decisions become purely secular negotiations and relativism rules over morality.
For these reasons, we should exhaust every one of the legal appeals which is available to show the strength of the system which was built on the Ten Commandments. We should use the same system that has helped Christians in so many other disputes. Christians ready to use civil disobedience had better be very careful. Is this the place and is now the time to take the ultimate stand? Are we being asked to deny our faith?
Judge Moore may have jumped the gun in deciding to use civil disobedience so quickly in this dispute. There are many legal appeals which are available.
There are facts about this country which cannot be disputed. There are facts about who founded this nation and why. There are facts about the lives and beliefs of the founders. There are facts about the influences in the lives of the framers of our original documents.
We stand now at a crossroads that could lead us away from the beliefs that founded the nation. Are we ready to do that? Is now the time and is this the place?
Work around the clock. Spend tens of thousands of dollars. (At least.) Do the impossible. And get well rewarded by Uncle Sam. Dozens of small groups are driving to do just that by March 13, 2004. The impetus is the Grand Challenge, a race sponsored by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Show up with a vehicle that can direct itself from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in ten hourssorry, no human help allowedand you could win serious bragging rights. Oh, and a million dollars cash.
Today’s press conference by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board included many particularly insightful comments. One really caught my attention. Admiral Gehman said words to the effect, ”You can change an organization by reorganizing, but you cannot change a culture by merely reorganizing.”
So true, yet it remains a confoundingly misunderstood message. The time, talent and repetitiveness required of the senior leader in any organization trying to bring about transformation cannot be appreciated until you’ve been through it. As I read the report, I realize that this accident was about far, far more than misjudging or misunderstanding engineering data.
>From Bill Whittle’s recent essay titled Responsibility:
They, like me, call themselves conservatives, but we are indeed a new breed: pro-choice, pro-gay, vigorous defenders of equality of race, religion, gender and sexual orientation. Were big on freedom and big on responsibility.
The left hates us. We are harder to attack than the racist, homophobic, misogynists that they formerly could comfortably lambaste as right-wingers…
The point is this: labels dont really work. As one of my readers brilliantly pointed out in my comments section, its not like the vast sensible middle of the nation is divided into Red and Blue camps, Republicans vs. Democrats, Liberals vs. Conservatives, Left vs. Right. Todays politics are more like a Rubiks cube, where someone you may stand shoulder-to-shoulder with on one subject, can become, with a simple twist of the issues, a bitter opponent in some other fight.
The top layoff leader in terms of layoff numbers is Carly S. Fiorina at Hewlett-Packard. She fired 25,700 workers in 2001, and saw her pay jump 231 percent, from $1.2 million in 2001 to $4.1 million in 2002.
The CAIB (Columbia Accident Investigation Board) has issued volume 1 of its report on the breakup of Columbia during re-entry. The findings are straight-forward.
The request for a ”bill of materials” that insulates small networks and individual PC’s from spam, viruses, hacking and pop-ups went nowhere. Surely there is a set of hardware and software that can be implemented on typical small business networks – yes, they’re ”typically” Microsoft-based.
In my office we keep all PC’s up-to-date with the latest Windows updates. We have copies of Norton Antivirus running on all the PC’s and we keep it updated. I’m using Office 2003 in a pre-release version to try and battle spam. Installing Google’s new Toolbar 2.0 solved the pop-up problem. All of this sits behind a router with a solid firewall. We don’t run Microsoft Exchange.
Even with this installation, Norton alerted me each time one of the infected sobig emails hit the inbox. I wasn’t infected, but I was interrupted by the alerts. It sounds as if Steven was even spared that inconvenience!
Baptists given a view of a rough cut of the movie ”The Passion” came away generally enthusiastic about how the movie portrays the last twelve hours of Jesus’s life.
We’ve linked to the story of this movie before. Here’s an updated link to a trailer for the movie as well as the movie’s web site.
Dave Winer pointed us to Wired’s article about MIT’s course content on the web. While reading that article, I notice a back-link to an interview with Neal Stephenson. I’m not a big fan of science fiction and I haven’t read any of Neal Stephenson’s books.
However, he wrote one of the most amazing articles for Wired several years ago. It describes the intracacies of laying high bandwidth fiber optic cables under the oceans. At the time I was deeply immersed in fiber optics, yet, this article captivates because of the sheer ease with which Stephenson tells the story of such a mammoth undertaking.
The solution to the RSS problem of trying to get extended Movable Type entries to show up in an aggregator may be solved! It will take some work because it looks as if I need to edit someone else’s RSS 2.0 template as well as learn and install a couple of plugins and a couple of macros. I’ve never used plugins or macros with Movable Type, so I’ll have to tackle those learning curves.
Thanks to Shirley Kaiser for the details. She’s got a new Reference section to her weblog.
The story of my life:
”By the way sir, we want you to know that since you began your web design studies here at our university some three years ago, we’ve added to our degree requirements. Though you’ve successfully completed your first three years, you now have three more years rather than just a fourth year!”
Have you ever felt as if you can’t learn fast enough? Studying web standards and web design is like studying history at a pace that covers less than a day in a day. By the time you’ve completed your study of a day, one or two more days of history have been added.
Last night I continued my study of web standards, RSS and the like. I’ve not begun to scratch the surface with CSS, yet. This morning brings news (to me) that there are things called ”floating elements.”
Here I am trying to understand why the text editing box of Movable Type uses [b] and [i] rather than [strong] and [em]. Why can’t I put Movable Type into a mode that helps, forces or causes me to write valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional?
I suspect the place to go for an early review of the report issued by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board is here. It should be released tomorrow morning.
I’m still toying with my RSS feeds. I haven’t yet found a way to edit the template for RSS 2.0 so that aggregator-users see complete posts including any extended entry.
Needless to say, I’m terribly weak in the area of hand-coding this stuff. It’s because I don’t fully understand what goes where nor do I understand what each symbol, code and portion of the RSS template is really doing.
I’ve just switched back to my old RSS template to see if it improves what shows up in FeedDemon. * * * UPDATE * * * Ok, now I can see more of the body of my entry in FeedDemon, but none of my links show up as links in FeedDemon. There’s so much more to learn!
Alan Cornett’s site is one I visit too infrequently due to my dependence on an RSS aggregator and the absence of an RSS feed from so many Blogger sites.
New ways of thinking interest me. Organizations quick to say, ”we’ve already done that or that won’t work,” are particularly interesting. Gut-feel, intuition and instincts are great for some types of work. Other types of work in the same organization require a fresh approach.
Fact-based management is rare. Experience breeds managers who can shoot from the hip with apparent impunity. Yet, when you dig into a business problem with these kinds of managers, you quickly discover just how many flaws reside inside their intuitions.
Tomorrow, NASA will release the report about the Columbia accident. Yesterday’s New York Times ran a good article by John Schwartz about the guy who has led the investigation.
Here’s an eye-catching quote:
As the board members studied the shuttle disaster, he said, they realized that they needed to look beyond failing hardware and simple human error into NASA’s culture, to see if there were elements that all but compelled bad decisions.
There is likely to be a methodology for future accident investigations that can grow from this report. One tell-tale sign is this:
Diane Vaughan, a sociologist at Boston College whose study of the Challenger accident in 1986 helped inspire Admiral Gehman to broaden the board’s approach, said the outcome could be a model for others to follow. ”This report is truly an intellectual breakthrough in terms of accident investigations,” she said.
Dr. Vaughan described a system in which internal pressures and external factors like politics and even budgets came together to produce a misguided decision to launch that shuttle.
As we investigate more and more disasters, from the bombing of the USS Cole to the bombing of the UN Headquarters in Baghdad to the recent power outage, this retired admiral may provide the way:
He got a call last week from the commission investigating the power blackout.
For those of you who engage in or keep up with the kinds of debates that go on among Christian people, you can read the comments that have been exchanged in an entry I wrote called The Slippery Slope.
Cass McNutt has the ability with a few words, a selected story or a brief insight to bring everything into perspective once more. As denominations fight amongst themselves in ways that confuse the average observer, Cass reminds us of this story.
On the subject of something some call ”absolute truth,” it occurs to me that we might one day be called to give an accounting for ourselves. Wouldn’t it be tragic if one of God’s questions was, ”Did you ever do anything to drive someone away from Me?” The truthful answer? ”Yeah, but I was defending absolute truth that day.”
Who gets to be the final arbiter of the truth of scripture? Who is so wise in this world today that they can confidently decide that the act of locking a long-time seminary president out of his office is somehow ”ok,” while we have beer-guzzling deacons, racists, cheating wives and all other forms of human diversion seeking a place in the pew on Sunday morning?
No matter which ”most offensive sin” we select, inevitably one or more of those ”sinners” will seek comfort with God. The time wasted in deciding which leaders get to wear the badge of acceptance (i.e. someone who will fix his signature to the new Baptist Faith and Message and discard the old) is clearly time that cannot be regained to reach the sinner. Does reaching a sinner with The Good News ”matter more” than ”purging” someone who doesn’t believe or behave as we do? ”It matters to this one.”
No words that I know how to write can possibly express how proud I am of you. Time together has simply passed much too quickly. Now that you’re at the opposite end of the state, I miss you more than ever.
God’s blessing has been bountiful in having you as my daughter. Your joy, your excitement and the love you have for life is completely contagious. I still wish for a heaping helping of that kind of enthusiasm every morning.
Memories flood through my mind on a day like today. From first steps to first birthdays to all the other mountaintop experiences we’ve shared.
The written word simply cannot express the enormous wishes, hopes and dreams that I have for you. Each day I pray for your safety, your happiness and for your ministry to others.
Please know this day and every day that you are cherished, loved and missed, but I am so tremendously happy that you’ve found God’s calling in your life.
Rest assured that each time I think I’ve reached or seen my proudest moment, you surprise me once more. My prayers continue to seek God’s watchcare and blessings in all that you do.
This morning I downloaded and updated to FeedDemon’s Beta 4. I continue to wish that I could sort the sequence of channels within a channel group by a preferred reading sequence. For those days when you are pressed for time, knowing that you’re looking at the ’top 5’ channels in a channel group would be handy.
SharpReader allows you to do this with drag and drop simplicity.
The increasing rate of litigation means that there is a far higher chance that doctors will be asked in court to explain the exact meaning of NFN (Normal for Norfolk), FLK (Funny looking kid), CTD (Circling the Drain, expected to die soon) or GPO (Good for Parts Only). [Overlawyered]
Of the 133 pieces of spam-mail in my inbox this morning, 46 were infected with the ’sobig.f’ virus. Norton Antivirus 2002 trapped each of them. This was on a PC running a fully updated version of Windows XP Professional behind a firewall and with attention to security.
For those of you/us who are expected to make and support sound recommendations to home users and small office users, what are the right recommendations today? I’m seeking a strong product from a strong company for each of the following:
Antivirus
Antihacking
Antispam
Antipopups
Here are the configurations I’d like to be able to support:
Standalone PC at home or office
Peer-to-peer network at home or office (25 users max.)
Small LAN running Windows Server 2000 or 2003 at home or office without Exchange (25 users max.)
Small LAN running Windows Server 2000 or 2003 at home or office with Exchange (25 users max.)
For the operating systems on the PC’s:
Windows 98
Windows 2000/Windows XP
Questions that arise include:
Is there a truly workable spam-fighter from a reliable company that suits these needs?
What do you do about administering the antivirus software in a 15-station network? Merely changing the password a PC uses to access the LAN can stop that PC’s LiveUpdate because the ’scheduler’ in Windows doesn’t know about the password change.
Do you use individual copies of Norton Antivirus or do you use a server-installed version?
What’s a solid solution for antihacking? Is it a Linksys or NetGear router or is there something far better?
What can be done about popups?
Remember, we’re talking about businesses that have no I.T. department or director. They pay a fee to an outside firm to come in periodically and help with technology problems, updates and changes.
We don’t want a different array of products at every customer’s site. If Norton is good one place, it’s good for all customers. If Linksys routers solve most hacking problems for a typical small business, then there’s no need to have a client list of 50 customers with 31 different brands of routers.
Is there any way to address these things without destroying the performance of the network? An endless set of warning messages isn’t the answer. ”Sally” needs to be able to keep working, not phone the ”computer guy” each time she gets a warning messsage she doesn’t understand.
Based on support questions I’ve been seeing, it seems that many TopStyle users don’t know that it offers keyboard shortcuts which wrap HTML tags around the current selection. [FeedDemon]
I guess either this or that says it all, is to be believed without question and is the final authority. At those so certain that they’ve chosen the right battle to fight publicly and the right message for a needful world, one can only stand and stare in amazement. Oh, to be so sure of oneself. So many in need are more like this.
That last entry didn’t post correctly, yet it showed up 5 times on the home page of the weblog. I had to rebuild the entire site after deleting the unwanted entries. So, a simple post at 11:15 p.m. has taken until 12:08 a.m.
It’s 11:15 p.m. and I find myself ready to call it quits for the night. It’s been a miserable day and I feel guilty for saying so. There’s something about having to focus so totally on trying to make technology work when it doesn’t want to cooperate.
For some unknown reason, having made no changes, there’s a red ’x’ next to the first entry in the Reading List of the sidebar. Whatever the cause, the ”newly updated” arrow is refreshing properly. I’ve changed nothing there.
I’m still searching for a laptop and so many things are on hold until I can find one. I spend way too much time trying to help a guy sort a 798,000 record database in Access and delete two thirds of the records.
I’m trying to learn RSS, XHTML, CSS and designing web sites around web standards. I have no idea how to go about learning this stuff, and I find myself running from resource to resource learning bits and pieces at a time.
Then I run across someone who knows the stuff so cold that it’s like a native tongue to them. I have difficulty understanding how I’ll ever get to that point. I get comments that I can’t begin to act on because I’m truly clueless about where to begin. I feel like people are saying, ”all you do is lift the hood and…” Little do they realize that I don’t have a clue what the hood is, much less how to lift it!
Anyhow, it’s been a frustrating day. Technology prevailed today.
I’ll learn something more tomorrow and try to win back the day!
I bought TopStyle on June 10, 2003. I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t taken the time to learn it. This declaration from a customer will change all of that in a matter of weeks. (Contrast the elation with this sad story.)
Once the new laptop is selected and in hand, I’ll be coming up to speed with what TopStyle can teach me about web standards.
Do we really want to have our religious leaders be people whose homes we want to tour? Is that the mark of an accomplished Christian?
If you really want to understand the direction and beliefs of Dr. Mohler and his cronies, you can read this.
My point is not solely criticism of Dr. Mohler. There has a been a movement afoot in the Southern Baptist Convention for roughly three decades. That movement seeks to turn pastors, seminary professors and any other employees of Southern Baptist Organizations into people who have ”sworn allegiance” to a set of values and belief statements that have been written by Mohler or his contemporaries. Here’s an example:
It is not enough to say we believe every word of the Bible to be true to be a Baptist. The Baptist Faith and Message as revised by the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000 is the answer to this theological problem because it leaves no wiggle room for neo-orthodoxy.
With the revision to the Baptist Faith and Message doctrinal statement in 2000 and the discussions that followed it, Southern Baptists did more to align themselves with the beliefs of Catholicism than at any time in their history.
That marked the culmination of steps such as the one taken by Bible-thumping believers to fire Russel H. Dilday, long-time President of Southwestern Seminary:
On March 9, 1994, Dilday was removed without warning and was locked out of his office while still attending the meeting in which he was fired.
In a world needing a Savior, so much of this smacks of little people seeking desperately to be taken seriously by acting like their worldly counterparts. Any means to an end replaces God so loved the world for folks like this.
Due to the number of submissions received from customers, Symantec Security Response has upgraded this threat to a Category 3 from a Category 2 threat.
Shirley Kaiser indicates that an upgrade to Perl at her ISP may be behind some problems with her Movable Type installation. A couple of questions come to mind.
First, was it her ISP or her host or were they one-and-the-same? Second, are any other Movable Type users likely to experience similar problems if their hosts start updating Perl or other server-side software?
I’m happy with the service I’ve received at Bloggerzone. I also hear good things about Pair. Are there other hosts that have large numbers of weblog customers?
Berkshire Hathaway made an offer to Clayton Homes to buy the company for $12.50 a share. Several shareholders or shareholding institutions wanted more. Berkshire wouldn’t go higher. The vote of shareholders approved the deal.
Now, one of the institutions has gone to court, suing some directors for fraud. How in the world does an institution come to the conclusion that they will somehow get more money even if they prevail in court. All the court could do would be to void the deal.
Under that circumstance, the company might go back into play, but it can’t possibly be worth more given all the legal fees and feuding.
In an effort to get extended entries to appear in news aggregators such as FeedDemon or SharpReader, I’ve come up with some true-false questions.
In order to create or edit an RSS template, you must first understand what each Movable Type tag stands for and does?
In order to create or edit an RSS template, you must know what each XML tag that wraps around the Movable Type tag does?
Finally, you must know all of the XHTML/XML syntax that is used in an RSS template?
>From these questions it seems the logical starting point is a thorough review of the Movable Type tags to determine which of them you want to include in your RSS feed. Then, you’ve got to decide whether you are going to include excerpts, full entries, full entries with extended entries or full entries with extended entries as well as comments.
If I’m right about any of this, developing RSS feeds is a non-trivial kind of exercise.
Based upon a comment I received that indicated there was a way to include ”extended entries” in RSS feeds, I’ve made a change to my RSS 2.0 feed this morning.
While I don’t know what I’m doing at all, I found two places in the RSS template where there was a line that began with a [description] tag. So, I changed both of them to this:
The rest of this entry is a test to see if the change makes a difference in what I can read in FeedDemon. In other words, this is the extended entry. Will it show up in my RSS feed?
* * UPDATE * * * Nope, no such luck. Does anyone know how I should change the RSS 2.0 template so that a full entry including any extended entry gets included in the RSS feed?
Love God, your God, with your whole heart: love him with all that’s in you, love him with all you’ve got! Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates. Deuteronomy 6:5-9 The Message
If possible, I’d like to buy a new laptop computer today. I’d like to have a fast, Pentium 4-based PC running Windows XP Professional. Ideally, I’d have 30GB or 40GB of hard drive, at least 512MB of memory, a CD burner, etc. In other words, I want a desktop replacement. * * * UPDATE * * * A resolution of 1400×1050 is also something I’d like to have. Only a few of the Thinkpads offer this.
HP finally fixed my computer. The Pavilion ZT1290 laptop was returned to me late yesterday by FedEx. Booting up, I found that HP had completely reimaged my hard drive with Windows XP Home. All of the bundled software (there’s a lot) that came with the computer has been updated and was reinstalled on the computer.
For about ten seconds I was reminded of why I thought this laptop was such a great buy, even at $2450 plus sales tax. Then, it dawned on me. A Windows XP Home machine cannot (conveniently) be joined to a Windows 2000/2003 Server domain.
Apparently, though I haven’t asked them since getting it back, HP believes the zt1290 cannot be upgraded or reformatted to Windows XP Professional. I have never seen a PC that could run Windows XP Home, but not Windows XP Professional. I think HP has simply taken the easy route.
Bottom line:
FOR SALE: Hewlett Packard Pavilion ZT1290 laptop computer purchased July 26, 2002 from PC Mall in Memphis, TN. 1.8Ghz Pentium 4, 512MB RAM, 40GB hard drive, CD burner, built-in wireless, Windows XP Home, full Corel suite, external floppy drive, 15 inch display running at 1400×1050 resolution (I love this display), Quicken, Britannica Ready, Norton Antivirus 2002, MusicMatch Jukebox. Google it!
Best offer!
So that no one gets the wrong impression, let me add this. I looked long and hard before buying this computer. I like so much about it an awful lot. I simply cannot support the products from a company that behaves the way you see here.
Is it possible that we’re nearing the finish line on this nightmare?
HP’s information system tells me that the laptop has been fixed. There’s no word on what was done.
However, HP did provide a FedEx tracking number. You can see that the laptop made it back to Memphis over the weekend. It’s scheduled to be delivered here by 3:00 p.m. today. We’ll then know whether or not the drive was reformatted and whether or not HP was able to diagnose and repair the boot problem.
No, this isn’t the latest spam to hit your inbox. There’s a multi-million dollar opportunity lurking in literally thousands of companies. To my knowledge, it has not been addressed. Here are the seeds of it:
On the front of the room they ran a screen that showed how many calls were waiting, and how long they had waited to get to me. I don’t want to talk about those numbers, but they weren’t good.
Robert had just returned from helping Microsoft answer support calls concerning the ”worm.” He saw what a call center can be like. The art and science of matching capacity to demand in a call center is tricky work.
Most companies do not get it right. Hold times, abandoned calls, busy signals and flakey ”message-on-hold” technologies make a customer’s experience dismal. Get those things right and you may find yourself spending so much that no increase in customer satisfaction will be sufficient to cover your investment.
The state-of-the-art in 800#-support technology is still pretty bad. Figure this one out and you make zillions!
Owning a generator makes lots of sense if you can put a price on comfort, safety and lost productivity during an outage. When the local utility continues saying ”a few days” when they really mean a few weeks, it’s difficult to know how much to invest and when.
For around $2000 plus the fuel that would have been required to operate it, this product would have covered our thirteen-day outage in Memphis for about $160 per day. That’s assuming you bought it and used it only that one time. However, it’s cheap insurance if you operate a home-based business and need to provide steady, reliable power for computers as well as a few other appliances.
This one is worth re-reading. It’s about 45 days old now. Whatever your business and whatever technologies you may already be ”invested in,” set them aside. Think about how your products and services might fit into a world of extreme mobility. What would be different? What do you do that would change?
How could it be different if ”contact mobility” weren’t an afterthought? Well, think about it: your phone is connected to a network. Why aren’t your phone’s contacts automatically synchronized through the ”cloud” with your PC, which is also ultimately connected to the same cloud? Why does your phone’s display not automatically show your next appointment or meeting, being connected to that same ”cloud”? And so on.
Throughout history some of the fiercest wars were over matters of religion. In 2004 a movie will be released about the last hours of Jesus’s life. We’ve mentioned it here.
The August 16, 2003 issue of World has an article[online information form required for this link] about The Passion. Some who have seen the movie and many who have not have chosen to comment, criticize or suggest changes.
Whether a literal or figurative war, it seems obvious that some would still go to war if they perceive that history is being told in a way that appears unfavorable to their interest group. For their concerns, they aren’t worried about whether history is portrayed accurately or not.
Memphis Light Gas and Water is the local utility in Memphis. According to directors of that utility, 338,000 customers lost power the instant the storm hit.
By day 14 there were still roughly 10,000 customers without power. Memphis was measuring utility customers or electric meters. Using such a metric a family of six would be counted as a single utility customer, though six people were without power. During a work day, a business employing 100 people was counted as a single customer or electric meter.
Memphis got no media coverage. New York and the national media are behaving as if that city dropped into an abyss. All of us are enormously dependent upon electricity. Try to imagine your own life without electricity for 3 or 4 days. What if you couldn’t drive anywhere? How would you keep battery-operated laptops and cellphones and PDA’s running?
How do you sleep when the temperature is 85 degrees and there is 90% humidity?
I’m way behind on reading and posting. I may have to simply blow off part of the entries that were posted during the outage. Some web sites are providing really valuable information in fields that interest me. I’ve got to catch up on reading and studying them.
Other sites may be candidates for resumed reading, but no look back. FeedDemon doesn’t allow me to put weblogs or RSS feeds in a reading sequence within a category or listing. Instead, channels are listed alphabetically within the listing. It’s a little tough to read the highest priority sites first.
As for entries, I still have not put up any of the storm photos and I haven’t had a chance to cite some of the best of Zeldman.
I’ll try to get to that tomorrow.
HP has my laptop on the way back to me. It left San Jose via FedEx and has arrived in Memphis. It’s scheduled for delivery to me by 3:00 p.m. on Monday. I really am hoping that it is repaired this time. It will go a long way toward helping me catch up on all I need to get done.
By whatever means, you’ve found this entry. Stop right now. You’re about to get a different kind of glimpse into the faith of true seekers. Unencumbered by some ritualistic formality, the true seekers of God’s grace don’t have all the answers. Instead, they struggle. They wrestle. They hurt. So stop right now and get ready to read something more than a soundbite.
I can’t tell you whether this is real or fiction. I haven’t read enough of it, yet. However, I know that this story is true. If it wasn’t true in the area of Texas mentioned, it’s been true through the years in countless other places.
The language is strong coming from a preacher, so be prepared. Take a look:
I met with Tom and his deacons the night he told them his family was falling apart. They were surprisingly gentle and sympathetic. They told him he could stay on as pastor. They laid hands on him and prayed for him. They promised in Jesus name they would stand behind him and walk with him through these hard days. He burst into tears because it was the first moment of grace he had received since the whole thing started.
That was Thursday night. Sunday morning they fired him…
You’ll find some wonderful insights if you read the first few entries.
This is definitely a weblog to keep your eye on if your seeking your own path out of the Rat Race!
When did litigation strategy become a primary skillset for CEO’s? When did threatening lawsuits become a company’s best idea for enhancing shareholder value?
Absent any cohesive strategy of its own, bitter over the inroads made by Linux and desperate for publicity, SCO is now a wounded beast striking out at anything it hears in the dark. If you follow the money, you get some inkling of where this is headed.
Clearly, Andrew Tobias must be conflicted at this moment. As Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, Tobias is staunchly opposed to every idea, comment or suggestion made by any Republican.
He grew so concerned about the recent tax cut that he began including a quote from Warren Buffett at the end of the emails he sends to subscribers. Now Buffett is advising Arnold.
I’m a long-time admirer of the financial savvy and communication skills of both Tobias and Buffett. I’ve invested with or along side both of them over the years. The principles they advocate are sound. In neither case have their political views been consistent with my own.
It will be interesting to see how Tobias is able to deal with Buffett’s ”support” for Arnold. As for Arnold, this might be the master stroke he needed. No one is better wired for dealing with a crisis the size of California’s than Buffett.
Since July 22, 2003 when a major storm devastated Memphis, TN, I’ve had either no cable modem service or very sporadic service.
Weaknesses in the Memphis infrastructure became totally evident when this storm hit. Our local utility lost over 70% of its customer base in about 15 minutes. It took more than 2 weeks to restore electricity. Phone and cable companies are still attempting to recover.
Posting may be intermittent until stable ISP services are restored from the cable company.
As service returns and remains up, I want to post some pictures of the damage. I’ll also offer a couple of thoughts about reading Zeldman’s web standards book by flashlight. Finally, there’s the matter of learning CSS and XHTML well enough to tackle another makeover of this site.
Be assured that Volume 12 of this mess is far more pleasant than what you’ve been reading. I finally worked up patience enough to call HP last evening. They had my laptop for over two weeks, didn’t fix it and couldn’t provide information about it along the way. Read about the entire train wreck here.
They returned it changed but not fixed. I was ready to solve this once and for all. I dialed the phone at 5:07 p.m. After holding briefly a bot announced that the number I dialed was no longer in use for HP’s support calls. I was told to call 800.474.6836.
I dialed the number and held until 5:45 p.m. when Glenn picked up. Under no circumstance could anyone have been more professional, informative, concerned and helpful than Glenn. He was fantastic.
Glenn picked up on The Saga quickly and without being patronizing, he continued the call with an understanding that many things had been tried, many calls had been placed, etc. He asked great questions and his attempts at some high-level troubleshooting were relevant.
Concluding that the PC really did need to go back to Milpitas, CA for service, Glenn entered the order, provided the information and explained clearly what I should do when repacking the beast.
One note of alarm – this time the hard drive is going back with it. I spent the evening doing all the backups I could think of so that I could be productive. The machine is now packed, labeled and sitting next to the front door for this afternoon’s pick-up by FedEx.
Glenn’s helpfulness uncovered one interesting fact. HP apparently has a policy or unwritten rule that a product must be returned three times for repair before they’ll call it a ”lemon.” So, if they don’t fix the machine this time, they get yet another chance. If it’s not repaired, Glenn said they’d send a factory-refurbished replacement.
Oh, and Glenn asked for an email address. In this morning’s inbox is an email with a link for tracking this product on line. I’ll keep you posted.
Our call concluded about 6:30 p.m. Now we wait and see if HP is able to deal with this correctly this time. Current score: F2/C27/P22.
Because I’ll be providing a link to all of the entries that make up The HP Way, and because some people will want to read them in chronological order, I’m providing a Table of Contents.
This might assist HP’s Investor Relations department as well as anyone I can reach in their executive and quality groups.
There is no conceivable way to mock up or make up a case study such as the one Hewlett Packard is putting me through. I’ve been in the computer business for in excess of twenty five years. The behavior of this company is more arrogant, disrespectful, unconcerned and ineffective than ANY I’ve ever witnessed.
Tonight I got my courage up and placed another call to HP. I wanted to find out how to handle the return of this defective laptop which they sent to me today unrepaired. The paperwork said they fixed the problem. The laptop required 11 cycles involving press the power button, wait for it to lock up, turn the power off, start again.
Here’s how HP handled tonight’s call. In a single call, I spoke to four people. First, Harry took the model number and the CSO number. He said he would transfer me to Pavilion laptop support. That was at 8:26 p.m. (CDT).
At 8:57 p.m. Richard answered the phone (F2/C25/P22). He indicated that he only worked on Pavilion desktops. He said he would transfer me to Pavilion laptop support.
At 9:02 p.m. Kim, an HP call director, answered the phone (F2/C25/P23). She was very rude. She asked how long I had owned the laptop. She asked the model number. She asked if I had ever called HP tech support before. When I gave her a very abbreviated version of my story, she transferred me to Pavilion laptop tech support.
At 9:05 p.m. David, an Indian fellow, picked up the phone and indicated that he didn’t speak English (F2/C25/P24). At least, I think that’s what he said. He put me on hold.
At 9:20 p.m. the call was cut off. Latest score: 2 faxes, 25 calls, 24 people.
HP is truly declining faster than any larger company in recent memory other than those guilty of fraud and accounting scandals. Please know that any ad you read, watch or hear from Hewlett Packard that says anything about customer focus, quality, excellence or any words remotely similar is a fraud in and of itself.
The August 11, 2003 issue of Forbes magazine featured Carly on the cover. Inside is an article about HP titled We Did It. The first page and two thirds of that article pictures four people under the caption ”Carly’s Angels.” It is so sad that companies of the stature that HP once was must resort to such puff pieces. Sadder still is Carly’s self-promotion. She’s on the cover, she’s in the photo with the other four and then she has another full page photo in the middle of the article.
She should have had the courage and self-respect to let them photograph some of her electronic plantations where underpaid, overworked and ill-informed people are attempting to respond to the numerous calls from customers with questions or with products that don’t work. A day of reckoning is coming for this company.
The four people are Ann Livermore, Shane Robison, Jeff Clarke and Peter Blackmore. The subtitle next to these people says, ”Carly Fiorina’s boast: HP pulled off a complex merger and saved $3.5 billion. Her sales pitch: We can work this magic on your company.”
I have but one thing to say to these five people, ”Keep away from my company. I don’t want to have a business that behaves in any way like the HP of August, 2003.” The writer of the story, one Quentin Hardy, should be ashamed for being a party to such a silly and superficial promotional piece.
I’ll sleep tonight. I’ll call HP’s headquarters tomorrow and seek relief from this nightmare I’m in.
Some good news and some bad news. The Pavilion zt1290 was delivered a few minutes before 3:00 p.m. today by FedEx. It required 9 tries to boot to a stable desktop in Windows XP Professional.
I bought this computer brand new in July of 2002. I paid $2450.00 for it plus $207.50 which is the sales tax for Memphis and the State of Tennessee. That’s $2657.50 for a laptop that cannot be shut down without requiring at least 5 to 15 retries to get it to boot up. Once up and running it does fine and there are things I like about it; otherwise, I wouldn’t have bought it.
Knowing what I know now, I’ll do everything possible to avoid purchasing anything from HP again. More importantly, I intend to use any influence I can muster to encourage others to buy other brands of products – regardless of the product category they may be needing.
HP’s form included with the laptop said they ”duplicated the failure,” and they replaced the Switchboard PCA. Yet, this laptop will not start up correctly.
In a few minutes the calls will resume to 970.635.1000.
With each passing moment I find myself taking pleasure in stories such as this one that exposes a few of the cracks in HP’s foundation.
The straight-line windstorm that hit Memphis, TN on July 22, 2003 was referred to today as ”Hurricane Elvis.” Take a look at this slideshow for a few of the photographs that illustrate why 338,000 utility customers were without power immediately after the storm. It took over two weeks for everyone to get power restored.
My home was without power for over thirteen days. Later today, I’ll post some neighborhood photos that show the power of the storm.
Volume 8 left off with Michael planning to call. That was a promise he made on August 5th. Nothing more has been heard from Michael since then.
My frustration forced me to tackle HP again on August 6. The score quickly ran up to F2/C23/P19. Here’s how it happened: 10:40 a.m. called HP and was cut off; 10:46 a.m. redialed and was cut off; 10:49 redialed and was cut off; 10:50 redialed and was instructed by a phonebot to call a different number.
At 10:52 a.m. I called the new number. I was promptly cut off. At 10:54 a.m. I called that same number and was greeted by Nancy. Something tells me Nancy was not this woman’s given name. I’m reasonably sure that Nancy was in India.
By 11:04 a.m., it was obvious that I needed Nancy to escalate my call to a supervisor. First, I needed to speak to someone I could understand. People in Bangalore, India don’t speak English exactly as we do in the Deep South of the United States.
Second, I was fed up and wanted someone to get this mess fixed. At 11:12 a.m. Philip got on the phone. Philip told me that he was based in Bangalore and had the authority to fix the problem. He first needed to do some research. He asked permission to put me on hold.
I granted that permission and waited interminably. When he returned, Philip assured me that my laptop service had been expedited and I would have it in 5 to 7 business days. Again, that promise was made on August 6.
Tomorrow may be the day! Philip may be my hero.
August 9 at 1:55 p.m. marked my last phone call to HP. An Indian woman named Elisa asked me five times for my case number. I held a long time while she researched my case. At 2:16 p.m. she asked me for my CSO number and I again held for quite a long time. Elisa eventually returned to the phone and said, ”your laptop will be returned four business days after August 11, 2003.” I kid you not.
After 24 phone calls, two faxes and conversations with 20 different employees at HP, I through up my hands and decided I wouldn’t pursue them again until the 12th or 14th of August. Tonight is Sunday, August 10, 2003. I’ll sit patiently until Wednesday of this week. If I’ve not got my repaired laptop by then, the floggings will begin anew.
HP should be ashamed. Carly should be ashamed. Those who posed for the recent Forbes magazine article should be ashamed. I’m simply very thankful that Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard weren’t around to witness the decline of such a formerly formidable company!
Sometime yesterday, the web site HP provided for tracking the status of a repair got updated. Nothing got corrected. No existing information was altered.
What appeared offers hope. In an area called ”repaired product shipment (to you),” a FedEx tracking number appeared. Appearances may deceive me, but it appears that FedEx will be delivering my ”repaired?” laptop by 3:00 p.m. tomorrow.
Tonight I went to see Seabiscuit. I’ve not spent a better couple of hours in months, if not years. See it this week if you haven’t already.
You’ll rediscover a time when people gave others far more than a second chance. You’ll find out that there was an era when everyone needed a little help, a little encouragement and the opportunity to remember their dreams.
The other day, in a mad dash to catch up on everything, I read something about creating RSS files with NotePad. A Google search this afternoon uncovered the article by Stephen Downes.
I didn’t call HP again until Monday, August 4. One of the phone numbers I had been using was no longer valid and I was told to call an 800# and use their new voice response system.
Doing so, Dana answered. She told me that she didn’t handle Pavilion repair calls and I should hang up, call back and wait for an operator to answer. (F2/C12/P12)
On the next call I got Samantha. She couldn’t help me, but said that she’d connect me with Pavilion repair. (F2/C13/P13) She did. I got Maggie this time.
Maggie asked for my CSO#. When she realized the CSO# was dated July 26th, she transferred me to the notebook repair department. While holding for them, I was cut off. (F2/C13/P14)
I redialed. ”Your call cannot be completed at this department of HP. Please hang up and call again.” (F2/C14/P14)
I redialed. Sirhan finally answered. (F2/C15/P15) He asked for my model number twice. When I gave it to him, he said they didn’t handle that model, so he transferred me to another department. I couldn’t understand more than every fifth or sixth word that Sirhan said.
I held until one ear was compressed against my head. Then, while fully expecting HP’s usual performance, I was cut off.
I redialed the voice-response-activated menu system again. Indojet(sp?) answered the phone this time. (F2/C16/P16) She was astonished that I had not received my computer back from HP. She suggested I call back to the 800# and when the voice-activated response system asks me to say ”repair status,” she suggested I remain silent. (I can’t make this stuff up. This is the truth. It happened.) Oh, Indojet is not from this country.
I redialed the 800#. Ignoring the directive to say ”repair status” I was put into a loop of the phone system where it continued to return to it’s own greeting three times before bailing out to music on hold. I held.
Raj answered. Raj is from India. He needed my Case# and my CSO#. I provided both. He asked me if it would be ok if he put me on hold to check the status of my computer. I assured him I had no problem holding for an HP employee.
Twice Raj returned to the call from on hold and asked for ”two minutes to do research.” Each time it was granted by yours truly. Raj returned to the line a third time and told me that my zip code didn’t match the zip code on the CSO#. He asked if I’d like him to correct it. I freaked.
Raj was instructed to connect me to his supervisor immediately. I held for twenty minutes in order to speak to Michael. The score is now 2 faxes, 17 calls and 18 people (not including the FedEx guy). (F2/C17/P18)
Michael went through the whole thing with me. He said he had the authority to straighten this out. He needed 120 minutes to fix it. That was at 5:30 p.m. While I was on the phone with Michael, my electricty came on. I concluded with Michael and went out for dinner allowing my air conditioner to do its thing while I was gone.
Michael called my cell phone at 9:39 p.m. and said he would have an answer in 120 minutes. I assured him that would be ok. Michael works in Bangalore, India. I suspect some other folks I spoke to live there as well. Visibility into HP’s repair center in Milpitas, CA isn’t great from Bangalore, India. Trust me on this.
The morning of August 5, 2003, I awoke, looked at my cell phone and saw that I had a voicemail message. At 1:12 a.m. on 8-5-03, Michael called and said he needed 24 hours to determine the status of my PC. He said, ”I call you tomowow twee hows early dan dis time.” I assume he meant around 10 p.m.
It’s 12:01 a.m. on 8-10-03 as I write this. I haven’t heard from Michael again.
HP was once known for quality and over-engineered products. This category of entries documents what HP has become. You can catch up on the entire series by reading these:
I couldn’t think about the laptop on 7-31-03. It was hot. The house had no electricity. I hadn’t slept well in days. I knew something was fouled up at HP regarding my laptop, but I couldn’t figure out what.
During my last two calls, I had asked both Theresa and Ryan if there was any way at all to ”keep them on the case.” Was there a way for me to reach them if I had any additional questions? Both assured me that they couldn’t personally take ownership of a customer’s problem.
By Friday, August 1, 2003, my curiosity was killing me. I decided to call at 11:40 a.m. Using HP’s ever-changing voice-activated menu system, I responded ”repair status” when told to do so by the voicebot. Jodie answered, asked for my CSO# and said she was transferring me to the Pavilion notebook repair department. I held for some horrible period of time.
Thomas answered the phone. He asked for my CSO#. He told me it would be 3 to 5 days before HP could arrange to pick up my computer. I kid you not! That’s what he said.
I went nuts. I explained when HP got my laptop and who signed for it. Thomas said he wasn’t sure that was correct. It wasn’t what his system showed. We argued. He asked for the FedEx airbill number in a way that made me think he thought I didn’t have it.
He went to FedEx’s web site, quoted to me what I had already told him and said, Wednesday will be the fifth business day from the time HP received my laptop so they were still within the promised service window. Thomas asked if there was anything else HP could do for me today. I assured him there wasn’t a thing more that HP could do for me.
I hung up the phone and decided to take a couple of days off. Eleven people at HP had checked ”the system.” Eleven phone calls had been placed. Two faxes had been sent. The laptop had been in HP’s hands for 48 hours. Clearly, they needed more time. A lot more!
You can see the other entries in this series by clicking on The HP Way. It’s the story of a laptop repair under warranty at HP. It’s not a pretty picture. When we left our last volume, we had faxed twice, called nine times and spoken to seven people, not including the FedEx driver who picked up my laptop on July 29th.
Wednesday, the 30th of July had me very busy until late in the day. I had been staying home for the prior two days waiting on HP to arrange for the pickup of my computer. By Wednesday, I had cabin fever and was needing to get out of the house. Some areas of Memphis had power. I sought and found food, air conditioning and a modicum of comfort.
By the evening I decided to use FedEx’s voice response system to track the shipment to HP. Sure enough, J. Rivera signed for the shipment at 9:03 a.m. on 7-30—03 in Milpitas, CA. I was relieved.
This went so well that I decided to use the 800# provided to me the prior night by Ryan. I called the number. After a lengthy hold, Alice seem really dismayed that I had called. She said she wasn’t authorized to open my CSO# which meant that the shipment had not arrived or there was a problem with it. She abruptly transferred my call to ”Pavilion support” as if I had violated a federal statute. (F2/C10/P8)
I was on hold forever. Alice returned to the call and said she was still on hold with Pavilion tech support. I sympathized and waited.
After another long hold, Theresa got on the phone. Theresa scolded me for not sending in my proof-of-purchase. She said she could help me, but I’d have to fax it to her. She said I couldn’t ship my computer until she, Theresa, had my fax in hand. I explained that HP already had two faxes and my computer and she nor anyone else at HP was getting anything more from me. She protested, so I referred her to FedEx’s web site and the FedEx airbill number.
Theresa then accused me of shipping my computer without authorization. She backed off when I asked her how I could have possibly guessed all the right address and shipping information. By now, I was hot – physically and emotionally.
She put me on hold for an enormous length of time. When she returned to the phone she assured me that the service was all set up and ready to go. She closed by saying, ”I’m sure they’ll find your laptop in Milpitas somewhere.”
My confidence sank, but with the score standing at F2/C10/P9, I caved. I went to bed in a hot house once more. Frustrated with the city government and the local utility company for having such poor preventative and disaster preparedness plans, I was now hopping mad at HP.
You’ll not believe how much madder I would have to get.
This category of entries is about my attempts to get HP to repair a laptop computer under warranty. Volume 5 of The Saga is about phone calls from me to HP on July 28 and July 29, 2003. Today is August 9, 2003 and I still do not have my laptop back. This mess began on July 26th.
After placing one fax, 8 phone calls and talking to five people I got Dan, my sixth contact at HP. Dan said my fax hadn’t been rejected and my proof-of-purchase was probably valid. The problem, as Dan saw it, was in the fact that ”HP is five to seven days behind in updating the information in the warranty system. Warranty information must pass through two departments before it can be entered into ’the system.’” I dared not ask about ’the system.’
I told Dan my story. He spoke great English, so I was at least communicating in something resembling a reliable way. Dan also felt my pain. He decided to try and help me. All I needed to do, Dan said, was fax my proof-of-purchase information to 604.702.0786 to the attention of Karrie. He was going to take care of the rest.
I briefly explained Memphis’s power problems and told him the fax would be sent to him within the hour from a Kinko’s. That fax was date-and-time-stamped within 30 minutes of my hanging up the phone with Dan. He assured me that he would personally see to it that the FedEx pickup would happen before noon on Tuesday, July 29, 2003.
Though the score was now F2/C8/P6, I thought progress was finally being made. Out of exhaustion from trying to sleep the prior night in a steaming hot house, I fell sound asleep.
I got up early on Tuesday the 29th so that I’d be ready for FedEx. They’re headquartered in Memphis and the service we get here is amazing. FedEx pioneered the notion that the only thing more important than the shipment is information about the shipment. I was looking forward to my laptop being in FedEx’s hands. I knew I could track it.
Tuesday was another hot day in Memphis. I was beginning my eighth day without electricity. The local utility was being accused of refusing help from neighboring utility companies in the reconnection efforts. Patience was running thin all around. Yet, I was feeling as if something semi-productive was happening by getting this nagging laptop problem resolved while still under warranty.
You guessed it. Noon came and went without a sign of FedEx. Debris littered Memphis streets, and virtually every intersection had to be handled as a 4-way stop. The pace slowed terribly. I decided to remain patient since FedEx might simply have been caught in the numerous traffic jams.
At 2:45 p.m. on 7-29-03 patience ran out, and I ran the score to F2/C9/P7. That’s two faxes, nine phone calls and seven people involved in four days of dealing with HP. I dialed the number. I held for 31 minutes.
Ryan, an English-speaking lad with a resolve to help people went into action. He listened carefully to my story. He editorialized, ”that stinks,” after hearing what I had been through. Reassuring me that he wasn’t going to drop the ball, he asked permission to put me on hold so that he could contact FedEx.
Ryan came back to my call and said FedEx would be at my doorstep between 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. He gave me an 800# to use from that point forward for tracking my laptop within HP’s service group. He said that I could check the status at each station in the HP repair process.
FedEx showed up as promised and the driver even knew part of my Saga. He verified all the information and took my laptop on its way leaving me with a copy of the FedEx airbill complete with tracking number. I was momentarily appeased. I finally left my house, went out for a nice dinner and returned home in a mood to endure the heat and the power outage a bit longer. MLG&W, the local utility, was promising power any day now for the tens of thousands of customers (think electric meters – not people) without power.
Appeasement wouldn’t last long! Remember, this is only Volume 5!!
Current Status: Today is Saturday. Though FedEx delivers on Saturday, I had no hope or expectation that HP might return my laptop today. Instead, it was time to place another call to HP. It went all the way to Bangalore, India and I was told by a woman who had deep difficulty speaking English that my laptop would be returned in 4 business days. By the time you’ve finished The Saga, you’ll realize just how unreliable that kind of information can be.
When I concluded Volume 3, I had gone to bed fuming. The power had been off since Tuesday morning, July 22. It was miserably hot, dark and amazingly quiet. None of that soothed my frustration with HP, a company I had once admired a great deal.
Monday, 7-28-03, was a bright new day. I still had no electricity. However, Brian had assured me that my laptop would be picked up by FedEx on Monday the 28th. It was packed and all paperwork, numbers and notations were where they were supposed to be.
I decided not to leave the laptop on the front porch, but instead, I stuck a note on the front door alerting HP to knock so that I could provide the shipment to them. With burglaries escalating so rapidly, I didn’t want to take any chances.
Positioning the box near the front door, sign in place, I sat down to read.
The heat was miserable. I read and I sat. My sister brought me some ice for a cooler. I drank a coke. I read and I sat. The day grew long. At 5:45 p.m. I placed another call to HP. I held for a long time. I got cut off. I redialed and held for 35 minutes.
Trebecca(sp?), a woman who shouldn’t even try to speak English without several more months of classes, finally picked up the phone. She glanced at a computer screen and said, ”your proof of purchase has been rejected. You must call 800.374.5828.”
I did. They couldn’t help me at all. I wasn’t even calling HP. I had been told to call a number that went to a firm that apparently sells extended warranties for HP. They were clueless as to how to help me, but seemed resigned to the fact that they had been getting lots and lots of calls exactly like mine.
Sheila said they had tried to tell HP that it wasn’t doing any good to have people trying to track their repair problems calling an extended warranty organization, but HP hadn’t been able to correct the problem.
Then, day became dusk and dusk became very, very dark. FedEx never stopped by.
For those of you keeping score at home, we’ve now faxed once (F1), placed six phone calls (C6) and talked to four people (P4). From now on we’ll keep score by indicating (F1/C6/P4).
With real determination after talking with that extended warranty firm, I called HP once again. I was frustrated because the laptop hadn’t been picked up. Now it seemed that something had apparently gone wrong with the fax I sent in.
Again, after dialing HP’s number, I held for almost 40 minutes. By the time Dan answered the phone, I was ready to be firm, factual and as unconcerned about HP’s internal messes as I could possibly be. This phone call took the score to F1/C7/P5. Dan was about to raise the score some more.
Paving the way for tomorrow’s continuation of The Saga, take a look at these two screen shots: #1 and #2. They illustrate what HP’s own systems are saying to their customer service people about the status of my laptop computer.
I have blocked out a couple of key pieces of information for security purposes, but I think you can tell from these screenshots that the laptop I sent to HP remains missing and they don’t even realize it.
Would you like to know why I’ve chosen my weblog to air HP’s dirty laundry in public view? The reason is buried in this tribute to Instapundit’s second birthday as proclaimed over at BuzzMachine. Look carefully and you’ll discover why weblogs will become a chosen vehicle for companies that are serious about helping customers.
There are some very, very nice tips and techniques that can be deployed in a weblog to make the readers’ experiences better. One of the best places to learn of those tips seems to me to be Brainstorms and Raves. Today, Shirley points to Adam Kalsey’s recipe for fixing cookies. It’s great.
Current Status: Still no laptop. Still no phone call. Today is Day #14 of this mess. The best way to catch up on what this is all about is to read the category archive.
When we left our last episode, we had called HP, gotten the warranty service call entered and submitted our proof-of-purchase. During that call, we were instructed by Brian to call back in ”a few hours or so” to make sure the fax was received and that a FedEx pickup request was scheduled. Because it was a Saturday, the pickup wouldn’t be done until Monday, but that gave me time to remove the hard drive, pack the machine and enclose the required paperwork.
That original call with Brian ended at 2:30 p.m. The fax I sent was time-stamped at 3:09 p.m. that same day. The cover sheet of the fax included the case number, the serial number, the customer service order number, my contact information – the works.
At 7:26 p.m. on 7-26-03 I called HP again to check on the status of the pickup request. I dialed the number, selected the menu options and waited on hold for 14 minutes. I spoke with Gary this time. Gary said the ”system hadn’t been updated.” He instructed me to wait several more hours and call back.
On 7-27-03 at 4:50 p.m. I called HP once more. This time I spoke with Sonya. Sonya spoke very broken English. Sonya said that if I’d send in my proof-of-purchase, my computer would be repaired in 24 hours and returned to me. She said that ”worst case,” HP would return it to me between 7-28-03 and 7-30-03. Trying to explain to Sonya that I had already sent the proof-of-purchase went nowhere at all. Explaining that HP didn’t even have my computer, yet, was also a futile effort. Sonya didn’t have a clue.
I tried to call identically the same number at HP two more times that evening and was cut off each time while holding.
Fuming, I went to sleep mad and vowed to fight HP another day. In my wildest dreams and imagination, I had no idea what was about to happen!
What you’re reading here is only going to get worse over the coming days. In the meantime I don’t have the laptop I sent to your company to be repaired. The longer it takes to get to me, the less concerned I become about how I characterize your firm’s treatment of me.
First, let me say that I began admiring HP and its products while a sophomore in college. Holding my very first HP35 calculator and checking its results with my sliderule, I discovered a product of enormous quality with great documentation and engineering pride behind it. Through the years, I’ve owned companies that resold HP products. I was a Fortune 500 executive at one of HP’s largest distribution customers.
Now, HP doesn’t resemble the company I so admired. A recent purchase of an HP12c Platinum calculator has been a severe disappointment. It’s slower than it’s 23-year old predecessor in some critical areas. Again, not the HP of old!
Your company has my laptop. Your company farms out phone inquiries about warranty service to a team or contractor in Bangalore, India. They have little or no visibility into the service center in Milpitas, CA. When I tell them that HP cannot find my computer in Milpitas, the folks in India can only refer to what they ”see on their CRM screens.” One person told me that HP is over five days behind in updating that information. How do I know you have my computer? FedEx’s tracking system tells me who signed for it, where and at what time.
Lest this letter become solely a gripe letter, let me offer a suggestion. Rather than posing for pictures for magazines, use that time each week to submit and track a warranty or non-warranty repair with your own company. Don’t have an assistant do it. You do it. Spend the time on hold. Act like a customer. See what your firm is doing to its customers. Get a printer repaired. Call for service on a server. Send a calculator in. Pick some Compaq products and some HP products. Mix it up a bit.
That’s my suggestion to you. I’m still waiting for my repaired computer. The story I’m telling here is already thirteen days old. What’s happened will be reported. Trust me – it’s not pretty. You won’t like what your company has done.
Please for the memory of David Packard and Bill Hewlett, fix it. If you need help, email me. I can offer some assistance that will improve things in less than thirty days. It will cost you, but it will be worth every dime you invest!
First the only important news: no one who said they’d call me from HP called today; no update to their tracking system on the web was done and the laptop didn’t arrive here.
This began on July 26, 2003 with a phone call to HP, followed by a fax of my proof-of-purchase information to insure that the Pavilion ZT1290 was under warranty. I found a very remote Kinko’s location that still had power. They were able to complete the fax for me.
Brian was the guy who helped me on the first call, and other than the requirement to fax my proof-of-purchase I was not inconvenienced at all. In fact, Brian’s work led me to believe that all was well.
It was a Saturday. Brian said my laptop was eligible for a warranty repair without sending in my hard drive, battery or AC adapter. He told me how to pack the laptop, what address to send it to in Milpitas, CA and he explained that FedEx would pick it up at HP’s request on Monday. Brian issued a case number and a ”CSO” number.
Everything seemed great. Thus concluded call #1. Was I ever in for an eye opener.
In our next episode, we’ll talk about what happened when I called to get the FedEx ”pick-up” number that resulted from my faxing my proof-of-purchase. We’ll call it, ”HP’s Image Corrodes.”
I’ve never really wanted to inhibit a company’s success and progress though I’ve predicted the demise of some that were unprepared to do business. I find myself torn between a 29-year loyalty and respect for Hewlett Packard and the wrath I feel toward them now.
Thus begins a saga on July 26, 2003.
I was mired in a power outage in Memphis, TN resulting from a powerful straight-line wind that came through at 7:35 a.m. on July 22, 2003. That was a Tuesday.
By Saturday the 26th I felt like I had to start being productive again. I had been helping neighbors while attempting to provision for nights with no lights and Deep South summer heat with no air conditioning. I had gone four nights without power.
That Saturday I realized I must take care of a warranty repair on an HP notebook computer I bought in July of 2002 or risk losing the warranty. >From the moment I purchased the computer, it required 15 to 20 restarts to get to a stable Windows XP desktop. Each restart would progress a bit further before locking up. My travel needs changed about the time I bought it, so for many months I was content to leave it on to avoid having to shut it down only to endure that repetitive start-up process.
Now, with no air conditioning, no Internet access and no power, it seemed a good time to send that laptop back to HP for warranty repair. So, I placed ”THE CALL.”
THE CALL has changed my life and my outlook profoundly. When I think about it in the context of Memphis Light Gas and Water (the local utility company) behaving like the monopoly they are along with local media outlets cheerleading for their ”phenomenal efforts” following the storm, I realize just how significantly my outlook has changed. HP, the local utility company and the local newspaper altered my view of commerce.
This category of entries called ”THE HP WAY” is here to record the failings of HP and the failings of MLG&W during the great power outage of 2003. This entry marks Volume 1 in the series. As we begin, MLG&W has restored my power. It’s now August 7, 2003 and HP has NOT returned my laptop PC. In fact, they can’t find it.
TypePad has launched. Many will now face the great dilemma in comparing their costs and know-how with Movable Type, blogrolling and a hosting package with the all-in-one features of TypePad.
For those disinclined to learn CSS, XHTML, web standards and assorted other arcane technologies, this begins to look like a no-brainer!
Thanks to all of you who have emailed concerning the outage. Yesterday’s Internet access was intermittent at best. This morning, I arrived at my desk at 6:00 a.m., but all lights on the cable modem were flashing. I finally got service just before 8:00 a.m.
Electrical service has been on since being restored. Phone services have also been working since the electricity was restored.
For a number of days after the storm, people needed help clearing their driveways just enough to get the cars in and out. Others began the clean up effort right away. A crane was brought in to lift a tree from the home next door to mine. I began helping neighbors and, after a couple of days of that, I began work on my back yard.
Hilarious side note: I found a line that was connecting two rickety old utility poles entangled in some downed limbs in the backyard. Realizing it was going to be needed to stabilize the utility poles, I began untangling it and moving it to the side where work might begin.
When electrical crews arrived this week to get my block restored, I pointed out the ”tension cable” so they could get to work there first. ”Sir, that’s not a tension cable, that’s the primary conductor for this neighborhood and carries 23,000 volts!”
Silly me! Now I remember why I’m glad power was out when I was cleaning up back there.
By nature and personality profiling I’m a rather creative type. Don’t confuse creative with ”artsy.” I have no artistic skills to speak of. For me, creativity entails pursuing things others say ”can’t be done that way.” Often, my response is, ”but what if they could?” In other words, what competitive advantage would you or your business achieve if you actually could find a way to do something that appears unlikely.
Being creative, I also don’t like to be denied something. When the power was out, I just knew there had to be a way to do things I needed to do. At every turn I was frustrated. Even electric generators were good for little more than keeping the freezer food from spoiling. Alternatives for Internet access were completely out.
When a swath of wind approximately 50 miles wide and moving at between 80 and 105 miles per hour crossed the Mississippi River at Memphis moving from west to east, Memphis was devastated. Oak trees that were hundreds of years old split open or uprooted.
The wind downed all of the media outlets. It downed every cellular network for a time. Falling trees and snapping telephone poles wiped out electricity and land phone lines. Those with electric hot water heaters lost any hope of hot water.
Deaths in the area from carbon monoxide poisoning outnumbered deaths from the storm itself. Some people simply couldn’t respect the fact that the exhaust from a generator required that it be outside and well-ventilated.
At night the city was black and quiet. Burglaries jumped by 600% in the first few nights of the outage. Traffic was snarled by closed routes, downed power lines and debris everywhere. 75% of the city’s stoplights sustained damage. For almost a week, every intersection was a four-way stop. Few know how to use a 4-way stop. Many simply disrespect it and jump at the chance to ”get ahead of you.”
None of this got much attention on the national news. All of it was poorly handled by the city government and the leaders and communicators at the public utility.
During this quagmire, and after BellSouth provided some limited phone services, I decided to get an HP notebook PC repaired under warranty. In the next few days, you’ll read a series of entries in this new category called ”The HP Way.” It will chronicle HP’s handling of a simple repair. It will explain why I intend to go to my grave attempting to influence as many people as I can to select alternative products to any and all products manufactured and sold by Hewlett Packard.
If you haven’t read Atlas Shrugged, the title of this entry may not make much sense to you. If you have read Atlas Shrugged, then you know that walking away from the rat race – the rodent regatta which we live in – frequently seems to be the right course of action. I’m not ready to walk away just yet, but having watched a monopolistic utility, a city government and Hewlett Packard fail customers and constituents so miserably, I’m now ready to rededicate myself to warring against lousy service, poor communication and dismal performance.
Why does the ”time capsule” at the top of my sidebar split the date and wrap it when using Opera? Is something wrong with my stylesheet? Is something wrong with the script that produces the time capsule? Is something wrong with the markup? Is it merely the current settings and preferences in Opera that causes the problem? How does one know?
* * UPDATE * * * Steven suggested I post a ”screen capture” showing what this site looks like in Opera. I’m hoping that if you click here, you’ll see an example of what I’m talking about.
This begs yet another question. What’s the best way to do a screen capture or what’s the best tool to add to the toolkit for screen captures?
Falling behind by two weeks is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it feels as if I’ll never catch up and the withdrawal pains were merciless.
On the other hand, there’s a wealth of new information to absorb. My interest right now is almost completely focused on the ”how to’s” of Movable Type weblog design. I’ll never be a graphic artist. I’ll never create templates that look as good as Shirley Kaiser’s. She’s got a new design and it looks great. I want to study at the feet of someone who knows the product(s) and techniques so well.
Ben Hammersley’s competition ended and he’s using a new design. I’m crazy about it as well as some of the designs that didn’t win.
Now, where to begin? You know those brochures you get for a 1-day seminar on some subject for a fee of $239 – coming soon to a city near you? I want one of those for Movable Type, plugins, web standards, design techniques, etc.
I was able to get some work done last night. Arriving at my desk at 5:30 a.m. this morning, I discovered that the local cable company was still having trouble being a reliable ISP.
The call to tech support resulted in all of the ”you’re an ignorant user” kinds of questions followed by all of the ”you’re an ignorant user” kinds of tests. Completing the last test, the phone babe concluded that there must be something wrong.
She told me the ”Memphis office” had some outages earlier this month. I about reached through the phone. I was without power, phones or Internet service for 13 days. She then said the Memphis office wouldn’t open until 8:00 a.m., but she’d enter a ”trouble ticket.”
Moments ago, I got Internet access again. No clue as to how dependable it will be.
There are tales to be told about the storm that hit Memphis. With power restored last evening, we didn’t get a reliable cable modem connection until late today. Then, there were the 4000+ emails that needed to be purged of 3400 sickening slices of spam.
Trust me, regular entries will resume soon. I read a lot by flashlight during the outage. We have a great deal to learn in this country about disaster preparedness and executing a disaster plan. More importantly, we sit on a rather fragile infrastructure that isn’t getting enough maintenance, and it isn’t getting replaced by newer technology at any rate that makes sense. Think rotten telephone poles where underground conduits ought to be.
On July 22, 2003 at 7:35 in the morning, Memphis, TN experienced a freak storm consisting of 100MPH ”straightline winds.” This was a bit like an inland hurricane.
The local utility company known as Memphis Light, Gas & Water saw 306,000 of its customers lose power. That’s customers – not people. Multiply by about three to determine the number of people that were impacted. Literally, I have lived in the dark with no air conditioning since the morning of July 22, 2003.
At 5:20p.m. this afternoon, power was restored. Until then, I had no way to use computers, phones, cellular service, etc. The national media has not covered this story. Memphis, TN looks like a war zone. One hundred year old trees blew over at the roots or split open. They now litter the city.
You simply cannot imagine how devastating it can be to a metropolitan area of over one million people to have 70% of the area without electricity.
If you’ve read this far and can influence others to resume reading this weblog, I’d appreciate it. We’ll be attempting to return to normal posting over the next couple of days.
If you’ve been expecting an email or phone call from me, know that I’m trying to catch up, but it may be several days before you hear from me.
Movable Type permits an extended entry. I often use that feature. Tonight while studying the features of FeedDemon, I began to review my own entries via the feed reader. It was immediately obvious that none of my extended entries are showing up in the RSS feed.
Anybody got any clues about how to modify an RSS feed to include the extended entry? I’ve already selected ”full posts” as opposed to excerpts. What do I need to change to allow someone to read everything associated with an entry in their aggregator?
I’ve been using SharpReader to gather RSS feeds for quite some time now. This afternoon, I copied all of my RSS subscriptions over to FeedDemon to begin a careful review of version 1.0 beta 2a.
A couple of key observations:
In SharpReader I had all of my categories of feeds and the feeds within each category arranged in a reading priority order. I haven’t found anything similar in FeedDemon.
SharpReader permits dragging and dropping feeds or URL’s for auto-discovery and for placement within categories. Subscribing to a feed in FeedDemon requires a few more steps/clicks.
SharpReader’s ”tree-view” of all the feeds allows you to expand all categories and view all subscriptions or scroll through them. I haven’t found anything similar in FeedDemon.
SharpReader appears to handle images in feeds better than FeedDemon at this point.
There’s another more significant question. How do you launch a web site from within FeedDemon? If I want to read the entire site, I just double-click in SharpReader and I’m taken to the site using my browser. I haven’t found anything similar in FeedDemon
There’s a lot more testing to do, and each of these products continues to advance. You can’t go wrong with either one.
Per a Gallup Poll conducted July 7-9, ”nearly 9 in 10 Americans (89%) oppose holding the fast-food industry legally responsible for the diet-related health problems of people who eat that kind of food on a regular basis. Just 9% are… [Overlawyered.com]
Now I’m really getting confused. It’s about copyrights.
Do folks believe copyright laws are bad? Is that it?
OK. I’ll accept that, but it seems there’s but one alternative and that’s to seek legislative changes to copyright laws.
If the gripe is NOT about copyright laws, but about the method that organizations are going about trying to protect their copyrights or collect consideration for their improper infringement, then I’m still confused about what the problem is.
I’m thinking about SCO and the RIAA. First, why can the RIAA get subpoenas issued on behalf of one or more of its members. If an artist records some music and Sony issues the CD, doesn’t Sony have the copyright? Aren’t they the ones that should be seeking legal protection?
Now, about SCO. There’s big talk today about SCO having recently acquired the copyright to Unix. SCO is still making the claim that portions of the open source product called Linux are ”copied” from Unix. Therefore, those using Linux have (what sounds like) two choices: (1) get sued as IBM has been – for $3 billion; (2) pay SCO for a Unix license which then means you can continue to use Linux ”legally.”
I need for Ernie or Walter or Larry or somebody to help me understand this. Are we saying folks shouldn’t be able to protect intellectual property or are we saying they shouldn’t use the courts to protect it?
I’ve seen giant internet feuds over someone stealing someone else’s weblog template. Isn’t that the same issue?
Also, waiting under the clouds of trials is as important, for they will ultimately produce showers of blessings.
Rest assured that if God waits longer than we desire, it is simply to make the blessings doubly precious.
devotional for July 21, 2003
My dad would have turned 80 years of age today. Instead, he died at age 59 in 1982. My life was altered at that time and has not been the same since. He was my best friend.
Days like today make me want to think of heaven in sentimental terms. Has he seen these past twenty one years? Has he seen his granddaughters grow up? Does he know how much he’s been missed?
Does he have any idea just how completely he provided for us during his working years?
The girls are amazing, Dad. Oh how I wish they could have known you.
Alcoholics are attempting to make legal history by suing the drinks industry for failing to warn them of the dangers of addiction. Twelve addicts, aged between 18 and 60, claim their lives have been destroyed by the demon drink and… [Overlawyered.com]
You know the guy who claims he can take people straight out of the unemployment line and teach them how to buy real estate with no money down? Bill Allen or somebody like that? You know who I’m talking about?
Well, I wish somebody would come along, sequester me for three days and teach me how to start from a blank Notepad screen (or any other tool) and build a standards-compliant web site. Better yet, they could teach me how to read a set of Movable Type templates and understand what the templates are causing to happen in the weblog’s final rendering.
Two articles at Boxes and Arrows caught my eye recently. Both have relevance to an overall process of designing and developing a new information system. In small to medium-sized businesses, often where there is not an I.T. department, the need to properly match the information systems of the business to its various constituencies is paramount.
Dirk Knemeyer has written an article titled Information Design: The Understanding Discipline. In it he explains the roles, functions and definitions associated with information design. Whether building a new supply-chain system or improving a company’s web site, information design plays a part in the overall process.
The second article is by Erin Malone. It’s titled The Power of Process, The Perils of Process. Erin talks about her own process and then cautions against process-for-the-sake-of-process. Wise advice.
Frank Patrick answers a question about small companies and their interest in using ”consultants” to help grow a business or raise funding for a business. We’ve assisted small companies for years and Frank’s points are mostly right on.
By the time a small business owner is willing to talk to you about your consulting services, one of the biggest obstacles has been overcome. That’s his own hard-headed resistance to having anyone else inside his company.
>From there, we often find as many areas for liberating cash as we find for growing the company. Excess inventory and late accounts receivable with no real strategy for fixing the problems are key places to look. Both of these run to Frank’s mantra of cash flow, cash flow and cash flow.
His strength is perfect
When our strength is gone.
He’ll carry us
When we can’t carry on.
Raised in His power
The weak become strong.
His strength is perfect
His strength is perfect.
The more I learn, the more I want to learn. There’s a sense in which my education is still haphazard. These recent web standards studies make me believe that it’s time to give some structure to the process of learning all the topics I want to learn.
A new category on this weblog may be the answer. Rather than dropping any and everything about technology into a single category, it may be time to introduce a ”Web Authors’ FAQ.” I’d set it up as a category and post entries about everything. Rather than multiple categories, all the entries would be in the form of a question or questions and would go into the ”Web Authors’ FAQ.”
Topics would include:
beginners’ basics of web site development
XHTML
Movable Type
MT plugins
PHP and scripting
weblog templates
CSS
web standards and validation
MySQL and weblogs
graphic arts and design techniques
syndication formats and how-to’s
...and a lot more
I want to learn how to use tools and plugins like this one from Brad Choate. Before using it, I want to understand the theory and principles behind plugins.
Dan Gillmor points at the flood of subpoenas coming from the RIAA and its members. They want to find people who might be guilty of violating the copyright laws of the USA.
Dan’s not happy about the RIAA’s insistence that the law be enforced. Then, in an amazing turnabout, the end of his entry suggests doing business with companies that are not members of RIAA or doing business with artists directly.
I could so easily be mistaken, but here’s what I believe to be true. We have a copyright law in this country that protects the creative work of artists and those they designate to produce, promote and market their music. If that law needs to be altered we have a process for doing that.
If someone wants to produce creative works which are not protected by copyright law, they can do that.
I don’t like legal wrangling of any sort. I don’t like fine print. It’s terribly unsettling that we’ve become a nation of endless laws, litigation and feuding. Yet, the RIAA can use the course they’ve chosen. We can then decide – each one on his own – to patronize members of RIAA or not. I hope that’s what Dan is suggesting.
what is meant by CRM in the context of this type of article. The notion that IBM and Siebel are going to create an on-line CRM service for small or medium companies skips some really important steps.
First, what is ”customer relationship management?” Second, where does the information that populates a CRM system come from? Think about it. A good customer relationship managment system puts every piece of information about every transaction, inquiry or interaction with a customer at the disposal of any employee responsible for the next interaction with the customer.
Most of those transactions reside in the accounting and business management system of the business!
IBM and Siebel must believe that the application and data integration project (required to make CRM-by-subscription work) will be paid for by the small business. Not a chance.
Small and medium companies are very protective of their data. They also prefer an integrated solution using off-the-shelf software when possible. They’d be far happier if someone said, here’s a module of your existing software that can reach into every other module and present everything related to customer interactions.
Anything else or any other approach, well, I just don’t get it.
McKinsey’s consulting practice is not focused on businesses much below a Global 5000 standing, meaning only the 5000 or so largest businesses in the world fit McKinsey’s target market segment.
Consequently, when a report like this comes out singing the praises of EDI (electronic data interchange), there’s an important piece that is missing. That’s the voice of the small or medium company that has been dictated to by one of the ”bigs.”
Though the examples are legion, I’ll cite two EDI projects and their consequences from the viewpoint of the company being told what to do.
Example One: Chrysler tells an electronics company that does warranty and non-warranty repairs of instrument clusters and stereos how things are going to be. Chrysler specified a date by which several EDI transactions would be the only acceptable means of transferring information between the two businesses.
This small company doesn’t have an I.T. department. They don’t have a value-added network (VAN). They don’t own EDI software. Add those costs together coupled with some advisory time from an I.T. consultant and that business probably lost money on the next twelve months of transactions with Chrysler.
You see – prior to this EDI mandate – Chrysler had already hammered the margins of the smaller supplier to miniscule levels. Why doesn’t the small supplier simply ”drop” Chrysler? They can’t. Their investment over time in doing business with one of the largest automotive firms in the world can’t be redeployed for another customer. The trap had been set.
Example Two: IBM tells it’s authorized resellers that it wants to send and receive transactions via EDI. Change the word Chrysler to IBM in the rest of the sentences of Example One and you have Example Two.
Now contrast all of this with the small business’s ability to use it’s own off-the-shelf accounting software to simply ”print a transaction or report to an XML file.” Yes, such software exists.
Free of micromanagement by the bigs, an invoice, purchase order, sales acknowledgement or other business transaction can be written to an XML file. Using this sort of technology, the small business returns to a level playing field with the BigCo in the area of how business transactions will be exchanged.
I’ve witnessed first-hand what a web site looks like in IE6 vs. Opera 7.1. It illustrates just how inconsistently the same code is being rendered behind the scenes.
Now, can someone tell me what the obvious differences – technical, funding or otherwise – are between Opera and Mozilla? Does one of these clearly have the upper hand when it comes to properly displaying sites coded to web standards? Does one of them perform better?
I’m looking for an education here, so point me in the right direction, and thanks!
Overcoming my frustration from earlier this morning, I returned to reading and posting. Taking up where I left off, I continued with mezzoblue only to find a letter from a person griping about trying to view some web site using the MSN-TV Browser.
Now I’m getting a feel for what web authors are going through.
Learning what’s behind the scenes of a web page has been an experience unlike any other educational endeavor I can recall. This morning, I get one of those seemingly small tidbits that is really a breakthrough.
Here’s the quote:
I missed one closing tag, and received 52 validation errors.
The enthusiasm of a beginning web designer getting her feet wet with XHTML rapidly wanes when this happens to her. Seeing so many errors on one page is a blow to ones psyche, and when they dont realize that all 52 can be eliminated with the addition of four bytes to their code, it can make the difference between sticking it out until validation is achieved, and turning their back on valid markup because its just too hard.
* * * UPDATE * * * After wrestling with this very simple entry for over thirty minutes in Zempt, I went to Movable Type’s text entry screen to post this. No matter what I did to the text and links in the above entry, Zempt gave me an error when I attempted to post. Those are the kinds of things that shake a rookie’s confidence.
On second thought, surely I’m not still a rookie after making entries to a weblog for nineteen months. Does a day come when you really understand any of this junk? Can someone get confident with this stuff? Will an absorption of web standards make XHTML/CSS/HTML/templates/Movable Type/scripts, etc. more understandable?
* * * UPDATE 2 * * * I’m told by Zempt support that I had a ”high ASCII character in my post.” I’ve given it a couple of tranquilizers in hopes that it will come down soon!
Like a parent in denial, I can only say, ”I have no idea how it got high. All I did was copy it from mezzoblue’s weblog.”
Reading Zeldman’s book has been an eye-opener. The costs associated with web design from the mid-90’s to the present are enormous. The proportion of those costs which were avoidable by employing web standards is the most eye-opening aspect of the whole picture.
I was reading Tim Bray’s site this morning. He said, ”If you were looking at this in any browser but Microsoft Internet Explorer, it would look and run better and faster.” The message of Zeldman’s book is that it would also cost less to develop, use less bandwidth, be forward compatible and be less costly to maintain.
I was blown away. Rather than the big, wide column of text that I’ve been seeing in IE6, the site is a nice, readable width roughly equal to two column-widths of a daily newspaper.
Ben Hammersley already has some entries in his ”Design for an iPod” competition.
One of these days, I’m going to learn how to develop a template, how to allow users to select between multiple style sheets and how to test/develop this stuff without interfering with my weblog while doing the work. I wish there were a pill I could take to learn this stuff.
Seeing this work for Ben raises 1000 other questions. How is he able to show these designs without stepping on his existing weblog? Are these really pages in a weblog that he could post to? How do you design pull-down menus that allow switching between weblogs and column placement? How do you design a template starting from a blank screen? Where do you go to learn this stuff?
Each day that passes, I’m thankful that the people running our government since early in 2001 have been there. The team they followed into the White House could not have seen us through these past two and a half years.
The team they defeated on the way to the White House most certainly could not have seen us through.
As others rally to the cries of lies, conspiracy, warmongering and all manner of other hateful accusations, I’m reminded that we needed strong and commanding leaders to see us past a bloody Tuesday when the sky over New York City filled with smoke.
I’m reminded of the words at a national prayer vigil only a few days after September 11, 2001…
Do It Again, Lord
Written by Max Lucado for ”America Prays”, a national prayer vigil on September 14, 2001
Dear Lord,
We’re still hoping we’ll wake up. We’re still hoping we’ll open a sleepy eye and think, What a horrible dream.
But we won’t, will we, Father? What we saw was not a dream. Planes did gouge towers. Flames did consume our fortress. People did perish. It was no dream and, dear Father, we are sad.
There is a ballet dancer who will no longer dance and a doctor who will no longer heal. A church has lost her priest, a classroom is minus a teacher. Cora ran a food pantry. Paige was a counselor and Dana, dearest Father, Dana was only three years old. (Who held her in those final moments?)
We are sad, Father. For as the innocent are buried, our innocence is buried as well. We thought we were safe. Perhaps we should have known better. But we didn’t.
And so we come to you. We don’t ask you for help; we beg you for it. We don’t request it; we implore it. We know what you can do. We’ve read the accounts. We’ve pondered the stories and now we plead, Do it again, Lord. Do it again.
Remember Joseph? You rescued him from the pit. You can do the same for us. Do it again, Lord.
Remember the Hebrews in Egypt? You protected their children from the angel of death. We have children, too, Lord. Do it again.
And Sarah? Remember her prayers? You heard them. Joshua? Remember his fears? You inspired him. The women at the tomb? You resurrected their hope. The doubts of Thomas? You took them away. Do it again, Lord. Do it again.
You changed Daniel from a captive into a king’s counselor. You took Peter the fisherman and made him Peter an apostle. Because of you, David went from leading sheep to leading armies. Do it again, Lord, for we need counselors today, Lord. We need apostles. We need leaders. Do it again, dear Lord.
Most of all, do again what you did at Calvary. What we saw here on that Tuesday, you saw there on that Friday. Innocence slaughtered. Goodness murdered. Mothers weeping. Evil dancing. Just as the ash fell on our children, the darkness fell on your Son. Just as our towers were shattered, the very Tower of Eternity was pierced.
And by dusk, heaven’s sweetest song was silent, buried behind a rock.
But you did not waver, O Lord. You did not waver. After three days in a dark hole, you rolled the rock and rumbled the earth and turned the darkest Friday into the brightest Sunday. Do it again, Lord. Grant us a September Easter.
We thank you, dear Father, for these hours of unity. Disaster has done what discussion could not. Doctrinal fences have fallen. Republicans are standing with Democrats. Skin colors have been covered by the ash of burning buildings. We thank you for these hours of unity.
And we thank you for these hours of prayer. The Enemy sought to bring us to our knees and succeeded. He had no idea, however, that we would kneel before you. And he has no idea what you can do.
Let your mercy be upon our President, Vice President, and their families. Grant to those who lead us wisdom beyond their years and experience. Have mercy upon the souls who have departed and the wounded who remain. Give us grace that we might forgive and faith that we might believe.
And look kindly upon your church. For two thousand years you’ve used her to heal a hurting world.
One of the things I like best about Shirley Kaiser’s weblog is the way she ties important topics together along with her own commentary, advice and help.
It’s great – every time. Within the last forty-eight hours or so, several folks have talked about using Movable Type for more of than weblogging. In fact, some are suggesting MT as a complete content management system. Shirley pulls it all together.
You’ll get a glimpse of her ”construction zone” when you visit.
Of the last 18 entries that hit my news aggregator from etc.-Indulging My Inner Geek, I’m convinced that at least 15 deserve careful study, understanding, experimentation and – quite possibly – implementation.
It’s amazing what the recent revelations about web standards are doing to sharpen my focus and study. So many things can now be tossed aside in favor of some other things that provide a real education in what web designers need to be thinking about.
Later we’ll cover some bandwidth topics in greater detail. For now, suffice it to say that Glenn Fleishman’s site and Alan Reiter’s recent entry are worth studying if you have any interest in the future of wireless, Wi-Fi, cellular and VoIP technologies.
Frequently, I quote something or someone using a [blockquote] tag. Within that tag, I may want something centered. Here’s an example:
This Is The Title
Author
This is where the body of the quote goes.
This is the last line of the body of the quote.
This entry was produced in Movable Type’s normal text editing box. The above blockquote used the following tags: [blockquote] [center] [b] [br /]. It looks the way I want it to look, but I don’t believe it is well-formed and validating XHTML Strict.
Here’s the same blockquote using the tags that Zempt would apply, and I’m told these are the proper, well-formed XHTML Strict tags:
This Is The Title
Author
This is where the body of the quote goes.
This is the last line of the body of the quote.
This second blockquote used the following tags: [blockquote] [div align=”center”] [strong] [br /]
Last week when I attempted to post a blockquote using this last method, I discovered that all of the entries following that entry has lost their left margins. In other words, all entries that had been done before it – remember, entries are in reverse chronological order. So, this is a test to see what we get.
* * UPDATE * * * Ok…no problems. I’m going to pass this one off to one of two things: (1) operator stupidity, i.e. me or (2) a fluke when I was attempting to use Zempt last week. Stay tuned.
Warren Buffett doesn’t ”play” the stock market. He buys businesses. There’s a huge difference. He doesn’t want to own a part of a business that he wouldn’t want to own in its entirety.
He offered to buy Clayton Homes back in April (WARNING: direct link to pdf file). After the months have past, the decision was to come to a vote among the Clayton shareholders yesterday. Here’s what Warren Buffett made absolutely clear to them prior to the vote (WARNING: direct link to pdf file).
Yesterday, the shareholders and directors delayed once more. They wanted two more weeks to see if they get a better offer. It’s not likely. The Berkshire offer of $12.50 a share rests near the middle of Clayton’s recent trading range. The business has had some setbacks since the offer was made.
Dithering and thumbsucking and wringing of hands is not likely to help. As a result they owe Warren Buffett $5 million by close of business today in consideration of one of the stipulations in the original purchase agreement.
$5 million represents better than 4% of the profit in the company for the past 12 months. With 136.2 million shares outstanding and an annual dividend of $0.06 per share, $5 million would cover the dividends for better than 60% of the shares. A well-run business appears to be slipping a bit at the point of turning loose!
Lance Armstrong remains the overall leader in the Tour de France and was named ESPN’s best male athlete of the year last night.
Stage 12 of the 20 stages will be run tomorrow. It’s a time trial against the clock and presents a strategic turning point for Armstrong’s final stages of the 2003 Tour.
Have you ever worked in a place where the culture assumed that the person walking into your office or in front of your desk was immediately your highest priority? It’s as if their presence escalates them above all else on your to-do list.
I’m drowning.
Back later today with a test of [div align=”center”] [/div] and some other good stuff.
Since 1976 my work has dealt with I.T. in distribution environments. It’s covered everything from distributed computing architectures to customer-oriented systems to vendor supply chain problems. We’ve worked with some big companies and some small companies to align their I.T. projects with the strategic goals of the business.
Through all of that we fought the absence of standards. There weren’t standard field sizes for data. There weren’t standard nomenclatures for data. Systems simply weren’t designed to work with other systems.
Cut to the 1990’s. A few forward-looking companies began to see the advantages of standards in key areas. One outgrowth of this in one industry is RosettaNet. This group discovered that there was value in standards. Electrical wall outlets that are similar from one room to another make sense! Other industries have now made similar discoveries.
Sure, one can cobble together some HTML that works in I.E. For a single weblog, that’s probably just fine – until it isn’t. The notion of standards as they relate to forward compatibility is profound – whether we’re talking about large transaction counts between customer-supplier systems or simple weblogs. I intend to jump on the standards bandwagon.
I don’t intend to become evangelistic or political about it. Even the standards organizations permit ”transitional” sites free of the ”strict” adherence to standards which sometimes takes more time rather than less. It just seems very logical to move from my current level (or lack) of knowledge to the next level by keeping standards-based design in view.
Now my challenge is to back up and figure out how to bring this weblog’s past entries into standards compliance. Do I simply export all my entries, fix them with an editor and re-import them? I’m not sure. One of the sites that teaches ”skinning” says this at the beginning, ”Your mantra: fix your site before you skin it, or you’ll regret it.”
Mississippi: ”Civil lawsuits filed in Jefferson County allege that lawyers signed up fake clients for a 1999 lawsuit that resulted in a $150 million jury verdict against the makers of a diet drug.” According to the allegations, lawyers knew that… [Overlawyered.com]
Mississippi lawsuits came under scrutiny on 60 Minutes. This Forbes article paints a rather bleak picture of some of the practices.
Is there any question that our tort system is ripe for a major transformation?
There’s a CSS style sheet that Movable Type uses to format these entries.
Using MT’s text entry box, I have some latitude to enter some HTML tags. If I don’t choose the correct ones, I make it impossible to validate this weblog. Right?
If I use Zempt to do something, it chooses a particular way to tag the text.
How do I know/determine which way is ”right?” Both of them ”work.”
Perhaps an example would help. There are two ways to center something inside a blockquote. The first way is to tag the text with [center] [/center].
The second ways is the way Zempt does it with [div align=”center”] [/div].
How do I learn/know/determine which of these is the ”proper,” well-formed way to do things? A similar question arises with [bold] vs. [strong] and [i] vs. [em].
Dave and John will remain influential voices in the Weblog world, but without them it’s not clear whether UserLand (which makes the tool I currently use to manage this site) will continue as one of the leading software developers in the space. [Werblog]
I’m kinda getting sick of the tag team effort…[iBLOGthere4iM]
* * UPDATE * * * Glenn weighs in with another point of view. My point of view? Two brilliant guys shouldn’t have to dilute their contributions with sidebar issues.
Give me one pure and holy passion
Give me one magnificent obsession
Give me one glorious ambition for my life
To know and follow hard after You
To know and follow hard after You
To grow as Your disciple in the truth
This world is empty, pale and poor
Compared to knowing You, my Lord
Lead me on and I will run after You
Lead me on and I will run after You
For several days, my news aggregator has not shown any entries from Brainstorms and Raves. I like her design work and wondered if she wanted an iPod – from Ben, not from me (yet).
I went to the site.
Whoa. Shirley’s been posting. Why hasn’t SharpReader been telling me about it?
* * UPDATE * * * I just unsubscribed and re-subscribed to the rss.xml file. It still provides entries up to and including 7/8/03 ”Brainstorms and Raves Moving Dust: Converting to Movable Type.” It appears there have been four entries since that one, but none of those have shown up in SharpReader.
* * UPDATE 2 * * * SharpReader simply needed to cycle through another refresh. Problem squared away – all entries updating!
I want a configuration option in a weblog tool that lets me specify the type of validation I want to achieve (e.g. HTML Transitional, XHTML Strict, etc.). By selecting this option, a ”valid set” of buttons are turned on for editing entries, and no entry can be published/posted without a warning that it doesn’t conform.
What’s the term? Well-formed. That’s it. I want my weblog tool to force me to publish well-formed entries. In a perfect world, it would limit my options to only those tags that produce well-formed entries. Maybe this book I bought today is going to teach me how to do this by hand, but it sure would be nice to have a watchdog for this stuff!
Is that what TypeStyle is supposed to do for me? I bought and paid for it, downloaded it and haven’t taken the time to learn it.
Is Zempt headed in that direction? I’ve got to get into their support forums and prowl around.
What a great article! Rick Klau was quoted often in an article by Sue Bushnell for CIO Magazine. The topic is dirty data.
I had a business meeting over lunch today with a fellow consultant who is attempting to help an ophthalmological implants manufacturer. The company believes it needs new software in the CRM area. My friend has already identified that they need two other things first: (1) they need to define their business processes and communicate those to everyone in the business (2) they need to clean up their data.
We’ll ultimately help them with their software, but we’ll insist on the same things he’s recommending. Few executives ever really understand just how much faulty data is costing them in lost productivity and wasted I.T. investments.
Ben Hammersley has put out a call for template work in Movable Type. I’m anxious to monitor the responses and the results he gets. I share virtually every one of the requirements he describes in his entry, but I’m not sure how to get there. For all I know, this very entry may be preventing this entire weblog from validating.
I’d like to have a second and, possibly, a third skin or template-set for this weblog. We’ll see what the market is like out there and which designers step forward with interest in doing these kinds of projects and at what kind of prices.
This isn’t just some message board with a blogging label slapped on—the AOL Journals team is taking the time and effort to get this right and that’s highly commendable. Within a company the size of AOL, this is an amazing feat. [Not A Dollarshort]
With yet another creditable entry into the weblogging tools field, it seems essential that we stop this melodramatic focus on something called RSS and begin to talk to real customers/users of weblogging software about what they want and need. Specifically, what does the techie user want and need? What does the non-techie user want and need? What do the writers want and need?
>From some movie, one of my daughters frequently quotes, ”Intelligent people do not allow themselves to become bored.”
Waking at 5:00 a.m. this morning, checking the news aggregator, I can confidently say, ”I’m bored.” My intelligence can probably be called into question as well.
Democrats are still frustrated that there are no weapons. Techies are frustrated that someone wants them to pay for music. Other techies are arguing about stuff mere mortals can’t understand. Pro athletes are still getting pay raises with their arrest warrants. Windows still outsells Linux. Bureaucrats still make silly decisions.
Even the sites I read in a category called ”gossip” are lambasting one another. They seem to be trying to run one another out of town, but I can’t be sure. Linkage to this will only bore you and waste valuable time.
The world – as we know it – didn’t change last night. So, good morning.
Mel Gibson has directed a new movie called The Passion. It’s about the last days of Jesus. Now, via Blogcritics, we’ve got a link to a trailer for the movie.
It’s incredibly powerful. Not a word of this movie is in English and there are no subtitles. All of the dialog will be in old Latin and Aramaic.
Yet, the story and its meaning remain unmistakable.
Robert Scoble has packed a wealth of great entries into some ”early morning” posting. SharpReader tells me he was posting between 1:25 a.m. and 5:56 a.m. Allowing for the two-hour time difference between Central and Pacific time, well, that’s still the wee hours.
I encourage you to take a look. You’ll almost certainly find something of interest there this morning. Desktop Linux, why attend conferences, great homes and ActiveWords are just a few of the topics.
David Weinberger has been logging his experiences as he attempts to install Linux on a spare computer. He has the patience of Job. His experiences make it obvious that Linux isn’t ready for those of us who aren’t members of the techiest set. By techiest set, I mean those who eat, sleep and breath computers rather than what computers can do for us.
* * UPDATE * * * Via Robert Scoble’s weblog, I found this link to Mitch Kapor, who has conducted a study of Linux on the desktop.
For any of you who are considering a new Pocket PC 2003-based PDA, Gizmodo has put together a guide that should summarize all the specs and new models that you’re considering.
In trying to sort out all this RSS/Pie/Necho/Echo stuff, I’ve posted some stream-of-consciousness questions. One of them had to do with how many weblogs I’m seeing that have a whole string of icons or links in the ”Syndicate” section of the sidebar. People are now doing all the various combinations and permutations – with comments, without, excerpts only, full posts, etc.
Danny at Formerly Echo, one of the new TypePad weblogs, picked up on my questions and has provided some updates. It seems that the ”ultimate answer” is not to have a string of little buttons showing all the different feeds. Rather, feed readers which perform ”auto-discovery” will apparently solve the problem. Theoretically, this means a weblog’s sidebar could be completely free of any indication of syndication!
Harvard has revoked its admission of Blair Hornstine, the prospective member of the Class of 2007 who made national headlines when she sued her school system to ensure she would be her high schools sole valedictorian. (Elizabeth W. Green & J. Hale Russell, Harvard Crimson, Jul. 11)(see Jun. 30, May 13, May 3-4). [Overlawyered]
Do you ever wonder if there’s a place on the Internet where you can find people arguing about their designs of drive trains for automobiles? Surely, somewhere, there’s a set of weblogs where flames are firing back and forth concerning some arcane aspects of torque, power, RPM’s, etc. Likely as not, they’re also flaming each other in a he-said-she-said fashion.
I’m glad I’m not so interested in my automobiles that I feel inclined to listen to the designers’ squabbles. Instead, I just want a better car every few years. I don’t need to know how they did it, just that they did it.
I’ll be able to tell. The car will be more powerful or more comfortable or it will feel as if it drives more safely. Perhaps it will get better mileage to boot.
There’s something equivalent to a drive train behind the scenes of weblogging. The General Motors, Chrysler and Ford of weblogging are probably Six Apart, Userland and Blogger, but not necessarily in that order. Suppliers to these companies are small companies and individual developers who deal with the real ”guts” of software under the hood. RSS is an example technology. I’m sure there’s an alphabet soup of others – UDI, SOAP, FOAF, XML, OPML, XML-RPC, RDF, API, ad nauseum…
I’m merely a user. I drive Movable Type from Six Apart. As long as real, user-oriented and understandable improvements are made to that product, I’ll keep using it, donating money and paying for products from that company. I also subscribed for another year to my Radio Userland account. Absent any plan to use that account at this point, I don’t know why I paid, but I did.
My point? Some tremendously knowledgeable and talented people seem to be arguing over things as mundane as whether the transmission will be fastened to the car with metric or english bolts. Worse than this is that part of the debate seems to be about the manner in which each party voiced his support for metric or english!
The users don’t care – only the programmers care! Until someone speaks up and says, here’s the feature, function and benefit of what we’re debating, users are going to grow progressively more frustrated with this whole debate and the web will be left to the techies. Some techies may even prefer this, but, trust me here, that won’t pay the bills!
You want weblogging to succeed in a really meaningful, money-making way? Provide genuine benefits to individuals and businesses and then support them for all you’re worth. They’ll be loyal to you forever.
Otherwise, the so-called BigCo will step in, if for no other reason than the BigCo can make a decision – right or wrong and move on. The reason they can make a decision is they’re a for-profit entity seeking to provide owners with a return. They don’t have the luxury of endless, intellectual sniping.
For those savvy programmers/developers who have managed to lay low with their heads down getting meaningful work done, we, the customers scream, ” T H A N K S ! ”
Now several weeks old, Stephen Manes’s article for Forbes called Kill Spam With Your Own Two Hands provides some insight into the many techniques that people have used to combat spam.
When I installed Outlook 2003 (Beta 2) and converted my *.pst file, the process automatically discovered that I was using the (Outlook version) of SpamAssassin. SpamAssassin from Deersoft was bought by Network Associates and is to be sold as McAfee Security or some such notion. I haven’t checked into it. I’m not a big fan of Network Associates.
However, there is also supposed to be some form of spam fighter in Outlook 2003. At conversion I had two ”junk mail” folders. I simply ”merged” those two, so that now when I find something in my junk folder, I can’t be certain whether SpamAssassin or Outlook 2003 moved it there. I don’t care.
Not some right-wingers. Not fundamentalist Christians. Not some on the religious right. RIGHT-WINGERS. Period. If you believe in a flat rate tax, regard the trial-lawyer lobby with deep suspicion, oppose campus speech codes and favor missile-intercept technology, then naturally you are a Bob Jones U sympathizer who growls unclean! when you pass the stack of Potter books at the Barnes and Noble.
Now [via J. D. Lasica] comes this 17-question test to help you pick your candidate. This one is worth your time. It forces you to think about the issues.
There’s so much more that can be done with an Amazon affiliation and a weblog. I’ve got a wishlist that – until recently – was wrong in my sidebar. In my opinion Amazon doesn’t do a very good job of telling you how to set up a link to your wish list from a page other than their’s.
Here’s where I plan to turn to start learning more about what might be done with my Amazon affiliation. It sounds as if it’s time for me to learn what MTAmazon is.
espn.com may offer the best coverage of the Tour de France Freedom. Thursday, July 10 marked the completion of Stage 5 of 20 stages. Stage 20 and the race’s finish will be in Paris on Sunday, July 27 after 2130 miles.
America’s Lance Armstrong is going for his fifth consecutive win.
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. John 16:33 King James Version
I’ve told you all this so that trusting me, you will be unshakable and assured, deeply at peace. In this godless world you will continue to experience difficulties. But take heart! I’ve conquered the world. John 16:33 The Message
When the announcement was made that the folks at About.com had begun using Movable Type for all of their sites, and there were RSS feeds, I immediately added some RSS feed subscriptions to SharpReader. I regret it.
About.com is as bad as any site I’ve seen when it comes to pop-ups. I know, there is software to prevent pop-ups. Yet, preventing pop-ups also prevents the new window for blogrolling to open as well as blogchatter and others.
I’m thinking of doing a purge from the aggregator of any About.com site!
Ridiculous audiophile excesses could easily creep into my nature. For years I’ve been fascinated with the notion of trying to reproduce the sound quality of a live concert in a home audio system.
In the world I’m talking about wires that lead to speakers are as big as garden hoses. Amplifiers for such a system weigh several hundred pounds. Turntable, tonearm and cartridge combinations can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
It is truly excess. It’s obscene excess. It can be wonderful.
Fortune’s Small Business (FSB) magazine has done an in-depth report on a manufacturer of the ultimate stereo speakers in the home audio industry. Some models range as high as $225,000 a pair with rumors of a $300, 000 product on the way.
Take a look at the article, then visit the Wilson Audio site. There is simply no way to rationalize, justify or explain yourself if you have this much invested in creature comforts, but it surely is fun to listen to somebody else’s excesses!
There are way too many (paid) subscriptions in my list of periodical reading. I should trim the count by at least 40 or 50 percent. Plenty of issues fail to provide their cover price in content value.
Yesterday was an exception on two fronts. First, the Wall Street Journal was one of those daily editions that simply covers a fourth of a year’s subscription cost in one day. The content was that rich. The July 21, 2003 Forbes magazine was similar. I bet I ripped out a third of the pages for future reference.
A (free) online subscription may be required to see these links:
How do people find out who visits their weblogs? How do they determine who links to their weblogs?
Thus far, I’ve found nothing in Movable Type that is a referer’s list. I use three different (free) meters, but they provide a limited or cryptic view of who has been here and who links to this weblog.
Now comes Refer 2.02. At this point, I have but one question. Does Refer 2.02 require that my weblog entries are stored in a MySQL database?
I believe there are configuration settings (somewhere) that allow MT to save entries in MySQL, but I don’t know what the alternative is (Berkley DB support?). Whatever it is, that’s what I’m doing. Can I still use Refer 2.02?
Doing away with things that are so common they seem ”normal” is hard in any organization. Cultures develop in such a way that they begin to expect things. Microsoft’s decision to do away with options, rather than expensing them, is a huge win for investors.
No, it’s not a win for investors who think only in one- to three-year periods, but it is a win for those who make investing decisions about businesses and not about stocks. There are many ways to compensate and reward employees. From the standpoint of a business owner, each of these has some cost or expense to the business.
Some have tried to argue otherwise, but their agendas often were clouded by other issues. Arguing against the expensing of options because you don’t like having a ”standards body” tell you what to do clouds the issue.
I’ve received options and I’ve granted options awards. I like the reward and others did, too. Yet, there are many other ways that the companies I was working for could have rewarded employees. The question of how to reward employees has now been addressed by the biggest technology company of all.
At a minimum the removal of options grants will take away one more thing that can obscure a company’s bottom line. Removing options from compensation plans also eliminates another possible accounting abuse for those in charge.
Though Enron has become the symbol for shareholder abuse, there is no shortage of egregious conduct elsewhere in corporate America. One story Ive heard illustrates the all-too-common attitude of managers toward owners: A gorgeous woman slinks up to a CEO at a party and through moist lips purrs, ”Ill do anything – anything – you want. Just tell me what you would like.” With no hesitation, he replies, ”Reprice my options.”
Wal-Mart is apparently no different from most other large organizations in starting something and, in only a matter of days, changing directions. The RFID right hand must have not known what the RFID left hand was doing!
I was once involved with an organization that spent months planning the move of over 180 associates to a new building. The people were moved over a weekend. On Tuesday of the following week, an executive (term used loosely) made the decision to move them back to another building.
The impact on morale, expenses and customer satisfaction was unbelievably harmful, but the exec got what he wanted.
Should the city support the arts with taxpayer money? Sure. Send some my way for my favorite art form of movies. And while you’re being generous with other people’s money, you can send me some taxpayer loot for a Roman statue for my backyard.
If there is a social good in hoity-toity chardonnay sippers getting arts welfare and in blue-collar beer guzzlers getting sports welfare in the form of stadium subsidies, then there must be a social good in this Italian drinker of jug-wine getting welfare to put a bocce alley in the backyard next to the Roman statue. The welfare could be justified by cultural diversity. The Supreme Court says so.
There is always a highfalutin justification when people petition the government to steal money from their neighbors for their own use. For example, arts welfare queens rationalize their theft in two ways. First, they say that the arts are important for a civilized society. Yes, indeed. The arts-rich German Weimar Republic became the Third Reich, and arts-rich Russia became the Soviet Union. Together, the two cultured countries killed over 100 million people.
Second, the queens say that art is good for the local economy because it attracts visitors. Although they never explain how it is good for my family’s economy, they may be on to something. Since my wife and I have hosted many business conferences for visitors, we should get a cut of the tax revenue that we have generated. Incidentally, business visitors do not ask about art museums.
Sure, art subsidies are a drop in the vast tax bucket. The problem is that all the small drops add up and become a tax torrent. It is estimated that the cost of government at all levels is $19,000 per household, excluding the $7,000 per-household cost of regulations. But that is still not enough plunder to satisfy larcenous limousine liberals and crooked country club conservatives.
When my poor grandfather immigrated here, taxes were about two-thirds less than today. Consequently, even on his meager income, he could afford to send his kids to Catholic school and still have enough money left over to play bocce at the local tavern.
A former coal miner with huge hands, he would know what to do about thieving elites if he were alive today. He’d shove a bocce ball up their turned-up noses.
Mr. Cantoni is an author, public speaker and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
The point: Did our nation’s Founders expect that every special interest group in the nation would ultimately have a line item on the budget that forced taxpayers to pay for or subsidize their cause? (Answer: No)
One of the new TypePad-powered weblogs is called Formerly Echo. It’s tracking the new syndication format work that has been going on.
An entry from earlier today points to Tristan Louis’s RSS2Necho parser. Tristan also sent me an email pointing to the tool.
Now, here’s my take on all of this. Work on the new format continues. Until it’s ”finished,” it makes no sense (to me) to convert my RSS feed to this Necho feed. Why? First, because I don’t think many of the feed readers are ready for it. They’re waiting as well. Second, unless you want to show both formats on your weblog, you’ll be shutting out those who read your weblog via an aggregator.
On second thought, maybe the right thing to do is to offer all the different feeds in a syndication area of the sidebar. Is this what it’s coming to:
This shows just how little I understand about all of this. I think I’m ready for my weblogging tool to make some of these choices for me and build my sidebar accordingly!
Protests are going on in Iran as the nation struggles to embrace freedom, democracy and a different way of life. Susan at LilacRose cites a letter that pretty much sums up the dream.
I can’t help but reflect back on Bill Whittle’s Trinity when I think of Iran’s struggle.
Last night I downloaded and posted from Zempt. Then, I was hasty in my first impressions of it. When I griped a bit, I awoke to a friendly comment/email from Adam Kalsey.
Suffice it to say, this product is rapidly growing on me. Part of my concern was in having no clue how posting from Zempt compared (behind-the-scenes) to posting from Movable Type. I didn’t want to start getting a mix of fonts or sizes or spacing or whatever on my weblog. I had already been through that with Radio.
By whatever magic this stuff uses, it works. My CSS design is making certain that anything I send to my weblog looks exactly as if it was posted via MT. Zempt simply provides the convenience.
Take a look at the benefits and goals that are behind Zempt. I’m impressed.
I still want to understand the relationship between the tools I mentioned in last night’s entry, but, for now, I’m using Zempt and trusting it!
Luke Hutteman does an excellent job of pointing out the fallacies in Adam Curry’s logic. He (Adam) wants to buy some popularity by being in the default feeds that come bundled with some feed readers, but he wants to control which kind of feeds that reader reads. It certainly looks as if he’s going to be supporting a very, very short list once necho is embedded.
There are a whole lot of ”ifs” in this article, but it’s an effective discussion of how CDMA technology and Wi-Fi will find themselves competing under certain conditions.
If you’re interested in Wi-Fi, this one is worth reading.
McDonald’s is moving forward with their Wi-Fi plans, though I wouldn’t expect to get connected in Iuka, Kosciusko or Starkville any time soon. New York, San Francisco and probably a thousand other locations get connected first. [link via Gnome-girl]
Apparently this crowd of people will begin work at 6:00 a.m. on July 26th, and they’ll continue to make entries to their weblogs every 30 minutes for 24 hours. It’s all for charity.
* * UPDATE * * * I’m only moderately impressed with Zempt. My first experience with an entry wasn’t terrific; I couldn’t preview the entry. There’s a preview tab, but it didn’t work properly. More importantly, I haven’t hit on the advantages of using Zempt to create and publish an entry as compared to Movable Type’s own entry-edit screen.
Also, I created the original entry, spell-checked it and added several words to the dictionary. Each of the two times I’ve edited the entry, it has forced another spell-check and the words I added continue to pop up as incorrectly spelled. (Beta?)
The TypePad weblogs look pretty good. Most of them (so far) have main text areas that are slightly wider than a newspaper column. I like that. They are quicker and easier to read than those that span the width of the screen.
Colors, fonts and layouts look good, too. Something is being done to make it easy for the ”graphically-challenged” to design something appealing.
So far, only a couple of the beta sites lack syndication.
People are important. How we treat people is important. How we’re treated by other people is less important. That’s counter-intuitive. The fight-or-flight response kicks in. The adrenaline gets pumped through our system. Suddenly, the most important thing becomes ”sticking up for ourselves.”
Who loses when this happens? Well, we all do. Some of us are ”mere users” out here. We’re interested users, mind you. We’d learn fast if we could find the right primers for this stuff. But, nevertheless, we’re mere users. We’re not qualified to take in the rarefied air of the programmers.
It’s frustrating to see the tactics that get used, but it’s refreshing to discover the genuine article amongst the disingenuous.
I have categories set up in my news aggregator, SharpReader. One of the categories is called ”gossip.” It’s a term I use affectionately – not hatefully. In this category are RSS feeds from people who write weblogs about their lives. They’re unafraid to let you know about their drunkenness, their ailments, their pets, their kids or their feelings toward someone in traffic. A lot can be learned about weblogging from people who write this way.
Trust me when I say that they are one-and-all oblivious to the fight that has been raging. They simply tweak their weblog designs from time to time and keep right on going. So far, I’m able to read their weblogs in SharpReader. At least I can read those that provide full entries in their feeds. Others have a minimal feed; often only a few words, so I launch a browser and read their sites. They’re likely to change their RSS feeds only after one of the MAJOR weblog tools alters the standard syndication method.
So, while I’m promoting a couple of tools, let me suggest to those with influence that they immediately make a TypePad account available to Mr. John Robb, whom I suspect is looking for a way to get his weblog network off the ground now that he’s been cut off by UserLand.
In it he says this about G. K. Chesterton, ”Chesterton had been dead more than thirty years when I first discovered him, but he resuscitated my moribund faith, as he has done for many others. ’I am the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before,” Chesterton declared triumphantly. ”I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.’”
With no information to base it on, I’ve been pondering a decision about TypePad. Here are the kinds of things I’m contemplating:
Does the monthly cost of TypePad compare favorably with my monthly cost for a Movable Type donation, site hosting, blogrolling donation, support and design assistance?
Will my Movable Type weblog entries import into a TypePad weblog?
When will I face my second annual donation to blogrolling and Movable Type?
What will it cost to slightly modify my Rodent Regatta design/templates for TypePad?
Is the change worth it?
If one were going to assist other organizations with a content management strategy, would it be better to know Movable Type/MT Pro or TypePad? (this answer may be obvious)
Rob picked up on the departure of John Robb from UserLand and the disappearance of John’s weblog. Tonight, I noted that John’s name no longer appears in Dave’s blogroll.
Maybe another shoe is going to drop in this saga. Were it the playoffs, I’d say that UserLand is finding the momentum (ol’ Mo) has shifted to the Six Apart folks and the Blogger/Google combo.
Lots of people are playing with alternatives to Internet Explorer for web browsing. John Patrick has found his alternative with Opera. John provides a lot of detail about features that fit his needs.
Bill Whittle has contributed another masterpiece of understanding. You should make a pact with yourself that you’ll read it before your head hits the pillow tonight.
Here’s an example of why:
If you think about all of the protestors you see on TV, whether they be against US imperialism, or globalization, or corporations, or claim to be champions of the Poor, both here at home and for poor nations in the world all of this anger and seething resentment, all of this bitterness and invective, can be attributed, when all is said and done, to having chosen to believe that there is only so much wealth in the world, and that rich people and rich nations gain and maintain wealth by stealing prosperity from the weak.
There is one thing that can undermine this great nation. Our insistance on trying to create equality of outcome will lead to a wealth redistribution system that one day so discourages our creative producers that they simply decide to walk away.
Ask any liberal today, ”How much should all forms of taxation take from my income?” Trust me, you won’t get any answers.
This thing called Blogshares has taken on more attributes of a toy. It’s not nearly the site traffic-builder that so many thought it might become.
Last week I griped about that. Since then, Ms. Morgaine LeFaye has continued to raid my personal holdings to sell whatever she wants to sell – with a few Blogshares-imposed limitations – to get whatever she wants. Trust me when I say, this is a poor facsimile of the public stock markets in this country.
Her argument is common, ”other people are doing it.” That’s fine and all in fun.
For those who would be duped, just know that the science and art that is investing isn’t like Blogshares. You can learn more about investing here.
The following quiz is amazing! In nine simple questions, it can determine someone’s political affiliation without fail. To see how it works, answer the following nine questions and then read the scoring key at the end.
1. John is in financial debt from his spendthrift ways, so he burglarizes his wealthy neighbor’s house. Is John’s action moral or immoral?
2. John is in financial debt from his spendthrift ways, so he votes for politicians who will take his wealthy neighbor’s money through progressive taxes and give it to him. Is John’s action moral or immoral?
3. Mary needs medicine but spent her retirement check at the casino. She steals the bike of the kid next door and sells it to buy medicine. Is Mary’s action moral or immoral?
4. Mary needs medicine but spent her retirement check at the casino. She votes for politicians who will buy her medicine and send the bill to future generations. Is Mary’s action moral or immoral?
5. Joe’s neighbor Mike is in dire straits through no fault of his own. Instead of helping Mike himself or donating money to a charity that can help Mike, Joe robs a stranger and gives Mike the money. Is Joe’s action moral or immoral?
6. Joe’s neighbor Mike is in dire straits through no fault of his own. Instead of helping Mike himself or giving money to a charity that will help Mike, Joe votes for politicians who will take money from strangers and give it to Mike. Is Joe’s action moral or immoral?
7. Sue, an unwed mother of four kids, dropped out of school and can only find minimum wage jobs. Resenting the nice house and cars that her boss has, she takes money from the cash register to help pay her bills instead of asking the local charity for help. Is Sue’s action moral or immoral?
8. Sue, an unwed mother of four kids, dropped out of school and can only find minimum wage jobs. Resenting the nice house and cars that her boss has, she votes for politicians who will take money from him through progressive taxes and give it to her in the form of housing subsidies, utility allowances, free health care and school lunches. Is Sue’s action moral or immoral?
9. Ted is a politician who gives other people’s money to John, Mary, Mike and Sue. Is Ted’s action moral or immoral?
* * *
Scoring key:If you answered that all nine actions are immoral, you share the same classical liberal beliefs as the nation’s Founders. If you said that only the actions in questions 1, 3, 5 and 7 are immoral, you are what George Bush calls a ”compassionate conservative.” And if you said that none of the actions are immoral, you are a contemporary liberal.
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
Frank Patrick read my question last week, commented and posted an entry on his weblog. I appreciate it.
I wish I had a significant project with which to collaborate with Frank, but, alas, no such luck. However, I’m quite interested in growing a practice that helps small to medium-sized companies improve.
There are so many improvement methodologies and so many different schools of thought. Some of the best are the oldest. There’s nothing like ”old wisdom.”
Last night my middle daughter got engaged. It will be at least a year before her wedding, but it’s an event unlike any other I’ve experienced as a parent. The mixed emotions are overwhelming, and that’s acknowledging that I’m crazy about the guy. They’ll be great together and they are truly seeking God’s best every step of the way.
Still, she’s one of my daughters. I don’t want to turn loose. Yet, no one is better prepared for her role as a wife, a future mother and a witness to those around her.
I’m so proud of you, Angie. And, I’m proud of your choice of a life mate.
Many thanks for this set of resources at Brainstorms and Raves. If you’re thinking of getting started, it’s great. If you’ve already got a weblog and want to enhance it, there’s a wealth of resource information provided. Thanks, Shirley!
>From the folks at Six Apart comes mention of a couple of tools for Movable Type users. I don’t think I’m using a single plugin, but it seems that everyone who is ”in the know” does.
...Ben Hammersly posted an entry I’m just now discovering. He does an excellent job of describing the nature of the current n/echo debate and what it might mean for users, the weblog tools companies and developers.
Yesterday, Rogers Cadenhead left me a comment. I appreciate it and I’m flattered. Without ”looking a gift horse in the mouth” I have to say that I just don’t have the prior knowledge required to understand exactly what Rogers is telling me.
I’m reminded of the first time those of us who started engineering school with sliderules saw calculators. We just didn’t know what to do at first.
That’s where I am with Rogers’s comment. I’m going to parse it here, if for no other reason than to expose my ignorance:
”adopt the optional core elements of RSS 2.0 that have information you want to deliver” – Where do I find a listing of what the optional core elements of RSS 2.0 are?
”add the namespace elements you want to support without removing any core elements” – Where are these listed? How do I do this? Is Rogers really explaining to me how to build my own RSS 2.0-compliant feed? Thus far, I’ve trusted the ”recommended feeds” that are bundled with Movable Type or provided by others. I haven’t really known why or how they worked!
”you support the people who have namespace support and those who don’t” – This sounds reader-oriented and friendly. As a writer of weblog I’m trying to do things that make it easy for others to read the weblog in as many different ways as they choose – visit the site, get it in a news reader, etc.
[DISCLAIMER: I have no axe to grind in the political debates about RSS, echo, etc. I don’t want to sound like an ingrate by parsing Rogers’s friendly comment and suggestion. I’m simply exposing the degree of my lack of knowledge in hopes of getting a primer on where to learn more!]
Too often, I get this weblog involved in something that seems ”hot,” but without a clear understanding of the benefits. I believe Blogshares was ”fun” and ”traffic-building.” Blogrolling is ”convenient” and ”traffic-building” and ”educational.”
Now comes BlogChatter. I’m in, but I’m not sure why I’m in. Chris Pirillo said he couldn’t tear himself away from it, so I figure it must be worthwhile.
Is this ”traffic-building?” Is it ”fun?” Are there other benefits to being a participant in BlogChatter? We’ll see.
This morning I was reading sites and found a summary of the Democratic candidates for President at Backup Brain. Tom linked us back to a post from December in which he listed his guesses about who might run, etc.
I was struck by a link in his post about Howard Dean. The link from the word ”issues” has now rotted. However, what are the issues in this upcoming election? Who sets ”the issues?” Are we electing a President based upon universal or majority agreement about what the issues are, or are we electing a President based upon what each candidate can convince us? Nevermind each candidates beliefs on each issue, let’s first agree to what the issues really are?
This is the major point of disagreement that I can see between Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Green Party folk (is that Greenies?), Classical Liberals, etc. Each of them has a different set of pet issues that they believe should become the national agenda.
Dane Carlson, with no words at all, shows us why we have fought for liberty in this country, and why we should be careful and cautious about the direction we allow this nation to take going forward from where we are.
The United States was founded on the noble idea of limited government and individual rights. That was something to feel patriotic about and even die for.
Now the nation is operating on the ignoble notion of limitless government and group rights. That is not something to feel patriotic about and die for.
Right here you should be reading a link to an interview from the Management site at About.com. However, after reading the interview myself, I found 3 pop-up’s had opened up from Internet Explorer. I was reading the article from SharpReader.
I just couldn’t bring myself to put you through the pop-up maze.
I’m a value investor. That’s a particular style and philosophy of investing. Actually, it’s best summarized as being a collector of good businesses. There’s no ”normal holding period.” There’s little selling. It’s strictly buy, hold and hand ’em down.
BlogShares on the other hand is a market unlike any I’ve ever seen. Someone named Morgaine LeFaye is slowly but surely emptying my portfolio by ”selling me out of things I own.”
It’s not right. However, it’s apparently within the ”rules.” She’s got a weblog.
Something tells me that if I follow the instructions in this link at Scripting News, I could design a template in Movable Type that creates a ”valid” RSS feed. Thus far, I’ve followed blindly by, first, using the standard RSS template that came with Movable Type. Then, seeking wider ”validation” I used a ”recipe” provided by Mark Pilgrim and Sam Ruby.
Now, with Rogers’s comments, I’m not quite sure where I stand. I still validate, but are we saying that I’m validating to something that isn’t or shouldn’t be a standard? Something tells me I’m wandering around in stuff I shouldn’t be near!
In August of 1991 I read a revised edition of The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. It carried a copyright date of 1986. This edition has 273 pages.
On the shelves at the bookstores today is the Second Revised Edition. It’s dated May of 1992. This edition has 337 pages.
What changed? The new Second Revised Edition still says the price of Bill Peach’s Mercedes was approximately $30,000 – a bargain to say the least!
Kidding aside, I want to really learn the Theory of Constraints (TOC). Frank Patrick’s methodology and consulting practice seems to have been built with TOC as its cornerstone. I want to learn more, but – as with most things – the key is in separating signal from noise. What are the best resources for learning TOC?
This former Army captain recently buried his W.W.II veteran father in a veteran’s cemetery. Although he had died a patriot, my father’s patriotism had diminished considerably over the years. Regrettably, his son feels the same way.
The United States was founded on the noble idea of limited government and individual rights. That was something to feel patriotic about and even die for.
Now the nation is operating on the ignoble notion of limitless government and group rights. That is not something to feel patriotic about and die for.
When my father was born, taxes were about a third of today’s. As a result, his poor immigrant parents could keep most of the fruits of their labor from marauding government agents, unlike the old country, where socialists considered the fruits of one’s labor to belong to the collective. My dad and my grandparents felt patriotic about that.
They also felt patriotic over the fact that even low-income, working-class people like themselves could build a sizable retirement nest egg over their working lives if they saved money, lived below their means, and invested sweat equity in their very modest homes. They were proud of not becoming a burden on society or on their families in their old age, and they wanted to leave their hard-earned money to their families when they died.
How times have changed! It is very difficult to feel patriotic when my father had to pay an estate attorney to put his money in trust, where the money would be kept from the greedy claws of the tax man, who would otherwise give it to other citizens who have no right to it and are nothing but common thieves.
Now my aging mother is dealing with the same issue. She was raised in a four-flat by a poor aunt who was married to a waiter. The aunt had the foresight to invest in blue chip stocks and to reinvest the dividends in more stock. Those investments have ballooned over the decades to a very sizable nest egg, which makes the return on socialized Social Security look like the bad deal that all socialism is.
Instead of spending the money on a new house, fancy cars, exotic vacations and frequent trips to the casino, my mom wants to do only one thing with it: pass it on to my son. But the government, our government, wants to take a big chunk of it for other people who have no right to it. Where does a supposedly free society get the moral authority to tell a grandmother what she can give to her grandson? Why is that anyone else’s business?
One of the politicians who believes in government theft, Dick Gephardt, owns commercial real estate a few blocks from the humble bungalow that my mom has lived in for over a half-century. He calls himself a patriot. I call him a thief.
Politicians of his ilk—and most Democrats and Republicans are like him—no longer represent people who work hard and save money. Instead, they use the tax code to punish frugality and to reward those who spend every penny they earn and who clamor for ever-increasing entitlements to compensate for their spendthrift ways.
A majority of Americans now get more back in entitlements and government services than they pay in taxes. That is a nice way of saying that they are mooching off of other people. Many of them call themselves patriots but do not pay enough federal income taxes to even support their share of the military.
The next time you sing the National Anthem at a sporting event or recite the Pledge of Allegiance at a public meeting, look around at your fellow citizens. Brimming with patriotism, half of them use the power of the government to take their neighbor’s money.
The Pledge contains the words, ”and to the republic for which it stands.” The words mean that the nation is supposed to be constitutional republic, not an unconstitutional democracy governed by majority rule, which is the same thing as mob rule. The words do not mean that politicians can violate the supreme law of the land for the benefit of the majority at the expense of the minority.
I certainly would not feel patriotic and sing La Marseillaise at a French soccer game, for I detest the socialism of France. Since the United States is now half-socialist, I wonder if I should sing only half of the Star Spangled Banner.
Granted, Americans are very fortunate not to have police breaking down their doors in the middle of the night—unless they are doing something that does not harm anyone else but is illegal, such as smoking pot, or, like my grandfather during Prohibition, making wine in the cellar.
And sure, we have the right to vote, a right that does not exist in much of the world. But do we really have any choices? Voting for a Republican president results in double-digit increases for the Department of Education and unconstitutional federal education standards. And having a Republican controlled congress results in a spending increase that rivals the spending increase under Lyndon Johnson. Worse, because the Supreme Court departed from its constitutional mandate long ago, there is nothing to stop the Founders’ vision of limited government from morphing into the nightmare of unlimited government.
We also have the right of free speech. Unfortunately, to fully exercise that right, I have had to become a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Arizona’s clean elections law, a law that restricts what private citizens can say before an election but gives the media carte blanche authority to say whatever it wants.
I will still put up a flag on July 4th, but with diminished patriotism.
Mr. Cantoni is an author and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
We don’t know whether this is hype, hoax or hackers’ paradise. Whatever system and tools you use, please go back it up. Back it up to some drive or media that you KNOW is secure. Don’t gamble.
I have a three-step back-up routine for this Movable Type weblog:
Back up the Movable Type entries
Back up all of the Movable Type templates
Back up the blogrolls
I’d also suggest that you find a way to export your RSS subscriptions to an OPML file for safekeeping. That covers the weblog. Now, think about all of your data files, your Quicken or Quickbooks files, your project files, your photo or music collection…
I’m amazed that we’re still seeing and writing articles about weblogs applied to this field or that. We’re still (over) analyzing the impact of weblogs on, well, you name it. Here’s another discussion that took place concerning blogs and the media. [from Dynamist Blog]
Michael Gerber, in his immensely successful (and worthwhile) 1988 book The E-Myth, states that most small business owners have three distinct ”personalities,” all three of which are constantly at odds with each other…[thoughtsonbusiness]
Have you ever proofed a brochure design or a web site design and found text that began, ”Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet…?” Ever wonder where that came from?
”My hope is that this movie has a tremendous message of faith, hope, love, forgiveness and a message of tremendous courage and sacrifice. My hope is that it will effect people on a very profound level and somehow change them and that message is a pretty good message to be pushing right now. There’s so much turmoil in the world today, on the brink of everybody at each others throats. I think usually when the world is tried in this way people usually start going back to something higher to fill a void in their souls, particularly if the earth is crying out in pain from all the suffering and fear that’s inflicted by war and hatred. For me, I don’t think there’s a better message you could put out there, than what’s in this movie.”
Mel Gibson
Discussing his movie, The Passion Crosswalk.com
I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said, ”Guns don’t cause crimes any more than flies cause garbage.” Yet, Ted Frank, writing for Overlawyered, has uncovered lawsuits going all the way back to the gun shop where one of the Maryland snipers shoplifted the rifle.
The NASDAQ peaked on March 10, 2000 at 5,132. (On that same day Berkshire Hathaway shares traded at their lowest level since mid-1997. The price was $40,800.) Currently, the NASDAQ is around 1600 and a share of Berkshire Hathaway is at around $72,700.
Needless to say in the three years since that peak, we’ve experienced a lot as a capitalistic nation. The dot-com crash, telecom crash and 9/11 hit us in the 550 days from March 10, 2000 to September 11, 2001.
Struggles are likely to continue as the mortal wounds of that initial 18 months lead to an agonizing death 18 (or more) months later. Many small companies remain in critical condition fighting hard to overcome the damage that was done. Nothing happens instantly, and bleeding to death must be a terrible way to go.
I like Jeff Cheney’s weblog. I like the ultra-clean design as well as the selection of entries.
Jeff doesn’t offer a lot of opinions nor does he ”spin” stories, but he can help you filter a lot of the noise surrounding a story and get to the most vital things that might be happening. He’s been hitting the high (or low) points in the RSS/Echo debates.
Dane has a gift for finding provocative, but well-thought-out treatises on the state of the nation and its future. If you aren’t reading Libertyfilter, you should.
I have no idea who Thomas L. Knapp is. Call me ill-informed. Yet, as I read his words, I realized that he’s completely consistent with other thoughts and worries that we’ve mentioned here.
According to this story at CPA Online, Microsoft is planning a ”lite” version of Small Business Server. It’s likely to include only Windows 2003 Server and Exchange 2003. If such a product becomes available, it will sell like hotcakes.
Now, I can explain what 9 out of 10 writers of weblogs need. They need a simple list of instructions – as simple as this one – that explains exactly what steps to take to ”remove the funk” from the RSS feeds. Is this something each user can do? Must Movable Type do something? Must anything be done at all? Can we all live happily ever after with funk in our feeds?
This interview is long. It is also going to raise your blood pressure unless you’re prepared to think critically about things like race, diversity, affirmative action and the nature of minorities in America.
If you are concerned about that notion of critical thinking, learn more here.
An interview with a campus head of diversity
By Craig J. Cantoni
(For Internet publication)
Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and four other justices have ruled that societal interests are served by diversity on college campuses. The reality is that the university brand of diversity and multiculturalism has backfired on campus, resulting in races segregating themselves into their own separate dormitories and organizations, and in race mongers taking control of faculty training and spouting divisive diversity drivel.
Don’t believe me? Then read the following interview that I conducted with the former head of diversity at Arizona State University a few years ago. The interview has been posted on my web site since, and it has proved to be very popular with readers across the nation.
The initials ”DH” stand for the diversity head in the following, and the initials ”CC” stand for me.
CC: Could you please define ”diversity” for me?
DH: Diversity has to do with blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native-Americans.
CC: I’m not so sure that you defined the word, but, nevertheless, let’s go on. So, diversity does not include Egyptian-Americans?
DH: Well…uh…you see…
CC: Or Iranians, or Bosnians, or Pakistanis, or impoverished Appalachian Scots-Irish?
DH: I use the government categories.
CC: Hmm, that’s interesting. I thought our system of government is based on the noble idea that we are all equal. I also thought that for the last 30 years it has been illegal in this country to give preferential treatment in employment and elsewhere to some groups over others based on skin color, ethnicity, race or nationality. My mistake. Let’s go on.
DH: Go ahead. You requested the meeting.
CC: Thank you. The description of the course that you are conducting for faculty here says that it will address ”diversity challenges, conflict resolution and the First Amendment in the classroom.” Could you give me an example of a diversity challenge in the classroom?
DH: Sure. The other day I had a Hispanic woman say in my class that ”all whites are ignorant.” An untrained professor might have responded to that by shutting her down or putting her down. But instead, what I did was ask the class for their thoughts on what she said. Interestingly, some other Hispanics spoke up and said that they didn’t agree that all whites were ignorant. You see, professors aren’t trained in how to handle that kind of conflict. In the Institute here, our goal is to give them the skills they need to deal with these types of situations.
CC: I must be ignorant myself. Must be a white thing. Did I miss something? Does the subject of whether whites are ignorant or not have something to do with learning math, engineering, double-entry accounting and other subjects? Do the laws of math change depending on the skin color of the professor or student?
DH: You’re missing the point.
CC: You got that right. What is the point?
DH: The point is that a university is a microcosm of society. It is a place of learning. It is a place where we address rather than ignore societal issues.
CC: Perhaps a sociology class might be a place to address racism and other social issues, but I’m not so sure that a racist comment should be allowed in a classroom or that the racial views of a student are relevant to other areas of study. I can’t help but wonder what you would have done if a white had used the ”N” word in class. Do I sense a double standard?
DH: Not at all. We value all viewpoints. You could have accused us of double standards in the past when we conducted diversity training the old way.
CC: I’m afraid to ask, but what was the old way?
DH: The old way was to separate whites from minorities in the class and have the minorities tell the whites what it is like to live in a white world as a minority. That made the whites defensive.
CC: Imagine that. That’s the problem with whites. They not only have pale skin, but they are thin-skinned. And to top it off, they are ignorant. I’m sure glad that I’m olive-skinned. Let me give you a little background about myself. It’s relevant to a question I want to ask you in a moment, so please bear with me. One of the reasons I went into human resources in the early 1970s was to advance the idea of equal opportunity. At the time, I was a big proponent of affirmative action and fought many groundbreaking battles on behalf of blacks and women.
Then, in the early 1980s, well before Roosevelt Thomas started the diversity movement with his landmark Harvard Business Review article, I would go on retreats with people of color to get in touch with my deep-seated feelings about race. And, oh yes, I got my undergraduate degree from St. Mary’s University of San Antonio, a school where half the student body is Mexican-American. At the time, I viewed my Mexican-American friends as the sons and grandsons of immigrants, just like me, who were trying to better themselves and live the American dream. At the time, we didn’t affix labels to each other and, in fact, thought that racial and ethnic labels should be done away with. My question is this: Do you wonder why someone like Craig Cantoni is so opposed to your brand of diversity?
DH: I can’t speak for you. But I’m sorry to hear that you are against diversity.
CC: Yeah, whatever the word means. It’s kind of like being against motherhood and apple pie. Let’s shift the subject from me. Let me ask you a related question: Do you think, as I do, that the races have become more polarized over the intervening years?
DH: Yes indeed. You see it on campus. Blacks have their own clubs and dorms. Hispanics have theirs. There doesn’t seem to be much mingling of races. That’s why the Institute is so important.
CC: Do you ever think that you’re at fault for the polarization?
DH: What do you mean?
CC: I mean that the diversity movement’s obsession with race has resulted in people being obsessed with race. I mean that putting people into categories makes them behave and think like they are in a category an aggrieved category at that. The government and institutions like yours have institutionalized the separation.
DH: You can’t ignore the fact that we’re all in categories. You’re Anglo, for example.
CC: Excuse me, but to the best of my knowledge, I’m an American of Italian ancestry. I don’t believe that I have any Anglo or Saxon blood. Since my forebears came from the Italian peninsula, which sits across from the African continent, and since a large number of citizens in the Roman empire were Africans, there is a better chance of me having African blood than Anglo blood.
DH: Okay. But the fact is that you are in other categories. You are a male, for example.
CC: You noticed.
DH: That’s the point. We can’t help but notice categories and respond differently to the category that we see.
CC: But my being male is not an artificial construct like you calling yourself ”Hispanic.” Nor do I petition the government to give me a group identity and group rights.
DH: What do you mean?
CC: Simple. There is no nation of Hispania. Nor is there only one ethnic group or nationality of Spanish-speaking or Spanish-surnamed people. The term ”Hispanic” is incorrectly used to cover many nationalities, with widely different cultures and history, ranging from Communist Cuba to aristocrats from the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It shows a profound ignorance of history to lump all those people together into one category as if they are a monolith.
DH: I like to think of myself as a Chicano.
CC: From the country of Chicania?
DH: Cute. My family is from Mexico.
CC: So if you insist on putting labels on yourself, why don’t you use the label of Mexican-American? It’s much more precise.
DH: Okay, if it makes you happy.
CC: Delighted.
DH: Let me return to the issue of categories. Why is it if a black man moves into your neighborhood, you will treat him differently? Is there something about black skin that gives off vibes? Is black skin in itself bad? Or is it that you assign stereotypes to his category?
CC: Seems like you are the one dealing with stereotypes. You assume that at the end of the 20th Century, mainstream whites will treat a black neighbor differently. You’re right, though. If Colin Powell moved into the neighborhood, I’d treat him with awe and respect. I suggest that you separate issues of class from issues of race.
DH: Then why is it that when blacks moved into neighborhoods in so many American cities, the whites moved out?
CC: Because human beings are rational and look out first and foremost for their own security and safety. It’s the same rational thinking that Jesse Jackson used when he said that if he is walking down a dark street at night and hears footsteps behind him, he is relieved to see a white face instead of a black face. The fact of urban life in American cities in the 1950s and 1960s was that whites, primarily middle-class ethnic whites, saw block after block and neighborhood after neighborhood be destroyed after blacks moved in. Upper-class elites and university intellectuals have the luxury of intellectualizing about the causes of uncivilized behavior in the inner-city, about the horrible social consequences of slavery, Jim Crow, poverty and the welfare state.
But if you had been living in a Lithuanian neighborhood on the west side of Chicago in a two-flat that had been in your working-class family for two generations, a home that represented a lifetime of hard work in a mind-numbing factory it would have been unnatural for you to welcome people of any color, white or black, who had different values about property values and a demonstrated history of destroying everything that you had worked and saved for. To react differently would be irrational and foolish. To delete your memory bank of all personal experience and observations would reduce you to the intelligence and existence of a slug. To me, there is a difference between being discriminating and being discriminatory. The former is based on factors other than race; the latter is based solely and exclusively on race.
DH: Your negative stereotyping sounds like racism, not discrimination.
CC: Webster’s definition of racism is this: ”A belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” I like that definition. And by that definition, I am clearly not a racist. I don’t think for a moment that when babies come out of the womb that there is any difference whatsoever, other than appearance, between one race and another in terms of innate intelligence and other human characteristics. Differences come later as a result of upbringing, social class, instilled values and that nebulous thing called culture.
DH: It seems to me that you whites…
CC: Excuse me, but you’re white.
DH: No, I’m Hispanic, er, Mexican-American.
CC: Not only do you look white, but the government classifies you as white; and we know how much you like government classifications. In fact, you are a member of the largest ethnic white group in America, far larger than Italian-Americans. Why you are classified as a minority is beyond me. It must be because universities are teaching diversity instead of math. Today’s graduates don’t seem to know that if you lump all white ethnic groups together, with the exception of one group, the lumped-together group will be a mathematical majority while the one exception will be a mathematical minority.
DH: You mean that you don’t see me as a minority?
CC: I know that you like to see yourself as a minority but, no, I don’t see you that way at all. In Arizona, Mexican-Americans comprise about 22 percent of the population, and Italian-Americans about five percent. I’m more of a minority than you.
DK: Let me finish what I was saying before you got us off on this tangent. I was saying that whites think in negative stereotypes.
CC: Didn’t you just state a negative stereotype? See, the government is correct in putting you in the white category. You think like a white person in stereotypes. I understand what your saying, though. You’re saying that Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan doesn’t think in terms of negative stereotypes. The New York Times Magazine must have been mistaken in a recent article. It said that blacks commit three times as many hate crimes as whites. Speaking of which, one time when I was riding the El train home from work in Chicago, three blacks got on the train and started slapping elderly white women, laughing as they made racist remarks about whites. Another time, a black man got on the train at the stop for Malcolm X College and sat next to me. On his briefcase were written the words, ”Whites eat shit!” in bold letters. And when I was a 16-year-old working as the only white on an otherwise all-black staff in an exclusive country club in St. Louis, my black supervisor told me to clean the employee rest room, which hadn’t been cleaned in years. Two hours later, as I was finishing the job, a burly black co-worker came in and urinated all over the walls, telling me to ”clean up this mess, white boy.”
DH: What does all that prove?
CC: It suggests that negative stereotypes and racism are not just a white phenomenon.
DH: Oh yeah, like you’ve suffered from negative stereotypes you who comes from white privilege.
CC: Wow, I’d suggest that you read the history of Italians in America. You don’t have to go back very far. Just go back to the 1938 issue of Life Magazine that featured baseball great Joe DiMaggio. It said that he was not a typical Italian who put ”bear grease” on his hair and reeked of garlic. And I guess that you’ve never seen the Godfather movie, which portrays Italians as Mafioso. You see, what’s different between you and me is that I don’t blame Godfather author Mario Puzo for perpetuating a negative stereotype about Italians by writing a novel based on facts. I blame the Italian mobsters for perpetuating the stereotype. I think the no-goods should be executed or imprisoned, and I support the government going after them with a vengeance. New York mayor Rudy Guiliani felt the same way when he was a prosecutor.
A couple of years ago I spoke at a diversity outreach conference of educators. As I sat at a table for lunch prior to my speech and introduced myself, the people of color at the table noticed the vowel at the end of my name and made the standard wisecracks about the Mob. I blame them for their appalling hypocrisy, but I don’t blame them at all for the stereotype. I blame depraved Italian mobsters like John Gotti for the stereotype. By the way, about your stereotypical statement about white privilege, let me say this: My impoverished and poorly educated grandfather immigrated to this country and took a job as a coal miner. Yes indeed, some privilege.
DH: But at least your grandfather was white, as were all the other workers, so he didn’t have to deal with feeling different. Diversity wasn’t an issue back then.
CC: Evidently you were not a history major. If you were, you would be aware of the huge differences between ethnic groups in the early Twentieth Century, the animosties, the tensions and the fights in the work place. Ethnic and religious slurs like dago, pollack, mic, papist, Jew-boy weren’t endearments back then. It wasn’t a loving gesture when an Irish cop bashed in your head because he didn’t like wops. People segregated themselves by ethnic and religious identity where they worked and where they lived.
DH: See, they needed diversity training.
CC: What, to make things worse? I take a different lesson from history. I take the lesson that assimilation worked its wonders without the help of social engineers and busybodies. Somehow industry was able to achieve historical highs of productivity and growth with a diverse work force, without sending managers to diversity training. Somehow the various groups gained political power, got an education and brought their families into the middle class on their own. Most of the problems went away after one generation, and almost all of them disappeared after two generations.
Blacks were another matter. That’s why the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed. That’s why I fought to give blacks equal opportunity in the work place and used affirmative action in its original meaning of outreach. It wasn’t until later that other groups petitioned the government to expand the Act to cover them. That was a slap in the face to blacks, because it implied that the other groups had endured the same government-sanctioned mistreatment. A black female editorial writer and acquaintance of mine still bristles over that. She won’t say so, though, in her newspaper’s editorial page. The newspaper wouldn’t want to upset its Mexican-American readers.
DH: Maybe we’d be better off if we didn’t use stereotypes at all.
CC: I think it would be better if we recognized that some negative stereotypes have their roots in reality. To get rid of the stereotypes, we have to eliminate the roots.
What I hear diversity leaders like you saying is that your particular group is a victim of white racism, that whites are evil and that you are helpless innocents. A little more introspection might be helpful, just as I went through introspection on my retreats with people of color. It might be helpful for you to be more self-critical and address the problems in your own group. For instance, instead of petitioning the government to teach Mexican-Americans in their native language, at the expense of other ethnic groups, you might be honest about the abysmal failure of bilingual education and the fact that about half of Mexican-American kids drop out of school, a fact that has nothing to do with any other ethnic group. To blame that failure on other ethnic groups and to ask for special privileges based on your ethnicity is intellectually dishonest and counter to the principles of your adopted country.
DH: If you destroy our language, you destroy our culture.
CC: Whew. Let me count to ten before answering: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. That was close. My Italian temper almost got the best of me on that one. But hey, it’s a cultural thing.
DH: Why would that make you angry? It’s the truth.
CC: I’ve read about this belief, but it’s the first time I’ve heard someone express it firsthand.
DH: As an Italian, you should understand what is is like to have your culture obliterated. The purpose of public schools has been to Americanize people, to take their culture away from them.
CC: Obliterated? God give me the strength to contol myself. My grandparents came to this country because they preferred it to the old country. Maybe yours came here because they are masochists who hate America. I can picture them talking back in Mexico: ”America is an evil, racist country, so let’s move there.”
In any event, my grandparents and parents ate Italian food, drank homemade Italian wine, listened to Italian opera, spoke Italian between themselves, and lived with other Italians in the Italian section of St. Louis known as Dago Hill, where it was so clean you couldn’t find a cigarette butt on the streets. I never remember the government Gestapo coming into our house and demanding that we stop celebrating our Italian heritage or stop using the Italian language. Oh yes, they also loved America and American values, customs, cuisine and sports, especially baseball. And they particularly appreciated religious freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of association, property rights, the rule of law, and legal contracts all the basic tenets of our liberal democracy, tenets that are hard to find outside of the Western world.
DH: But the government expected you to learn English in school, not Italian. That sounds like tyranny to me.
CC: I’m going to lose it. You might be right, but it was really my parents who expected me to learn English, just as their bilingual parents had expected them to learn English. Thank goodness. If they hadn’t, succeeding generations of Cantonis probably would have remained as poor as my grandparents. By the way, we do agree that public education has a tyrannical side, but for different reasons. That’s why my kid goes to parochial school.
As a purely practical matter, putting aside the issue of whether a nation can remain a nation if it doesn’t have a common culture and if it turns into a Tower of Babel, let me ask you this: How would teaching every ethnic student in his own language work? Are you suggesting that if there is one Iranian-American in a classroom, he should be taught in Farsi? What would happen to the cost of education?
DH: If we can send men to the Moon, we can figure that out. What’s important is that we don’t lose our cultural identities.
CC: And there it is in all its naked, ugly honesty. You don’t believe in all of us getting along and not being judged by the color of our skins. You want to be identified by your category. You relish it. You believe in multiculturalism. Or is it quadroculturalism for the Big Four groups of blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native-Americans? Or is it monoculturalism for your own group?
DH: I guess we’re not going to agree.
CC: We can agree on that.
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and management consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
Via Lilac Rose this morning, we’ve got the first review of the upcoming movie called The Passion. If the review can stir your soul, just imagine what the film must be like.
Too many organizations suffer from a ”been-there-done-that” mentality when it comes to improvement initiatives. They’ve seen and heard it all. They’ve been to the high ropes courses and they’ve played ”catch-ball” until they’re convinced that no program, plan or activity in business can turn dreadful places to work into places where we find joy.
There are two key components to changing this. First, there’s the attitude of the employee. Are they suited to their job? Have they got a ”fit” between their dreams, their skills and their selection of a place to work. Second, there’s the attitude of the company. If a company goes through many management fads and remains a place where trust is scarce, people are skeptical of everything ”management” says and ”we’ve seen it all” is the badge of tenure, then it’s time for a real transformation.
I’ve been rereading John Whitney’s book called The Trust Factor. It’s a recipe for corporate transformation. Using the principles of W. Edwards Deming, it teaches a leader how to restore an atmosphere of trust among employees, customers, suppliers, creditors and stockholders. Though it was written in 1994, clearly it never found a following at Enron, Worldcom or Global Crossing.
If you’re in a position to do something about a company’s culture, read this book. You’ll find it launches one of the most enjoyable adventures you’ve experienced in your career.
...the rest of us do one of two things. We either sit in the dark confused and wondering or we keep doing what we’ve been doing. Here’s an example. I’m using Movable Type 2.64 to run this weblog. I followed this set of instructions to make sure I had a ”valid” RSS 2.0 feed.
Once that was behind me, I began looking at RSS readers. I’ve been using SharpReader and there’s one thing I REALLY like about it. I can sort my feeds into categories, then, I can arrange the feeds in a category in whatever sequence I want. This is helpful because I can put my ”top 10 must-reads” at the top of each category. If time is short, I’ll at least get to the sites I know I most want to read. So far, I haven’t found any way to do this with FeedDemon. It may sound trivial, but I find it’s very important to my work and reading habits.
You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
Too much of today has been spent learning what OPML files are and can do, what the import/export features of RSS readers allow and what the differences are between SharpReader and FeedDemon.
These products are simply different and may be targeted to different audiences. There are so many things to like in both of them. I’ve moved well over 300 RSS feed back and forth between the two while testing things like import/export by category or listing group. For day-to-day production work over the next week or two (or more), I’ll be using SharpReader.
I’ll continue to test and experiment with FeedDemon. I haven’t even begun to appreciate some of its most highly-touted features. Things like ”news bins” and ”watches” are not set up in my installation right now. I’ll learn more and report back.
In the meantime the most striking thing I’ve found has to do with software maturity and the nomenclature used to describe the software. I’m running SharpReader version 0.9.1.3. I’m running FeedDemon version 1.0 beta 1a. By my estimation SharpReader ought to be at about version 1.5 beta 1 OR FeedDemon ought to be at version 0.4.0.1.
We’ll see how the feature set for FeedDemon unfolds over time. We’ll also see what the pricing of these two products turns out to be.
SharpReader renders the images on my weblog correctly within the feed reader. I use relative references for any images I post to my weblog. Currently, FeedDemon does not handle relative references, so you’ll see a placeholder for an image if you read my weblog with FeedDemon.
Also, FeedDemon limits you to 150 RSS feeds per ”listing” or grouping. If you want to import to a listing, you’ve got to make sure you are importing fewer than 150 feeds. If you want to export your feeds from FeedDemon, you can only do so by listing. In other words, if you have 10 listings or groupings with 10 feeds in each, you’ve got to do 10 exports and create 10 OPML files.
SharpReader allows you to group feeds into ”categories,” but you can export the entire list of feeds you are subscribed to. Exporting does NOT keep track of your categories, so importing them into another reader requires that you drag and drop them into the proper groupings.
Today I decided to check out another RSS reader by exporting my RSS feeds to an OPML file and importing it into the new reader. Aren’t you impressed by that sentence?
Earlier I mentioned human bandwidth. I see RSS feeds and readers as one way to leverage time. Yet, I was astonished to learn that my export of RSS subscriptions resulted in 352 feeds! FeedDemon apparently has a limit of 150 feeds, and it comes out of the download with some feeds already subscribed. FeedDemon groups subscriptions into something called ”listings.” (SharpReader calls these groupings ”categories.”) Perhaps the limitation is 150 subscriptions per listing. However, there doesn’t appear to be any way to preserve the categories I’ve got set in SharpReader when exporting to the OPML file.
So, I’ll be hanging on to SharpReader for quite some time until I decide how to deal with the limitations.
It may be time to decide what NOT to read!
* * UPDATE * * *
It seems the 150 feed limitation in FeedDemon must be related to 150 feeds in a listing. I haven’t explicitly tested that, but I’ve got in excess of 300 feeds moved into FeedDemon now.
Can anybody give me any hints as to why my images don’t show up correctly in FeedDemon? When I look at Rodent Regatta in FeedDemon, the images don’t render; all I get is placeholders.
When I wrote an entry titled Who Writes a Weblog and Why?, I was basically responding to something I didn’t understand over at Allied. Since then Jeneane and I exchanged some emails, and she’s written more. She also developed a blogging methodology for c-suite executives.
Here you’ll find some additional links that are taking the dialog much further. Good stuff!
One of the tenets leading to the build-out of the telecom industry’s fiber optic networks was that we wanted massive amounts of information available to us instantly. Whether it was instant entertainment via downloadable movies or the Library of Congress on line, we wanted everything – now!
Then, the bubble burst. Irrational exuberance gave way to collapsing shells of companies with no real products, services or revenue. As those fell away, the many telecom competitors took a hit as well.
During this period many of us added higher bandwidth to our Internet experience at work and at home.
We have cable modems, DSL lines and cheap T-1 service. Yet, the Internet experience is what it is and has remained that way for the past five or six years. Why?
One of the reasons, but only one, has to be human bandwidth. A person can only absorb so much from newspapers, movies, TV shows, weblogs, newsletters, mail, email, magazines and RSS feeds. Whether you are a thirteen year old prodigy working on three simultaneous Ph.D.’s or a 49-year old striving to ”keep up,” there is something finite about our capacity.
Little is being done to address that limitation. What can be done? A recent movie line said, ”If I take my gingko, I can usually remember where I put my Viagra.” Seriously, what can be done to raise our human capacities for information from dial-up to DSL to cable modem and beyond? How can I take in more data, process it, organize it, turn it into information and ultimately gain knowledge from it?
With most folks needing between 5 and 8 hours of sleep per day and allowing for at least 2 to 3 hours of time for food, hygiene and another 2 or 3 hours for family, the time for moving, processing and storing information drops to around 10 to 15 hours a day, best case. Unless someone is getting paid only to read, some portion of that time must be spent in gainful employment. Now you are truly up against one of the constraints of human bandwidth.
Someone once told me that the best speed-reading course ever invented involved deciding what NOT to read. Expanded to cover the whole range of human activities, deciding what NOT to do may yield the highest-value enhancements to our personal bandwidths. What can you eliminate from your routine?
The combination of short-range Wi-Fi, 30-mile-range MANs now under development that are based on 802.16 standards, and a fiber backbone will present developing nations with ”the greatest opportunity for scalable and cost-effective networks,” he said.
RICHMOND, Va., June 26 Microsoft does not have to include a rivals software in its Windows operating system, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday in overturning a judges order. The unanimous decision by the three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals represents an overall victory for Microsoft in its drawn-out legal battle with Sun Microsystems over the Java software.
might need a different name – like ”web site.” For those of us who attempt to read a large number of weblogs, RSS feeds and aggregators are the tools of the trade.
TechRepublic has attempted to start a weblog about job searches in the I.T. consulting field. I’ve looked for an RSS feed, but no luck.
Andrew Tobias is the author of The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need. It has been updated several times since its original edition. It’s a valuable addition to any investment library.
Today, Tobias is Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee.
Lately, he’s been asked to return to his writing about personal finance. Then, there have been follow up requests. Just to illustrate how stridently liberal he is, Tobias responded by directing his readers to a Maureen Dowd column.
I’m always amazed in traffic or in a check-out line or at the bank when someone goes nuts because they feel they’re being inconvenienced. We see people from time to time who appear willing and excited to make a scene wherever they are. Invariably, I get the feeling that they somehow think they are more important than others standing in line. Trust me, the blowhard in line at the bank is no more important that the laborer trying to make Friday’s deposit. I don’t care how many zeros of difference exist between their two checks.
Then, out of the blue, you read words like this:
My God, people can be vile. I hate to realize sometimes how naive I can be, how I can still be surprised at someones ability to put the screws to their fellow man – er, person – for reasons so petty you couldnt find them with an electron microscope. One silly minor person sets her jaw, decides to show someone whats what, and the effect cascades through the lives of half a dozen other people.
But you know what they say: everytime a door closes, another one opens. So make sure when you close it, your tormentors foot is caught twixt door and frame. And slam it shut. Hard.
I have no idea what might be going on there. He said, ”Why yes, I am being oblique, and I will remain so until things shake out.” Let’s hope this isn’t devastating to him. Let’s also hope it isn’t devastating to us.
Here’s another example of getting blindsided and a way to handle it. We’re wishing Todd and Robyn well, whatever their decisions. I have a hunch they’ll ultimately weather this storm and prosper. Read this follow-up and you’ll see how traumatic these things can be.
We’re at or nearing a turning point in this country. We’re going to need one another again. We’re going to have to be really good at things that others need us to be good at. Start honing a skill that you find so exciting that you can’t imagine being paid to do it. That’s when you’ll find that perfect niche!
The more frustrated I become with the career politicians who make up our two-party system of government, the more convinced I am that an alternative is the only way this nation can be turned.
I’m spending some time studying Classical Liberalism. Don’t let terms confuse you. The groups we refer to today using the names ”conservative” and ”liberal” have nothing in common with Classical Liberals. For those interested only in the Cliff’s Notes version of things, you might look at this outline. Don’t ask me to answer to the differences between a libertarian and a classical liberal. I’m still twisted up in all of the labels, philosophies and essays of each.
With certainty I can say that more-of-the-same politics will not take this nation in the direction it must go. I had hope at the time of the Republican sweep of 1994. Nada. I had hope again when Bush was elected. Thankfully, we had this man and his appointees in positions previously occupied by the likes of Cohen, Albright and Gore. Yet, on other fronts, we are not making the inroads we need.
One of the most inspiring courses of study in the area of Classical Liberalism is The Law by Frederic Bastiat. Be forewarned, he’s a French economist who lived in the first half of the 1800’s. If you are ”francophobic,” I’m sorry. His work is still masterful in describing the role of law, the rule of law and the underpinnings of a truly free society.
Reading The Law, you’ll see where we have managed to bend, fold, spindle and mutilate the ”law” that so many attorneys bow to it like a shrine. I know attorneys with more feeling for, loyalty to and dedication to ”the law” than they have to their Christian faith! That’s simply absurd.
It hasn’t changed since Adam and Eve, since Cain slew Abel or since David slew Goliath. You wonder what kind of trash talking Abel must have been doing that made Cain resort to ”taking him out to the field.” Here’s how the story goes:
Abel was a herdsman and Cain a farmer. Time passed. Cain brought an offering to God from the produce of his farm. Abel also brought an offering, but from the firstborn animals of his herd, choice cuts of meat. God liked Abel and his offering, but Cain and his offering didn’t get his approval. Cain lost his temper and went into a sulk. God spoke to Cain: ”Why this tantrum? Why the sulking? If you do well, won’t you be accepted? And if you don’t do well, sin is lying in wait for you, ready to pounce; it’s out to get you, you’ve got to master it.”
Cain had words with his brother. They were out in the field; Cain came at Abel his brother and killed him. God said to Cain, ”Where is Abel your brother?” He said, ”How should I know? Am I his babysitter?”
Genesis 4:2b-9 The Message
Do you know people like this? Caught up in jealousy, they lash out. Caught in a wrong, they lie. Can’t you just hear Abel? Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah, God likes me the best! Cain may have simply gotten fed up! As Barney Fife said, ”Sick and tired…”
Now fast forward to Goliath’s trashtalking:
Goliath stood there and called out to the Israelite troops, ”Why bother using your whole army? Am I not Philistine enough for you? And you’re all committed to Saul, aren’t you? So pick your best fighter and pit him against me. If he gets the upper hand and kills me, the Philistines will all become your slaves. But if I get the upper hand and kill him, you’ll all become our slaves and serve us. I challenge the troops of Israel this day. Give me a man. Let us fight it out together!” 1 Samuel 17:8-10 The Message
Then, when presented with the boy who would fight him, Goliath pops off again:
As the Philistine paced back and forth, his shield bearer in front of him, he noticed David. He took one look down on him and sneered – a mere youngster, apple-cheeked and peach-fuzzed. The Philistine ridiculed David. ”Am I a dog that you come after me with a stick?” And he cursed him by his gods. ”Come on,” said the Philistine. ”I’ll make roadkill of you for the buzzards. I’ll turn you into a tasty morsel for the field mice.” David answered, ”You come at me with sword and spear and battle-ax. I come at you in the name of God-of-the-Angel-Armies, the God of Israel’s troops, whom you curse and mock. 1 Samuel 17:41-45 The Message
Some of you thought trash talking originated in the NFL or NBA. Not a chance. Human nature hasn’t changed one iota since the beginning of time. Sure, we value our trappings, power and prestige, but so did Cain and so did Goliath. We may think that with all of our knowledge, all of our prosperity and all of our focus on getting ahead, we’re somehow better. We’re not. We suffer from the same frail ego that caused the original sin. For those who don’t know that last story, the boy with the slingshot needed a single stone to end that fight once and for all.
We spend way too much time on all the wrong things. We work too much. We fight too much. We argue too much. We strive too much. We complain too much. We’ve lost the ability to find and hold onto serenity.
In 1670 Blaise Pascal wrote: ”I have discovered that all man’s unhappiness derives from only one source—not being able to sit quietly in a room.”
Someone clever then remarked, ”I have discovered that all man’s unhappiness derives from one source-not being able to lock certain people in a quiet room.”
A good friend emailed this to me this week:
I feel exactly like…the Romans must have felt right before the empire went off the cliff. I read something by I believe Col. North the other day that the greatest strategist today is Osama bin Laden. He sees our internal decay, our discarding of our religious roots, our great expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan, our spreading ourselves thin militarily, the growing power of China, the high birth rate of our Moslem enemies, the radical black Moslems who are ”graduating” from our prison systems (due, I might add, to our insane drug war), our growing Moslem population, and the dedication that our enemies have to their cause. He sees the grand sweep of history and believes that time is on the side of our enemies.
Wow! That sums it up. If we don’t find a way to turn things; if we don’t find a way to suspend our focus on ourselves long enough to see the bigger picture; if we continue to try to one up one another, the thread of history will lead us to that same cliff that sent Rome to its doom.
Buy a set of Craftsman wrenches at Sears and you can be pretty certain they’ll last you a lifetime. Pick an RSS reader and you might discover something like this. Wishing Dmitry all the best, and hoping FeedDemon hurries.
There are weblogs for cats. There are weblogs for recipes. There are weblogs for programmers. There are weblogs for photographers.
Then, there are weblog tools that have so much capability that one can build a complete web site out of them. Does this make it a weblog or a web site? Does it matter that the weblog features the products and services of a business? It seems to me it only matters to those licensing the software.
No, I Mean Really Believe! Either you believe something or you don’t. If you do, there are certain reasonable steps you take. If you don’t, you avoid those measures. It’s not a question of ”how much” you believe something. It all boils down to either you do or you don’t. All else follows from there.
So, you’re relieved that the Supreme Court finally ”clarified” the University of Michigan’s admissions policy. You think it’s all settled. Leave it to Craig Cantoni to show just how stupid this ruling is, and how it will keep on giving!
An Italian cheers and boos the Supreme Court decision
By Craig J. Cantoni
(For Internet publication)
As expected, the political institution of the U.S. Supreme Court played politics and split the baby with its Michigan affirmative action decision. It created an intellectual mishmash by saying that racial quotas are bad but that it is good to consider race in admissions because diversity is good. The decision will result in universities setting aside a number of slots for applicants of selected races who would not otherwise qualify for the slots. Only a sharp political, er, judicial, mind can understand the difference between setting aside slots and a quota system.
Mishmash or not, this Italian is cheering the decision. Why? Because Italians comprise about six percent of the U.S. population but only about three percent of the student body of Ivy League universities. Thus, the decision will mean that Italians will finally get racial parity and be able to bring their unique experiences and perspectives to elite campuses.
In particular, the decision will mean that my 12-year-old son will have a better chance of getting into an Ivy League school, even if his academic record and test scores do not warrant it. Chances are, he will be the first Cantoni to attend an Ivy League school since my poor, uneducated grandparents immigrated to this country. I can picture him sitting in math class at Princeton, sharing his views about spaghetti with Bolognese sauce, the Godfather movies and the Sopranos television series.
What’s that? You say that it won’t work that way? You say that diversity does not include Italians or Greeks or Bosnians or Poles or Iranians or Tongans or scores of other racial and ethnic groups that are in the minority in America? You say that it also does not include Asians and Jews, because they get into prestigious universities on their own merit?
You say that diversity is really code talk for giving blacks and Hispanics preferences over my son, solely because of the color of their skin and their surname, even if they come from a wealthier, more advantaged family? You say that three generations of getting a Cantoni to the point where he might be able to attend an Ivy League school could be thwarted by a first-generation Mexican jumping the line?
Now I’m really confused. My lack of an Ivy League education is showing. I can understand that blacks are a distinct race—what used to be called the Negro race before the word ”Negro” became politically incorrect—and that they still suffer from the horrible legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, misguided welfare programs and government paternalism. But Hispanics are not a distinct race and have not suffered any more discrimination than other ethnic immigrant groups. I also thought that the label ”Hispanic” incorrectly lumps together over 30 nationalities, races and ethinic groups that have nothing in common but language.
Does the Supreme Court decision mean that universities are going make sure that they have the right proportion of Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Panamanians, Hondurans, Haitians, Spaniards and others? Will they make a distinction in the interest of diversity between a Mexican who has 100 percent Chiapa Indian blood and a Mexican who is a descendant of Spanish aristocracy? Or will they lump all of these diverse groups together in the name of diversity and pretend that they all think alike and have identical life experiences? After all, that is what the racial bean counters do with the more than 100 diverse ethnic groups and nationalities that make up what is clumsily called the ”non-Hispanic white” category.
Hey, wait a minute. Why are you calling me a racist for asking these questions? I’m not the one who believes in the government putting people into classifications so that politicians can pander to them and race mongers can monger over them. When I was a leader in equal rights in the 1970s and spearheaded affirmative action programs, affirmative action meant reaching out to blacks who had been denied opportunites in the past due to the color of their skin. It did not mean creating a false distinction between different white groups and arbitrarily reaching out to some members of the white race but not to others.
The Supreme Court decision is not about diversity. It is about reverse diversity. It is about arbitrarily lumping together widely diverse nationalities, ethnic groups and races for the purpose of favoring some and disfavoring others. This Italian says boo to that. ___
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com
Wi-Fi became the latest buzz to rival dotcom as a topic of conversation. For some, wi-fi meant a technology. For others, it was something to invest in. For still others, it was a service that could make their mobile lives easier. Finally, for home owners, it represented a way to share a fast Internet connection without hiring a cabling contractor to run CAT-5 wiring throughout the house.
Here’s an article contrasting so-called ”free” Wi-Fi with the services that require a subscription or payment with each use. the future is still very uncertain!
This story (link provided by Dave Winer) begins to develop the concept of weblogs for truly meaningful and useful purposes. Weblogs as therapy are good. Weblogs as daily journals are good. Weblogs for business are good. Weblogs are journalism.
Now, with a view toward teaching, mentoring and developing across the Internet, a fantastic horizon opens for weblogs. Here are the two links mentioned in the story above:
My weblog friend (we’ve never met in person) Cass McNutt has RSS links available on his home pages, now. Add them to your news aggregators. His thoughts should be a part of your regular reading. To get to all three quickly, go here. You’ll find the links in the comments.
A long debate began last week concerning RSS feeds and the formatting of those feeds. Apparently, each feed is made up of a list of elements. There are (also apparently) two main parts of an element. One is the tag or the identifier of the element and the other is the data. So, there’s something like pubDate which I’m calling the tag or identifier. Then, there’s the actual date itself.
Well, as the saga has continued, lots of people have weighed in with opinions about what makes for a ”proper” RSS feed. Proper is usually NOT defined as, ”It works fine in the RSS feed readers.” No, proper means something far more arcane, technical and precise. Absent that precision, funky is the desired descriptor.
Perhaps Brad Choate has provided the ”final word.” Now for the tough part – what specific steps do I execute to come into compliance?
The folks at Overlawyered present useful information about what the requirement for jury selection really is. We’re trying to exclude people with biases – not people with knowledge!
There comes a point in most public debates where we have run so far in one direction that we are left with no course, but to turn and run the other direction. The public image, perception and treatment of the Christian faith by the media has followed such a pattern.
Moving from a generally-held belief that this nation was founded on Christian ideals to a point where Christians have been ridiculed and mocked, we are now beginning to hear the first sounds of a backlash. Susan at Lilac Rose has an excellent entry on the subject.
What a conservative president would say about Medicare
By Craig J. Cantoni
(For Internet publication)
President Bush tarnished his conservative credentials when he increased the budget of the Department of Education by 11 percent and violated the Constitution by usurping states’ rights with his federal education standards. He threw the credentials away with recent his Medicare prescription drug program.
The program will cost at least $400 billion over the next 10 years and will create a long-term government obligation of $2.3 trillion, most of which will be passed to future generations.
If Bush were a true conservative, he would have made the following speech on Medicare and on Social Security.
Good evening, my fellow Americans.
The nation is facing a moral dilemma. I am here tonight to ask your help in solving the dilemma, for I know that Americans can be trusted to do what is fair and right.
The moral dilemma is this: On the one hand, your government made promises to seniors about Social Security and Medicare. A moral nation keeps those promises.
On the other hand, to keep those promises under the current Social Security and Medicare systems, your government has to send the bill to your children and grandchildren. A moral nation does not do that.
We are trapped in this moral dilemma because politicians of both parties have been lying to you about Social Security and Medicare for decades. I am going to tell you the truth tonight, regardless of the political consequences.
The truth is, we cannot add new benefits to either Medicare or Social Security, or even pay promised benefits, without stealing the money from future generations. Like you, I was taught that it is wrong to steal, especially from children.
The root of the problem is that the nation had a lot more workers per retiree when Social Security and Medicare were enacted. Over the years, the number of workers per retiree has plummeted as the amount of benefits per retiree has skyrocketed.
Every two kids born today will be supporting one retiree between them when they reach working age. Based on present trends, an estimated 60 percent of their earnings will be taken by the government in taxes over their working lives, much of it for the Social Security and Medicare benefits of retirees. Even serfs in medieval times did not have to give that much to the lord of the manor.
Most retirees do not feel wealthy, and an unfortunate number of them are destitute and in need of help from their fellow Americans. But as a group, seniors are wealthier than most other Americans. For example, they own 60 percent of the nation’s private wealth.
Something is not right when a wealthy retiree pulls up to a gas station in his motor home and is waited on by a clerk with two kids who earns $64 a day and who sees 15 percent of his meager pay, or $9.60, taken by the government to pay the Social Security and Medicare of the retiree. This kind of generational income transfer has to stop. With your help, I will stop it.
To stop it, and to solve our moral dilemma, I propose the following:
1. That promised Social Security and Medicare benefits be paid to current retirees.
2. That no new benefits be added to either program unless beneficiaries pay the total cost themselves and not transfer any of the cost to future generations.
3. That non-retirees be given the option to transfer their Social Security contributions to private retirement accounts and to establish private medical savings accounts for their health care needs when they retire.
4. That all limits be removed on what Americans can earn on a tax-free basis on their savings.
Details on these proposals are being given to Congress and to the media. Suffice it to say for now that the proposals are the only way to make Social Security and Medicare solvent and to stop passing an ever-larger bill from one generation to the next, in a gigantic Ponzi scheme.
I have nothing to gain and everything to lose politically by making these proposals. But I have everything to gain and nothing to lose morally by making them. And you have everything to gain and nothing to lose financially by embracing them. I ask you to do the right thing for your kids and grandkids, as I know you will.
God bless you and good night.
******
Of course, President Bush will never make the above speech. He will not make it because he is not a conservative. He is, simply and sadly, a tax-and-spend Republican who has more in common with liberals on entitlements and other economic matters than with conservatives. __
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist, consultant and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
I’ve said many times that Andrew Tobias’s book titled The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need is excellent. I have a hardback edition from the late 1970’s as well as several updates that been released since. There’s no better advice around for managing your money.
When I read words such as these, I simply cannot find the same human being’s thought processes at work behind them. Yet, the same guy, twenty or so years later says this:
Look at it this way: Do the 51 million folks who voted for Gore 537,000 more than voted for Bush wake up each morning thinking, Gee, this is really better than I expected! Weve got peace and prosperity, were funding the things that need to be funded, and, well the guy really is a uniter, not a divider. I dont think so.
He also said this:
And then look at the other side of it. Do the 50 million folks who voted for Bush wake up every morning feeling glad they did?
He’s simply lining up the counts for the upcoming election. Notice how he claims one person received 51 million votes and the other got 50 million, yet one of them won by 537,000 more. This simply is not the guy who put such careful attention into the numbers associated with personal finance. He’s clearly a person who has bet so much on his own horse that he must try in any way to convince himself and others that they won.
Here’s another excellent piece by Craig Cantoni. Enjoy!
According to conventional wisdom, education is the best way for the United States to compete in the New Economy of knowledge-based work, instantaneous information and the free flow of capital and products across national boundaries. The conventional wisdom is wrong and has led to the wrong national priorities.
The great education fallacy
By Craig J. Cantoni
(For Internet publication)
According to conventional wisdom, education is the best way for the United States to compete in the New Economy of knowledge-based work, instantaneous information and the free flow of capital and products across national boundaries. The conventional wisdom is wrong and has led to the wrong national priorities.
The best way for the nation to compete today is no different from what it was a century ago in the industrial-based economy. The best way is entrepreneurialism, coupled with the conditions that allow entrepreneurialism to thrive, including free markets, property rights, the rule of law, low taxes and a national culture that values risk-taking over risk-aversion.
If a nation’s competitive advantage comes from education, then the former Soviet Union would have had a thriving economy, since it had a well-educated populace. Likewise, today’s Germany, with its well-educated, highly skilled work force, would have a booming economy. Instead, it has stagnation, high unemployment, and a loss of industry and jobs to other countries.
In the case of the Soviet Union, of course, the preconditions for entrepreneurialism did not exist under communism. In fact, entrepreneurial activity was outlawed by the communists. In the case of Germany, entrepreneurialism is being strangled by the regulatory state, inflexible labor laws and skyrocketing social welfare costs. Similarly, the Japanese economy has been dead in the water for a decade, in spite of Japan’s well-educated populace, due to a reliance on the orderliness of industrial planning instead of the messiness of market forces.
Education is very important, but in the absence of an entrepreneurial economy and culture, it does not magically lead to a higher standard of living and economic growth. Granted, education does lead to breakthroughs in science and technology, but the breakthroughs would remain dormant without entrepreneurs risking capital to transform them into marketable products and services.
A case can be made that entrepreneurialism drives education as much, if not more, than education drives entrepreneurialism. It takes only a relatively small number of well-educated scientists to create scientific and technological breakthroughs that entrepreneurs can bring to the market, but it takes entrepreneurs to create a need for universal education for the masses.
This was seen in the early 20th century, when entrepreneurial industrialists like Henry Ford built new industries that created a demand for not only unskilled labor but also for tool and die makers, machinists, electricians, mechanical engineers, metallurgists, bookkeepers, secretaries, managers, and myriad other skilled and educated workers.
In 1910, only 13 percent of Americans had graduated from high school, but the percentage grew over the century in lockstep with the industrialization of the nation. At mid-century, as with China today, there began a massive exodus of workers from farms, due to huge gains in farm productivity, resulting from the mechanization of farming, which in turn was due to industrialization. Released from the plow, farmers could gravitate to higher-paid occupations and find the time to improve their education.
After World War II, the demand for educated workers accelerated as America’s entrepreneurial economy accelerated, during a period in which much of Europe and Asia lay in ruin. The GI Bill helped to meet the demand by subsidizing the college education of returning veterans.
It is important to remember that although the United States had developed its own educated work force over the century to meet demand, it also had benefited from a steady stream of well-educated immigrants, thanks to the opportunities produced by its entrepreneurial culture and political and economic freedom. For example, immigrant scientists played a key role on the Manhattan Project during W.W.II. And after the war, immigrant scientists from Germany played a key role in America’s rocket program. Today, the high-tech industry is dependent to a large extent on immigrant scientists and engineers.
The United States still has a net brain gain instead of a brain drain. But due to the Internet and other communications technology, American companies are now hiring well-educated foreigners and having them work from their home countries at a fraction of what they would be paid in the United States. For example, companies are establishing research and development campuses, technical call centers and software development facilities in India. If you call the AOL help line, chances are that the technician at the other end with the impeccable English is sitting at a desk in India and earning four dollars an hour.
This latest trend suggests that education is becoming an abundant global commodity and will not, by itself, create a competitive advantage for the United States in the world economy and differentiate the nation from other developed and developing countries.
America’s competitive advantage has to come from something that is in shorter supply in the world than education and is not such a readily transferable commodity. It has to come from entrepreneurialism, along with the conditions that allow entrepreneurialism to thrive, including free markets, property rights, the rule of law, low taxes and a national culture that values risk-taking over risk-aversion. Many Indian entrepreneurs start businesses in the United States instead of India, not because the U.S. has a better educated work force, but because it has a more favorable political and regulatory environment in which to conduct business.
Alarmingly, the U.S. may be losing its competitive advantage. While it still ranks high in political and economic freedom, there are danger signs that it is becoming a risk-averse nation, one that values the regulatory state, dependency and income redistribution over entrepreneurialism, independence and wealth creation. Some of the danger signs are as follows:
– Taxes and regulations are estimated to cost the average American household $19,000 per year, or about three times more in constant dollars than in the early 1900s.
– Government employment is at an all-time high of 21 million workers at the federal, state and local levels. This astonishing number is about 7 million more than the number of workers in manufacturing.
– Entitlements and other mandatory spending are at a record high and increasing, They now comprise two-thirds of the federal budget.
– An increasing number of America’s growth occupations are those that are dependent on the regulatory state and that redistribute wealth instead of create it. For example, the number of lawyers per thousand population remained flat until 1970. Then, because of the growth in government and litigation, the number tripled between 1970 and 2000. Similar increases were seen in the number of tax accountants, human resources managers, safety specialists, benefits consultants, lobbyists, congressional staff and scores of other occupations to numerous to list here.
The above trends result in less capital in the hands of entrepreneurs and, hence, less capital that is invested in new businesses and productivity improvements.
Some danger signs are not as noticeable as the ones above but are more alarming, because they reflect the onset of a risk-averse, anti-capitalist mindset among the American people. For example, a law firm in Phoenix is running a TV commercial that solicits investors who have lost money in the stock market. It is an updated version of the McDonald’s coffee case, in which a patron sued the company when she scalded herself with hot coffee. Now investors who burn themselves in the stock market can blame someone else.
In another Phoenix example, a neighborhood fought the construction of a computer chip factory because of environmental hysteria. The residents preferred low-wage convenience stores and retail outlets in their neighborhood over a high-wage factory, not thinking through the long-term economic implications of such a preference, especially when it is multiplied by thousands of neighborhoods and millions of residents across the country.
The most troubling warning sign is the lack of knowledge about economics and history among today’s high school and college students. Illiterate in economics and ignorant of the moral and philosophical foundations of capitalism and our constitutional republic, they fall for every crackpot socialist scheme and think that ”capitalism” and ”free markets” are dirty words. In guest-lecturing to senior business students at Arizona State University, I have found that the attitude and ignorance exist even in business schools.
What are the odds that the nation will stop believing the great education fallacy and begin to establish a national priority of returning to our entrepreneurial roots? Considering that most members of Congress are lawyers instead of entrepreneurs, and considering that entrepreneurialism is foreign to government schools and unionized teachers, the odds are not very good.
I’ll close with a couple of paragraphs from one of the greatest economics books, Human Action, written by one of the greatest economists, Ludwig von Mises. It is telling that both the book and the man are virtually unknown in government schools and in Congress.
”It is not generally realized that education can never be more than indoctrination with theories and ideas already developed. Education, whatever benefits it may confer, is transmission of traditional doctrines and valuations; it is by necessity conservative. It produces imitation and routine, not improvement and progress. Innovators and creative geniuses cannot be reared in schools. They are precisely the men who defy what the school has taught them.
In order to succeed in business a man does not need a degree from a school of business administration. These schools train the subalterns for routine jobs. They certainly do not train entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur cannot be trained. A man becomes an entrepreneur in seizing and opportunity and filling the gap. No special education is required for such a display of keen judgment, foresight, and energy. The most successful businessmen were often uneducated when measured by the scholastic standards of the teaching profession. But they were equal to their social function of adjusting production to the most urgent demand.” ____
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and strategic planning consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
Dane points to Philip Greenspun’s entry titled, The Chinese Car. It seems to me that Greenspun is right on the money with his forecast – if not for cars, for some other vital area of manufacturing. The question remains about just how far ”knowledge work” can take us. There is a reason that an automobile might be made so cheaply in China. People will work for less. Will we be willing to work for less here, in order to keep certain capabilities ”at home?”
A day approaches when we will have to return to the era in which meaningful sets of skills are readily exchanged in the markets for money, goods or services that we need in return. To that end Halley has posted the whole of Emerson’s Self Reliance.
Thank you, Joel Fuhrmann, for sharing your faith-based anniversary with us. Faith often works just this way:
I didn’t feel very good about myself that morning, nor in the days leading up to the decision, but I knew immediately after that prayer that day that I was forgiven and renewed.
Today I decided to live dangerously. With a solid backup of my system (I said wild – not crazy), I installed the Office 2003 – Beta 2 CD and allowed it to replace and delete my licensed copy of Office XP Professional. The beta software is time-bombed to expire on November 30, 2003.
I undertook this operation after watching a Microsoft employee work with his own production copy of the beta version. In other words, he had made the decision to put beta 2 into production use on his personal laptop. I liked what I saw.
So, today, with a 742MB outlook.pst file and an 85MB archive.pst file, I gambled and won. I’m crazy about some of the simplest and most cosmetic features of Outlook 2003. They are time-savers in several ways. I’m also impressed with how rock solid this particular beta product is.
This isn’t an approach I’d advise, but it makes me believe there is a fine product coming in the form of Office 2003. Go ahead – live dangerously!
John Patrick has a very nice web site and weblog. He’s got deep experience with the kinds of customers that IBM has served for many years. An (overly) simple view of that customer set is global company, many sites, multiple currencies, tens or hundreds of thousands of employees and usually public companies. John surprises a group of CIO’s with the term ”blogging.”
At the other end of the spectrum are small, private, closely-held businesses with fewer than 30 employees. ”Good enough” has become the technology management creed for too many of these businesses.
They are giving up on innovation. They find lots of excuses – not reasons – for their stances. ”Too expensive; no benefits; we don’t need it; we have people who do that; we already have two computers, why do we need a network?”
These are not your up-and-coming businesses. Some of these are businesses that have fed multiple generations of a family and continue to do so. Growth is not measured. Profit is what goes home with the owner at Christmas time.
Somewhere between those two is a sweet spot for small solution providers. I’m talking about businesses with 20 to 500 employees with an eye toward growing, becoming more profitable, doing things quicker for customers and reducing the waste and errors in their operations.
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to list ways that companies meeting this last profile can be identified. How do you find them?
Microsoft may be doing more than any company I know in fostering a concept called web services. For this entry, we’re defining web services as follows:
A web service uses the communications infrastructure of the Internet and the self-describing aspect of XML data to improve the exchange and processing of information between disparate systems.
That’s a mouthful, but it’s obvious that XML data is a key piece of thinking that makes a web service or web services possible. Because Microsoft is on so many computers with Office, and because Office 2003 can handle XML data, Microsoft may well do more to bring web services out of the purview of I.T. and into the hands of anyone who discusses, plans and executes the interactions between businesses.
For those of you staunchly opposed to Microsoft, regardless of what they do, take heart. For years businesses with completely different computer systems and software have attempted to find ways to integrate transactions. Web services dramatically simplify that effort. Whether Microsoft makes it a mainstream capability or someone else does, the advantages to all who work in a field where numbered products (SKU) have to be moved from place to place are enormous.
We’re attempting to do some research for a business client who wants to develop an email newsletter for his customers. Here’s where our research started:
Allow opt-ins at the web site to be added to the list
Permit non-techie users to design the next newsletter or email
Allow scheduling of email
Send plain text or HTML emails
Begin with 500 names and grow to 5000 names
Anybody else know of a good tool for doing this sort of work? Are there other criteria that should be reviewed? [Thanks in advance!]
* * LATE-BREAKING UPDATE * * * Another candidate is now in the hunt. >From a really reliable source who is responsible for distributing several email newsletters, I hear that iMakeNews is a tool to consider. More later!
It Is Well With My Soul
Words by Horatio G. Spafford, 1873
Music by Philip P. Bliss, 1876
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blessed assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
The words to this hymn were written after two major traumas in Spafford’s life. The first was the Great Chicago Fire of October 1871, which ruined him financially. Shortly after, while crossing the Atlantic, all four of Spafford’s daughters died in a collision with another ship. Spafford’s wife Anna survived and sent him the now famous telegram: ”SAVED ALONE.” Several weeks later, as Spafford’s own ship passed near the spot where his daughters died, he was inspired to write these words.
Bliss originally named the tune ”Ville de Havre” after the ship on which Spafford’s four girls perished, the SS Ville de Havre. Ironically, Bliss himself died in a tragic train wreck shortly after writing this music.
Walter Mossberg’s column calls a time-out from discussing a mobile phone email client to sing high praises for the Treo 600. Then, David Pogue sings even higher praises in The New York Times.
Craig Cantoni helps you sort through the numerous books you might otherwise select for summer reading.
Books for the fire, firelight
It’s time to escape to the cool high country with books for the campfire – books for throwing on the fire and books for reading by the fire.
Any book about hound dog Bill Clinton and his phony, calculating wife is a great substitute for firewood. This is especially true for Hillary’s new book of revisionist history, Living History. It also is true for The Clinton Wars by Clinton lapdog Sidney Blumenthal.
Books about losing weight should be set on fire and used to barbecue hot dogs and toast marshmallows. The books blabber about blubber but fail to tell the following simple truth: If you constantly consume more calories than you burn off, your butt will grow to the size of a bus.
Books that give financial advice should join the blubber books on the fire, for they also fail to tell a simple truth: If you spend more than you earn, you won’t have any money. PBS star and author Suze Orman makes millions by complicating this truism with her five laws for financial security.
A book that tells the truth about wealth is The Millionaire Next Door. It is an antidote to the class warfare and redistribution schemes of such leftists as Hillary Rodham Clinton and Ted Kennedy. The book shows that most millionaires became wealthy by starting neighborhood businesses, working long hours, saving money and living unpretentiously. Unlike Hillary, they do not become wealthy by making a killing in cattle futures and Arkansas land deals. And unlike Teddy, they do not inherit wealth and political connections from a philandering, bootlegging daddy.
Hillary and Teddy should sit by a campfire with Tom Daschle and read a wonderful book about government, The Law, by Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850). Among other gems, the 75-page book makes the point that it is immoral theft when the government ”takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong.” It can be ordered at www.laissezfairebooks.com.
Outside of politics, the best non-fiction book of the year is Seabiscuit: An American Legend. The meticulously researched book is about more than horse racing. It also is about perseverance, loyalty and Depression-era America.
And the best book ever written is my management book on ridding organizations of bureaucracy. Well, at least my mom thinks so.
So, some hotels aren’t seeing returns from their investments in Wi-Fi. I wonder how the returns on their investments in electricity and housekeeping are doing.
I’m not sure whether my RSS feeds are funky or not, but I suspect I can change them when changes become compelling or when readers demand a change. I think I’ll wait.
It’s useful when a developer so clearly depicts what he’s trying to do, what the issues are and what the trade-off’s are. SharpReader has become a trusted tool that works well for me.
This morning, Luke Hutteman makes it clear that he’s facing trade-off’s as he moves forward. Stay tuned!
Dane Carlson has found a quote from Senator Orin Hatch concerning the illegal downloads of music. Let me get this straight. I download a $1.00 song (by Apple’s pricing) illegally and the government will destroy my $2500 computer.
Does the punishment fit the crime?
* * UPDATE * * * Read what The VodkaPundit has to say, then ”shop around for your politicians!”
Today’s New York Times – believable or not – has a story in it concerning Linus Torvalds and some of his views on the SCO lawsuit against IBM. The paper quotes him as having said in an email:
”I do not look up any patents on principle because (a) it’s a horrible waste of time and (b) I don’t want to know.” Linus Torvalds
In other news, Torvalds yesterday announced he is taking a leave of absence from Transmeta to focus again on Linux.
Maybe I missed the point, but this is quickly looking like just another ”meme” on the Internet and in the blogosphere. This may have been a toy for wasting time. Now, all the folks have to go back to their index templates and strip out the code that was blogshares.
Meryl pointed to this book and it’s accompanying web site a few days ago. I missed it.
However, this is an important part of designing web sites. Lately, I’ve wondered what having close to 3000 entries in a weblog is doing to the speed of the site. Does MySQL behind the scenes help speed the site along? For what features or functions? Surely, the home page isn’t rendered any quicker, is it?
Along with this book, some other things are beginning to crystalize for me. Were I to ”fancy myself” being capable of web site design, some tools for the toolbox are now clear:
Learn and know HTML and XHTML
Learn a good text editor – I use NoteTab Pro
Learn and know CSS – I’m clueless here, but TopStyle is the tool I’m using to learn CSS
Learn Apache – it’s the most common web server around
Learn PHP – you buy lots of futures when you design with this scripting capability behind the scenes
Learn something about MySQL so that a web site can write forms data to a database
Learn Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro for image manipulation
Learn what the validators of CSS, HTML, XHTML and RSS do and how to apply them
Identify a set of web sites, books and fellow designers from whom you can get help
Unfortunately, there’s a missing ingredient. Having an eye for design is not something I’ve figured out how to study, learn and build. Either you are artistically adept or you’re not. Knowing the tools isn’t likely to bring this skill to the forefront.
That may be the single biggest obstacle to becoming a (profitable) web designer.
Recent investments in the companies that produce weblog tools are not so much a move toward consolidation as a sort of second-round financing. Google got Blogger. Movable Type got outside financing with a strong gameplan.
Now comes a theory that Userland might be next. Rogers Cadenhead provides some interesting scenarios.
The day started with frustration over this RSS mess and then got busy. The debate over the RSS mess is subsiding in favor of arguing about how people argue. Classic.
There wasn’t much to write about today. Stay tuned for more tomorrow.
FUD and the not-invented-here syndrome are the things that motivated the totally circular discussion of first RSS, then some metaAPI something or other and finally, the I’m going to run from this fight, but I plan to land the last blow as I run.
If anyone had anything concrete to say, something substantive would have come of it. Catch up by reading these:
Someone in this cast of characters may need to see to it that his software is well-designed, updated and customer-focused. Absent that, other companies will take over his company’s space. It might already be too late.
I hope all $400 million of this is raised from the pockets of lawyers and their law firms. Clients of lawyers have watched enough ”fund raising” to last a lifetime (or two).
We resume where we left off yesterday – with more RSS news and information. Two things have put this debate to rest for me. First, is Phil Ringnalda’s comment.
Sam Ruby is still on the case and providing help with the RSS feed questions. He’s pointed to an entry by Mark Nottingham. I like what Mark had to say, though I admit part of it is over my head.
I’ll go one step further. I have (what I think) is an RSS 2.0 (index.xml) feed on my weblog. I also have an RSS 1.0 (index.rdf) feed on my weblog. Can you read them in your RSS aggregator?
If yes, what more needs to be done on this subject? If no, can someone tell me what’s wrong with one or both?
Apparently, there has been quite a chit-chat going on in the comments at Sam Roby’s site. The 49 (at last count) comments surround this entry.
Take it from one who knows; inexperienced (non-coding) users don’t know that their RSS feed is funky. After reading all the comments, those same folks have no clue what to do about their RSS feeds, if anything.
Will somebody kindly step through the fog and say, “if you want your RSS feed to be right, and not funky, go do these steps...?”
The more I think about it, the less I understand why I have a little icon in my sidebar for XML and another for RDF. I probably should be able to pick one or the other, do away with the icon and simply the link to “syndicate this site.”
Help!
* * UPDATE * * * I’ve just found a second set of comments happening here. I’ve now seen several theories as to what Dave meant when he called the RSS feed in Movable Type “funky.” Thus far, I haven’t confirmed whether funky is wrong, nor have I confirmed which aspect of MT’s feed is the element(s?) that makes it funky. It may be something to do with the date element. It may be MT’s use of index.rdf to define the feed. Others have suggested it’s an extra colon in the time zone. Me? I’m still clueless!
In a single entry, Alan manages to capture some of the most important discussion and debate that rages about whether Wi-Fi or a ”variation” of 3g cellular technology will ultimately prevail in the marketplace.
These are great resources. I suggest you read them in this order:
The Three Gorges Dam project is apparently facing some cracks. As the reservoir fills, the designer is finding cracks that, left untouched, could leak. [thanks, Dane, for the link]
I’ve had only brief exchanges with Cass McNutt in the past year or so. He writes three weblogs with infrequent entries. Yet, each of them is profound. He posts no fluff. (My own site is fluffy enough for several!)
Joel Fuhrmann writes Right Left Whatever – Views on religion, politics and culture from a Christian who believes that Christians have free speech just like everyone else.
Yesterday, Joel pointed to Ben Domenech’s recommendations concerning commencement speeches. Both of these weblogs will become regular reads for me!
During the early 1990’s I worked with and got to know Craig Cantoni. One of the savviest human resource professionals I know, Cantoni’s ability to think through contemporary socio-political issues and skewer those based solely on political correctness is honed to a fine edge.
I’ve been remiss in not posting more of his work here since switching from Radio to Movable Type. Be assured that error starts getting corrected with this entry.
If you love the liberal media elite, if you think one or the other of our current political parties is the solution to all problems or if you prefer soft-headed, mushy thinking, don’t read any further.
Rewriting a story by the media moo-cow herd
By Craig J. Cantoni (For Internet publication)
On June 11, 2003, while sitting in the St. Louis airport, I read a front-page article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about how Missouri ranks low in the well-being of children. Several hours later, while sitting in my home in Scottsdale, Arizona, I read a front-page article in the Arizona Republic about how Arizona ranks low in the well-being of children. Both articles followed the same shopworn, unoriginal journalism formula and told only half the story.
No doubt, similar articles appeared that day in newspapers across the land as the great establishment media herd mooed in unison and published data from a press release without question or independent research.
The articles were based on a report titled ”Kids Count,” which was issued by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The Foundation was started by a cofounder of United Parcel Service and has the noble mission of improving the lives of disadvantaged children.
The report ranks states on ten indicators of child well-being, including such variables as the infant mortality rate, the teen birth rate, poverty, and the school dropout rate.
The Arizona Republic article was given the front-page headline, ”State ranks 45th in well-being of children.” The article included two tables of statistics. It then used 27 column-inches to tell a human interest story about a local pregnant teen, to make the unsubstantiated claim that state funding for social programs affects the state’s rankings, and to quote the head of the Children’s Action Alliance, which is a left-leaning organization that receives grants from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and believes in income redistribution.
That was it. The article did not question the report’s methodology and conclusions. Nor did it quote any organization that might have a counter opinion.
How could the article have been written if the Arizona Republic had wanted to tell the other half of the story? An example follows.
Arizona can do little to improve child well-being
By Craig J. Cantoni
According to a report released today by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Arizona ranks 45th nationally in the well-being of children. The low ranking is due to factors outside the control of state government and is unrelated to state social spending.
Among other statistics, the report says that 38 percent of Arizona families are headed by a single parent. The report did not give the state’s percentage of out-of-wedlock births, but the report’s publisher, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, has published the percentage in other studies.
Out-of-wedlock births have increased in the state from 32.7 percent of all births in 1990 to 39.3 percent in 2000. Nationally, out-of-wedlock births have increased from 28 percent in 1990 to 33.2 percent in 2000.
This continues an upward trend that began in the mid-1960s, when out-of-wedlock births were one-fifth the level of today. The Family Research Council, a family advocacy group, blames the increase on declining morals, on the 1964 Great Society Program and on the 1970 Title X Program, which funded family planning and birth control but resulted in dire, unintended social consequences.
Out-of-wedlock births and single-parent families, especially those headed by women, are considered by the Family Research Council and other family advocacy organizations to be the two primary causes of poverty, crime, school dropouts and other social problems.
For example, The National Center for Public Policy Research says that young children living with unmarried mothers are ten times more likely to be in poverty. It also says that the value of fathers can be seen in the fact that children living with fathers are twice as likely to stay in school.
Out-of-wedlock births and single-parent families are highest among Hispanics, Blacks and Native Americans. While Arizona has a relatively small Black population, Hispanics make up one-fourth of the state’s population, due to the state sharing a border with Mexico. And the state has nearly a quarter-million Native Americans, the highest number of any state in the nation.
To a large extent, Arizona’s low ranking in child well-being and its corresponding high ranking in out-of-wedlock births and single-parent families are due to federal immigration policies and to the horrible social conditions on tribal lands caused by federal welfare dependency and the ineptitude of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The rankings also are due to the state being a magnet for people who want to escape bad personal situations in frost-belt states and who mistakenly believe that a change in climate will improve their lives.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation report did not compare state-by-state rankings in social spending with rankings in child well-being. But a separate analysis shows little correlation between the two variables. For instance, although New York ranks near the top in social spending, it only ranks 27th in child well-being. Conversely, Iowa ranks low in social spending but ranks 5th in child well-being.
”Arizona could double its spending on social welfare and not make a dent in the problem,” said Ira Goldberg, a nationally recognized expert in sociology and economics. ”It’s an issue of unfavorable demographics and personal irresponsibility.” ____
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and consultant. He can be reached at Craig Cantoni
I read Robert Scoble’s weblog via my RSS aggregator. Sometimes I fall behind in my reading and try to catch up on certain weblogs all at once. Doing that, I found a link to Loren’s weblog and discovered this entry. It’s about ”actual” vs. ”perceived” quality. My own opinions about perception and reality have been documented.
Cut to today. I’m reading Frank Patrick’s Questioning Six Sigma. Frank considers TQM and Six Sigma to be ”data-driven” methods for bringing improvement into organizations. He cites prior articles where he has seen disappointment with these methods. I have, too.
The reality is I’ve seen every methodology fail somewhere, but not everywhere, unless the wrong approach was used. Most of the time it is NOT the fault of the methodology. Calling TQM (definition?) a data-driven methodology is also a bit misleading. It’s only data-driven if those doing the implementing focus on data, statistics and charting to the exclusion of everything else the methodology calls for. The same is true of Six Sigma.
Frank does an excellent job of discussing the ”project selection” notions that so often inhibit success with improvement initiatives. These selections are second only to executive commitment (constancy of purpose) as causes for failed initiatives.
Another leading cause is the failure to define quality from the customer’s perspective. That’s what leads to Loren’s notions about ”actual” vs. ”perceived” quality. Properly done, quality is quality. Either a product meets the customers’ requirements or it doesn’t. Either they agree it meets their needs or they don’t. Any other ”perception” by the supplier (Microsoft?) is self-serving and defensive at best.
Here’s what Deming said:
By what method? Use the one that corresponds closest to your need.
3% of the problems have figures, 97% of the problems do not.
Frank seems to coach improvement using the Theory of Constraints methodology. I’ve used Deming with liberal does of Crosby, Six Sigma and team-based management. I suspect there are plenty of success stories with any or all of these methods!
The key is having a clear and specific notion about how you’ll know you are on track to accomplish whatever it is you set out to do. How will we know we were successful?
Few will ever measure up to the standard he established as an actor. Atticus Finch will live on for many more years.
A great quote: ”I’m working as much as I like,” he commented in 1989. ”I don’t want to do, if I can avoid it, anything mediocre. It’s kind of unseemly at my age to come out in a turkey.”
The thought occurs to me that there must be some relationship between the cost of electronics that produce and amplify a whooping sound while flashing the lights and the cost of a ”kill switch with GPS signal” that (silently) shuts a car down after 50 yards of ”unauthorized” driving.
Could it be that this simple economic relationship has been left unexplored? Thieves will find a way to steal anything, but wouldn’t it be great to strand them, locked in the car with a GPS locator signal? (Oh, and for you lawyers out there, the kill switch could lower the windows slightly so that the criminals didn’t sit in a sealed car too long!)
Thank you, Walter Olson. This entry points to the litany of articles that makes it clear what litigation is doing to the medical profession. I recently spoke to a doctor who has decided to stop providing off-the-cuff answers to casual inquiries in the hallway at church or at the coffee shop. The fear of attorneys dragging doctors into court is laying waste to common sense help!
There’s an interesting article at CPA Online titled In Play: Where Will The Trend Toward Enterprise Apps Consolidation Lead Next?.
The accounting software industry or business management software industry is ripe for a serious round of consolidation. Microsoft got Great Plains, Realworld and Solomon. There’s more to come at every level of this fragmented industry.
Frank quotes Barbara Mackoff’s editorial review from Amazon. This statement stands out:
Leaders must make it possible for employees to work with joy, to their heart’s content, while responding to the needs of society.
The tide is going to turn soon. Whether it turns on a genuine desire by boards of directors to make businesses good places to work remains to be seen. In some cases it will turn from ”cheap-labor-youth-worker” to ”experienced-worker-age-doesn’t matter.” Other places will see CEO’s who are either good leaders or under-the-gun. Either of these types may catch a glimpse of what it means – not to prevent a ”hostile work environment” – but, rather, to build a place where people truly find joy in their work.
Look for those opportunities and contribute to them!
Dale Lature is in his own search for a place of service and significance. He’s weighing the concepts of calling and job, faith and reason, debt and income and searching and working. None of that is easy. It gets no easier when one is attempting to think clearly under the weight of mounting pressures.
There are many people in this same place today. I talk to several of them every day that goes by. Trust, hope, faith and a positive outlook are essential as one proceeds through the rough patch. On the other side is peace.
Today, I begin a study of the life of David. He is the lone character in the Bible to be described as a ”man after God’s own heart.” He was intelligent, handsome, a gifted poet, musician, soldier and administrator. He was also a man of extreme passions, chaotic family relationships, personal tragedy and political expediency.
He made some big mistakes, yet left us with a legacy of faith. Take a look at just one of his tributes.
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat.
The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul. The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes.The fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the LORD are sure and altogether righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb.
By them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.
Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then will I be blameless, innocent of great transgression.
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.
Were Peggy Noonan’s new book to surpass the sales of Hillary Clinton’s latest attempt to rewrite reality and call it history, the world would be a better place.
It will be a challenge. Today is its first day of sales and it ranks #23 on Amazon. Clinton’s book ranks #3, but has been on sale a couple of days or so.
There is simply no comparison between these two women’s views of our nation, its people and our role in the world. While Hillary is still uncertain about how the Rose Law Firm’s billing records ”just appeared” on a table in the White House residence, Peggy Noonan gave us words like this in today’s Wall Street Journal:
New Yorkers themselves have returned to fighting with each other. There’s been plenty to fight over, from the new taxes to the mayor’s new antismoking laws, which are not so much a policy as a non sequitur—New York is in crisis, let’s ban smoking! And there is the declaration of the organizations of World Trade Center families-of-victims that there should not be a statue of the firemen at the WTC memorial site. Three hundred forty-three of them died that day, but to commemorate their sacrifice would be ”hierarchical.” They want it clear that no one was better than anyone else, that all alike were helpless, victims.
But that is not true; it is the opposite of the truth. The men and women working in the towers were there that morning, and died. The firemen and rescue workers—they weren’t there, they went there. They didn’t run from the fire, they ran into the fire. They didn’t run down the staircase, they ran up the staircase. They didn’t lose their lives, they gave them.
This is an important disagreement, because memorials teach. They teach the young what we, as a society, celebrate, hold high, honor. A statue of a man is an assertion: It asserts that his behavior is worthy of emulation. To leave a heroic statue of the firemen out of a WTC memorial would be as dishonest as it would be ungenerous, and would yield a memorial that is primarily about victimization. Which is not what that day was about, as so much subsequent history attests.
But go tell some New Yorkers. They’re all arguing. September 11 didn’t change everything.
If you want to do something well, yes yes yes, it matters very much what it is, and understanding what it is. Speaking for myself only, I want to do my weblog well, for the sake of doing it well, it’s really that simple.
A number of years ago a good friend of mine wrote a book called Corporate Dandelions. Today, in an effort to locate one for someone else, I searched Amazon.
Can you believe that a hardback book about eliminating bureaucracy from organizations could be bought for $0.50? I know the guy that wrote it. I’ve worked with him. He’s eliminated lots of bureaucracies. What he suggests works, and you can get it for $0.50. You’ll find no greater bargain on anything anywhere today!
One of the most difficult obstacles to overcome when trying to help organizations improve is the notion – often from top to bottom – that answers are easy, quick-to-implement and instantly discovered. Nothing could be further from the truth. Some things take time!
I’ll repeat that. Some things take time! We live in an era of short attention spans, abrupt demeanors and distracted thinking. Most people are so busy saying what they want to say, they seldom hear or give any deliberation to what you’ve just told them. That’s assuming they let you finish what you’re telling them before cutting you off with, ”We’ve already tried that.”
In most cases they are certain they know what you are going to say before you say it. Interrupting one another has become the ”accepted” method of making your point. Say it fast. Say it loud. Don’t listen to the one you’re trying to communicate with.
This absence of considered and considerate dialog may be the largest single cause of failed communication in America today. Know-it-alls who prefer sound bites to thoughtful discourse do enormous harm. Those who would rather eat from a dumpster than say they took your advice on a matter are commonplace.
Through this fog of noise people want answers. Yet, they are too busy offering their opinions to hear anything of value. Confrontation is preferred over comaraderie. A feeling of superiority is more important to these people than a sense of collaboration.
What is one to do? Stay the course. Don’t give in. The oldest wisdom we have is far better than the sound-bite thinking of today’s MTV generation. The ability to think and think critically is a lost art. The ability to organize thoughts in a meaningful way is nearly lost. Articulating well-reasoned thoughts is also almost lost.
Keep trying. These things are valuable. They will return to favor. They’ve never lost favor with those who matter. Like ”pearls before swine” these skills are mocked by those who want the ”instant pudding” of quick solutions. As Deming said, ”there is no instant pudding.” Answers aren’t always quick and easy.
In the turmoil at the Times, there’s a broader implication: organizations are becoming harder to run. The phone, and email, have given managers the illusion that they can control far-flung empires. But modern communications, and the growth of weblogs and web bulletin boards in particular, have also given power to bitter employees. Think of it as the proliferation of weapons to organizational terrorists.
There’s opportunity in this message. The opposite of ”organizational terrorism” would appear to be ”joy in work.” Now we’re faced with a choice of approaches. Do we set about to rid work places of the causes of organizational terrorism, or do we set about to create work places where people can find joy in their work?
Monetary rewards are a way out for managers who do not understand how to manage intrinsic motivation. When joy in work becomes secondary to getting good ratings, employees are ruled by external forces and must act to protect what they have and avoid punishment.
Rick Klau points to a lawyer who has rebuilt his web site using Movable Type. This furthers the notion that Movable Type can truly serve the content management requirements for a web site – not just a weblog.
Genealogy has never been my thing, but there’s some possibility that three family names will die with me. So, I’ve started digging a bit.
I had a grandfather who left the South in the 1920’s, spent a few years in Texas and wound up in Seattle and started a second family there. No one has done much about understanding what became of him or that family. For those reasons and more I’ve begun to snoop around a bit.
In doing so, I’ve found an excellent tool for recording the information. By no means have I made an exhaustive study of this class of software, but if you want to download something that just simply works, take a look at Legacy 4.0 from Millenia Corporation. I think you’ll like it. The standard version can be downloaded for free and the Deluxe Edition is only $19.95.
You won’t spend time doing your genealogy research, then have to spend time learning a piece of software to capture the data.
Today is the day that Luther Vandross’s new CD goes on sale. It’s titled Dance With My Father. If you visit his site, the title track should begin playing. It’s a moving song, and Shirley’s suggestion that it ”tugs at the heartstrings” is right on target.
Vandross remains in critical condition after suffering a stroke on April 16. [from Brainstorms and Raves]
Rob is right when he says that we only need one good 3-pane RSS reader. Lately, I’ve been using SharpReader and upgraded today to version 0.9.1. I like the product. It’s .NET based and has run well so far.
I’ve been keeping my eye on FeedDemon and the reviews that have started appearing. FeedDemon will carry a price. As of right now SharpReader is free. If you haven’t tried one of these tools, you’ll be amazed when you do.
between temperament types and aesthetic preferences, a study is under way. Done by Industrial Design student, Erich Stein, the study could be rather revealing. I know some ornery people that have the aesthetic preferences of swine. I know some fanciful people with the taste of monks. What’s the connection?
I haven’t been quick to add lots of foxtails and mudflaps to this weblog.
There are features I wish for, but I haven’t really gone looking for ways to get those features or solve problems that I face on a daily basis with posting entries here. Today, I stumbled across (read in the RSS aggregator) Rick Klau’s mention of MT-Textile.
Explained Rick’s way, it sounds as if it’s time to learn more about Movable Type and plugins.
I’ve got a gripe about WinZip 8.1 or 9.0, take your pick. Upon downloading a file with the extension *.zip, you can click on the file and, (if you’re computer is set up for 1-click operations in Windows) you’ll get what you think is a list of the unzipped files.
In reality, you’re looking at something else. First, any folder structure that was supposed to be in the zipped archive is not shown in this pseudo-unzipped view. Second, any attempt to copy that list of files to a folder and run an executable is very likely to fail.
This has burned me in an attempt to download and try out Mozilla Firebird, and it burned me in an attempt to download the upgrade files for Movable Type 2.64.
You must consciously and carefully point to the *.zip file, right click on it and ’extract’ it to a specified location. Only then will you get what you are really seeking.
Robyn points to a Chris Pirillo/Lockergnome piece about building traffic for weblogs. Then, she points to another where a high-traffic blog is going back to the well for more money; that’s money out of the goodness of our hearts!
But realize this: if your worldview requires all sorts of secret kingdoms, unknowable motives, and unseen forces moving behind the veil of normal human experience, then you have taken yourself from the realm of a free citizen responsible for his own destiny and that of his nation, to a frightened caveman quivering in fear of distant Thunder Gods: immobilized, helpless and in a state of abject surrender. You have thrown away the hard work of millions and millions of your fellow human beings who have worked and studied their entire lives to raise you from those very depths.
that a bubble exists in certain housing markets. In fact, some would go so far as to say that the entire residential real estate market is a bubble just waiting for the first pin-prick of bad news.
Reality is somewhere in between. I think you have to be careful about the magnitude of the bubble by market and by specific piece of property. You might have a $800,000 property in one market that is over-valued by $100,000. In another market, you have examples like this 2,200 square foot loft that currently commands a $3.5 million offer.
He selected Apple’s access points so that the Wireless Distribution System could be used to enable multiple access points on the same network. How does this differ from simply assigning the same WEP code to all of the access points in the house?
As I read the interview, it dawned on me that there ought to be a tool that ”forces” me to write valid XHTML-Strict or Transitional markup. I’d tell the tool at the start of a new page that XHTML-Strict is what I was going for. Then, using some variation of auto-correct technology, the tool should alert me when I’m about to invalidate the page.
Does NoteTab Pro do this? Can I tell it that I’m producing an XHTML-Transitional page and have it limit my menu of tags to only those that ”fit?” I don’t know, but I intend to find out.
Today I heard an expository sermon that illuminated this verse of scripture:
But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. John 16:13 New International Version
For way too many years I thought this pertained only to matters of the Bible. Reading more carefully one can see that it says ”all” truth. I’ll never again study or attempt to understand any endeavor or field of interest without first seeking the enabling help of the third member of the Trinity.
As is so often the case, The Message makes the words come to life:
But when the Friend comes, the Spirit of the Truth, he will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is. He won’t draw attention to himself, but will make sense out of what is about to happen and, indeed, out of all that I have done and said. John 16:13 The Message
Today was what’s known as Pentecost Sunday. It’s the first Sabbath after a week of weeks (7×7=49) or the fiftieth day. The word is actually from the Greek language and means fiftieth. The Holy Spirit is our helper, our enabler and our personal assistant for gaining understanding and knowledge. When we realize this, we gain a great ability to understand.
Also from the Greek language and a tactic in Greek warfare where men fought in pairs is the word ”paraclete.” Another way to think of our helper!
I was fortunate to go to high school at a time when we did great junior/senior plays. In those years, musicals were still popular. Music within the context of a play or movie has enormous power to stir us.
Sometimes the lyrics cross over to just the mood or context that we need in spite of how they pertain to the plot of the play. Here’s a great example:
You’ll Never Walk Alone
by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein
When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don’t be afraid of the dark.
At the end of a storm is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark.
Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain,
Tho’ your dreams be tossed and blown.
Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart
And you’ll never walk alone,
You’ll never walk alone.
Everybody likes regular attention. We all want recognition for our work. Some folks need a bit more than others.
Find someone you respect and make sure they know they’re appreciated. Were all of us to receive high praise for the jobs we do, workplaces would improve dramatically and quickly.
Unzip the files to a folder like c:\program files\MozillaFirebird
Run the executable called MozillaFirebird.exe
That’s all there is to it
Wrong again! I’ve done this series of steps 6 times now. Each time I delete all prior work and files, do a fresh download and follow the recipe again. Absolutely nothing happens when I try to run MozillaFirebird.exe.
This is an example of why Microsoft is in no danger!
But in addition to push-to-talk, the Nextel Motorola phones have a JVM (Java Virtual Machine) that runs J2ME (Java 2 Platform Micro Edition) applications, which can be downloaded and upgraded over the wireless network. In many respects, leveraging Java on the client with J2EE app servers on the back end makes handsets equal in capability to handhelds. In fact, handsets are already encroaching on traditional handheld markets. For example, an application exists for remote IT systems management called IC2 from Inciscent. Engineers use PermitWorks to look up permit contracts in construction.
GM picked a cell phone supplier over a PDA supplier to automate a field-force. On the scale of a General Motors project, this could foretell how the battle between PDA’s and cellphones will end.
Bill Gates recently held his annual CEO Summit. He selects 100 CEO’s to attend a 2-day conference at Microsoft. InformationWeek did a pretty good job of covering the Summit.
This article has excerpts from Bill Gates’s discussion of how he uses email on a day-to-day basis. The full transcript of Gates’s remarks is here.
Then, there is this article about Jeff Raikes, a Group VP at Microsoft, meeting with a smaller group of the CEO’s to talk about how I.T. is and is not meeting needs in their businesses. One of the most telling remarks in this story concerns Raikes’s use of three tablet PC’s to manage his work. Some of these CEO’s are still wrestling with email as a productivity drain in their companies.
The June, 2003 issue of FSB magazine (that’s Fortune’s Small Business magazine) has an interesting cover story about George Foreman and his celebrity endorsement of the Salton grill.
Few products work exactly as advertised, designed or promoted. My own personal experience with the George Foreman grills has been great. It’s a guy’s appliance if ever there was one!
If Oracle’s Larry Ellison really believes there’s going to be a major consolidation of the technology industry, he’s clearly doing his part to make it happen.
Some say that youth, the MTV generation, Gen-X is the only relevant target market. All marketing, advertising, promotion and media selection should be directed there. Ask the drug companies and they’ll say, ”nonsense.”
They’ll tell you that the growth market is the now middle-aged baby boom generation. Still healthy and active, with plans to stay that way, the baby boomers have the resources to pursue all of the life-enriching techniques, tools, conveniences and medicines that are or will be available.
So, who has value? Ask some people and they’ll find fault just because someone is old. Others will come to an elderly person’s rescue.
Then, there are the obvious debates. Beyond the simple kindness we should extend to our fellow man regardless of age, condition, station in life, etc., these debates face us with a reality. Can the generations really co-exist?
Much advertising is directed to those who ”get” the quick sound-bite or the MTV video. Yet, we are told that the largest age bubble in our population’s history is about to move through the middle-aged years and into ages beyond 60. In fact there are those who believe we’ll have the highest percentage of the population between the ages of 50 and 75 in a matter of only a few years. They’ll largely be prosperous or completely without resources. With those extremes, the youngest adult age groups will not be the dominant market segment for most products. Customer service, marketing and promotion will have to span quite a range of capabilities to serve such a wide variety of age groups.
All of this brings us back to a non-commercial aspect of the picture. Why must we use race, age, gender, religion, status or some other superficial criterion on which to build our biases, prejudices and foundations for discrimination? Isn’t it time that we looked seriously at what it takes to live well together and value the strengths and capabilities of each group?
Most customers who move from dial-up access to cable modem or DSL modem access are elated – once the service is working. The only people who are happier are those who travel and have to use dial-up on the road after having fast access at the office and/or at home.
How fast is fast? Most DSL and cable connections for residences and small businesses are specified at around 1.5Mbps (that’s million bits per second). That’s roughly 25 times the speed of really good dial-up service.
They’re talking about running fiber to the home and providing 100Mbps service. That’s over 65 times faster than your DSL or cable connection. With speed like that, you can get a whole host of services that require too much bandwidth to be effective at 1.5Mbps.
In close proximity to this announcement has been a significant move in the stock price of RCN. The current annual report can be found here. The stock closed at $0.81 per share on May 1, 2003. Today it closed at $2.19.
For those keeping score at home, that means $10,000 invested on May 1 would be worth $27,037 today. [Full disclosure: I’ve owned RCN for quite some time and I still do.]
The bandwidth business is going to boom. I have no idea when. I have no clue as to what any of the specific companies might do or when. However, there are opportunities out there. Use your ”mad money” and place a few bets. You might get a pleasant surprise in ten or twenty years!
I saw something this week I had often wondered about, but never knew how it was done. It happened at McDonald’s. [Since this entry is categorized to go into the ”quality” category, please suspend your focus on quality food for a moment.]
McDonald’s was founded and improved on a premise of providing fast food. When a hamburger and french fries were the only menu items, fast food was pretty fast and usually an order was accurate. It didn’t hurt that the first people behind the counters were often the original franchise owners who had left other careers to take a ”flyer” on a McDonald’s franchise. These facts predate the million dollar fees now required.
As the franchisees matured and grew, quality slipped. Often the restaurants were dirty. More often a counter clerk wouldn’t even make eye contact. Driving through became its own special adventure.
This week I saw a ”quality team” in action at a McDonald’s. It was approaching the end of the breakfast menu and preparations for lunch. The team was working along side the regular employees of the business.
The big difference was the coaching that was going on. It was fantastic. I actually witnessed one of the guys telling another employee to head for the bathroom to get his uniform together. He was very specific about what needed to be fixed. Another wanted things cleaned up out front. It was done in less than a minute.
I saw another working with the ”drive-thru team” to make sure they had everything they needed as the menu rolled over from breakfast to lunch. Again, there were specifics. Measuring from the first tone of the system when a car pulled in to order, they wanted a 90-second finish. That meant take the order, get the food, get the money, greet the customer, present the food and have the transaction closed in 90 seconds or less.
>From there, each and every obstacle that might prevent a 90-second ”win” was evaluated and fixes were designed and put in place. They weren’t taking notes to research for some point in the future. They were fixing problems on the fly while the business was running at full speed.
Here’s the ultimate kicker. I watched a bunch of people having great fun. No one seemed ”over-managed.” Everyone was looking for ways to make it work. It was great to watch it all coming together.
The mere presence of the outsiders, who were there to understand the problems and fix them, was reason enough for the regulars to feel positive about what they were doing. I couldn’t help but wonder where those original franchise owners were. It should have been their jobs to put this kind of joy back in the work!
Yesterday was a travel day. Today is a day of catching up. There’s so much to do. Entries will be few and far between until this afternoon.
The good news is there’s a lot to talk about! In the meantime, you might want to take a look at this.
It meshes nicely with some of the thinking behind my ideas about the MTV-generation vs. the baby-boomers and what kinds of customer service will appeal to each. I have a McDonald’s story for you as well. More later.
Varied and often winding paths bring us to where we are in our lives. Christine wrote an interesting entry titled ”Newly Digital” on Sunday. Notice at the end of the piece where she mentions how it was inspired. Those are worth looking into as well.
In the next 48 to 72 hours, I want to cover several topics:
More on the search for significance in the 21st century
Customer service for the baby boom generation vs. the MTV generation
Movable Type topics like version 2.64, using MySQL and skinning the site
Bandwidth, wi-fi and some recent announcements concerning fiber to the curb
An interesting article I’ve recently read about alternative energy
to your regularly scheduled (and originally intended) programming. I’ve wrestled with myself and some folks who espoused some things in the name of faith recently. You’ve detected that here. I’m ready to get back to some of the things that have value to others. I’m not saying that this site won’t continue to be therapy for me from time to time, but we’ll make sure there’s more balance here.
Sincere appreciation to all those who sent comments or emails of support as you read recent entries! Your kindness prevents me from feeling sour or bitter as a result of passing through a rocky patch.
So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; For the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. James 1:19-20 King James Version
Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. James 1:19-20 The Message
is proof enough that I’ve got to find some way to learn HTML or XHTML more quickly. The entry still doesn’t look right. I’ve updated it about 30 or 40 times.
There simply has to be a way to lay out an entry in some sort of off-line manner, get it right and then post it ”permanently.”
In an effort to learn what it takes to be an effective web designer, I’ve been working through this list of resources. There are also several web sites that are useful for tutorials, quick references and examples.
Additionally, there are tools to learn. NoteTab Pro is one I’ve selected. I’m also using Globalscape’s CuteSITE Builder and CuteFTP products.
What I really wish to see is the toolkit of several leading web designers. What software have they selected? Why? What would a leading designer tell a novice to go buy?
Software?
Books?
Web sites for reference?
How to learn?
I’m considering adding TopStyle to the mix or replacing NoteTab Pro with TopStyle. I’m not sure but that they both belong in the toolkit.
Earlier this week I expressed my own dilemma about the open source software movement vs. the closed and proprietary (and costly) products available from major software companies. Within a matter of days, several things have helped crystallize for me where I think our clients should go with their I.T. planning. Here’s a list of the influencers:
Dave’s entry today points to Microsoft embedding the brower in the operating system
Brad Choate’s browser suggestion was much better, but sounds as if it was 180 degrees opposite of Microsoft’s thinking
Darkness comes late when you’re as far north as Seattle.
The breeze on the bow of the boat was fantastic. I’m glad the ferry is not part of my daily routine. I’m also glad the fog isn’t something I have to deal with as often as it rolls in here.
Great contrasts with the South, but not all of them are positive.
I asked God for strength, that I might achieve.
I was made weak, that I might learn to obey.
I asked for health, that I might do greater things.
I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.
I asked for riches, that I might be happy.
I was given poverty, that I might be wise.
I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men.
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life.
I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.
I got nothing that I asked for—but everything I had hoped for.
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.
I am, among all men, most richly blessed.
It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. Psalms 118:8 New American Standard Version
King David committed all manner of atrocity, faced numerous attempts on his life and suffered deep remorse and possibly depression. Yet, he was used in mighty ways and found favor with God.
The most arrogant thought I’ve ever had is this, ”I don’t think anyone will ever match the lengths I’ve gone to by doing something generous, special, kind or loving for me.” Wow. How ugly does that sound?
A thought like this overwhelms me in moments of despair; times when hope appears to be gone. It’s a horrible thing to think or say, but it captures the thoughts I have about times when I’ve attempted to do something for someone else, and have seen them not only ignore the effort, but demean it. I also have trouble seeing that anyone would go above and beyond for me the way I have attempted to for others. Whether it’s surprises out of the clear blue, or things that are lavish in their sheer scale, I wish I could experience first hand what I know I’ve done for or given to others. What a terribly selfish, self-centered and dark thing to say!
I long for a time in my life when I can put such thoughts behind me for good.
Understand that this isn’t about giving something in order to get something in return. That’s not it at all. Instead, it’s about having any other person seeing me in need and reaching out as I have to others. Maybe it’s a cry for attention; maybe it’s a plea for sympathy. Actually, it’s probably just pathetic.
When I think of being born in the greatest country in the world against enormous odds that I could have been born in poverty in Bangladesh, I have to see myself as blessed. Yet, when the immediate desires, needs, wishes and dreams cannot be achieved, I sink.
My prayer tonight is for God’s hand on my life and His guidance of the tiniest details of my existence. I pray that He’ll lift thoughts such as these from me and replace them with the thoughts of His Kingdom and the purpose I should pursue as one of His followers.
In memory everything seems to happen to music. Tennessee Williams
Women and elephants never forget. Dorothy Parker
What beastly incidents our memories insist on cherishing – the ugly and the disgusting – the beautiful things we have to keep diaries to remember. Eugene O’Neill
Cherish is the word I use to describe
All the feeling that I have
Hiding here for you inside
You don’t know how many times
I’ve wished that I had told you
You don’t know how many times
I’ve wished that I could hold you
You don’t know how many times
I’ve wished that I could mold you
Into someone who could cherish me
As much as I cherish you
Perish is the word that more than applies
To the hope in my heart each time I realize
That I am not gonna be the one
To share your dreams
That I am not gonna be the one
To share your schemes
That I am not gonna be the one
To share what seems
To be the life that you could cherish
As much as I do yours
Oh I’m beginning to think
That man has never found
The words that could make you want me
That have the right amount of letters,
Just the right sound
That could make you hear,
Make you see
That you are drivin’ me
Out of my mind
Oh I could say I need you
But then you’d realize
That I want you
Just like a thousand other guys
Who’d say they loved you
With all the rest of their lies
When all they wanted was
To touch your face, your hands
And gaze into your eyes
Cherish is the word I use to describe
All the feeling that I have
Hiding here for you inside
You don’t know how many times
I’ve wished that I had told you
You don’t know how many times
I’ve wished that I could hold you
You don’t know how many times
I’ve wished that I could mold you
Into someone who could cherish me
As much as I cherish you
Unfortunately, the worst enemy of Christianity is often the well-meaning Christian who has a distorted or partial view of God’s instructions to us. Elevating some portion of those instructions (i.e. one verse) over others, these people manage to do great harm to themselves and those they touch. When called on this selective participation in their faith, they respond, ”We are, after all, only human!”
One of my favorite books of the Bible is Nehemiah. Nehemiah 9:17 says this:
”They refused to listen, And did not remember Your wondrous deeds which You had performed among them; So they became stubborn and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But You are a God of forgiveness, Gracious and compassionate, Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness; And You did not forsake them. Nehemiah 9:17 New American Standard Version
>From the prodigal son to the unmerciful slave in Matthew 18:21-35, we see God’s definition of forgiveness. It’s so different from what many Christians practice. We don’t dare allow another to appear to have ”the upper hand” or to wrong us without lasting retribution.
The notion of ”wiping the slate clean” simply outstrips our limited minds. Our losses are enormous, and they mount with each failure to fully forgive. Yet, through it all, we must continue to love. Each of us has fatal flaws. Fortunately, we have God’s mercy shielding us from the swift justice we often deserve.
This morning’s mention of John Rosemond’s article brings another quote to mind:
Too many American children today are reaching full size during toddlerhood, the result of child-centered families, enabling parents, a lack of persuasive discipline and an emphasis on the child’s feelings rather than his or her behavior. This is not ADHD, but TIP, Toddlerhood in Perpetuity.
To avoid losing this article as archive links expire, I’m quoting the whole thing here:
John Rosemond: ADHD is price we pay for bad parenting
A fellow recently approached me at a speaking engagement and asked if it was true, as he had heard, that I ”don’t believe” in ADHD.
My reply: I absolutely believe that a significant percentage of children in America exhibit the symptoms of attention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder. Are these behaviors problematic? Yes. Are these behaviors caused by a gene or biological condition? I don’t believe that they are, nor have I seen proof of that hypothesis.
”So you think ADHD is caused by improper parenting?”
Yes, but I’m not blaming individual parents. Just as a culture can embrace a dysfunctional political system, a culture can embrace a dysfunctional parenting philosophy. America did exactly that in the 1960s and ’70s. You can’t be blamed for thinking that the way 98 percent of your neighbors are raising their kids is the right way to raise kids.”
I am convinced – and I am definitely in the minority, but I am not alone – that ADHD is one of many prices we are paying for adopting, 30 to 40 years ago, a ”psychological” approach to child rearing, an approach that has absolutely nothing in common with the child rearing practiced before that time.
The simple fact is that you cannot raise children two entirely different ways and arrive at the same outcome. In the 1950s and before, parents and teachers did not have the sorts of problems with children that parents and teachers are having today.
Although some researchers are convinced that a biological smoking gun will eventually be found, the fact remains that one has not been found; its existence is speculative.
Pediatrician and author William Carey, who wrote ”Understanding Your Child’s Temperament” in 1997, says, ”The assumption that ADHD symptoms arise from cerebral malfunction has not been supported even after extensive investigations” and ”No consistent structural, functional or chemical neurological marker is found in children with the ADHD diagnosis as currently formulated.” Carey is one of many investigators who have arrived at this conclusion.
”So, what do you think causes ADHD, John?”
The symptoms describe a child who is impulsive, unfocused, unwilling to apply himself to a task, inattentive, distractible, cannot wait his/her turn, and intrusive. That describes a typical toddler, a ”terrible two.”
The fact is, nearly every toddler ”has” attention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder. Furthermore, and again according to published diagnostic criteria, nearly every toddler ”has” oppositional defiant disorder and bipolar disorder of childhood.
The typical toddler is unfocused, inattentive and impulsive – attention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder. He screams ”no!” when his parents tell him to pick up a toy (oppositional defiant disorder) or stop throwing his food. He flies into rages during which he hits, then bites and screams like someone possessed of demons (bipolar disorder of childhood).
Can you imagine the carnage that would transpire if, as is the case in the animal kingdom, human children reached full size within 2 years? Battered parent syndrome is not a pretty picture.
The pertinent question: Do the child’s parents, with a combination of powerful love and powerful discipline (not harsh, mind you, but full of power), ”cure” this anti-social state before the child’s third birthday? Do they turn him into a pro-social human being? Or do they – out of ignorance, fear, or downright laziness – fail to properly discharge their responsibility to the child and the rest of us?
Too many American children today are reaching full size during toddlerhood, the result of child-centered families, enabling parents, a lack of persuasive discipline and an emphasis on the child’s feelings rather than his or her behavior. This is not ADHD, but TIP, Toddlerhood in Perpetuity. And indeed, it is carnage.
John Rosemond is a family psychologist. Questions of general interest can be sent to him at Affirmative Parenting, 9247 N. Meridian, Indianapolis, IN 46260
and to his Web site: www.rosemond.com.
Every day I’m confronted with something that tempts me to become an outspoken advocate for the open source side of technology. That’s the place where StarOffice supplants Microsoft Office; where Linux supplants whatever the latest flavor of Windows might be; where Opera (or others) supplants Internet Explorer.
It’s also the place where ”download costs” supplant $299 or $399 or $499 in the case of Microsoft’s prices. Obviously, either of these licensing arrangements will be followed by the costs associated with ”applying” the products – support, advice, help, etc.
What holds me back? It’s the nagging sense that Microsoft has won and a person in I.T. will soon be able to make a living only by supporting Microsoft products – not open source.
For us to talk, argue, try out ideas, tear down and build up thoughts, assimilate and appropriate concepts – heck, just to be together in public – we have to grant all sorts of leeway. That’s how ideas breed, how cultures get built. If any public space needs plenty of light, air, and room to play, it’s the marketplace of ideas.
I know lawyers who can’t spell computer, much less find the power switch. I know lawyers who think they know a lot about computers, the Internet, the terminology, etc. I know one lawyer who ”gets it.”
Unfortunately, all of these lawyers think they know what’s best for society and those of us who are ”ordinary people.”
[Some weblogs don’t have RSS feeds. In all of my focus on RSS and readers, I’ve fallen behind in reading weblogs that haven’t been picked up in the news aggregator.]
Just as a culture can embrace a dysfunctional political system, a culture can embrace a dysfunctional parenting philosophy. America did exactly that in the 1960s and ’70s. You can’t be blamed for thinking that the way 98 percent of your neighbors are raising their kids is the right way to raise kids.”
Novell came out yesterday and said it didn’t think that SCO owned the patents and copyrights to Unix. Apparently, there’s some confusion (in the minds at one of the parties) about this.
Were it not for the talent, time and attention provided by Stacy of Sekimori Designs, I wouldn’t have a Movable Type weblog. Since starting up with a new logo, new templates and a new host last October, I’ve tried to learn more. The test shows I’m a slow learner!
Yellow Belt
Your knowledge is gaining. You have now taken the first step on a long and winding road towards enlightenment. Stay focused.
Rogers Cadenhead is writing a book about Radio from Userland Software. (I still don’t know whether the product is called Radio or Radio Userland.) On Sunday, Rogers mentioned some discouragement on the part of the “hackers” who use Radio.
The more I use weblog software, the more I like the concepts behind Radio. There are a couple of those concepts that – while I like them very much – I worry may ultimately impact the scalability of the package. (With a lot of entries, the concept of “upstreaming” seems to bog down. Radio’s got something going on behind the scenes all the time on my computer!)
Far be it from me to assess the product from anything other than a non-programming user’s perspective. I learned a lot using the product. After many months of using it, I could tell when it (inexplicably) did something it wasn’t supposed to do.
I’m hopeful that Rogers’s book along with some really focused improvements to the product will keep it alive. I’d like to think that for $40 any small business could own and use a commercially-capable content management system. That’s exactly what Radio could become, because there don’t appear to be pricing surcharges or limitations on it when it is applied to a profit-making venture.
Vonage would only provide around 1000 minutes of talk time per month; that’s over 17 hours per month. The catch is this – there is no catch. Actually, Vonage will provide you all the talk time you want for $39.99 per month. You also get to pick which area code your Vonage number is in.
You’re an I.T. expert with deep experience in solving real business process problems for companies. Out of the blue you’re faced with a small company that has 9 salespeople. Your assignment is to determine the ”best sales force automation” solution for those 9 sales people, the sales manager and the owner of the company.
Ideally:
Sales people would have notebook computers
The sales manager could see the top 10 or 20 ”deals” that are most likely to close at any given time
No sales person could walk away with your entire customer list (even) with a ”lost” notebook PC
New prospects could be entered and assigned to a sales person so that s/he picks them up during the next ”synch” of the notebook
Adding a given site to the appropriate group or category in your RSS subscriptions
Adding a given site to the appropriate category or blogroll
Properly done, we get to specify the name of the weblog, the name of the person, which blogroll it belongs in, which RSS feed folder or group it belongs in and an opportunity to display all or part of any of this information in the blogroll and the RSS subscription list.
I’m going to start with blogrolling.com’s ”pop-up” which allows the quick addition of a weblog to a blogroll. After logging in, here are the fields it calls for:
Choose a blogroll
Title
Description
Target
Priority
I’d make a ”simple modification” to this list by adding another column with the same fields for RSS subscriptions. In other words, I could specify whether I’m tracking RSS subscriptions by name or by title of weblog. I could group them into different sets of RSS feeds based upon interest, subject or whatever. I could prioritize or sequence them within the group.
I wouldn’t require that the groupings I have for blogrolls be the same as those for RSS feeds, though they might be. Nor would I require that blogrolls and RSS feeds be listed the same way – by either title or name. These could be different.
This is an important enhancement to the field of weblogging and requires that the subscription list be maintained independently of the particular feed reader which is chosen.
Many of the weblogs I read are written by people who write, speak and consult (for a living) in the technology field. Their weblogs are their calling cards. While not directly promoting the fees they receive for writing, speaking or consulting, the weblog is their primary tool for promoting their views.
Shirley Kaiser’s weblog was denied entry into a portal based upon someone’s conclusion that her link to her ”commercial site” made the weblog ineligible.
As tools such as Movable Type become more adept at being content management systems for any website need, it seems the definition of ”commercial” may need some work.
I broke the middle finger of my right hand this afternoon, and I’m gently feeling my way around a keyboard. Writing on paper is quite the bigger challenge.
We’ll see how this goes for a few entries tomorrow before deciding whether or not typing must stop for a while.
As for tonight – I’m done! Oh, the wonders of pain killers.
Lay a whisper on my pillow,
Leave the winter on the ground.
I wake up lonely,
There’s air of silence in the bedroom
And all around.
Touch me now,
I close my eyes and dream away.
It must have been love
But it’s over now.
It must have been good
But I lost it somehow.
It must have been love
But it’s over now.
>From the moment we touched
’Til the time had run out.
Make-believing we’re together,
That I’m sheltered by your heart.
But in and outside
I’ve turned to water
Like a teardrop in your palm.
And it’s a hard Christmas day,
I dream away.
It must have been love but it’s over now,
It was all that I wanted,
Now I’m living without.
It must have been love
But it’s over now,
It’s where the water flows,
It’s where the wind blows.
I’ve been using SharpReader for just over a week now. Luke Hutteman is the developer behind SharpReader. It’s one of the three-panel designs that is similar to what you see if you have the preview panel turned on in Outlook. Down the left-hand column, I see a list of RSS feeds that I’m subscribed to. At the top in the middle is a list of the specific entries for the feed that I’m currently looking at – bolded if unread, normal text if read.
The main panel in the middle and at the bottom shows either the specific entry I’m reading or the entire weblog I’m looking at. Single-clicking or double-clicking determines which of these is true.
This morning I subscribed to the RSS feed from weblogs.com. Doing so allows me to page through dozens of recently-updated sites very quickly. It’s not particularly useful for reading weblogs, but it’s a good way to discover new weblogs.
My intent is to pick one of these and stick with it. FeedDemon may be first in the running even though I haven’t seen it. The reasons are:
I want to learn CSS and TopStyle may be the key to that
FeedDemon will be supported by Bradsoft as is TopStyle
A commercially viable solution appeals to me more than a freeware/shareware solution where support and innovation might be more likely to lag or cease
Part of the decision between these four will be made after seeing what Movable Type Pro and/or TypePad do with the whole notion of ”single-click” posting from RSS feeds, if anything. Will either or both of those packages move toward an integrated RSS reader and posting capability?
Joe looks at the issues of software development, support and innovation through the eyes of an unbiased (though, admittedly interested) party. He comes to excellent conclusions in my view.
Add to his thoughts those associated with the financial backing of the companies behind certain software packages, and you come to the conclusion that the better-financed company may be the one to support over the long haul.
The problem with private companies is determining which is better-financed.
Last year when I began this weblog there was a lot of discussion of ”validation.” At the time I didn’t understand the syntax of ”a href,” much less that there were three variations of HTML and something called XHTML.
However, it stuck in my mind, and validation is something I’d like to move toward with this weblog. RSS validation was completed last week.
Cannot touch, cannot hold
Cannot be together
Cannot love, cannot kiss,
Cannot have each other
Must be strong, and we must let go
Cannot say what our hearts must know
How can I not love you?
What do I tell my heart?
When do I not want you here in my arms?
How does one waltz away from all of the memories?
How do I not miss you when you are gone?
Cannot dream, Cannot share,
Sweet and tender moments
Cannot feel how we feel,
Must pretend it’s over
Must be brave, and we must go on
Must not say what we’ve known all along
How can I not love you?
What do I tell my heart?
When do I not want you here in my arms?
How does one waltz away from all of the memories?
How do I not miss you when you are gone?
How can I not love you?
Must be brave, and we must be strong
Cannot say what we’ve known all along
How can I not love you?
What do I tell my heart?
When do I not want you here in my arms?
How does one waltz away from all of the memories?
How do I not miss you when you are gone?
How can I not love you when you are gone?
The only thing better than a motion picture set against an epic scale is one that is of epic proportions and is accompanied by music that perfectly fits the emotions evoked by the film.
A Yale graduate, Jodie Foster was outstanding in Anna and the King. If you haven’t seen it, get the DVD or video tape soon! It’s a stirring story set against and absolutely beautiful backdrop.
Warren Buffett wrote an op/ed piece for the Washington post this week. Andrew Tobias has reprinted the entire article.
As with all of the Mr. Buffett’s writing, this provides a valuable education. Mr. Buffett’s piece also lacks the strident, whineytone that Tobias has used in his own attempts to educate us.
>From May 29 to June 4 I’ll be in the Seattle area. This morning I found a site called Seablogs – A Seattle weblog portal. There’s a map with listed weblogs pinpointed.
It sounds as if there have been a couple of recent Seattle ”meet ups,” but I’d be willing to meet for dinner if any of the area bloggers were interested.
Little things help a lot after a day like today. Joe Jenett helped me solve a problem I was having understanding how to insert a table in a Movable Type entry. I was using a table for what it was originally intended – data display – and not for layout assistance. However, the combination of a CSS-based weblog edited with Movable Type and my feeble knowledge of HTML created a problem. Problem now solved.
Then, on a whim and with some daring, I decided to follow these instructions to create Valid RSS feeds for this site. Now the index.xml feed is a validRSS 2.0 feed and the index.rdf feed is a valid RSS 1.0 feed.
Here’s a list of the conferences that I’ve either been invited to attend or have plans to attend for the balance of the year. There are simply too many. It’s decision time!
I’m trying to do something with this weblog that has me stumped. I want to create a 4-column table of data as part of an entry with an introductory paragraph before the table and a closing paragraph following the table. The final entry might look a bit like this:
This might be the introductory paragraph followed by a table that has four columns:
Heading 1 Heading 2 Heading 3 Heading 4
(table of data)
Closing paragraph.
I’ve been looking at all kinds of HTML references and I can’t make it work. The table makes my weblog behave as if the next entry should be part of a fifth column in the 4-column table. In other words, everything goes haywire. It’s almost as if the table becomes an image and text from the next entry or the footer of this entry is trying to wrap around it.
I’ve checked for closed table tags, table widths, etc., but can’t find the problem.
You just thought you wanted to understand some more about RDF and RSS feeds. Here’s the full fire hose treatment from the guy who owns the rdf.net domain name. Thanks for the link, Dave.
Following on the last entry, Six Apart has put out some more information about just how easy it’s going to be to start a weblog (with no know-how). I encourage you to sign up for the announcement emails and consider jumping on this bandwagon from the get-go!
There’s an interesting article making the rounds. It’s titled What If You Built a Blog and No One Came? I read about it at Shirley Kaiser’s (fantastic) weblog called Brainstorms and Raves. She amplifies and enhances information from the article and offers specific tips for attracting more readership to your weblog.
If you have the urge to write, don’t let an absence of readers deter you! Get started, enjoy the experience and learn a new skill. You just might discover side benefits to your effort.
Kevin hits the nail on the head. This is how it ought to be in my view.
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. Romans 12:2 King James Version
In the comments to one of my earlier entries are terriffic explanations and answers to some of my questions. First, Dave Meehan provides a way to learn more about RSS 2.0.
and go read the cover story – The New Gender Gap – from the latest (i.e. May 26, 2003) issue of Business Week. Maybe this link will work for you, but you might have to have a subscription. If the link won’t work, go buy a copy or get to the library.
Whether you have kids or not; whether you have pro- or anti-feminist leanings; whether you’ve ever sensed the gender-shift that is taking place in our society or not, this article is for you.
It may be time for Halley to write an alpha-female series, because the article will have you believe the alpha-male is dead!
Here’s a clip from Business Week:
The female lock on power at Lawrence is emblematic of a stunning gender reversal in American education. From kindergarten to graduate school, boys are fast becoming the second sex. ”Girls are on a tear through the educational system,” says Thomas G. Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education in Washington. ”In the past 30 years, nearly every inch of educational progress has gone to them.”
You’ve come so far. From a short, chubby-legged 4-year old to ”Approaching Center,” you have grown up in the studio. Among the new class of tall dancers, you show the grace, the peace and the uplifting love that is ballet. Your performances take people to the higher thoughts – the better things of life.
While the dancer has grown, a beautiful young woman has grown as well. Your faith and the care and concern you show for others is a light to the rest of us. Through a childhood that had a big sister calling you ”chubs,” and another big sister giggling, you stayed focused and true to a calling that few people ever hear.
You heard it at age 5. Few ever know the joy of such a fit between desire, ability and opportunity.
Every time you take the stage, I’m convinced I’ll see something that hasn’t been seen before. There’s expressiveness, entertainment and joy in what you give to all who see you. Those gifts are immeasurable in their ongoing influence. Whether it’s a 4-year old dreaming or a 38-year old mom who needed a break, they find it in what you give!
No Dad could be prouder. You are an amazing woman with a focus and a resolve that is so rare in life. God has huge plans for you and we all will share in the joy of discovering and realizing those plans.
If you (and the other reader of this site) have been watching for any length of time at all, you’ve seen numerous links to Po Bronson’s book, What Should I Do With My Life? Since its first mention here in December, it has steadily climbed all the major bestseller lists.
Some things simply bear repeating.
After reading about Dan Miller’s 61-year old client, I recalled a chapter titled The Once-Angry Minister in Bronson’s book. It’s about a lawyer-turned-minister and it is so fitting:
What are we to do with this enhanced story of ourselves? Can what-we-do really be in alignment that deeply with who-we-are? I think it can, if we let ”I’m going to be truer to myself” be the principle that drives our decisions every time we come to a crossroads. Through trial and error, we are pushed to greater recognition about what we really need. The Big Bold Step turns out to be only the first step.
Through the past fifteen years of my career, this notion of alignment has been prevalent. Most often it’s the alignment of activities in a business to achieve a certain end. However, more often than not, it’s also about what the business is doing to really provide the intrinsic rewards that the owner(s) thought s/he might get when they started or bought the business.
It takes an outsider to both see and ask the kinds of questions that haven’t been getting answered for too long. Whether the questions are asked of an individual as s/he focuses on life or whether they are asked of a management team in a small, closely-held company, the goal is the same. ”Please help us find the meaning and significance in what we’re doing or help us get to things that do provide meaning and significance.”
This site is supposed to be about getting out of the rat race and finding meaning and significance in all that you do. For the past few weeks, I’ve been distracted by my own learning curves in some technical areas as well as a few thousand other fires.
Today, we’ll face reality once more.
The cold, hard dash of reality that too many people are facing is summed up in the first article from Dan Miller’s weekly newsletter:
1. CRUSHED SPIRIT
This week I saw a 61 yr-old gentleman who lost his job back in October. When a long period of time has passed without a job I always suspect more life issues to be lurking in the sidelines. Yes, his wife left him four months ago, his daughter (”the joy of my life”) got married and moved away five months ago, his investments are now worth less than half what they were 3 years ago, he had worked for the same company for 36 years and now they let him go with a small severance package, he’s unconnected at his church and feels ”rejected on all sides.” He made the last mortgage payment three weeks ago on his dream house that now must be sold to settle the divorce and he’ll likely move into an apartment in town.
Where do we go from here? Proverbs 18:14 tells us ”A man’s spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?” Or in the Living Bible ”what hope is left?”
Each area of our lives requires that we are making deposits of success. Tiny withdrawals with no deposits will lead to bankruptcy in relationships, physically, spiritually, and socially as well as in jobs and finances. I know that in crisis the area of most pain gets most of our attention. But often it is by making extra deposits in other areas that a person can springboard back to success in even the most critical ones.
My advice: Set aside time for vigorous physical exercise. Walk 3 miles – the feeling will help cleanse and stimulate creativity. Seek out a Godly mentor. Much of the success of AA has been in having another person to call in the lowest times. Read the Bible and other inspirational material at least 2 hours daily. Volunteer for a worthy cause. Helping someone else in need is a great way to ease the inward pain. Get a job – even if it’s not your dream job or a great career move. Deliver pizzas or work in the garden department at Home Depot – to get moving in a positive direction while you continue to build for
long term success.
Unfortunately, some losses are irretrievable and some pain is debilitating. If you recognize too many withdrawals in your life, take drastic measures to stop the hemorrhaging – today!
After cheering for Robyn this morning, I noticed this question, ”Does it encourage stealing or is it just poorly judged use of sarcasm?”
Trust me, were it somebody’s musical work, we’d have people throwing around RIAA and DRM and every other acronym to debate this concept of stealing. Copying somebody’s templates is theft absent any permission to do so.
Melissa makes it pretty clear that when the section of the article is titled this way, it’s theft – not poorly judged use of sarcasm! It’s also not right to say, ”Chill out, it’s just research,” in some weak attempt at humor about encouraging the theft!
The real essence of this entire debate is, how will creative people get paid?
even when said tongue-in-cheek. Robyn’s points are dead on the money. It’s great to have a ”free-wheeling” cable TV show, but to encourage theft is way outside the bounds.
”If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon.” George Aiken [Quotes of the Day]
I thought the Unix operating system came out of Bell Labs back in the 1960’s or 1970’s. I thought dozens of startup companies in the field of multi-user, small business computer systems were built around the Motorola 68000 processor chip and the Unix operating system in the 1980’s. (e.g. Fortune Systems, Wicat, etc.)
Somewhere along the way Novell bought Unix from AT&T and then sold it to SCO. That’s where I lost track of Unix.
The reason I did is because Linus Torvalds invented Linux. I thought it was a new, independent operating system. Now, interviewed by VAR Business, the head of SCO says this:
VB: Is there anyway to get a real Linux version from your perspective without violating SCO IP?
McBride: Based on the understandings we have right now, we don’t see how.
Does this mean that Linus Torvalds copied Unix, named it something else and stuck his name on it? Linux, after all, is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
New broadband numbers are in, and they give some mixed signals.
First, the good news. Last week, Leichtman Research Group put out numbers showing the first quarter was the fastest ever for broadband sign-ups, with 1.9 million added, putting the total at about 19 million. Earlier this month, phone giant Verizon Communications Inc. cut rates on its high-speed plans, which steps up price competition and could accelerate the pace of broadband sign-ups. By the end of the year, more than 20 million U.S. households, or around 20%, are expected to have a broadband connection, creating new markets for providers of broadband services.
But there are clouds darkening this sunny picture. Pew Internet & American Life Project released results of a survey early Monday that indicate many consumers that continue to use slower, dial-up connections aren’t terribly eager to move to broadband: About 57% of dial-up users polled told Pew they had no interest in upgrading to a faster home connection. Other numbers indicated that the percentage of long-term dial-up users interested in a broadband upgrade had shrunk since last year. [Wall Street Journal]
After all the wrestling with RSS readers and RSS feeds, I’ve discovered a couple of very fundamental gaps in my understanding. First, I don’t really know the difference between an XML feed and a RDF feed.
Second, I don’t fully understand why there are so many varieties of file names associated with RSS feeds. My own RSS reader lists literally dozens of file names that are all valid RSS feeds. Here’s a sample:
index.rdf
rss.xml
index.xml
index.rss
”anyname”.xml
There were also *.cgi files, *.php files and others. What makes for a valid RSS feed?
Third, I’m clueless about how to modify existing feeds to make them RSS 2.0 compliant. In fact, I don’t know how to add a RSS 2.0 feed from scratch.
Lots more to learn! Starting resources for digging into this are here and here. Though it may be outside their focus, I’m hopeful that Movable Type Pro might address some of the notions I’ve had about blogrolls and RSS subscriptions, although these wishes may remain outside the functionality of weblog tools.
Both of the techniques that Robyn suggested work well. I’ve used Movable Type’s native export feature to create a file that has all of my entries in it. It happened very quickly, but a check of the file proved all the entries are there.
Then, I used the technique for writing templates to an external file to make certain a copy of my templates always reside in a folder at my web host. For double redundancy’s (i.e. Murphy’s) sake, I also copied that folder to a local drive.
Now can we come up with something Creative Commons-like, basically some middle ground for people who want credit for their work, but don’t care to erect a tollbooth? [Scripting News]
Some ideas and opportunities don’t require a profit-motive to be meaningful!
I’ve used SharpReader as a collection point for the RSS feeds I had in my old copy of Radio, Amphetadesk and a brief trial run with Syndirella. Working with these feeds and getting accustomed to viewing ”the news” in a news reader once again, I’ve concluded the following:
There ought to be a way to keep RSS subscriptions and blogrolls in sync
There ought to be a way to keep track of an individual’s name as well as the weblog name in your news reader and your weblog
There ought to be a way to group or prioritize your blogroll and your RSS feeds independently of one another
Finally, care has to be exercised when reading and posting from a news reader. It’s easy to value speed of posting and quantity over quality of entries
”Disney found a way to rent DVDs without needing a system to get the discs back. Using self-destruction technology, Disney will begin ’renting’ DVDs this August that become unplayable after two days and do not have to be returned.” [Wired News]
There’s an interesting piece at Joi Ito’s site concerning what persona a journalist has when writing professionally. He contrasts that with bloggers who ”take criticisms more personally.”
That’s because most bloggers write without adopting one of the professional personas that Ito mentions.
Having saturated yourself in Jayson Blair’s quagmire at the New York Times this week, take a look at a story that will give you some insight into just what went on there. [The Morning News]
I am following a very transparent formula. I blog about what excites me and if it is possible for me to invest in it, I do. [Joi Ito]
This makes no sense:
When berblogger Joi Ito spent weeks lauding the creators of Movable Type blogging software, and then invested money in the company, you could almost hear the sound of a thousand technology hacks muttering, ’Now that’s interesting’. But search the blogs of his friends for critical comment, and you’ll find none. [Bill Thompson]
So, the ticket I got yesterday was bothering me so badly that I decided to try to deal with it today. Through the ink smudges and water stains on the ticket I found and called the number I was told to call. Here’s how that went at 8:35a.m. this morning:
Them: Memphis (unintelligible)...please hol’
Me: (wait 15 minutes and hang up)
Now it’s time to go to one of the four precinct offices mentioned on the ticket. They are open from 8:00a.m. until 4:30p.m. five days a week according to the back of the ticket. According to the handwritten sign inside the precinct, you can pay tickets any time between 8:00a.m. and 6:00p.m.
At 2:20p.m. the counter where you pay tickets has a ”we’re away sign that says they’ll return at 3:00p.m.” The person who was away was sitting behind a different counter approximately five feet from the one I was supposed to use. She said she’d ”return” at 3:00p.m.
Stay tuned for an update after my third attempt to deal with this!
* * UPDATE * * * 4:50p.m. Friday afternoon: $39.00 was the fine. No way that $39.00 covered the officer’s time at my car, followed by the ticket processing time, followed by the clerk’s time at the police precinct followed by the cost of processing the receipt of funds. Hey, but sound economics is not what The Law is all about, is it?
Let me say I respect law enforcement. I also disrespect bureaucracy, those that foster it and those that exist within it without attempting to fix it.
I didn’t have my seatbelt fastened. It’s fine that I get a ticket for breaking a law. I don’t think the law should exist, but that’s not for the me and the policeman to decide. What I resent is being told there is a fine, when in reality, the punishment for my offense is a fine accompanied by a significant runaround courtesy of the Memphis Police Department.
Erin Malone has written a piece that might have just the words someone needs today. In the world of work we can so easily lose the joy of life. Erin offers a suggestion. [from Boxes and Arrows]
I know enough to be very dangerous when it comes to using HTML, building web sites and editing a weblog. When it comes to these matters, I can contribute a user’s or layman’s point of view, but I can’t write – with any authority – about the technical aspects of accomplishing what I suggest.
Here’s my premise:there is a relationship between what many people want to do with their blogrolls and their RSS subscriptions. Why do I manage these two areas of my weblog experience independently of one another?
Some definitions are in order. The blogroll is a list of links somewhere on a weblog that points the author and/or the readers to other weblogs or web sites. It can be maintained by using a service like blogrolling.com. Or it can be maintained by directly editing a list of links in the templates of the weblog.
The RSS feeds are ”behind-the-scenes” pages of XML code that allow one to subscribe to the work of another and see that work in one of the many RSS readers. In other words, weblogs with RSS feeds can be aggregated with other weblogs for reading in an RSS reader. Basically, you build a personalized newspaper made up of all the weblogs and web sites you subscribe to. Learn more about RSS here.
Each morning when you open your news aggregator or RSS reader (SharpReader is the one I’ve worked with most recently), you’re presented with the news. As a weblog writer you hope the RSS reader’s presentation facilitates copying, pasting, annotating and providing attribution and links to whatever catches your eye. If Dave says something that I want to repeat or comment on, I may want to quote a portion of what he says, link to the rest and attribute the entry to him. [See a great example of this sort of posting here.]
Assume it’s the first time I’ve read that weblog, but I like it and want to include it in my blogroll. Using blogrolling.com I can open a window with one-click that allows me to add that weblog to my list. If I have my weblogs grouped by subject into HTML-related weblogs and photography-related weblogs, that same window permits me to ”drop” the link into the proper group.
The more I work with my own weblog, the more convinced I become that I’m often maintaining two things for the same discovery. If I find a new site that I like, I’ve got to consciously maintain my RSS subscriptions and my blogroll ”subscriptions” independently of one another. There’s a relationship in many cases and I want to be able to update both needs with one round of subscribing.
I should be able to group my RSS subscriptions differently from my blogroll. I may think of my RSS subscriptions by subject or by frequency of reading. I may do just the opposite with my blogrolls. The daily reads in my blogroll may cross many subjects, but in my RSS reader, I may want to go through the socio-political weblogs before I go through the HTML-related ones.
There’s a relationship between maintaining subscriptions to blogrolls and RSS feeds. Will the weblog tools change to accomodate this? Will blogrolling.com change? Will the feed readers add blogrolling? I’m not sure, but let’s get this stuff together – somehow!
I’m searching the U.S. Constitution looking for where it says I need to be protected from myself. I’m happy to fund an Abrams or a Bradley or two. I’m thrilled when we can track down Al Qaeda and rid the world of a menace.
Where does it say that I can’t be stupid? If I elect to ride alone in an automobile without my seatbelt fastened, where’s the harm? Why does the government need credit for saving my life?
Ok, yeah, I got a ticket. Eight police cars at a 4-way stop. At least 12 policemen walking in the middle of the street. Now I understand part of the reason for the corruption in Memphis and Shelby County. Faced with choices about ticketing lone drivers for not having on a seatbelt or cleaning up government abuses, our officials have made it clear where they stand.
I was wrong. I should have had my belt on. This country doesn’t need a law that says I should be ticketed when I don’t. Some laws are asinine.
In the early days of Wal-Mart’s incredible build-out, there were specialists who (for a fee) would help locally-owned Mom-and-Pop operators learn how to retain their customers and build lasting loyalty. These consultants had ”how-to” guides with specific techniques that the small business owner could follow. They were thought of as recipes for survival.
I read Dave’s entry this morning and agree with it. Google will be attacked by Microsoft. Google should know this, prepare for it and be ready. I say, ”yes, again.” Now for the real question: ”What should they do? What can they do?”
Is there a formula for living with the 800 pound gorilla?
Statistics suggest that a CEO in the 80’s might have earned something like 17 times the average wage earner in his company. Today that number is north of 500 times the average wage earner’s income. Think about those numbers for a moment. In the 80’s a wage earner making $12,000 was governed by a CEO making $200,000 or so. Today, a wage earner making $20,000 is likely governed by someone making $10 million or more.
Sure, these are sweeping generalities for large public companies. Yet, these are the very companies where CEO compensation is so terribly out of step with real performance.
On page 16 of his annual letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett begins an excellent discussion of corporate governance. A few quotes are in order:
Accountability and stewardship withered in the last decade, becoming qualities deemed of little importance by those caught up in the Great Bubble. As stock prices went up, the behavioral norms of managers went down. By the late 90s, as a result, CEOs who traveled the high road did not encounter heavy traffic.
In theory, corporate boards should have prevented this deterioration of conduct.
These directors and the entire board have many perfunctory duties, but in actuality have only two important responsibilities: obtaining the best possible investment manager and negotiating with that manager for the lowest possible fee.
Directors should not serve on compensation committees unless they are themselves capable of negotiating on behalf of owners.
Theres nothing wrong with paying well for truly exceptional business performance. But, for anything short of that, its time for directors to shout Less!
By now the message should be clear. We need a free market system that seeks the best talent for the job. Note that in Buffett’s remarks, he mentions serving on 19 public boards over a 40 year period, and that put him in contact with around 250 other directors. That’s not very many. When you draw from a sample that small, you risk missing a really valuable look at the rest of the population. Even with lots of country club memberships, that group of directors wasn’t likely to find the guy willing to do the job for half the present package!
There’s also a message here for job seekers, headhunters and career placement professionals. We’re entering an era of ”job placement by bid.” Given a group of otherwise-qualified individuals, what would each one bid to do a job? A crass way to ask the question is, ”For how much would you perform the job currently being done by the incumbent who is making $750,000 or $150,000 or $75,000?” You get the idea.
Now for the relationship between the access point, the backhaul bandwidth to the ISP and the ISP’s bandwidth to the backbone. How does one aggregate the bandwidth necessary to handle the traffic from all the ”light bulbs?”
As someone with a weblog, I love the attention. As someone with trackback, I have no idea why a single link in a single entry would generate 3 trackback entries.
We live in a time of such prosperity that even our downturns feel lavish compared to those who live without. The bad habits we’ve cultivated through the prosperous decades are now blights on us as people.
In too many ways and with too many people, there is a sense that one is somehow better than another. They may be better because of their job. They may be better because of their car. They may be better because of their over-bearing nature. Whatever delusion they have and use, they’ve determined that they are better than you and me.
These are the folk that don’t know how to forgive. They relegate others to some station in life based upon a perception only infrequently shaped by experience and reality. They look down on you when they think they are better than you. When you’re in trouble they simply look a bit further down and are thankful for the distance so that whatever stink might be on you at the moment doesn’t get on them.
It’s a sad way to live. It’s even sadder to see those of faith involved in it.
Web designers intrigue me with their loyalty to specific tools. I wish there was a place that listed the preferred tools of the best designers.
Why? One of the things that has helped me learn HTML, its variants and the related technologies in the weblogging world is the specific mention of a given designer’s software selections.
This isn’t a ”be like Mike” kind of thing. It’s a way to sort and filter the myriad selections, choices and tools in order to move along the learning curve more rapidly. Were we to put a colophon on every designer’s weblog, we’d begin to capture some sense of how they approach a project. Topics could include their preferred:
HTML editor
CSS editor (is there such a thing? is that what TopStyle is?)
RSS version (0.91, 1.0, 2.0)
Photo editor (are there others besides Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro?)
Validation tools
FTP product
Sources of new knowledge (sites, books, references, etc.)
How and why you got into web design work?
First public site ever created?
...what are the other ”can’t live without” tools in the toolbox?
You can’t kick a window out, but you can’t open a door or window, either. Let’s see, ”am I a quality product or not?” [The Shifted Librarian via Techdirt and Gizmodo]
Halley’s Comet is providing sound bites from Gone With the Wind and more. You just might be entertained – or not. Somehow she’s getting into the minds of Rhett and Scarlett.
Think of a cellular telephone tower as the center of a circle. The circle is a cell. I have no idea how large or what the radius of the circle might be. Unless cells are situated in such a way that there is overlap, cellular service will suffer drop calls or poor call quality.
A few weeks ago, I went looking for a similar capability with wireless/802.11x technology. I didn’t find it. I’m still not sure how you might blanket an area with an 802.11x cloud.
Whatever the case, I’m looking for a way to be a part of the revolution that removes so many of the ISP hassles from the consumer and small business niches.
Moving to Seattle was a very real possibility back in January. I continue to look at my job and career options in the area.
craigslist is branching out with new city listings. Seattle has been on the list for a while, and there’s a recent uptick in the number of listings there.
For those who might have become disillusioned with a search, I encourage you to re-engage and think carefully about what you want to do.
Here’s an excerpt from last week’s newsletter from Dan Miller:
1. REMEMBER THE SABBATH?
In the ”busyness” of modern life, I fear we have lost the rhythm between activity and rest. ”I am so busy.” We say this as a badge of honor, as if our exhaustion were a trophy, and our ability to withstand 70 hour weeks a mark of real character. We convince ourselves that the busier we are, the more we are accomplishing and the more important we must be. But is this really so? Does more activity really mean more accomplishment? To be unavailable to friends and family, to miss the sunsets and the full moons, to blast through all our obligations without time for taking a deep breath – this has become the model of a successful life.
Unfortunately, because we do not rest, we lose our way. Instead of BECOMING more, we are just DOING more. We base our value on what we can do, rather than on who we are. Are you making time for the inhaling half of your life? Our technologies make us available 24/7 to the demands of our work – if we allow it.
Embrace Sabbath days and times in your life. Wisdom, peace, creativity and contentment will grow in those times. Take a walk, give thanks for simple things, bless your children, take a bath with music and candles, turn off the telephone, pager, TV and computer – carve out those times for restoration and spiritual breathing.
Today’s newsletter is a day late – Sunday night we had a violent storm here in Franklin, TN. Our power was out all day Monday. No Internet, no air conditioning, no TV or radio. So my wife Joanne, our son Jared and I spent the day cleaning up trees, talking to the neighbors and going out for lunch. An unexpected Sabbath.
I am fortunate to work in an environment where I see rabbits, guineas, woodpeckers, lightening, clouds, and neighbors. It’s difficult for me to find a refreshing pause in the midst of concrete, asphalt and honking horns. My work setting is the result of having a clear goal and a plan of action. I know what works for me. Have you been able to find the work that provides a balance of ”being” and ”doing?”
Ever since someone called it the information superhighway, I’ve thought about the ”end game” in Internet access. How will we get on the highway when the whole thing is ubiquitous?
Will everybody have an AOL or MSN account? I think not. Then, what? Will everybody have T-Mobile accounts for certain cities, airports and Starbucks, but Boingo accounts for other places? Only the early adopters will put up with this nightmare. Who will offer us access? What will the end game look like?
I expect the really fat pipes – the so-called backbone – will remain in the hands of a relatively few big international providers of telecom services. The next set of pipes will likely be in the hands of a more plentiful group of providers of metropolitan or regional networks.
You won’t pay much attention to either of these first two groups unless you just like this stuff.
The more I read and study, the more convinced I become that a wireless technology will provide us with the right combination of mobility, fast access and flexibility across devices. This story drives the point right up to your doorstep! This will become the answer for most of us whether sitting in our homes, our offices or meeting in a restaurant.
This is the 2525th entry to this weblog since January 13, 2002. Though many days pass with no entry, after 485 days I’ve averaged better than 5 entries per day. Some of those were tests of technology. Some of those were mistakes. All were opportunities to learn something.
If you haven’t read the ”About” page in a while, now might be a good time to find out why I do this. The primary reason?
Paul Ford has captured what every person I’ve ever known has felt with Until the Water Boils. Dean Allen amplified it. This is well-written material. In addition to evoking emotion, it inspires one to write.
Just look at this excerpt from Dean’s reflection:
In my experience (I have no one elses) the worst of the torment of a bitter end usually came not from feelings of rejection or invalidation or loss though those piled up like hills and mountains but rather from things I heard myself saying. Yes asshole, that was you put that together, arent you proud. Turn it around in your head for years, pretend the words meant something else, that somehow they landed on gracious and forgiving ears, but you cant get them back. Ever. Lets paraphrase a dead French male: we can forgive those whove hurt us, but not those we hurt.
Love will do that to you. The loss of love will, too. Having read these entries this morning, I’m going to make certain I add more of this sort of fiber to my weblog-reading diet. There are clever designers in the weblog world. There are clever coders. Most importantly, there are some excellent writers. I want to learn from the best of all of them.
My earliest writing in a weblog was awful. It was about trying to learn how to use a weblog and HTML and stuff. Because it was my first writing, I wanted to save it. Maybe it’s in an ugly form right now, but it’s now in a single continuous stream of entries. I got it all together over the weekend.
With that done, I’m committing to several new efforts here. First, I want to read more great weblogs. Second, I want to gain some depth in my knowledge of HTML. Third, I want to make a certain set of tools for doing this sort work uniquely mine. Movable Type and its offspring will be one. NoteTab Pro may be one. TopStyle might become one. I want to get familiar with validation of HTML variants, CSS and RSS and the like.
I plan to start this reawakening with weblogs like Paul’s and Dean’s and Shirley Kaiser’s. I’m glad I found their work. I’m glad I got my weblog entries reunited. I’m glad it’s May of 2003 and I’m able to take this next fork in the road.
I’ve not done any editing of the newly imported archives today. Everything I did last night was merely to make them readable – not nice. They look horrible. I know. I’ll get to it.
In the meantime, I’m finding just how much more I know now about HTML than when I was struggling terribly in January and February of last year. Yet, I feel as though I don’t have nearly the knowledge I need to be an effective HTML writer.
Rob has some suggestions. First, there are the things he’d like to get done for his own site and a reading tip on CSS. Then, there are some tools and sites that might come in handy. I had mentioned TopStyle as a possibility this past week, and I think it might be just the right tool for learning CSS.
The ad you see here ran in the print edition of today’s New York Times Book Review. It effectively advertised two things. First, is an essay written by Tufte titled The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint. It’s available for $7 and is apparently 24 full color pages.
The second part of the ad mentions Tufte’s one-day course called Presenting Data and Information. I’ll be attending one of these later this year.
No one is better at presenting information for understanding than Tufte. No one is better at fostering the transition from data to information to knowledge to understanding than Tufte.
comes in so many unexpected ways. Last night, I pleaded to be comforted. This morning, quite unexpectedly, I heard a sermon that was just amazing.
I went to high school with the mom of this young pastor. She was in the audience as he stood at the pulpit and said, ”when it comes to Moms, I hit the jackpot.” From there, he delivered an absolutely fantastic message of hope.
It is obvious that she has led a life full of challenges. Unwaivering faith in bedrock principles of Christian living and an amazing spirit have brought her this far. More importantly, she’s done a fantastic job of teaching her son about those bedrock principles and the Faith that transforms.
I’ve tortured myself tonight as I’ve dealt with all of the frustrations of fixing the weblog problems that resulted from the ”import.” I’ve listened to the music of Josh Groban about 15 times while all the editing has been going on. I understand why people cry at Italian operas!
Writing a weblog from January of 2002 to the present has been a pleasure. Overall, it’s been enjoyable. On balance, I’ve liked it. Convinced? Well, the writing has been fun. Learning HTML has been tedious for me.
The act of importing the old entries from Radio has awakened me to two particular kinds of errors. The first, and most prevalent, were the errors that resulted from my ignorance of HTML. I see so many questions in my early entries that I now know the answers to.
The second set of errors result from Radio’s peculiarities in formatting when in WYSIWYG mode OR from the act of trying to export and import that HTML into Movable Type.
I’m doing some of the most rudimentary editing to return the weblog to usefulness after the import. I’ve fixed corrupted archive files.
What I haven’t done is make it look good. The archives are simply chock full of nested blockquotes that are awful. They’ll get fixed a little at a time.
I’m also slowly adding category assignments to the oldest entries. This will go slowly. Did I mention that this might take some time?
Using the method originally suggested by Rick Klau, following these procedures and using Bill Kearney’s exporter tool, I’ve imported my Radio entries into Movable Type – TWICE! Who knows why I got duplicate entries, but I did. So, now, there’s a lengthy editing process under way.
The editing process is laborious:
First, I’m having to delete the duplicate entries – that’s taking forever!
Then, there are the differences in formatting of entries between Radio and this weblog, so those have to be done
Categories have to be assigned to the imported entries
Backups have to be made every so often
One thing I didn’t have to do was edit the export file. The notes I used related to a much older version of the exporter that Bill Kearney wrote. I didn’t have to edit the ”Body:” line, the date or anything else.
I’ve got a problem of some sort with the July and August, 2002 archives
I’m sure there’s more
Sometimes I think the world would be better served by a return to wooden pencils and yellow legal pads!
Poor performance – I like to keep an aggregator running and check on updated sites over the course of several hours at the computer. I noticed that Amphetadesk would sometimes slow to a crawl or stop completely. Kevin’s mention of a memory leak problem in 32-bit Windows may indeed solve such a problem.
Difficult organization – My use of an RSS feed aggregator is most effective when I can order or prioritize stories around writers, subjects or threads. Apparently, there is a whole host of third party hacking that has been done to enhance Amphetadesk. Kevin suggests a Google search to locate such items.
Limited improvements – Kevin’s a busy guy and he explains some of the things that keep him busy.
My bottom line is I want an aggregator that meets my needs off-the-shelf. I’m ”hacking around” enough to make blogrolls and weblogs and blogshares and other stuff work. I don’t know whether Microsoft has a memory leak problem with Windows XP with all of the service packs and updates installed or not. Even if that problem is solved, I’m left to ”hack around” some more to turn Amphetadesk into the tool that I need it to be.
Kevin’s done a good job with it. Many people use it and speak highly of it. My remarks had and have more to do with the tool I need now than the tool I might be able to construct with a lot more work.
As the trial-and-error process of backing up, securing and working with old Radio entries proceeds, lots of questions have arisen. I’m trying to add my old Radio entries which date to January 13, 2002 to this weblog. Ideally, they’d be added in such a way that they appear as if they were originally created and entered here.
The old were done with Radio. This weblog is done with Movable Type. Methods for checking the number of entries in Radio tell me that I made 1910 entries. Using one of the export tools for those entries, I get an incomplete result. It says that only 316 entries were exported. A look at the file shows no entries pre-dating May 6, 2002. I have no idea what’s wrong with this approach. I’ll stay at work on that.
Overnight I let Radio run (on an old, slow PC) and I turned on the ”archive to XML” feature. Apparently, that produces a file that some other import/export methods use. I checked that file this morning and, sure enough, it says there are 1910 entries. That’s a hopeful sign. Here’s a google search for help!
Now for ”the running of the scripts.” Hope I don’t get gored!
I listed a set of weblog tasks on Monday, May 4th. I’m deep into the efforts to get those things done. Here’s a status report:
This first task of exporting old Radio entries for import to Movable Type is toughest of all. I’ve tried several methods, but I’m still getting incomplete results or serious errors. More on this in a bit.
I’ve downloaded and subscribed to some feeds using Syndirella. So far, so good; but, I already see that I want some features in news aggregation that I haven’t found in the product. Over the weekend I’ll configure a trial version of NewzCrawler.
No attention has been given to a site makeover or second skin. I’ve jotted down some sites I like that have features or ”looks” that I might add here. This is a lower priority.
I’ve really stepped up the study on all things XML, XHTML, DHTML, CSS, PHP, validation and RSS. We’ll see how confused I am when I come out of this round of study.
The pause in all of this comes this morning. Daughter number three is dancing. So the day goes like this: work on XML file exports, watch the ballet, work on XML file imports! Such a well-rounded life, wouldn’t you say?
Level 3 has announced the sale of dark fiber to the National Research and Education Fiber Company (Fiberco), a new organization established by Internet2 to purchase and distribute fiber-optic assets to regional advanced networking organizations and research universities throughout the U.S.
Many thanks to Steven Vore who found this link and photo providing more information about HP’s new financial calculator called the HP 12c Platinum. The good news is that it will have a faster processor and more memory. The bad news is that it doesn’t appear to have a ”delete last digit” feature.
It’s your birthday. It’s hard to imagine that we’ve known each other for 21 years. I wish you and your granddaddy in Memphis had known each other better. Instead, we only have very few pictures of a big-eyed, quiet little girl sitting in his lap looking around. You were only seven and a half months old when he died.
Now you’re a senior in college. I couldn’t be prouder of you. You’ve got such a sweet spirit, an incredible sense of humor and God’s light shines through you in all that you do.
Dads wish daughters wouldn’t grow up. In fact, Dads may never turn loose of the little girls that first made their impressions. Was it when she first smiled at him? Was it when she first laid her head on his shoulder and cried? Was it the last time he saw her cry? Whatever the situation, daughters remain daddy’s little girls for life.
No matter how far you go; no matter how much the joy; no matter how deep the sorrow, you’ll continue to be Daddy’s little girl. Twenty-one or not, Daddy will always be at your side. One of the great joys this Dad has experienced is seeing you and your two wonderful sisters grow up as best friends, siblings and allies in everything.
May God continue to poor rich blessings on you and all that you do.
Amphetadesk is out due to poor performance, difficult organization of the news and limited improvements to the product over time. Syndirella is out because my initial attempt to install the product was met with an error message. No time to troubleshoot.
Radio remains an important tool, but I intend to use Radio for a new weblog and I’ll be setting up Radio’s aggregator specifically for those topics.
That brings us back to Newzcrawler and FeedDemon. I like both of these products because, for very little money, it looks as if both will be well-supported. I’m particularly impressed with Newzcrawler’s ”Outlook-styled” user interface, but I plan to start learning TopStyle so, I like Bradsoft’s backing of FeedDemon. Here’s one of FeedDemon’s screenshots.
The comment light is lit. Let me know what you think or what your own experiences are.
* * UPDATE * * * Syndirella is working fine and is back in the hunt. I was tired last night and overlooked the fact that I was trying to run the installation executable from WinZip, rather from a folder. Problem fixed this morning.
This may wind up on Userland’s support and discussion forum, but I’m going to take a shot here, first. This is about what I want to do with my weblogs. Here goes:
Clarification: when using Radio, any entry you make is saved within the directory or folder structure that Radio places on your local PC. Right?
#1 is true even if during the course of using Radio you change the host or the domain or both to which Radio entries upstream; right? In other words, whatever got written using that copy of Radio on that PC is saved in the folder structure even if the entries upstreamed to Domain XYZ at Host 1 for 6 months, then went to Domain ABC at Host 2 for 3 months. Right?
Assuming #1 & #2 are true, an attempt to ”import” Radio entries into Movable Type from Radio’s normal directory structure on the local PC should result in all of the entries being picked up. Right?
At that point, one could ”erase” all entries from the local copy of Radio, begin a new set of entries on the Userland server or at the host and domain of one’s choice. Right?
Has anyone written a procedure that takes those entries out of Radio and into a Movable Type weblog? Let’s assume I began using Movable Type in October of 2002. Is there a procedure which will establish entries in Movable Type from the Radio entries that were done during the 9 months prior to October?
I want my old Radio entries to become entries in Movable Type so that I have one continuous weblog from January of 2002 to now. Then, I want to start using Radio to produce another weblog for a completely different purpose from this one. Tips? Tricks? Help?
I read different weblogs for different reasons. Some are for their technical viewpoints. Others offer strong political insights. Still others may be able to do both of those, but they’re not the weblogs I read for HTML advice. You get the idea. I don’t get my accounting advice from the plumber nor do I get my legal advice from the barber.
Yet, there is an important corollary to this. Just because I love a source, I don’t throw it out when the writer says something that is either silly or differs from my viewpoint. It’s still a trusted resource in its area of competence and influence.
I read the following quote on Monday. It’s been rattling around in the back recesses ever since then, but I can’t help but believe there is great profundity here.
And again, if the standard for anyone in public life trying to support morality and virtue is that they be saints – even according to other people’s standards – then we’ll have no upholding of morality at all.
Here’s a fundamental question concerning Operation Iraqi Freedom:
Are we to understand that the left believes that the war wasn’t just if we don’t find a significant number of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) inside the borders of Iraq?
If the answer to this question is yes, then the following things must logically be ok with the left:
Starving your own nation’s children because you won’t comply with a 12-year old UN resolution
Beheading people in public absent any legal process
Setting fire to women crossing at borders
Building and using torture chambers
Plundering a nation’s wealth for the sole use of the dictator
It took me a while to understand anything at all about RSS when I began a weblog. I was still struggling to understand anchor tags at the time. Once I understood the purpose of the feature and the benefits of using a news aggregator, RSS’s importance was clear.
Then came the switch to Movable Type from Radio that cost me my news aggregator. I tried to use Amphetadesk, but got poor performance and didn’t like the change.
With no mention of the product showing up on HP’s web site, Stephen Wildstrom has a column in the current Business Week that says HP is going to update the HP12c. Tentatively, it’s to be called the HP 12c Platinum.
This product has been the workhorse for financial computations for over 20 years. Calculators are fantastic products. They do very specialized things incredibly well and incredibly fast. I went to engineering school during the era when calculators replaced slide rules. The summer following my freshman year, I bought my first HP45 calculator.
Many of us in the engineering school literally checked calculator results against our tried, true and trusted slide rules until we gained confidence. Later I began teaching courses in RPN and HP calculator techniques.
I’ve searched the web rather thoroughly and Wildstrom’s is the only mention of this new product. If you locate a place that has them, expects them or can take a pre-order for them, let me know.
is joy in the suffering of others. We live in a world today where relishing the sorrows, sadness, hurts, misfortunes or unrest of another is very common. It’s common among Christians, even when they are mentioning your name softly for prayer requests (an all-too-common euphemism for gossip). It’s common among those who are driven as they see yet another ”competitor” fall from ”the race.” It’s common among those who secretly revel in seeing someone who’s been ”too successful” falling victim to the observer’s idea of justice or revenge. Very simply, it’s common for people to get some sort of twisted pleasure when they find another hurting; even more so if they get to witness emotion!
Heaping more pain on those who are suffering is not our calling. I have no idea how people reconcile this sort of behavior with their professed faith in a Savior who said:
”Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults — unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging.” Matthew 7:1-2 The Message
In companies of all sizes the Cobol programming language has been the underlying language for business-critical applications for several decades. With every innovation has come some tweaking, some interfacing and some shade-tree engineering to allow these legacy applications to survive.
Now comes an op-ed piece from Michael Vizard that declares Cobol, The Enemy. He lists a string of companies that are endorsing the enterprise service bus (ESB) as a means of integrating new technology with older Cobol technology. The death of Cobol has been foreseen for thirty years, but life support keeps it functioning.
A light in the water triggered a headcount on the USS Abraham Lincoln as it makes its way to Everett, WA. The headcount took longer than ususal because some media people failed to show up where they were supposed to. Everybody was ultimately accounted for.
At various times I’ve heard proponents of one technology or another become so fervant in their support of the technology that they take on the demeanor of a political or religious advocate. Examples include (but extend far beyond) Windows vs. Macintosh, Windows vs. Linux, Open Source vs. Closed(?) Source, CSS vs. Tables, Basic vs. Cobol, etc.
Ray Ozzie relates a story about a decision point involving proponents of Java vs. alternatives. We have the benefit of looking at this one in hindsight and seeing how things have unfolded. This was a decision involving people who had ”real work” to get done – not just the luxury of debating because debating is fun.
Last week I visited a business that is over 100 years old. It’s currently being run by the first member of the fifth generation of the same family. The last member of the fourth generation was on hand – as he is every day – to make certain that thing happen as they always have.
My visit was to discuss the company’s needs. We do some rather broad consulting work spanning strategy, technology and operational improvements. To the question, ”what are the toughest issues you face today,” we received a one-word answer. The word was ”insurance.” When we started to ask, ”what kind of…,” we were cut off in mid-question. ”All kinds,” was the reply.
Clearly, at the moment I was meeting with him, this guy was convinced that he had no other business problems other than ”insurance.” Nevermind that he had no record keeping for his inventory. Nevermind that he has a 63-year old woman who has been working in the business for over 40 years who handwrites every sales ticket and invoice. Nevermind that he’s facing all forms of insurance premium increases due to poor recordkeeping in the areas of human resources, inventory control and property improvements.
Sitting behind the desk of the 63-year old were twin safes of probably 1940 or 1950 vintage. He clearly had more invested in today’s dollars in those two safes that he had invested in all of the technology that the company owned (2 personal computers). With any mention of technology he objected by indicating that no software, no operating improvements and no inventory control could give them enough benefit to justify the cost.
”What if we could put inventory management methods and technology in place that reduced inventory by enough to pay for the technology, our fees and the higher insurance premiums you’re expecting?” I asked. ”You can’t,” came the reply, ”I don’t know how much inventory I have, but I’m certain it isn’t enough.”
I was once told you can’t argue with success. I didn’t try, even though I wasn’t sure I would have been arguing with success!
Warren Buffett held his annual meeting of stockholders in Omaha yesterday. There was good news all around. He’s pursuing the purchase of Clayton Homes. The deal with McLane Company and Wal-Mart was announced. Record earnings for the first quarter of 2003 were announced. Life is good in Omaha right now.
Continuing to focus on CEO compensation and its excesses, Mr. Buffett was quoted as saying, ”If I can’t understand it, the mangement probably doesn’t want me to understand it.” He was talking about financial reports from large companies, but he could have just as well been talking about other forms of executive excess. [CEO photo courtesy of dollarshort.org]
Unfortunately, the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting didn’t have many webloggers attending. A few notes are beginning to find their way to the news services, but this is nothing like some of the tech conferences where people are writing entries from the floor of the convention center.
Today is the day for Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting of shareholders in Omaha. I couldn’t go this year. Normally, they expect 15,000 people to attend the gathering which Warren Buffett labeled ”Woodstock for Capitalists” a number of years ago.
News coming out of the meeting tells of approximately $1.7 billion in operating earnings for the first quarter. Mr. Buffett also discussed Berkshire’s pending purchase of McLane Company, Inc. from Wal-Mart. $22 billion in sales and two thirds of that does NOT go to Wal-Mart.
A leadership position at The University of Alabama is a position of great honor and responsibility. When you accept the honor, you also accept the responsibility. That responsibility includes conducting your life in accord with appropriate standards of professional and personal conduct. Coach Price did not meet this responsibility despite being warned about his public behavior before the incidents in Pensacola, Florida occurred.
Robert E. Witt
President
The University of Alabama
May 3, 2003
At the end of an old movie the other night, I heard a piece of music during the closing credits. The soundtrack didn’t contain the song. Digging around in the comments on Amazon, I found the artist mentioned as well as the song title. It turns out this song was written in 1940 and was recorded by the Mills Brothers in 1949, as well as by famed country singer Vaughn Monroe.
Who knows why one piece of music, one artist or one set of lyrics wows one while others aren’t the least bit interested? This piece of music was done by a Bahamian artist to a native Bahamian rhythm for this movie. It’s a great piece of music.
Someday
Original music and lyrics by Jimmie Hodges
I know that someday you will want me to hold you,
When I’m in love with somebody new.
You expect me to be true, and go on loving you;
Although I’m feeling blue, you think I can’t forget you.
Until someday you will want me to hold you,
When I am gone with somebody new.
Although you don’t want me now, I’ll get along somehow,
And then I won’t want you.
I know that someday you will want me to hold you,
When I am gone with somebody new.
What am I supposed to do with this love I have for you?
To my heart I must be true, although I can’t forget you.
Until someday you will want me to hold you,
When I am strong for somebody new.
Although you don’t want me now, I’ll get along somehow,
And then I won’t want you.
I know that someday you will want me to hold you,
When I am gone with somebody new.
Although you don’t want me now, I’ll get along somehow,
And then I won’t want you.
Were every detail of your own life to be revealed on the front pages of a newspaper after you reported something on someone else, would you be comfortable with that? Few can truthfully answer, ”yes.” Some can, because they don’t care what others may learn about their weaknesses. Some can, because they lead truly pure lives.
Others could not stand this sort of scrutiny. Either their pride and self-esteem would take such a hit that they couldn’t live with themselves or the very objective reporting they so publicly advocate could get questioned after some scrutiny of their private matters.
The next morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by Uriah. He wrote: ”Put Uriah in the front line, where the fighting is heaviest, then retreat and let him be killed.” 2 Samuel 11:14-15 Today’s English Version
I learned something new yesterday. I learned that blogrolling.com has a field called ”description” and when that field is filled in and a visitor to your blogroll mouses over a name on the blogroll (in IE, at least), the description will be shown. So, if I elect to show the names of individuals in my weblog like this: Rob Farhni, but I want At The Core… to show up when someone rolls over Rob’s name, then all I have to do is enter the name of the weblog in the description. The reverse is also true. Put weblog names in the ”title” field and put the person’s name in the ”description” field. Simple, but useful.
Only now am I able to fully appreciate Dive Into Accessibility by Mark Pilgrim. I’ve downloaded it, printed it and I now use it as an important reference. It’s not so much because I’m becoming fanatical about accessibility. Rather, it’s just got some solid HTML advice in it.
Depending upon how much Washington State had to give up and how much ”up front” money Alabama had to give up, this hire is beginning to look flawed from the initial phone call. This is the kind of guy they brought in to run a program already on probation? Strength…give me an ounce of strength!
Berkshire Hathaway has agreed to purchase a subsidiary of Wal-Mart. Berkshire’s news releases can be found here. The specific pdf file for this transaction is here.
A tradeshow attendee, David Berlind, describes the gear and applications that he took along to be able to write about the show. He also describes the available wireless technology that was (and wasn’t) at his disposal at the convention center.
He speaks of the ”hot spots,” those wireless/Wi-Fi access points that are connected to high speed bandwidth providing Internet access and email to a Wi-Fi-equipped device. There’s a problem wtih this approach. I want to be able to go anywhere at any time and have access to the Internet without being focused on getting ”within range” of a hot spot. I want a ”cloud” of Wi-Fi to blanket a city much like campuses are blanketed for students.
Why is this so difficult? Where are the providers of the technology to do this? Why can’t we get commercial solutions that create a ”cell or cloud” of Wi-Fi over a 2 to 5-mile radius from an antenna mounted on a building, a water tank or a cell tower? Who knows how to do this and which products to use to make it reality?
Joe Jenett has a link to some questions by Dan Bricklin about this Creative Commons license issue. This entry is really a start at trying to understand what this means and why you or I should care. I’m gathering the links I need to be able to study the topic:
Meryl Evans was, and may still be, in the hospital. I’m behind on my reading, so I’ve just read her weblog and found this news. Nonetheless, she’s got a laptop and is apparently posting some entries from the hospital. This one is really helpful!
Academia does some things very well, but they do some others very poorly. Sixty years with a near certain renewal of your contract might make any organization, particularly the University of California, a little complacent. Complacency is different from leaving the doors unlocked at night and leaving milk and cookies for any who might come in!
David Winer’s daily writing at Scripting News and his remarkable weblog production tool called Radio from Userland Software are two reasons you’re reading this. He got me hooked on the concepts behind weblogs just from reading his daily work. He’s another year older and wiser!
H A P P Y    B I R T H D A Y,   D A V E !
Apple’s new iTunes service has been examined (in depth) on the web. David Pogue, who writes for the New York Times, has an interesting twist on what’s been done so far. [Special Note: If you don’t have (a free) subscription to The New York Times’ online content, take a moment to answer their questions and gain access.] The RIAA will need way too long to study this idea:
Now theres a more disruptive notion. Now that we can buy music by the individual track, should the price depend on the age or profitability of the recording?
If so, why stop there? Why not also factor in how expensive the recording was to make? Surely a solo by an obscure guitar player shouldnt cost the same as one by a 250-piece orchestra conducted by Simon Rattle.
Furthermore, what ever happened to supply and demand? Shouldnt the hottest, most desirable music command the highest prices, and forgotten oldies be listed in a digital bargain bin? After all, nobody minds paying more for new movies at Blockbuster, and less for classics from yesteryear.
Of course, coming up with a formula to determine the value of music wouldnt be a cakewalk. It might start something like this:
((song length x ensemble size) + bands popularity [as determined by the number of hits returned by Google]) / songs age) – minus royalties earned so far
Well, maybe we should let MIT work out the rest. In the meantime, $1 a song is probably as good a price structure as any.
Raised in the USA one is exposed to competition early and often. From races with a sibling to youth sports to a growing awareness of how competition works in the free enterprise system, children realize that competing effectively provides momentary lifts to self esteem and may ultimately lead to the right schools, the right careers and the right ”station in life.”
We reinforce this notion with professional athletics in which we pay entertainers enormous sums to do whatever it is they do. Lately, they do it as individuals rather than as teams. The sense of collaboration and teamwork that we thought we were fostering has given rise to a new breed of thugs. We’re not building character – we’re building characters.
In business we see so much evidence of the law of unintended consequences. Rather than lifting people’s minds to higher and better things, we’ve entered an era in which public figures in athletics are merely an extension of the Hollywood bunch. Their senses of entitlement, being above the rules and behaving recklessly are honed to a fine edge.
Ever since I read No Contest by Alfie Kohn followed by Punished By Rewards by the same author, I’ve sensed that something is wrong with the way we teach and practice competition. We’re reaping unintended consequences by teaching kids how to elbow their way to victory and on ”to the top.” If the ref doesn’t see the thrown elbow, you’re labeled ”shrewd.” If you’re called for it, some commentator will say, ”that sometimes happens to the kids who play the game aggressively.” No one ever mentions flaunting the rules, harming your fellow man or moral bankruptcy.
Deming wasn’t focused on competition. He was focused on those attributes of a business that permitted the company to survive, thrive and continue in a way that met the needs of customers and employees alike. We’re sticking the hero’s tag on the wrong people these days. Somehow, we’ve got to raise a generation that understands what is uplifting, what is valuable and what the long-term benefits of collaborating rather than competing can truly be.
Before I’m accused of advocating socialism, I’ll flatly and emphatically state that I don’t and I won’t. Competition in markets is healthy. Collaboration in markets can also be healthy when done within the laws boundaries. Dave gave a clear picture just this morning of the differences between ”good competition” and ”bad competition.”
Where will we look to again build a man’s man who is as comfortable at the gallery, the ballet or the Saturday afternoon football game?
Our miserable individuality is screwed to the back of our cars in the form of personalised license plates.
The President has landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln as it makes its way from Honolulu to San Diego and ultimately to Everett, WA by next Tuesday. Tonight’s speech should be great!
God will make a way,
Where there seems to be no way
He works in ways we cannot see
He will make a way for me
He will be my guide
Hold me closely to His side
With love and strength for each new day
He will make a way, He will make a way.
By a roadway in the wilderness, He’ll lead me
And rivers in the desert will I see
Heaven and earth will fade
But His Word will still remain
He will do something new today.
God will make a way,
Where there seems to be no way
He works in ways we cannot see
He will make a way for me
He will be my guide
Hold me closely to His side
With love and strength for each new day
He will make a way, He will make a way.
I’d love to attend a class on logic with some very specific (unnamed) people. Some are Christians, some are not.
In both cases these are people who behave irrationally – as we all do from time to time – or illogically. Norman Geisler’s book called Come, Let Us Reason – An Introduction to Logical Thinking is a splendid text for a group of Christians to use.
You’ll love it, even if you’re one of the people with whom I’d like to attend logic class!
Many people struggle with the Bible. They struggle to understand it. They struggle to interpret it. Most of all they struggle to apply it. Take a look at these two different ways to approach life as described in two different translations of the Bible:
It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom.
But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard – things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely. Galatians 5:19-23 The Message
Here’s how the same passage reads in the New American Standard Bible:
Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Galatians 5:19-23 New American Standard Bible
The points?
Living life with a total dependence upon yourself alone is doomed to failure and misery.
Own (at least) two different translations of the Bible and let one amplify the other for you.
In the Broadway musical Les Miserables, Marius returns in his memories to a cafe that was part of his early years. Now wounded and recovering he laments the loss of friends, the loss of a dream and the despair of being alive when so much has been lost.
Empty Chairs At Empty Tables
from Les Miserables by Andrew Lloyd Weber
There’s a grief that can’t be spoken,
There’s a pain goes on and on.
Empty chairs at empty tables,
now my friends are dead and gone.
Here they talked of revolution,
here it was they lit the flame,
here they sang about tomorrow
and tomorrow never came.
>From the table in the corner,
They could see a world reborn,
And they rose with voices ringing,
And I can hear them now;
The very words that they had sung
Became their last communion
On the lonely barricade, at dawn.
Oh my friends, my friends forgive me
That I live and you are gone
There’s a grief that can’t be spoken,
There’s a pain goes on and on…
Phantom faces at the window,
Phantom shadows on the floor,
Empty chairs at empty tables
where my friends will meet no more.
Oh my friends, my friends don’t ask me
what your sacrifice was for
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friend will sing no more.
”No one causes you to feel that way. You choose to feel that way in response to another.” Bunk. Explanation coming.
”People who show emotion are not stable people.” Bunk again.
Sure, we can all become stoics. Let’s think about how much fun that would be. What if I could simply march through a day, happy-go-lucky, rejoicing in all that was happening. Then, someone close to me rips my heart out and stomps on it before my eyes before it stops beating. I’m left to ”choose” how I want to respond.
Remember, I was going along happily. Until I came in contact with this individual my day was ok. Then, boom! You’re telling me that s/he isn’t in some way accountable for dealing devastation?
You’re telling me that responding – not in kind, mind you – but, responding nonetheless with a modicum of emotion makes me the unstable person? I think not.
Fred Couples showed emotion after a long, uphill battle to return to the upper echelons of competitive golf. That’s an incredibly difficult thing to do. Golf is a game of emotions. Managing emotion is the key to playing golf successfully! Fred’s path hasn’t been free of turmoil.
Today, this clown used his own radio program to make fun of Couples for showing some emotion after winning the Houston Open yesterday. Not only was it a heartless thing to do, but it was done in a way that was factually inaccurate. Woloshin simply didn’t tell the story the way it happened and was broadcast on national television.
People are so anxious to be popular or right or to get attention that they lose all perspective when it comes to how they treat another. We have so few opportunities in a lifetime to truly reach out to someone for good. Why would we use even a single one of those to do harm, be neglectful or sow divisiveness?
a given lawyer can get a given jury to believe at a given moment. That’s the unfortunate reality of what our legal system has become. Cleverness, tactics and legal minutiae replace victims’ rights, punishment-as-deterrent and justice. The Malvo case is the one that has me on the soapbox at the moment, but there are plenty of examples to go around.
Grisham’s latest book is an eye-opener. Walter Olson’s book is a nonfiction expose on just how far we’ve stooped with tort law. Unfortunately, all of this has become ”about the lawyers” rather than about the law. Right, wrong, fairness and equity don’t matter any more.
Many home and small office users of bandwidth are elated with their upgrades to DSL or cable modems from dial-up connections to the Internet. They have immediately experienced the difference in a speed of approximately 40Kbps and something between 1000Kbps to 2000Kbps. In other words, they’re seeing the practical connection speed of 56K modems contrasted with the practical connection speed of a 1.5Mbps to 2.0Mbps line. Here’s some data.
The connections vary in price (approximately) like this:
Dial-up $15.95 to $23.95 per month
Residential DSL or cable $40 to $50 per month
Business DSL, cable or fractional T1 $100 to $300 per month
Here’s what I’d like to build:
Why can’t an ISP provide an 802.11x signal over a wide area at a price of say $30.00 per month for the consumer or $150 for the business? Users could work at home or the office. The 802.11x network could have truly high speed bandwidth for the backhaul. Ultimately voice-over-IP will come (reliably) to 802.11 networks. Why isn’t this the fountain of youth for an ISP? What are the gating or limiting factors? Is it technology that’s not available (802.16)? Is it a capital problem? Is it fear of cannibalizing existing business?
If 802.11x signals could be provided reliably from an antenna over a 2 to 5 mile radius, it wouldn’t take many towers to cover a city area that is 25 to 100 square miles. In fact, if the antenna covers a 2-mile radius, that’s an area of 12.57 square miles. A radius of 5 miles gets 78.54 miles.
At the extremes, this means that from 1 to 8 antennae could do the job. Even if such a rough calculation is off by a factor of 2, what could 16 antennae and the associated equipment cost? $15,000 each? $25,000? $100,000? These are not large amounts of money when one figures that customers will be subscribing at $30 to $150 per month.
UPS appears to be going for wireless-end-to-end. They seem to have created the right business plan for removing as many wires and cables from their operations as possible. Their RFP clearly crossed the various wireless protocols and technologies with an eye toward applying the best technology to the appropriate business need. Notice the use of CDMA/1XRTT. Here’s a Google search over at Alan Reiter’s weblog to try and understand how this technology competes with or enhances 802.11X networks.
It’s Monday morning. If your blood pressure can stand it, you can read what Andrew Tobias believes about the Rick Santorum remarks. Tobias links to Andrew Sullivan. Interestingly, both of these men are gay, but come from opposite sides of the political spectrum. Tobias is Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee. Sullivan has always tended toward conservative points of view. They are united in their criticism of Santorum’s view of this case before the Supreme Court.
Someone once said that the Bible’s first management consultant was Nehemiah. If you’re involved in the management of any organization, there are great lessons there.
However, I also feel that the way Jesus communicated with stories, analogies and parables deserves real attention. In a couple of weeks, I plan to start a rather detailed study of the parables. The books you see here are the three I plan to use. If you feel strongly about others or other authors, the comments feature still works. Here are the three books:
If you haven’t entered your URL into the GeoURL database, nows the time to do it. You’ll be able to determine the names of other weblogs and web sites that are geographically near you.
interested in Wi-Fi appears in the April 28, 2003 issue of Barron’s. A quote from John Patrick is pertinent:
”Telephony is just another Internet application,” says John Patrick, a consultant and author who until his retirement a year ago was IBM’s chief Internet guru. ”The telecom industry thinks of the Internet as one of the things you can do with telephony services, but it is exactly the opposite. Telephony is one of the many things you can do with the Internet.”
”It bothers me and frightens me when the entire American economy is looking to one very modest new technology to save it,” he says. ”That’s not a very good thing. 802.11 is a modest technology; it’s wireless ethernet, that’s all it is. It’s not a panacea.”
With the introduction of TypePad, the Sixapart folks hope to build another wave of weblog writers. In particular, they want the writing of a weblog to be easier. There’s now some evidence that the new TypePad product may indeed be easier to use.
Dean Allen is apparently doing something similar with Textpattern and TextBox. Add to these entrants the new Google-owned Blogger and there should be no end to the decisions and debates as to which is the right tool for the job.
For those of you who enjoyed the Google logos yesterday, here’s another page with quite an extensive list of the holiday logos of the past. These logos are still linked to their original search parameters.
The folks over at Google are celebrating another casual Friday with a tribute to the 50-year anniversary of the discovery of DNA.
If you’re reading this on a day other than Friday, April 25, 2003, you may have no clue what I’m talking about. In that case, take a look at this page of Google’s holiday logos. They also provide a page of logos created by fans of Google.
We called American Airlines executive behavior ’chiseling’ last week. Yesterday, Donald J. Carty resigned from the company. He was CEO and chairman.
I see one thing wrong with this. There was a group of people negotiating directly with the unions who new of what the executives were trying to get away with. They should be gone, too!
This week, we’ve been working on a number of enhancements to the services we provide. We’ve also begun a (lengthy) process of repackaging the marketing information we produce about what we do.
Thus far, we’ve only partially reworked our company’s web site. That work will continue for the next few weeks. For work that I am doing and speaking engagements I accept, we’ve produced a personal site.
Because of our belief that Wi-Fi or its variations are solutions to the metro network or ”last mile” problem, we’ve begun a crude page of notes concerning Wi-Fi. This will also be enhanced over time.
As always we’d appreciate hearing about any broken links or problems with any of these sites.
What is the X Prize? Get three people up to 62.5 miles of altitude in a vehicle, land them safely and do it again within 2 weeks. Do it and you win $10 million. A flight from Dallas to Seattle recently flew at 39,000 feet. That’s not quite 7.5 miles. This is seven times higher than that.
* * UPDATE * * * November 24, 2003: Steven Vore points out that Dick Rutan actually co-piloted Voyager around the world. Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites is/was the designer.
Level 3 Communications of Broomfield, CO announced a profit for its first quarter. Yesterday, the stock jumped from $5.88 to $6.26, a one-day jump of 6.5%. The profit largely resulted from one-time items related to restructuring some customer contracts.
On October 5, 2001 the company closed at $1.98 per share – down from its all-time high of $130 per share on March 10, 2000, the day the Nasdaq peaked. Had you invested $10,000 last October 10th, your investment would have been worth $31,616 at last night’s close. That’s an annualized return of better than 102%. No company will return that over a long period of time.
As one of the survivors of the telecom/dotcom meltdown, Level 3 is well-positioned to benefit handsomely from further turmoil among telecom companies and the future uses that we’ll have for high bandwidth telecommunications services.
* * UPDATE * * * Following Tuesday’s (4-23-03) big jump, Level 3 managed to fall to $5.84 yesterday (4-24-03), a drop of 6.7% It’s tough in telecom!
For those who are interested, on March 10, 2000 Berkshire Hathaway closed at $40,800 per share. The stock had declined from an all time-high of $84,000. Warren Buffett commented in the 2001 Annual Report this way:
Here’s one for those who enjoy an odd coincidence: The Great Bubble ended on March 10, 2000 (though we didn’t realize that fact until some months later). On that day, the NASDAQ (recently 1,731) hit its all-time high of 5,132. That same day, Berkshire shares traded at $40,800, their lowest price since mid-1997.
Note, at the time of his comment, the NASDAQ had been around 1,731. It closed yesterday at 1,466 and that’s up 5.87% for the year.
CEO’s continue to see average annual growth in compensation that far outstrips the pay increases of the ”average worker.” Fortune magazine has a cover story describing just how bad the phenomenon has become and some rather sneaky ways that giant amounts of compensation are hidden.
Dan Gillmor blasts American Airlines’ executives for trying to ”extort deep concessions” from the workers while continuing to feather their own nests.
In addition to providing simplicity in writing, editing, designing and hosting a weblog, will TypePad do for Movable Type what web services have done for Radio from Userland Software?
Clearly, Radio Userland has features that you simply cannot get from Movable Type. They are architecturally different products. Here’s a partial list of things that I still wish for in Movable Type:
Shortcuts – the ability to enclose a link or a graphic in quotation marks and have it render the link or graphic correctly in the final entry
Stories – the ability to store, date and index complete stories which can then be linked to multiple times without having to locate ’long posts’ in archives to link back to them
Weblogs.com – the traffic reports that come from being hosted on a Radio Userland server
News aggregation with one-click posting – The ability to subscribe to an RSS feed, review all updated feeds in a news aggregator and point and click to add an entry to your weblog complete with attribution to the original author
’Automatic’ backup of your weblog – because the entries reside in a directory/folder structure on your local computer, you always have a backup if something goes awry at the server
Create entries for later posting – because the entries are created on your local machine, they can be created and later FTP’d to your weblog
This might get very interesting. Now, if only I could find a way to ”import” all my original Radio entries into my Movable Type weblog.
Scanning technology in the logistics field wins big customers with seemingly small improvements (on a percentage basis) in the results. Here’s an article that talks about an improvement at Federal Express of only three percentage points in the actual scanning accuracy, but when you scan a million targets you are preventing 20,000 errors.
I encourage you to go over to TypePad and enter your email address for notification when this service becomes active in a few weeks. Reading between the lines, this service sounds as if it will really appeal to those who are not technically inclined, but want to write and publish a weblog. Here’s a quote from the press release:
”Movable Type is a marvelous tool for sophisticated users, and now TypePad will make the same power and community available to everyone as a weblog service that’s easy enough for anyone to sign up for, but lets even the most basic users participate not just in writing on a weblog, but in being a member of a networked community, creating semantically-rich content, and accessing web services.”
Work on several fronts continues, but the pace is frustrating. Sometimes I wish I’d never learned to spell HTML. I keep telling myself that something meaningful will come of all the effort. Stay tuned.
Our plans to put some new information on the web today and alter several web sites were a little bit ambitious. We ran into a couple of hurdles. We also ran out of time for the day.
Efforts will continue tonight in hopes of producing results by sometime tomorrow.
New entries here will be rather infrequent until after the work is done.
Tomorrow is an important day. We’ll be updating several web sites and launching some new capabilities while still continuing our present work. Many of these things have been in the works for quite some time.
This Holy Week has been an important time of preparation. Currently, I don’t have a church home – (long story). Yet, the reality of the last week of Jesus’s life has been incredibly strong this week. It sets an example for how we’re to live, lead, love and be with one another.
So many Christians or ”groups” of Christians think they’ve got ’it’ all figured out. They know just how to pray. They know just which scriptures to recite or to ’call upon’ for any situation. We live in an era when the experiential Christian is one who has attended all of the right Bible studies, retreats, walks, lessons, sessions and services. Yet, the simplicity of the Bible and the history, custom and social condition at the time is so often missed by those groups because they’re looking for something ’deeper.’
What’s the point you might ask? Well, first, we’re recommitting our work to God’s honor. Making life and work better for people will be of utmost importance as we seek new clients. Second, too many of those who call themselves Christian are doing more to sow discension, anger and confusion among fellow Christians as well as those who don’t understand John 3:16. Our focus will be on Christ’s example rather than the man-made rules, ethics and complexities of the day. It’s truly what Christ meant when he said,
The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. John 10:10 KJV
Today, the stone rolled away. There’s been no doubt for two thousand years about the outcome. What’s left is for each to decide!
It Is Finished
by Bill & Gloria Gaither
There’s a line that’s been drawn through the ages
On that line stands an old rugged cross
On that cross a battle is raging
For the gain of man’s soul or his loss.
On one side marched the forces of evil,
All the demons and devils of hell,
On the other, the Angels of Glory,
And they meet on GolGotha’s hill
The Earth shakes with the force of the conflict,
And the sun refuses to shine;
For there hangs God’s Son in the balance,
And then through the darkness He Cries,
It is finished, the battle is over
It is finished, There’ll be no more war
It is finished, The end of the conflict
It is finished, And Jesus is Lord
In my heart the battle was raging,
Not all prisoners of war have come home
There were battles choosed of my own making
I didn’t know the war had been won
Then I heard that the King of the ages
had fought all the battles for me,
and that victory was mine for the claiming
And now Praise His Name I am Free.
It is finished, the battle is over
It is finished, There’ll be no more war
It is finished, The end of the conflict
It is finished, And Jesus is Lord.
God sent His son, they called Him Jesus
He came to love, heal, and forgive.
He lived and died to buy my pardon,
An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives.
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
Because He lives, All fear is gone.
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living just because He lives.
How sweet to hold a newborn baby,
And feel the pride and joy he gives.
But greater still the calm assurance,
This child can face uncertain days because He lives.
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
Because He lives, All fear is gone.
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living just because He lives.
And then one day I’ll cross the river,
I’ll fight life’s final war with pain.
And then as death gives way to victory,
I’ll see the lights of glory and I’ll know He lives.
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
Because He lives, All fear is gone!
Because I know He holds the future
And life is worth the living just because He lives!
I hope you never lose your sense of wonder,
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger,
May you never take one single breath for granted,
GOD forbid love ever leave you empty handed,
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.
I hope you dance….I hope you dance.
I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance,
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Livin’ might mean takin’ chances but they’re worth takin’,
Lovin’ might be a mistake but it’s worth makin’,
Don’t let some hell bent heart leave you bitter,
When you come close to sellin’ out reconsider,
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.
I hope you dance….I hope you dance.
I hope you dance….I hope you dance.
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along,
Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone.)
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.
Dance….I hope you dance.
I hope you dance….I hope you dance.
I hope you dance….I hope you dance..
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along
Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone)
There will be few things more moving than seeing troops returning to the USA after serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom. The USS Abraham Lincoln will be the first carrier group to get back.
Everett, WA is planning quite a welcome. What an opportunity to take some fantastic photographs. I suspect the Lincoln will pass right by this window.
In Jewish law, the Sabbath began at sundown. Jesus was crucified on Friday and was removed from the cross before sundown that same day. Saturday was the Sabbath, but it was also a day between days.
Those who believed or who came to believe as Jesus suffered and died on the cross understood His promise. The Victory had been sealed, but the expectancy and the uncertainty and the mourning continued all day on the Jewish Sabbath.
Yet, we know what a glorious day Easter Sunday represents. We do not serve a dead prophet; we serve a risen, living King.
He Lives
by an unknown author
I serve a risen Saviour,
He’s in the world today;
I know that He is living,
Whatever men may say;
I see His hand of mercy,
I hear His voice of cheer,
And just the time I need Him
He’s always near.
He lives, He lives, Christ Jesus lives
today!
He walks with me and He talks with me
Along life’s narrow way.
He lives, He live, salvation to impart!
You ask me how I know He lives:
He lives within my heart.
After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, ”I am thirsty.”
A jar full of sour wine was standing there; so they put a sponge full of the sour wine upon a branch of hissop, and brought it up to His mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the sour wine, He said, ”It is finished!” And He bowed His head, and gave up His spirit.
I’ve lost almost 30 pounds since 11-10-02. Five of that has come off in the last ten days. How have I done it? I followed this guy’s advice. It’s a lifetime wellness program that gets built into your lifestyle. No obsessing over this food or that. No ”kill yourself” exercise regimen. Instead, you just eat right, get some exercise and manage stress which leads to slow and steady progress. It really works.
If you can only read one of his many books, this is the one I’d recommend.
Sharon Begley has begun writing a Friday Science Journal column for the Wall Street Journal. Her work first caught my eye with her April 4th column titled ”Likely Suicide Bombers Include Profiles You’d Never Suspect.” [Note: subscription may be required.] She did a great job of starting the debate about what may really motivate suicide terrorists.
... ’CHISELING’ IS. Chiseling business people have long been considered the sneakiest and most untrustworthy to work for. In this age of explosive corporate scandals, you’d think the execs at American Airlines would know better than to try to further widen the income gap between the executive ranks and the labor unions. Instead, they tried to sneak something by and got caught.
Fortunately, the flight attendants picked up on the SEC filing and went public with their frustration. This leaves a cloud of ill will between labor and management which may ultimately bring about the bankruptcy that everyone was being asked (by the executives) to help them avoid. That’s chiseling.
Tony Blair read 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 at Princess Diana’s funeral. This particular chapter in the Bible is often referred to as the ”love” chapter. However, the 1611 King James translation uses the word ’charity’ where we normally read the word ’love.’ Take a look below at some different translations. Rather than producing confusion, these translations shed light on one another.
This is the day we know as Good Friday. It’s the day when John 3:16 truly became a reality.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16 KJV
Take a look at this website to see how various translations handle the words.
I Corinthians 13 from various translations:
from the New Living Translation:
If I could speak in any language in heaven or on earth but didn’t love others, I would only be making meaningless noise like a loud gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I knew all the mysteries of the future and knew everything about everything, but didn’t love others, what good would I be? And if I had the gift of faith so that I could speak to a mountain and make it move, without love I would be no good to anybody. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would be of no value whatsoever.
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
Love will last forever, but prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will all disappear. Now we know only a little, and even the gift of prophecy reveals little! But when the end comes, these special gifts will all disappear.
It’s like this: When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child does. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now. There are three things that will endure faith, hope, and love and the greatest of these is love.
from The Message:
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, ”Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always ”me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good. We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
from the New American Standard Bible:
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.
When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.
from the King James Version:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
Many scholars believe that recent translations of the Bible are superior to older translations because of recent archaeological finds. Others find heresy in anything other than the 1611 King James Version.
The following is chapter 12 of the book of Proverbs from The Message. It truly reads like a list of pithy sayings. It reads like something we might say to one another today. It’s no substitute for a great translation of the Bible, but it is certainly an inspirational addition to any library.
Proverbs 12 from The Message
1 If you love learning, you love the discipline that goes with it – how shortsighted to refuse correction!
2 A good person basks in the delight of God, and he wants nothing to do with devious schemers.
3 You can’t find firm footing in a swamp, but life rooted in God stands firm.
4 A hearty wife invigorates her husband, but a frigid woman is cancer in the bones.
5 The thinking of principled people makes for justice; the plots of degenerates corrupt.
6 The words of the wicked kill; the speech of the upright saves.
7 Wicked people fall to pieces – there’s nothing to them; the homes of good people hold together.
8 A person who talks sense is honored; airheads are held in contempt.
9 Better to be ordinary and work for a living than act important and starve in the process.
10 Good people are good to their animals; the ”good-hearted” bad people kick and abuse them.
11 The one who stays on the job has food on the table; the witless chase whims and fancies.
12 What the wicked construct finally falls into ruin, while the roots of the righteous give life, and more life. Wise People Take Advice
13 The gossip of bad people gets them in trouble; the conversation of good people keeps them out of it.
14 Well-spoken words bring satisfaction; well-done work has its own reward.
15 Fools are headstrong and do what they like; wise people take advice.
16 Fools have short fuses and explode all too quickly; the prudent quietly shrug off insults.
17 Truthful witness by a good person clears the air, but liars lay down a smoke screen of deceit.
18 Rash language cuts and maims, but there is healing in the words of the wise.
19 Truth lasts; lies are here today, gone tomorrow.
20 Evil scheming distorts the schemer; peace-planning brings joy to the planner.
21 No evil can overwhelm a good person, but the wicked have their hands full of it.
22 God can’t stomach liars; he loves the company of those who keep their word.
23 Prudent people don’t flaunt their knowledge; talkative fools broadcast their silliness.
24 The diligent find freedom in their work; the lazy are oppressed by work.
25 Worry weighs us down; a cheerful word picks us up.
26 A good person survives misfortune, but a wicked life invites disaster.
27 A lazy life is an empty life, but ”early to rise” gets the job done.
28 Good men and women travel right into life; sin’s detours take you straight to hell.
If you can dream and not make dreams your master;
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build them up with worn out tools.
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: ”Hold on!”
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
When I was in the seventh grade, I was told that in three weeks I could have $10.00 if I’d memorize If by Rudyard Kipling. I did. I then carried a copy of it in my wallet all the way through high school and college. That copy – tattered and worn – remains in a tickler file where I see it monthly.
Though I’ve only lifted excerpts for the entry above, a thorough reading and understanding of the entire poem remains one of the purest forms of secular wisdom. It has influenced my personality and development to an enormous extent.
Before anyone rains on this entry, let me assure you that I’m 100% behind our military, its leaders and those who developed a battle plan for Operation Iraqi Freedom. I also took some courses in Biblical Archaeology in college.
Alan Cornett has pointed to an article from the St. Petersburg Times by Sharon Tubbs titled Artillery and Artifacts. Nevermind, for now, what consideration the military did or should have given to The Cradle of Civilization arguments raised by the pacifists. Instead, read the article for the history and the archaeological significance of the region.
My take-away from this article is that under a free Iraq, we may now have access to areas that have been too dangerous or off limits to our researchers for many years.
I’ve been an enthusiastic fan of Adaware from Lavasoft for quite some time. Today, I updated my copy via the web and ran a complete scan followed by a quarantine of all the recommended files. There were 63.
Then, I downloaded Spybot-Search & Destroy. It rapidly found 12 more files or registry entries that it recommended I get rid of. I did. I encourage anyone reading this to take a look at some of the reviews of Spybot and consider adding it to the suite of tools you use to fight viruses, adware, spyware, unwanted cookies and other intrusions.
Two pieces of music have been stuck in my head this week. It’s Holy Week.
Until you’ve heard someone sing Via Dolorosa, you can’t imagine the power of this piece of music. Then, I’m reminded more than usual this week of my own story as told through music. We too casually toss out the expression, ”there, but for the grace of God, go I.”
Somebody who knows Microsoft from the inside out might be able to answer this question. What percentage of Microsoft’s employees write code? I want one of those jobs that doesn’t involve writing code!
I encourage you to take a look at the very brief summary of the last week of Jesus’s life. Yesterday, was a day of solitude. Thursday He taught servant leadership. It’s probably one of the most profound and counter-intuitive principles in all of His teachings. If you seek joy and significance in life, look at these words:
In today’s words, here’s the lesson: True fulfillment never comes from a life of self-gratification. The way to the top in God’s economy is through serving. It’s finding God’s mission for your life and engaging in it. It’s finding people you can humbly serve in daily, down-to-earth ways. And when you find God’s purpose for your life and pursue it in a spirit of humility and servanthood, your heart spills over with love and gratefulness.
You’re in a race. You overtake the second place runner. What position do you now hold in the race? (answer: Hope you didn’t say first place. You overtook the second place runner, so you’re in second place.
With a redoubling of effort, I’ll be making a fourfold increase in what I’ve been trying to do with career, job and employment. Here are a few of my alternatives:
Expand our existing business
Go to work for another company
Develop some new consulting fields
Change careers entirely
I’m going to be rethinking these between now and Monday. Watch for a radically expanded effort in one or more of the above areas.
Here’s a quote from Po Bronson’s terrific book that characterizes my own career perfectly. The words were spoken by Heidi Olson:
There had never been a job description that fit her. ”I do best in organizations in flux,” she realized. ”if they’re undergoing rapid change, need to be reinvented or fixed, a cleanup or a new build, I’ll do great. I’m not right for a regular job.”
Some weblogs generate comments. Others generate email. This one brings in email – a lot. When I wrote The Price of Victimhood, I had no idea that so many people would have something to add or something to dispute in what I had written. Apparently, families, workplaces and social settings all suffer under the weight of ”victims.”
Here’s a sample of some of the remarks that came in:
”I can handle the whining from the people you wrote about. It’s their unwillingness to ever see themselves the way they truly are that drives me crazy.”
”So many of these so-called ’Christian’ people never apologize or take any initiative to restore the relationships they damage. It’s almost arrogant. They blame someone else for the problem and never accept any of the blame.”
”You should combine what you wrote and quoted about ’pride’ with the one about ’victims.’”
”Are you thinking of someone in particular?”
”Why can’t people understand that they can do and say things that hurt others’ feelings even though the one getting hurt has a choice about how to respond?”
”You quoted from Ephesians, but you missed the most important verses. Chapter 4, verse 26 says, ’...do not let the sun go down on your wrath.’”
”It is so sad that these people would rather be right than have successful interpersonal relationships.”
”Things aren’t as cut-and-dried as you say they are.”
When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space
On the roof it’s peaceful as can be
And there the world below can’t bother me
Let me tell you now
When I come home feeling tired and beat
I go up where the air is fresh and sweet
I get away from the hustling crowds
And all that rat race noise down in the street
On the roof’s the only place I know
Where you just have to wish to make it so
Up on the roof
At night the stars put on a show for free
And darling you can share it all with me
I keep-a tellin’ you
Right smack dab in the middle of town
I found a Paradise that’s trouble-proof
And if this world starts getting you down
There’s room enough for two up on the roof
Up on the roof
Glenn Reynolds points us to an update on Dr. Atkins’ condition following a serious accident. I know many people who have lost lots of weight using the Atkins Diet. I also know many people who continue to condemn it as a seriously risky approach to wellness.
The suddenness with which life throws us challenges, opportunities, excitement and tribulation can be breathtaking. To use the old roller coaster analogy – so many people go through life simply trying to hold on tight and avoid throwing up. There is more. Life can be full of meaning, purpose, significance and joy.
The Solid Rock
words by Edward Mote
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
On Christ the solid rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand.
All other ground is sinking sand.
Perception isn’t reality. Lots of people think otherwise. Psychologists and communicators attempt to convince us that perception is reality, but it isn’t. Let me explain. Imagine tomorrow morning. Imagine a beautiful April day. You wake up and you step outside. It’s a glorious day. You remark to someone standing nearby, ”What an incredible day this is. Isn’t that the most beautiful yellow sky you’ve ever seen?”
It’s a spring day and the sky is a vivid blue. It isn’t yellow. No matter how badly your perception is fouled, the sky remains blue. Just because you see yellow, it’s not a fact that the sky has suddenly gone from being blue to being yellow. Yeah, I know. Your reality is now different. You see yellow. Fine, but have the laws of physics that make the sky appear blue changed? Has only your perceiving apparatus gone astray or are you now prepared to argue that all of physics can be called into question?
This phenomenon (of fouled perception – not yellow skies) bites people in all walks of life. It is particularly common in today’s world where so many are taught to be victims. If they don’t like your perception, they whine about it until you cave in. One particularly ominous attribute of those who play this game is duplicity.
When they want to feel a certain way, you or something you said or did is often the cause. However, when you feel a certain way, it is your perception that is fouled. They didn’t say or do anything to do harm or sow confusion or bring about dissension, and they will argue until they are purple if confronted about it. The masters of this emotional approach to everything can literally tie an individual or an organization in knots.
Spiced with a few politically correct, multi-cultural, diversity buzzwords, this perception vs. reality loop can go on endlessly. The cost in time is huge. The cost in dollars is outrageous. The saddest part of all – the cost in human terms. Allowing one of these perpetual victims to whine, moan and disrupt can take a toll that wrecks the very soul of even the most confident people. Those who empower and foster this sort of tripe do one of the most serious disservices to all with whom they come in contact.
Personal responsibility extends to every aspect of life. From the choices we make to the words we speak to the motives in our hearts, we have a responsibility to treat others fairly and with kindness. Those who practice victimhood, then hide behind the perception vs. reality trick are guilty of one of the lowest forms of deceit. They see strong leaders as tyrants. They see specific requirements as too detailed. They see anything that closes off their path to victimization as an afront to their personal definition of right and wrong. Remember, their personal definition may or may not be accurate. Standards are for everyone else, but not for the victim.
Trying to convince one of these people how wrong-headed their approach is will only frustrate you. So many of their excuses for why they are that way lead back to a decision they must make: Will I continue to blame someone or something else for all that I am and do or will I accept complete responsibility for myself, my choices, my actions and my impact on others from this day forward? Lawyers who define ”truth” as ”whatever we can get a jury to believe” are guilty of blaming ”the system” or a whole host of other causes for their dishonesty.
There are two sets of scripture that describe the direction these people must decide to pursue. Here they are in two different translations:
Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God? Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall; But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. Isaiah 40: 27-31 KJV
Why would you ever complain, O Jacob, or, whine, Israel, saying, ”GOD has lost track of me. He doesn’t care what happens to me”? Don’t you know anything? Haven’t you been listening? GOD doesn’t come and go. God lasts.
He’s Creator of all you can see or imagine. He doesn’t get tired out, doesn’t pause to catch his breath. And he knows everything, inside and out. He energizes those who get tired, gives fresh strength to dropouts. For even young people tire and drop out, young folk in their prime stumble and fall. But those who wait upon GOD get fresh strength. They spread their wings and soar like eagles, They run and don’t get tired, they walk and don’t lag behind. Isaiah 40:27-31 The Message
Clearly, eagles are not victims. Nothing in their makeup calls them to victimhood. We’re called to be eagles.
Here’s the second crystal clear message about how we’re to treat one another:
Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you. Ephesians 4:29-32 KJV
Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth. Say only what helps, each word a gift. Don’t grieve God. Don’t break his heart. His Holy Spirit, moving and breathing in you, is the most intimate part of your life, making you fit for himself. Don’t take such a gift for granted. Make a clean break with all cutting, backbiting, profane talk. Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you. Ephesians 4:29-32 The Message
* * UPDATE * * * There’s an update to this entry here.
If you subscribe to T-Mobile’s Wi-Fi service, you can use it in any place where they have access points (known as a hotspot). However, you can only use the hotspots of the services you are subscribing to; unless, of course, you stumble into an open hotspot where you can get Wi-Fi service without a fee.
As I understand this entry, it means that T-Mobile will soon be available at any Kinko’s, Starbucks or Borders. So, if those are the places you hang when you travel, T-Mobile might be for you. On the other hand, Boingo has a completely different list of locations as does Wayport.
It looks to me as if the road warrior still needs upwards of 3 or 4 accounts to be certain there’s Wi-Fi available. Stay at a Marriott and you’ve got it in the hotel. Eat at McDonald’s and you’ve got it at breakfast. Make copies at lunchtime and you’ve got it at Kinko’s. You get the picture. Something is going to have to change to make Wi-Fi as ubiquitous as electricty.
Now that the French have shown their true colors, we need an alternative to the famous Rhodia Pads. Any suggestions? Anybody know if there’s anything remotely comparable?
I’m not a wine drinker. I’m ok with cheese of other nationalities. But, Rhodia Pads are a staple.
I’ve renewed my Radio Userland serial number for another year. Last October, I moved my primary weblog to a new host and began using Movable Type for content management.
There are features of Radio that I still miss. In particular, I have not had a news aggregator since I moved to Movable Type. I’m considering the following and if you know how to make any of these happen, your help is welcome:
Move Radio to a different (faster) computer
Import all of my past Radio entries into my existing Movable Type weblog
Point the Radio Userland weblog to a new host and begin posting to it once all existing entries are removed. (In other words, a fresh start of a brand new weblog on Radio)
There’s apparently a time and a place to let your message be forcefully understood. Yesterday, we talked about the final seven days in the life of Jesus. The Monday before Jesus was crucified, He cleaned out the temple. No account of this story portrays the act as peaceful. Was this the stress of what He was facing? Was this a momentary lapse? Was this God’s son fulfilling the purpose He was sent to fulfill? All of our modern day, pop psychology explanations break down when this event is viewed in light of the days that followed. Every step of the way ”obedience” was the watchword.
Do you believe that history documents the last seven days of Jesus? Do you believe that there were accounts of the events of that week that run parallel to The Bible? If you have not seen the historical evidence that supports what we call Holy Week, begin now to understand the story. Here are some ways to do that:
Down the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem that day
The soldiers tried to clear the narrow street
But the crowd pressed in to see
The man condemned to die on Calvary
He was bleeding from a beating, there were stripes upon His back
And He wore a crown of thorns upon His head
And He bore with every step
The scorn of those who cried out for His death
Down the Via Dolorosa called ”The Way of Suffering,”
Like a lamb came the Messiah, Christ the King,
And He chose to walk that road out of
His love for you and me.
Down the Via Dolorosa, all the way to Calvary.
Por la Via Dolorosa, triste dia en Jerusalem
Los saldados le abrian paso a Jesus
Mas la gente se acercaba
Para ver al que llevaba aquella cruz
Por la Via Dolorosa, que es la via del dolor
Como oveja vino Cristo, Rey, Senor
Y fue El quien quiso ir por su amor por ti y por mi
Por la Via Dolorosa al Calvario y a morir
The blood that would cleanse the souls of all men
Made its way through the heart of Jerusalem.
Down the Via Dolorosa called ”The Way of Suffering,”
Like a lamb came the Messiah, Christ the King
And He chose to walk that road out of His love for you and me
Down the Via Dolorosa, all the way to Calvary.
Boeing’s people are refuting a story in Business Week in which professor Alan MacPherson of State University of New York at Buffalo and co-author [of a study] David Pritchard say that the company will get out of the business of manufacturing commercial aircraft.
Currently, Boeing gets nearly 60% of its revenue from commercial airplanes. But, here’s what some facts show:
Other evidence supports their prediction: more than 30,000 layoffs from Boeing’s commercial-airplane division over the past two years, continued outsourcing of factory work to Asia and Russia, the sale or closure of 10 million square feet of factory space, and a 60% decline in Boeing’s commercial-airplane backlog since 2001. Four of Boeing’s six airplane production lines have backlogs of less than 50 aircraft—a paltry number, Pritchard contends. Generally, the industry considers a backlog of 100 jets or higher to be financially healthy.
   Wanted: Ideal Executive In very large corporations the ideal executive line-up includes four different types. First, a chairman who is a business statesman, broad-gauged, intelligently interested in national affairs, as well as being capable of shaping policies and finances. Second, a dynamic president, expert in production problems and, preferably, able to sally forth to the firing line when big contracts are being let. Third, a master sales manager, bubbling over with ideas, originality, enthusiasm, pep, capable of inspiring the whole salesforce-and of commanding their respect for his practical abilities. Fourthand this is what many corporations lack-a vice-president in tune with labor, preferably a man who has come up from the ranks, a man of deep human sympathies, temperamentally fitted to meet and mingle with wage earners, to talk their language, to inspire their confidence.
Microsoft has named Kevin Johnson Group Vice President of Worldwide Sales, Marketing & Services. It’s the third highest ranking slot at Microsoft – presumably behind Gates & Ballmer.
Everybody’s talking about consolidation in the I.T. business. This week Larry Ellison of Oracle predicted a shake-out of 1000 or more technology companies. [link is to the Wall Street Journal(WSJ) and a subscription may be required.] Here’s how the WSJ characterized Ellison’s prescription for survival:
Recognize that simpler is better. He hopes to switch Oracle’s operations, which span 160 countries, from 1,500 servers to just 24 Dell Linux boxes.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. To fly to California, you shouldn’t have to design your own plane, build your own airport and learn to fly. But that’s how much of the tech industry operates.
Take advantage of proven technology. ”Every child’s unique. Every computer doesn’t have to be.”
Remember specialization of labor and economies of scale. ”Companies will start doing less of their own computer operations and outsourcing more.”
Take cues from the customer. ”We became the largest industry in the world by selling things that people didn’t want to buy.” That has to stop, he says.
A few other clips from the article:
In 1995, he predicted the death of the personal computer.
These days, he unabashedly enjoys the finer things in life: He owns a pleasure yacht called Katana and a racing yacht, and last year he put up about $80 million to finance his own America’s Cup team.
He owns three palatial homes in Northern California, including a Japanese-style mansion that is being built in a traditional style without nails.
He has been married and divorced three times; he’s currently engaged to a novelist.
BOTTOM LINE (my beliefs): The tech industry may consolidate. The tech industry will probably continue to grow at a rate that is faster than the economy at large. The biotechnology industry will grow at rates resembling those of the the computer industry in its prime.
”He arrived expecting to see an incredible ostentatious display of wealth. At the time, a full three-quarters of the employees were millionaires. ”But they were still working in cubicles. Even the founders! And they were so nice!” One moment that stood out: an assistant had to get lunch for David Filo and Jerry Yang. She grabbed two premade turkey sandwiches from the cafeteria and threw them on the table in the conference room. Carl couldn’t believe she hadn’t asked them what they wanted, or let them customize their orders. When Carl was her age, he had to get lunch one day for Joel Schumacher and another executive. Joel ordered gazpacho with no croutons, no sour cream, and chopped egg on the side. The other executive ordered a hamburger with grilled onions on the side. But the burger came by accident with the onions on the burger. The executive refused to eat it, and chewed Carl out for not checking the order to make sure it was accurate before presenting it.
Can you imagine the parties in Baghdad this week? Hospitals had best make a rubber stamp that says GEORGE, because nine months from now theyre going to use it on every other birth certificate.
The ultra-liberal left has developed a shrill new alternative to protesting the war now that it has progressed so well. The only problem with this latest rant is that it’s wrong-headed as well.
Much of the argument hinges on what percentage of GDP the deficit represents. I’ve also seen stories about what percentage of the GDP, the war costs represent. Unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal doesn’t provide links to some stories, but Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore wrote an opinion piece for Monday, April 7, 2003. The title was ”A Tax Cut: The Perfect Wartime Boost.”
Here’s the essence of the message from Laffer and Moore:
Assuming 5% nominal GDP growth per year, the U.S. would have to run deficits of $500 billion per year for the next 10 years just to reach the level of debt relative to GDP that we had in 1993. While we’re not suggesting that that would be the ”right thing to do,” what we are suggesting is that the idea of excessive federal debt is not the appropriate consideration to keep our president and our Congress from doing what’s right for our country. We need President Bush’s tax cuts now.
Level 3 Communications of Broomfield, CO has begun a steady advance as one of the survivors of the telecom shakeout and as a next generation provider of IP services end-to-end. Level 3 has announced an agreement with PanAmSat Corporation, which enhances PanAmSat’s ”delivery of entertainment content and information to cable broadcasters, network television affiliates, news agencies, ISPs and other customers around the globe.”
Additionally, Level 3 has announced an agreement with PlusNet Technologies of London. Under that agreement Level 3 will provide IP transport services to PlusNet, which is one of the UK’s largest ISP’s. Level 3 operates a 10-gigabit IP backbone that spans 57 North American markets and 16 European markets, and is accessible from more than 550 traffic aggregation points.
He summed up his final judgment on Bill Clinton in a column a few years later, when he responded to another journalist’s assertion that Bill Clinton was ”unique.” Yes, said Kelly. ”What comes across as the most important source of Clinton’s uniqueness as president is the nearly unbelievable degree of his essential unfitness to be president—his profound immaturity, his pathological selfishness, his cynicism, above all his relentless corruption.”
Ali is gone. If we can now find Saddam and the boys, the Iraqi people should begin to get the real message of freedom.
I haven’t written much about The War. Embedded reporters or not, it has been frustrating to watch the efforts of our troops as portrayed by media skeptics, cynics and malcontents. Have you ever watched a basketball game where you felt the ultimate victor had to beat the opposing team, the referees and the court-side announcer then answer inane questions from the clueless?
What really gripes me about the left’s anti-war posture is how intellectually dishonest it is. The leftists will go into drama queen mode over sweat shops employing children in South America. They’ll go nuts when women’s rights are abused, except when women are beheaded or set afire in Iraq. They’ll rally and march and hoot and holler about human rights violations in countries that change their names weekly.
Let a madman with palaces galore starve 400,000 children and the left blames the U.S. for the situation. If Martin Sheen really believed all he claims to believe about this war, he’d have the intellectual honesty to stop playing the role of a President who sends troops into battle.
...tired and fed up with people who seem to have all the answers. Most often these people have a tendency to jump to conclusions, speak without really thinking and act so incredibly sure of themselves. They are often abrupt, rude and without original thoughts. Typically they broadcast the latest thoughts they’ve heard someone else espouse. Unfortunately, they are also frequently very wrong. The world doesn’t need another authority. The world doesn’t need another know-it-all. The world needs people who understand God’s grace and His mercy on each of us and the real depth of I Corinthians 13.
Life is simply too short to spend even a moment badgering someone else into your point of view. Either you show them kindness, consideration and respect or you show them who you think is ”boss.” One way or the other, your personality shouts much louder than your viewpoint!
It is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes
bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But Pride always means enmity – it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.
In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that – and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison – you do not know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound’s worth of Pride towards their fellow men. I suppose it was of those people Christ was thinking when He said that some would preach about Him and cast out devils in His name, only to be told at the end of the world that He had never known them. And any of us may at any moment be in this deathtrap. Luckily, we have a test. Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good – above all, that we are better than someone else – I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.
It is a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices can smuggle itself into the very centre of our religious life. But you can see why. The other, and less bad, vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from Hell. It is purely spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly. For the same reason, Pride can often be used to beat down the simpler vices. Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy’s Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity – that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride – just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.
I can anticipate the response that is coming: ”I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t this also your experience?” Yes. I’m full of myself—after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary.
But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.
It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?
The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a feature section on ten hot technologies or trends that will impact us or already have. Here’s the list:[subscription may be required]
I’ve never been one who falls for a particular product so completely that I wish every product I use could be developed and sold by that company. The people at Microsoft see themselves in that light. Pretty soon they’re going to run out of technology niches to steal and they’re going to decide that they want to supply shoes or blenders or chairs. First, they want to take Google down.
On its face, this isn’t so much a horrible change as it is an omen of Microsoft’s direction. Reader Walt Kwait sent me the next update message we’re likely to see: ”Click Yes, or No, or Cancel, or press Escape, or End Task, or just power off your PC to update your machine with any changes Microsoft wants to send you or take from you. Your birth alone was implied consent to Microsoft Corporation, allowing this to happen.”
And here’s another valuable insight:
Some observers criticized the comment of the Microsoft spokesman I quoted, who said that Windows Update is completely voluntary and that users aren’t required to run it. ”I can just imagine trying to get support from them if you do not have the latest patches installed,” David Rahn says. ”The first thing they usually say is, if you’re not running the latest patches, get there and then we’ll talk. Getting patches may be voluntary, but needing them certainly is not.”
Microsoft suspended lots of application and server upgrades when it decided to pursue trustworthy computing and security. Apparently, the company is now more comfortable with its posture regarding security.
With the meltdown of the dotcoms came the meltdown of the telecommunications companies. The former we might do without. The latter – in some form – is with us for the duration. As the telecom industry attempts to right itself and find a place of (profitable) relevance, new entrants threaten. A panel of experts at a Wharton Technology Conference discussed a variety of threats, needs and opportunities. Wi-Fi looms as a truly disruptive technology.
Tom Yager has surveyed the I.T. landscape and sees a coming consolidation of earth-shaking proportions.
It will take a couple of weeks for me to process everything I’ve taken in over the past three months. I already feel hopeful, excited, and motivated about consolidation. It will bring technology back into sync with business reality. I worry about my future, as do several of the visionaries and strategists who spoke openly with me. Those who saw this coming long before I did have had more time to accept that their once-sure life plans will be delayed or derailed. You’d be surprised how many are happy about a forced change of scenery and perspective.
That’s nice for Starbucks, but unless T-Mobile is given an incremental per store percentage of aggregate increased sales based on the number of Wi-Fi users at any given time, this doesn’t pay the T-1 bill.
This quote summarizes the current state of the Wi-Fi industry. No matter which type of wireless access you select, at some point your wireless connection hops on a wire that is being paid for by someone. Generally, that ”someone” must cover the cost of that bandwidth as well as the maintenance, operation and original cost of the equipment to operate the network.
This is a fact regardless of which provider you may be. From Starbucks to McDonald’s to Boingo and T-Mobile, profitable companies are not going to operate wireless networks at a loss for very long.
* * UPDATE * * * Look at what Ephraim Schwartz has to say about public Wi-Fi access.
You can easily set up a wireless LAN in a home or small office, taking advantage of whatever Internet connection you might have. The cost to do this is as little as $180 for a home with two computers and an existing DSL or cable modem connection.
The wireless ISP approach provides service within the coverage area of the WISP. This article describes the services of a WISP in the Salt Lake City area. For services that might be available wherever you travel, Boingo and T-Mobile are two of the current contenders.
CIO (chief information officer) magazine has just completed a survey of top CIO’s in industry. This article, ”The Importance of Being Strategic,” describes some of the thinking that CIO’s must use to be successful. The advice applies to virtually anyone in a major corporation today.
Clay Shirky has written an excellent article describing why wireless networking technologies such as Wi-Fi will ultimately replace third generation (3G) cellular technologies that feature phone service as well as wireless, roaming Internet and email access.
One of the challenges in the technology field today is explaining technology to the uninitiated, but interested customer. Unfortunately, the technology field calls these people ”users.” Wireless means so many things to so many different people. Few really want to understand the difference in the underlying technologies that make a cell phone so different from a PC ”connected wirelessly” at an airport. This article takes a run at explaining the current state of affairs.
Cisco claims that 67% of large U.S. companies have voice-over-IP pilot projects under way. Here’s an older article that counters the Cisco point of view.
Cisco sees a future where the LAN, WAN and service providers’ networks will all seamlessly connect with each other, he said.
Microsoft is preparing the next release of their Office suite. Big changes are in the works. Today’s current version of Office is called Office XP. This article explains how the new software will be bundled and packaged for resale. Expect another round of PC upgrades in order to take full advantage of the many new features Microsoft plans. You’re also likely to have to make the leap to Windows XP.
This article explains that some key components of the new software will only run on Microsoft’s latest operating systems – Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 or Windows XP. Users of any of the older Microsoft operating systems such as Windows 9X versions or Windows ME or even the older Windows NT versions can’t run the new software.
When billionaires grandstand they do it with such vigor that they undermine their own credibility. No time to research a response from Gates or Ballmer, but it’s likely that they said something at the other extreme of the spectrum.
”(Microsoft has) already been killed by one open-source product. Slaughtered, wiped out, taken from market dominance to irrelevance,” Ellison said, speaking of the Apache Web server’s displacement of Microsoft’s IIS (Internet Information Services) technology. ”They had a virtual monopoly on Web servers, and then they were wiped off the face of the earth. And it’s going to happen to them again on Linux.”
Yesterday I recovered a long-lost Hewlett-Packard HP11c calculator. Pressing the power button, it came on instantly and has run without a hiccup ever since. This product had been in a drawer for over 20 years. I have a cell phone that likes to be recharged every 4 hours and it’s becoming greedier about even that frequency.
Here’s news that we may one day recharge our batteries in a completely different manner. From the article is this excerpt: Minteer said the team is working on ways to increase their biofuel cell’s power density. Currently the team’s battery can produce 2 milliwatts of power per effective square centimeter. The average cell phone requires 500 milliwatts to operate.
and things and people seem to converge against you, a story like this one pops up. It sort of makes one think about where to look for friends, consoling and loyalty. [via InstaPundit]
But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up, and said to them, ”He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” John 8:7 NASB
They kept at him, badgering him. He straightened up and said, ”The sinless one among you, go first: Throw the stone.” John 8:7 The Message
So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. John 8:7 KJV
When they continued to ask Jesus their question, he raised up and said, ”Anyone here who has never sinned can throw the first stone at her.” John 8:7 New Century Version
They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, ”All right, stone her. But let those who have never sinned throw the first stones!” John 8:7 New Living Translation
Lots of weblogs are covering the latest information seen or heard via news services concerning the war. It’s tough to keep up. There are several great portals to the rest of the comments. The best seems to be (as is often the case) The InstaPundit. Rachel Lucas also has the usual excellent coverage and points to others.
Cisco is buying Linksys. Cisco is another of those companies that has been built largely by acquisitions. Another famous example of the acquisitive strategy is Worldcom. On scales large and small acquiring companies have to be extremely cautious about getting what they pay for. They also have to be nearly ruthless in their willingness to write down assets when they realize they’ve overpaid. Otherwise, you get to the ”big bath” accounting practices that led to Worldcom’s announcement of nearly $80 billion of write-downs.
Did we get him? Only time will tell, but the more time that passes, the more likely we are to hear that we got a busload of nuns taking the orphans to a place of safety!
* * UPDATE * * * Still waiting on bomb damage assessment! If we got him we need to get the word out so that Harvard can get back to work.
Recently, this weblog has included content that is focused on man’s search for meaning, signficance and a purpose that fulfills. If you are wrestling with your own situation, consider the 40 days it would take you to go through Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life. It’s well worth your time.
Blessed are those who trust in the Lord. . . .They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they go right on producing delicious fruit. Jeremiah 17:78 (NLT)
Back at the revolution...
We’ve talked about Wi-Fi or wireless local area networks here before. There’s an end game out there that really does replace a great deal of the technology that we have come to think of as ”essential.”
Kevin Werbach points to another example of how we can expect to use our Wi-Fi networks in the future. We’re talking about growth rates of 98% per year!
I have coveted a new Apple G4 Powerbook. For those who don’t want to relicense all of your software for the version that runs on the Mac, Gizmodo shows us an answer from Samsung.
Disruptive technology is often described as the unexpected breakthrough from an unexpected entrant into an otherwise mature field. One example that gets cited is that the light bulb was not invented by a candle maker seeking to improve his product.
In my lifetime, I foresee many revolutionary businesses which will grow from some form of disruptive technology. Two that immediately spring to mind are:
Wi-Fi networks as an alternative to cellular and legacy telephone networks
Fuel cells as an alternative to fossil fuels and dependence on foreign oil imports
We’re told to make our work something we are passionate about. Many times – by the time you decide to do that – you may have lost the ability to identify just what kinds of tasks you can be passionate about. Po Bronson’s book can help. I noticed today that his book has spent eight weeks on the March 16, 2003 New York Times Book Review’s best seller list.
Doctors debate everything, from the right way to sedate somebody to how much pain medication to give to whether you would send somebody to the O.R. right away or wait. It’s very disconcerting to realize how much of it is a judgment call at any given time.
Not long ago I visited with a doctor who made me aware of just how far we have to go in the field of medicine. Techniques that are viewed as primitive and harmful were commonplace not so long ago.
Techniques that we consider state-of-the-art today will one day be shown to be barbaric in their outcomes. Today’s New York Times Magazine provides some interesting insights into the kind of trial-and-error work that is still a big part of the medical industry.
The Lord was ready to save me; Therefore we will sing my songs with stringed instruments, All the days of our life, in the house of the Lord. Isaiah 38:20
What I’m curious about is who is doing the design and implementation work on all of these ”national efforts?” Who is actually measuring and outfitting a McDonald’s restaurant? What brand of gear are they choosing? Has Cometa hired a third party to do the installation or does Cometa have people on the payroll who are doing the work?
There’s a future in which Wi-Fi devices provide us with the services we now get from local phone lines, long distance services, email and Internet access. All of the abilities to place phone calls, retrieve email and browse the Internet could be provided without a dependence upon the legacy phone networks.
This morning, Dan Gillmor mentions Vivato as one component of that future.
I cannot tell why there should come to me
A thought of someone miles and miles away,
In swift insistence on the memory,
Unless there be a need that I should pray.
Too hurried oft are we to spare a thought
For days together for some friend away:
Perhaps God does it for us, and we ought
To read His signal as a call to pray.
Perhaps just then, my friend has fiercer fight;
Some overwhelming sorrow or decay
Of courage, darkness, some lost sense of right,
And so, in case my friend needs prayer, I pray.
Friend, do the same for me, if I, unsought,
Intrude upon you on some crowded day.
Give me a moments prayer in passing thought;
Be very sure I need it, therefore pray.
Life gets overwhelming. Little things become big things; or, we allow little things to take on giant proportions in our hearts and minds. Despair is easy to find in this world today.
Here’s an example of the message in Isaiah:
You shall weep no more. He will be very gracious to you at the sound of your cry; When He hears it, He will answer you. Isaiah 30:19 [NKJV]
Have you ever longed for something late in life that you could only have done or taken care of years before? Do you think about what might have been had you only…? There’s hope!
So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten. The crawling locust. The consuming locust. And the chewing locust. My great army which I sent among you. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, And praise the name of the Lord your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you; And My people shall never be put to shame. Joel 2:25-27 [NKJV]
you know how good God is. Every now and then, the power of the 100th Psalm is obvious in a life. Here’s what it says:
Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands. Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations. Psalm 100:1-5 [KJV]
I can only imagine
What it will be like
When I walk by your side
I can only imagine
What my eyes will see
When Your face is before me
I can only imagine
Surrounded by your glory, what will my heart feel?
Will I dance for you Jesus, or in awe of you be still?
Will I stand in your presence, or to my knees will I fall?
Will I sing halleujah, will I be able to speak at all?
I can only imagine.
I can only imagine
When that day comes
When I find myself standing in the sun
I can only imagine
When all I will do
Is forever, forever worship you
I can only imagine.
Surrounded by your glory, what will my heart feel?
Will I dance for you Jesus, or in awe of you be still?
Will I stand in your presence, or to my knees will I fall?
Will I sing halleujah, will I be able to speak at all?
I can only imagine.
I’m also reminded of the song His Strength Is Perfect. The words that grab my soul are: ”Raised in His power, the weak become strong…”
or these: ”But sometimes I wonder what He can do through me? No great success to show; No glory on my own. Yet, in my weakness, He is there to let me know…”
and finally: ”We can only know the power That He holds, When we truly see how deep our weakness goes;”
Here’s an example of how God speaks to us about our sense of weakness when experiencing trials and tribulation:
At first I didn’t think of it as a gift and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then He told me,
”My grace is enough; it’s all you need.
My strength comes into its own in your weakness.”
Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations that cut me down to size – abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become. II Corinthians 12:7-10 [The Message]
Microsoft has released another beta version of the new Office suite of applications. However, with its renaming to Office System, the company is trying to reposition the suite with a greater focus on enterprise computing needs.
That said, we can only hope that OneNote is as functional as NoteTaker. InfoPath is another included application with the beta version. It will be interesting to see what the final packaging of these applications turns out to be.
With cheap, plentiful bandwidth comes an opportunity to displace the legacy telephone companies with wireless devices handling voice, data and entertainment over Wi-Fi networks. This article summarizes the current flurry of activities beginning with McWi-Fi.
It’s almost a shame to point to this via Scripting News, because this guy’s reasoning is so far off the mark. However, it’s apparently the message that the media and the Hollywood bunch want us to hear.
the 2002 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report and, in particular, Warren Buffett’s Letter to Shareholders for 2002 is a must read. Someone said that a thorough reading of these letters is worth more than two years in a top business school. This latest installment holds true to that wisdom.
Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters! Let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. For human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness. So put away all filth and evil excess and humbly welcome the message implanted within you, which is able to save your souls. But be sure you live out the message and do not merely listen to it and so deceive yourselves. For if someone merely listens to the message and does not live it out, he is like someone who gazes at his own face in a mirror. For he gazes at himself and then goes out and immediately forgets what sort of person he was. But the one who peers into the perfect law of liberty and fixes his attention there, and does not become a forgetful listener but one who lives it out-he will be blessed in what he does. James 1:19-25 [from the NET Bible]
A stressful day with a sad ending and a devastating impact on the future.
Thank you, Susanna, for reminding all of us that one of this country’s darkest days should not be lost in the mindless whining of those who have an agenda other than the preservation of democracy, freedom and free enterprise.
What do the actors and actresses believe should be done about stuff like this? Thanks to the Instapundit for the link.
Charlie Daniels wrote an open letter to the media and another to a group he calls ”the hollywood bunch.” They’re both worth considering, particularly if the rest of the celebrities get so much air time for free.
Glenn Reynolds just posted a link to a story stating that 9 more Al Quaeda members have been arrested. There’s talk that Bin Laden or his son could be in this batch. Stories like this one were flying around during the afternoon yesterday.
For over a year, I’ve felt that Bin Laden bought it during the heavy fighting at Tora Bora, but, obviously, there haven’t been facts to support that suspicion. What a circus we’ll have if we do catch Osama alive. Imagine the Barbara Walters interview – ”what kind of rock would you…”
I missed a February 27th announcement from Canon. Apparently, lots of new models were announced and big price drops on existing models took effect. Here’s a quick look:
Last August I bought an HP Pavilion laptop that has never worked properly. Oh, it runs fine. If you turn it off it requires about 20 cycles of the power off-power on button before it will boot to a stable Windows XP desktop. So, it needs to go to HP for some attention.
Attention means, ”toss it and send me a new one!”
What I really crave is one of these. The software licensing to replace all that I have on my current laptop is the challenge. The coolness and ease of use factor may win me over, though.
* * UPDATE * * * Here’s an example of an application that makes this purchase easier to rationalize. Dave has two mentions of NoteTaker today.
It seems the Lysistrata Project is getting press along with the laughs. Some have come up with alternatives to that plan. What occurs to me is that we probably should expect a world-wide baby boom about nine months from now as well as another one nine months after our troops get home.
Toshiba wants to be a leader in the public hot spot business by the end of the year. They’re saying they’ll install 10,000 access points between now and then.
Now, even military strategy gathers the talking heads. A couple of reporters are now speculating – claiming contact with ”other military officials” – about how we’ll handle Iraq when the time comes to remove the Hussein regime. While I fully expect the attack on Iraq to be swift and decisive, I doubt seriously that the full context of the Pentagon’s strategy has been emailed to every foot soldier who has ever worn a uniform.
WASHINGTON, March 4 Senior Pentagon officials said today that two dozen long-range bombers would be sent to Guam, within easy striking range of North Korea, after President Bush said that if diplomacy failed, he might be forced to turn to military options to prevent the North from making nuclear weapons.
80211hotspots.com allows you to select a city, state or country and find a hot spot for your wireless networking requirements. Thanks for the link Allison.
I got an email quoting Ross Perot as having said something like, ”Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without an accordion.” Ross didn’t say it.
Those who understand that war is sometimes the only option left are putting together some of the best and most reasoned discussions of where we find ourselves as a nation and as thinking individuals. No one is pro-war. However, to keep the debate raging, those who’d rather see Iraq dominate the Middle East and world headlines select their messages in such a way that logic forces the rest of us into a pro-war, pro-democracy footing for the people of Iraq.
The Instapundit found an article at the Financial Times that describes the shift in military planning from the Cold War model to today’s ”anybody can be a threat anywhere in the world.”
I’m quite glad that 03-03-03 is a date in the past. The balance of this week cannot possibly be as disappointing as Monday was. Thankfully, I’ll have a brand new attitude to take into the rest of the week.
Every word of God is pure; He is a shield to those who put their trust in Him. Proverbs 30:5
The situation is illustrated horrifically by Susanna Cornett’s entry this afternoon. After everyone gets through screaming their antiwar or antiBush propaganda, our leaders have to decide. After everyone points to North Korea and screams, ”what about them?” the leaders have to decide. When everybody is finished marching and protesting, someone must make a decision.
In a democratic republic, that decision is not your’s or mine. The fact that we elected people who are responsible for those decisions remains a part of our history to its origins. A decision must be made.
I’ve been an investor with and fan of Warren Buffett for a lot of years. One of the milestones every year is the release of Berkshire’s annual report containing Warren Buffett’s letter to shareholders. You can find back issues here.
Saturday, March 8, 2003, is the date for this year’s annual report to be posted on the Berkshire Hathaway web site. However, because of the longstanding friendship between Buffett and Carol Loomis, Fortune has scored a coup and has some excerpts.
It’s been said that a careful reading and re-reading of Buffett’s letters provides better business insights than two years in a top business school. Yep, they’re that good.
North Korea is behaving like Russia during the early days of the Cuban missile crisis. I don’t know whether they think our resources are depleted or whether they think we won’t respond to their nonsense.
Maybe they think they can pull off something similar to the China incident with our EP-3. Whatever they’re thinking, we need to realize that North Korea simply is not like Russia, particularly at the height of the Cold War. They have nothing like the military capability that the USSR built. Clearly, they could lob a shot or two at us, but does anyone think for an instant that we wouldn’t retaliate with overwhelming fury?
Glenn Reynolds points in the direction of those who believe the war might have already begun, then tempers it with this:
I’m inclined to believe it myself, but as I’ve said before, the disinformation is likely flowing fast and furious at the moment, meaning that all reports should be viewed with more (even) than the usual skepticism.
When you can find a hot spot – i.e. a place where wireless connectivity is offered or open – having a wireless laptop provides enormous freedom. I’ve spent the last two or three hours doing research and writing using a Wi-Fi connection and it’s terrific. No more getting chained to an office and a desk. Wi-Fi is the future indeed.
are in proximity to or headed to the Middle East. I believe we have 12 carriers in service right now, with others under construction.
With the USS Nimitz deploying today for the Middle East, it will be joining the USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Carl Vinson, USS Harry S. Truman, USS Constellation and the USS Theodore Roosevelt. All of these have air wings numbering as many as 85 aircraft. Five of these are Nimitz-class carriers. Only the USS Constellation falls into the Kitty Hawk-class of carriers.
That leaves six other carriers to cover the rest of the globe. For those who are obsessed with the threat posed by North Korea, it would seem that in many ways their military capability closely resembles the ICBM threat we faced for so many years during the Cold War. In other words, an ICBM launched from North Korea would be identified immediately.
Doing anything about it is another matter. Remember when we based our military strategy on MAD – mutually assured distruction? Kissinger brought us through the ”detente” era.
Though secret technical weaponry exists, we are not likely sitting here in a state of operational readiness to defend against an ICBM – that’s an intercontinental ballistic missile.
I’m a thinker more than a talker. I’m an analyst more than a well of opinions. I like to really consider the reliability of my sources and the facts they present. I’d rather be roughly right than precisely wrong, to quote Warren Buffett.
Deming always encouraged managing with facts. Intuition simply isn’t enough. So often the things that are factual are counter-intuitive. Stacy Tabb pointed to Bill Whittle this morning with an entry she called There Is Always Hope. In it she provides the link to Bill Whittle’s Confidence from February 23, 2003. I like the way the logic lays out. I like the feelings I get when I read these pieces.
In an era when the media services are full of speculation without substantive fact, confidence is something Americans have lost. They’re told not to trust our government by a liberal media elite. They’re told to worry about what the French think by a liberal media elite. They’re told that world opinion is against America, its people, its government and all that it has stood for these past two hundred plus years.
It’s in my genes to want to be accurate and right. If I don’t know for certain that something I’m saying is true, I’ll try to mind my tongue. Select any media service, any network, any news organization and you won’t find much of that. They’d rather ”break” an erroneous story than provide facts to Americans a few hours later. All too often, the citizenry is picking up on that method and repeating it in the coffee shops, barber shops and conversation pits of our communities. It’s tiring and frustrating, particularly when we know that they don’t really know!
Trust me when I say that we have a very finite number of people in this country today who really know what the threats to our existence have been and might be. We have an even smaller group who knows when we might use our military in Iraq or elsewhere. No matter how many news sources you search, no matter how many press conferences you listen to, the detailed planning in this country is still a matter for a very closed circle of people.
The day began with an email from a guy at a church I once attended. He’s apparently trying to recruit people to help fix up a camp in the area. Someone has let it run down, so now people are being asked to help. Here’s what frosted me:
The camp has meant so much to our church and others for so long we really owe it some return. In fact if you remember we damaged one cabin so badly it had to be torn down and we have never helped rebuild it.
These statements beg so many questions, I don’t have time to ask them. It sounds to me like somebody ought to be teaching those who damaged the cabin some respect for people, property and decent behavior. Oh well, I can blow this off.
>From there the day entered a death spiral. Job sites, companies ostensibly seeking talent and today’s ”normal” behavior toward those who would inquire about careers are sickening things. There was a time that courtesy, manners and civility was expected on the part of a candidate as well as the hiring organization. More and more, I sense that Gen-X tactics, morals and methods are not only expected, but required. I won’t go there!
Surrounding a lot of this turmoil was a lot of noise about…Nevermind, this isn’t even therapeutic!
Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up. James 4:10
Saturday and Sunday Glenn Fleishman provided information about some restaurant chains and some hotel chains. In each case he provided the chain’s name and the number of locations they have around the country.
As I understand this, there are a couple of objectives. One is to speculate about where Cometa Networks might put their Wi-Fi hot spots. The second is to discuss where business people might find hot spots to be useful.
Why aren’t office buildings considered a prime location for hot spots? Why aren’t we thinking about Wi-Fi in the same context that we need and use electricity? Oh, by the way, one of the chains with a very high location count in the U.S. is Radio Shack. I still don’t see business people seeking out a nearby Radio Shack just to retrieve email, but if you somehow provided ”drive-in” hot spots where email gets retrieved while sitting in the parking lot, then you might have something!
Take a look at the latest update to one of the blogosphere’s ecosystems. The number in parenthesis indicates the number of links to that weblog. Frankly, I don’t get it. It shows the Scripting News at #152 with only 36 links. I linked to Dave’s site today, but I’m not shown in the details.
How can I say thanks
For the things You have done for me
Things so undeserved, yet You gave
To prove Your love for me
The voices of a million angels
Could not express my gratitude
All that I am and ever hope to be, I owe it all to Thee.
To God be the glory,
To God be the glory,
To God be the glory, for the things He has done.
With His blood He has saved me,
With His power He has raised me,
To God be the glory,
For the things He has done
Just let me live my life,
Let it be pleasing Lord to Thee
And should I gain any praise,
Let it go to Calvary.
To God be the glory,
To God be the glory,
To God be the glory,
For the things He has done.
It was the March 2003 edition and I bought it in order to read about some people who are buying small fiber networks at distressed prices in hopes of one day lighting those networks or spinning them off at favorable prices.
Then, I stumble into word that the March, 2003 Red Herring might be the last issue. I found this report at The Wall Street Journal. [paid subscription may be required for viewing]
Glenn Fleishman had thoroughly torched an article about the wireless hot spot business. After reading Om Malik’s article on companies that are buying distressed fiber networks, I’ll have more to say about its inaccuracies as well as those in the sidebar articles. Maybe Red Herring floats to the surface because of articles like these.
Q. What do you think is the next trend? A. In the next five years, wireless and mobility are next – especially in the Internet world, the ability to always be connected with telephones, pagers, that kind of stuff.
The fact that you have access doesn’t mean you always have to use it.
I’m potentially worldwide accessible, but when we went to our vacation spot in Hawaii, I turned it off.
Cass McNutt has three weblogs as well as an excellent company site. The weblogs are about business, faith and thinking. I write a lot about each of those topics.
Last week I mentioned the sales activities I was getting involved in and some of the refresher materials that I had started going through. Cass suggested the addition of Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith. I’ve added it to the previous list of links.
”You mean, like, my cell phone,” she said. She had heard me say ”wireless network.” Technologists and marketers of the next generations of technology have got to overcome the jargon and terminology barriers that are being erected in people’s minds.
Wireless networking in the office or in the home is referred to as Wi-Fi or 802.11a or b or g, etc. Wi-Fi and 802.11 refer to the same technology – i.e. a way to move information on a network without having wires running to the computers.
This is completely different technology from cellular telephone technology. The fact of the matter is that Wi-Fi might one day replace today’s cellular networks with something that provides far more features that are more versatile and more closely match the ways that people want to work with a laptop computer or a PDA (personal digital assistant) or a personal communicator (cell phone).
Most people I talk to use 802.11 in all its flavors (a, b, g, etc.) interchangeably with the term Wi-Fi. Here’s an article that tries to draw a distinction based upon pending certification by one the industry’s standards boards. To me this is splitting hairs.
Here’s another article that provides some ways that Wi-Fi might impact home users of the technology.
In a search and review of a couple of recent cell phone/PDA/mobile email clients, Walter Mossberg continues to say good things about the Handspring Treo. I’ve used a Treo 300 for approximately eight months now and I like it. It’s not perfect by any means, but I like having a dependable Palm OS-based PDA with a reliable cell phone in a single device.
However, I continue to point back to this statement as ”the ultimate.”
Walter Olson has an op-ed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal. [Paid subscription to the Wall Street Journal may be required]
Here’s an excerpt concerning a brand new study that disputes some causal relationships that have been successfully prosecuted in the past:
Why is this news? In part because lawsuits blaming OBs for cerebral palsy and other infant brain damage may constitute the single biggest branch of medical malpractice litigation, yielding lawyers the highest settlements and the richest contingency fees, rivaled only by failure to diagnose cancer. If ACOG’s report is to be credited, much of this litigation looks to be scientifically unfounded.
that destroyed 10 Israeli lives here and another 27 there went on for years with little direct retaliation from Israel. Patience and restraint beyond belief became apparent in the Israeli responses. With the power to literally irradicate a sponsor of terror and his followers, Irael has shown a resolve to be patient.
In my opinion our President has shown similar restraint in dealing with Iraq. He has let world opinion influence repeated trips to the U.N. admittedly questioning that organization’s relevance every step of the way. Take a look at his speech to the American Enterprise Institute.
Traditional communications systems based upon the copper wires of AT&T and its spawn will one day cease to exist. Replacing those companies and their antiquated technologies will be a new breed of fiber optic cable illuminated by optoelectronics. Both of these technologies – the fiber and the electronics at each end of the fiber – will advance in technical performance and price much like the chips and add-on devices of today’s personal computer industry.
In other words, we’ll buy vastly more capability for 30 or 40 percent less every 18 months or so. For this reason legacy accounting methods which had the telecom monopolies depreciating things over 40 years will give way to modern, reality-based depreciation schedules with realistic plans for continual upgrades to the network.
A leader in this type of thinking is Level 3 Communications, of which I’m a shareholder. Level 3 calls this approach to the market ”silicon economics.” The basis for this type of thinking can be found in the presentation materials from three of the company’s analysts’ conferences. Though the presentations date all the way to 1999, the truth of their message endures.
Level 3 is focused on long-haul economics. They are not currently pursuing mid-market customers or last mile solutions for next-generation fiber optic communication. Beginning this week, we’re pursuing a venture that has the potential to revolutionize the use of fiber, Wi-Fi, voice-over-IP and end-to-end IP networking in offices as small as 3 to 5 workers. Using technology such as that described in Level 3’s presentations, but scaled to suit businesses of all sizes, our goal will be to build finished IP services that anyone might use.
Stay tuned. The era of truly cheap bandwidth has arrived. It will get interesting very quickly.
If you haven’t seen the photobloggies site, you need to. Even if you simply need to capture the best photography sites in your blogroll, this is the place to do it.
During the 1980’s I owned one of the computer distribution franchises. MicroAge was a force to be reckoned with in those years – both as a national distributor and on a local basis where the franchise owners often dominated their marketplaces. Today, that original company is gone and the name continues with a completely different business.
As a business owner, selling was a natural part of every work day. It was never formulaic. There was no manipulation. There was no ”one best method.” We prided ourselves on selling goods and services to commercial users of technology at a time when the ”retail approach” to selling computers was just being explored.
Those experiences taught me that selling could be a worthy profession. Meeting real needs and solving real problems for people was the key. Lately, I’ve gotten involved in several new ventures and activities that will require my attention in the sales area once again.
I’m looking at the various resources that are available and refreshing my knowledge of some key fundamentals. Here’s a list of things I’m spending some time with:
Andrew Tobias points the way to a Jewish film archive currently listing over a hundred films. Imagine the day when everyone has the computing resource and the bandwidth available to show films such as these on something more than a small window on the PC screen.
Halliburton and Siebel aren’t saying that anything went wrong in their deployment of a global CRM (customer relationship management) system. What’s clear is that PeopleSoft has somehow convinced Halliburton to abandon a past investment and invest again. All of this is in the interest of ”getting close to your customers” – something that once was done with a box of 3×5 index cards.
Following the index cards was something the computer industry called ”sales force automation.” In fact, one of the players at the low end of sales force automation is called salesforce.com. Now SAP is chasing the business and Microsoft has set their sights there as well.
Absent strong leadership, investments in software are no different from other business fads. The results seldom live up the potential or the presentation done to justify the investment. Whether your business contemplates a major new sales force automation/CRM project or team-based management or Six Sigma or any of the dozens of other improvement initiatives, make sure the owner and/or CEO is squarely behind the effort and committed to see it through. Otherwise, it will be scrapped in less than 36 months.
A day is coming when we are completely untethered. Already, we visit offices where the mouse and the keyboard are no longer wired to the PC. The rise of Wi-Fi (wireless networks) that allow users to share high bandwidth connections to the Internet continues.
Yesterday, Cisco announced that they want to further the drive toward wireless devices connected to otherwise ”stupid networks.” Well, they didn’t quite say it that way, but the end game is getting clearer. Fiber optic pipes providing IP packets of voice, data and entertainment unencumbered by the legacy phone companies are the next wave. The technology and the pricing will be truly disruptive to traditional ways of thinking about where we buy communication services and Internet access.
No matter who you are, what you do or where you live, you face uncertain days. Sure, everything may look rosey at this instant. You may have life, career, relationships and answers galore.
Something will change. Uncertainty is right around the corner. There are countless hurdles that you’ll face and it’s far better to know where you turn for strength when those hurdles get high and closer together and more difficult to predict.
WE BELIEVE IN GOD
by Amy Grant & Wes King
We believe in God
And we all need Jesus
Cause life is hard
And it might not get easier
But don’t be afraid
To know who you are
Don’t be afraid to show it
If you believe in God
If you say you need Jesus
He’ll be where you are
And he never will leave you
Sing to me now words that are true
So all in this place can know it….
We believe in God
And we all need Jesus
We believe in God
And we all need Jesus
We believe in God
And we all need Jesus
Sing to me now words that are true
So all in this place can know it…..
We believe in God
And we all need Jesus
We believe in God
And we all need Jesus
We believe in God
And we all need Jesus
SEEKERS OF YOUR HEART
Written by Melodie Tunney, Dick Tunney & Beverly Darnall
Until we give You first place, until we let You begin
To fill us with Your Spirit, renew us from within,
Nothing matters nothings gained.
Without Your holy presence our lives are lived in vain.
Refrain:
Lord, we want to know you,
Live our lives to show You
All the love we owe you,
Were seekers of Your heart
Because Your heart was broken, because You saw the need,
Because you gave so freely, because of Calvary,
We can now be called Your own.
Completed creations filled with You alone.
Kentucky 70 Mississippi State 62. After being down by 19 very early in the game and as much as 16 fairly late in the game, Mississippi State chipped away, but couldn’t close the gap on an outstanding Kentucky basketball team.
Dori Smith points the way to an article titled Caring For Your Introvert. I guess I’m an introvert, but I don’t ”growl or scowl or grunt or wince when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice.” Here’s the money line of the article: ”Sometimes, as we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to themselves.”
Today I received a piece of mail requesting my participation in an RTE conference. RTE apparently stands for ”real time enterprise.” What this appears to mean is that businesses should pursue systems, information and customer-supplier relationships that are based upon real-time data rather than ”old” data.
Fortunately, I won’t attend. Too many fads have come and gone or been tried and abandoned in businesses. The most disappointing thing about many of these initiatives is how worthwhile the results have been in the companies that have properly implemented them. In other words, every improvement initiative isn’t bad in and of itself. Rather, poor implementation usually is at the root of the problems.
I’m sure using real time information is great. Deming called it managing with facts. I’m also sure that real time information to the exclusion of customer focus or employee involvement or teams or quality or metrics or any of the rest will fail.
Eileen Shapiro wrote an excellent book called Fad Surfing in the Boardroom that explains why so many of these efforts come apart and actually do harm to the participating company. Here’s a quick review.
Memphis got almost 4 inches of rainfall last Friday. Annually, the city gets about 50 inches or so of rainfall. However, Memphis typically gets that rainfall from several very large rains spanning several days throughout the year.
Contrast that with Seattle, WA which gets annual rainfall of around 36 inches. However, that rainfall accumulates from many days of a seaside drizzle and mist that takes much longer to accumulate. That’s the reason everyone thinks Seattle is so rainy.
All it takes is a single day with 3 or more inches of rainfall and you begin to understand how the statistics can be misleading.
Some people believe it’s easier to do without money if you’ve never had money. Others simply find a place of service and significance and their needs – monetary and otherwise – are more than filled.
Dan Miller’s outstanding weekly newsletter gives a glimpse of what kinds of consequences might result if you work only for money.
I JUST WORK FOR THE MONEY
from the February 17, 2003 issue of Career Link
”Law school sucked all the life and creativity out of me.” ”I’ve never been happy practicing law.” ”I have never had a sense of purpose.” ”I feel destined to do something great, but have no idea why or what.” ”I work only for the money.”
These are statements from a young attorney – who in his last position had been sick for 6 months, ”triggered initially by stress.” But a new ”career opportunity” presented itself and he is now working in a prestigious position with a Fortune 500 company. Unfortunately, the sickness is returning, starting with the symptoms of a choking feeling and shortness of breath.
Ultimately, money is never enough compensation for investing our time and energy. There must be a sense of meaning, purpose and accomplishment. Anything that does not blend our Values, Dreams and Passions will cause us on some level to choke. Events of the last two years have caused all of us to ”reassess what’s important.” A life well lived must go beyond just making a paycheck – even if it’s a very large one.
The Bible tells us in Ecclesiastes 5:10; ”Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.” If money is the only reward of your job, you will begin to see deterioration in other areas of your life – physically, emotionally, spiritually, and in your relationships. Need a new plan? Take a look!
”That every man find pleasure in his work—this is a gift of God.” Ecc. 3:13
P. S. I have to add an interesting side note. Proper alignment in doing work we love does not mean the family will be eating rice and beans – in fact, the opposite is more often the case. Proper alignment releases not only a sense of peace and accomplishment, but money is likely to break in on you like an exploding dam.
When cable modem service costs $40 to $50 per month in the US for approximately 1.5-2.0Mbps of bandwidth, but the same $50 per month will buy 100Mbps in Japan, something is clearly wrong.
Via Scripting News we get a pointer to Kevin Werbach’s assessment of how the FCC could make such a bone-headed decision.
The folk at Overlawyered.com point to all of the ambulance chasers that have sprung into action in Chicago. I’m convinced there is no limit to what people will do for money or the possibility of money.
John Grisham’s new book, The King of Torts, sheds great light on the state of class action lawsuits in the U.S. It’s a well-written piece of fiction, but there’s no doubt the roots of this fiction are reality!
Businesses doing approximately $500 million or more in annual sales often have telecommunication expenses that exceed $150,000 per month. Take into consideration every pager, cell phone, key system in the branch locations, PBX’s at headquarters, local lines, long distance, data lines, VPN’s…you get the picture.
A frightening fact is that the invoices from all the suppliers for these goods and services are very often wrong. A bank with hundreds or thousands of ATM’s may see an invoice with 20,000 or 30,000 line items on it. The task of ”auditing” that invoice prior to paying it might consume 2 weeks for 2 accounts payable or telecom analysts.
Yesterday, I visited a business that has carved its niche from the errors, costs and time required by big companies when they are auditing and accounting for their telecommunication costs. The company is Asentinel. Currently a private firm, the future looks incredibly bright. By auditing, automating and reporting on telecommunication usage and expenses using methods that business people can understand, Asentinel is paving its way as a revolutionary in the fractured and nasty world of legacy telecom.
When you see the results of an Asentinel audit of an EDI invoice from one of the major carriers, it makes you wonder how the carriers have held on as long as they have. One reason is that all of them have similar kinds of errors in their billing systems.
Keep your eyes on this business. It’s likely to be one of the first great break-out stories when this economy turns. With paybacks in certain instances of as short as 3 months, Asentinel is clearly meeting the aggressive ROI requirements that today’s CFO’s put on software projects.
This nation has long had a highly regulated telecommunications industry. In spite of efforts to deregulate, particularly since 1996, the industry has become more difficult to deal with.
We recently had a consulting engagement in which we simply wanted to price DS-3 lines to multi-tenant office buildings on behalf of a group of investors who were contemplating a telecom aggregation business. Here are examples of what we heard from representatives of the key providers in the area:
A DS-3 will cost about $10,000 per month, but we’ll waive the installation fee if they contract with us for 3 years
Four emails and 3 phone calls and a second provider still hasn’t responded
One of the traditional phone companies has said ”approximately $3000 per month, but it could be more”
A next generation, all-fiber company has quoted less than $1000 per month for bandwidth equal to a DS-3
What’s frustrating about each of these ”estimates” is how much uncertainty clouds them. Clearly, the provisioning times for a DS-3 will likely exceed 60 days for most of these providers. [We’re in a city where FedEx can accept packages as late as midnight and still have them delivered by 8:00 a.m. the next morning!]
Another factor is the difficulty in ordering bandwidth. Between the arcane language, the acronyms and the bureaucracy that must be satisfied, no customer can possibly order such services in less than 4 or 5 phone calls.
Nevermind the fact that you can place an order for a rather complex computer system via the Internet or by phone and have it in less than a week. Nevermind the fact that delivery times on many other ”distributed” products have been cut to less than 48 hours.
The provisioning of bandwidth still requires an act of Congress and 10 years of experience in the telecommunications industry before the supplier will accept an order from the customer. This is one of those industries that is so ripe for a transformation that there is no doubt a new, next-generation supplier’s disruptive view of how this ought to work will win the day.
Enter a word like ”tornado” in the search box and click the button labeled ”Google Search”
You can also find images on the web with a normal search of google, but it requires that you visit several web sites to see if the image you are looking for might be at that particular site. Google’s specialized image search reduces the time required to find images.
”Everything can be taken from a man but …the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
”The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on my life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company … a church … a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past … we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the string we have, and that is our attitude … I am convinced that life is ten percent what happens to me and ninety percent how I react to it. And so it is with you … we are in charge of our attitudes.”
This weblog has spent a lot of time on matters of significance and man’s search for meaning. The two quotes you’ve just read summarize a key aspect of finding meaning no matter in what the circumstances we may find ourselves.
Significance may be found in even the most mundane of tasks, chores and jobs. It’s up to each of us to determine for ourselves with each passing moment what we will choose to believe about our circumstance and what attitude we will select.
Dave Winer has some great insight into where Google and Teoma stand today in the search engine business. Reviewing these two companies and tools in light of the battle between Microsoft and Netscape is an intriguing way to look at the future possibilities.
There’s almost no equal to the kind of fear, worry and helplessness that people feel when a dire medical diagnosis is given. Yet, ”information accidents” as discussed in this excerpt are quite common.
I visited Richard Saul Wurman at his home in Newport, Rhode Island a few weeks ago with my friend Ted Stout. I asked him what he thought about the fact that more people die from information accidents in hospitals than die in car wrecks.
He said, ”Medical care is delivered by people. People screw up. If you have to go to the hospital, the best thing you can take is an advocate—a friend who can ask questions, use common sense, look over the nurse’s shoulder and call somebody if your condition changes.”
He went on. ”When I go for a physical, I get them to draw double blood. They send the samples to two different labs. A ’miss’ can hurt you more than a false positive.” He continued, ”It’s insurance against mistaking your sample for someone else’s—a mistake that’s more common than we’d like to believe.” I wonder how many SMART People’s lives will be saved by this little trick.
Read what one of the researchers in the field of quality management had to say. Only with the aid of her knowledge of W. Edwards Demings statistical methods was she able to avoid radical surgery when it simply wasn’t called for.
All businesses and business processes experience waste. Most of the time waste is due to errors or nonconformities in the agreed upon work processes. For some businesses this waste can exceed 40% of the total business expenses. In others it’s as high as 25% of sales.
If we are to ever regain control over medical costs in the USA, we must start with the errors – information errors that lead to procedural errors.
At a future time, participants were asked to recall their actions on that specific day. Ayanna Thomas, a doctoral student in Loftus’ research group, found that 15 percent of the study’s volunteers claimed they had actually performed some of the actions they had only imagined.
No wonder eye witnesses are so unreliable. With some rather simple suggestions, people can have memories altered or added.
Quote of Note: Larry Lessig on the Price of Connectivity
”To repeat again, here in Japan, they are selling 100
megabits per second for US$50/month, 12 mbs for $25.”
Scroll down a bit and in the sidebar you’ll find a section called ”Resources.” This section is ripe for a makeover, but for now it includes lots of different kinds of resources. Some are HTML-related. Some are management-oriented. Others are resources for faith-based studies. Two new additions for today include Executable Outlines and Religious Resources. Both offer great tools.
Life can get awfully overwhelming from time to time. Even people of great faith find periods of real challenge. Dating to the 19th century, here are words of comfort:
I SURRENDER ALL
Words by Judson W. Van DeVenter, 1896
Music by Winfield S. Weeden, 1896
All to Jesus I surrender
All to Him I freely give;
I will ever love and trust Him,
In his presence daily live.
I surrender all, I surrender all;
All to thee, my blessed Savior,
I surrender all.
All to Jesus I surrender,
Humbly at His feet I bow,
Worldly pleasures all forsaken,
Take me Jesus, take me now.
I surrender all, I surrender all;
All to thee, my blessed Savior,
I surrender all.
I’ve been away for over a week. On the weblogging front, Movable Type has issued MT 2.62 and Pyra Labs sold out to Google. It’s time to start catching up on all that’s happened.
This weekend I’ve seen a ballet set to the music of Kate Campbell. If you are not familiar with her work, you owe it to yourself to see a concert or listen to a CD.
His Eye Is On the Sparrow
Words: Civilla D. Martin, 1905
Music: Charles H. Gabriel, 1905
Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come,
Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heaven and home,
When Jesus is my portion? My constant friend is He:
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.
Refrain
I sing because Im happy,
I sing because Im free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.
Let not your heart be troubled, His tender word I hear,
And resting on His goodness, I lose my doubts and fears;
Though by the path He leadeth, but one step I may see;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.
Refrain
Whenever I am tempted, whenever clouds arise,
When songs give place to sighing, when hope within me dies,
I draw the closer to Him, from care He sets me free;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.
Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
Robert Robinson, 1758
Come, thou Fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
mount of thy redeeming love.
Here I raise mine Ebenezer;
hither by thy help I’m come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God;
he, to rescue me from danger,
interposed his precious blood.
O to grace how great a debtor
daily I’m constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.
Through a combination of fortuitous circumstances, networking and God’s guidance, I’ve never had to look for a job before. Recently, I began to feel around to see what might be ”out there.” I’ve got a job I’ve liked, but am tired of in so many ways.
Here’s where my eyes have been opened. Today’s job hunt is an absolute and total roll of the dice. On line services at each and every company you visit encourage you to ”submit your resume.” The best of these send an automated reply if you submit a resume in a format they can read and like.
The worst of these acknowledge nothing and provide no information to you about what the next steps might be, when you might hear something or how to follow up with the company. They get all your information and machine or man begins making judgments about you.
NOTE TO SELF: Never conduct a job search that is so impersonal and unkind to those seeking to join your company!
to get Internet access on an airplane if you knew you were going to be on there for 4 to 8 hours or longer? Boeing and some of the airlines think you might.
The preceding entry talks about unrest and a lack of fulfillment that exists with workers – particularly in the technology industry in the U.S. I assure you it is a very real phenomenon, has existed for quite a long time and spans far more than the tech industry.
Then, comes this article about the ethical dilemma one worker faced.
Carlton Vogt makes it clear with each of his articles that he’s not holding himself up as the last word on any ethical question. He reasonably and fairly portrays the situation and expresses his own doubts when the answers are fuzzy.
Suffice it to say that the unrest between management and workers will always be there until trust is established. A worker who would take a job, then immediately leap to the one he (or she) really wanted doesn’t foster much trust in the manager who ”got burned.” What’s the solution? Live with your choices. Too much in today’s world is too easily undone. Agreements, promises and words mean nothing where someone can come along and undo them with yet another stroke of the pen.
Managers at tech companies are increasingly out of step with a work force that seems to grow angrier by the day, according to a new report.
Here’s another indicator:
The study, released last week, found that people relate to their work on a personal level, basing much of their satisfaction on whether their job provides them a sense of confidence or control over their destinies. ”Employees are not apathetic or indifferent, as many suppose. In fact, people have very strong emotions about their work,” researchers wrote.
There is an enormous opportunity awaiting the firm or individual that can properly identify, develop and teach a method (a consulting ”hook”) that any business can use to solve the problems cited in this survey. Deming called it ”joy in work.” Labor strife, labor unions and job hopping all stem from the same roots as the unrest that Towers Perrin along with Gang & Gang talk about.
Six Sigma hasn’t done it. ISO 900X programs haven’t done it. Team-based management hasn’t done it. The need is vast in today’s world. People want significance, and they rightly believe that the place where they spend from 8 to 12 hours of every day should be a place where they can find significance.
The need appears to be one where the alignment of management and workers is addressed as well as the alignment of job assignments and personal objectives. This is worth a great deal more discussion with the right people.
A week ago the Internet slowed to a crawl for a lot of people. The cause turned out to be the Slammer worm. It was an incredibly fast-spreading virus of the ”worm” variety. Here’s what CNET News had to say:
The worm infected more than 90 percent of vulnerable computers within 10 minutes, opening a new era of fast-spreading viruses on the Internet. The SQL Slammer worm-also known as Sapphiredoubled in size every 8.5 seconds when it first appeared, and reached the full rate at which it was scanning for vulnerable computersa rate of more than 55 million scans per second-after about three minutes.
Yesterday CNN Headline News looped a story (over and over and over) about a guy in Seattle who is offering two free plane tickets to the person who provides the ”tip” that lands him a marketing job. First impressions are often right, but they’re sometimes wrong.
Is offering a reward to the person who really engages in helping one fine gainful employment a sign of desperation or is it shrewd business? I ask because I’m looking. Looking on the web and talking to humans face-to-face are two entirely different things.
So, what’s it going to take? I need to know the names of the hiring managers for two positions that are open at Microsoft. How do I get those? What’s your price for getting me the tip I need?
is a full-time effort for most people. They seek significance through their careers. They seek significance by living vicariously through their children; not raising their children, mind you, but living their own lives over again throught their children.
Here’s one more attempt to arrive at something signficant. We need the right kind of ’statement’ at the site of the former World Trade Center towers.
...it would be restrained, severe, symmetrical, and it would strike the sky like two great swords.
To any of the Microsoft folks who read Rob’s weblog or mine, I want to let you know that I’m going to be in the Redmond area next week, the week of February 10-17. If you know how to get me in touch with a human being on the hiring side of Microsoft, I’m prepared to set up a/some meeting(s).
Conversational Terrorism is a set of tactics that are all too common in our attempts to communicate with one another in this day and age. Thanks to Frank Patrick for the pointer.
I haven’t read all of these, so I might have overlooked one. The tactic of interrupting someone or talking at the same time they’re completing their thought has become the primary tool in talk shows, interviews and unmoderated debates.
In the skies today we saw destruction and tragedy. Yet farther than we can see there is comfort and hope. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, ”Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry hosts one by one and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.”
The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today. The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home.
May God bless the grieving families, and may God continue to bless America.
People generally are intrigued when smart people fail. Whether a smart person has a public meltdown (e.g. Richard Nixon) or a group of smart people experience a disaster (e.g. NASA and the Challenger explosion), the media and the public push and shove to witness the outcome.
We value life in this country – or once we did. With the shuttle Columbia’s break-up this morning, we have apparently lost seven smart people. On Thursday, we lost four smart people in a Blackhawk helicopter crash in Afghanistan. They got ”page 3” coverage.
Why does the shuttle Columbia warrent wall-to-wall media coverage, but the loss of four of our guys in the war on terrorism gets lost in the shuffle? It’s because the US space program has long been a beacon of prowess – an ability to do something that no other country in the world can do. Our smart people got us to the moon and back. We have always been captivated by that accomplishment and the series of steps that led to it.
Now, we’ve experienced a tragic failure trying to return the shuttle to Earth. We will mourn with others. We will listen to the pundits guess and assume and hypothesize about what might have happened. We will watch as smart people are questioned unmercifully by talking heads behaving as if they know and knew much better how to prevent a disaster.
In the end we’ll continue to be a people who’d rather see and second guess a train wreck than to see the beauty in each life we come in contact with. It’s the curse of a smart people.
* * UPDATE * * * Glenn Reynolds has posted a link to Ronald Reagan’s speech about the Challenger disaster. Here’s just one part of it that chokes you up:
I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA or who worked on this mission and tell them: ”Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it.”
Rob Fahrni has found (via Joshua Allen) a list of people who work at Microsoft and have weblogs. I’ve created a sidebar item called ”At Microsoft.” Using blogrolling.com’s excellent tools, I should be able to keep this list in synch as Rob makes changes to his – not automatically of course, but with some manual intervention!
* * NOTE * * * Greedy subplot: I’m in the hunt for two jobs at Microsoft. If any of you Microsofties read this and have advice on how I can move beyond the automated careers site to some sort of personal contact…well, you get the idea. I’m going to be in the Redmond area the week of February 10th and could easily spend some time discussing these positions with the hiring managers. [Thanks in advance for any help!]
Everybody in the blogosphere reads James Lileks, so it’s probably pointless for me to steer you that direction. However, on the off chance that somebody reading this isn’t a member of the blogosphere or, just maybe, doesn’t even know what the blogosphere is…well, I give you James Lileks on 31-January-2003.
Just so you understand Gnat is his daughter. She must be two or three by now. James takes care of Gnat a lot and the material becomes richer for his effort. James also writes like Gnat talks sometimes. That alone is worth the price of admission.
Here’s the teaser:
And as we all know, cold peanut butter has the same effect on fresh bread as a belt sander has on a titmouse. Theres just nothing left.
Or there’s this:
Gnat hasnt entered that phase of life where Crusts are viewed as Satans Scabs, something one cannot touch without losing your mortal soul. But we use one of them all-natchral peener butters.
Kevin has found another profiling tool on the web. It’s quick and easy to take. It results in the old ’DiSC’ analysis. It’s pretty accurate, too. Take a look, then you can ”Read More” to see how mine came out.
Analyzer
62 34 37 66 (scores correspond to DiSC or directive, interacting, supportive and conscientious)
General Description
As an Analyzer, you tend to seek perfect outcomes in all of your plans and projects. In many situations, you take things apart in your mind and think about ways to do them better. You excel at this kind of mental examination, but you may tend to see family and friends as projects, rather than as people.
Typical Areas of Strength
Analyzers, like you, tend to be analytical, logical, direct, confident, and they like new challenges. They excel at seeing the larger vision, creating efficient methods and procedures, and listening carefully for the facts.
Typical Areas of Struggle
Due to your tendency to focus on tasks, you sometimes show a lack of sensitivity to the feelings of family members and friends. When you are sharply focused on a task, you may come across as being overly critical, judgmental, blunt, or impatient with others.
Your Preferred Activities
To maximize your talents, you look for situations in which you can offer logical solutions to complex challenges, and you evaluate and make the necessary changes to assure the desired outcome.
Your Communication Style
You tend to provide insights and direction by teaching, managing, clarifying, and advising.
There’s an article on the opinion page of today’s Wall Street Journal. You may have to have a subscription to see it – I don’t know for sure. There’s a real temptation to quote the whole thing, but I won’t.
The upshot is that on Tuesday voters in Oregon decided they didn’t want an income tax increase of some $310 million just to prevent $310 million of budget cuts in the state. The irony of the whole story is two-fold. How it was quieted by the national media after the unexpected defeat is one huge story. The other story is about media, poll and pundit statements in advance of the election that assured it was going to pass. Voters turned out in droves and beat the thing 54% to 46%.
There was a real drive by pro-tax people to get this thing passed. The state’s employees and their unions were obviously all for it. Here are some excerpts:
Don’t take our word for it. In an election-day interview with National Public Radio’s ”Talk of the Nation,” Colin Fogerty of Oregon Public Broadcasting described the pro-tax effort as follows:
”This was a fairly sophisticated grassroots campaign by social service agencies and schools and supporters of state services that really sent the word out that these cuts will be fairly drastic, and there were a series of news stories on our station and television stations and the newspapers about just how dramatic these cuts are going to be. And literally there will be frail seniors turned out of nursing homes, and literally there will be a quarter fewer state troopers on the road, and universities will be cut.”
Translation: Frighten the bejeebers out of folks by telling them that unless they agree to higher taxes, government is going to shut down the prisons and throw grandma out in the snow. As Tom Cox of the Oregon Libertarian Party put it in an op-ed last week for the Statesman Journal: ”The state of Oregon has 47,000 employees. . . . But the 200 employees we find to lay off are state police officers?”
”I’m a normal person and when I don’t have enough money I have to change my habits,” 26-year-old Heather Bryan told the AP, explaining her vote against the measure. ”Government should be the same way.” How’s that for a bellwether?
An entertaining movie, here’s the essence in a single song:
Razzle Dazzle Music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb
Give ’em the old razzle dazzle
Razzle dazzle ’em
Give ’em an act with lots of flash in it
And the reaction will be passionate
Give ’em the old hocus pocus
Bead and feather ’em
How can they see with sequins in their eyes?
What if your hinges all are rusting?
What if, in fact, you’re just disgusting?
Razzle dazzle ’em
And they’ll never catch wise
Give ’em the old razzle dazzle
Razzle dazzle ’em
Back in the days of old Methusulah
Everyone loves the big bamboozulah
Give ’em the old three ring circus
Stun and stagger ’em
When you’re in trouble
Go into your dance
Though you are stiffer than a girder
They let you get away with murder
Razzle dazzle ’em
And you got a romance
Give ’em the old razzle dazzle
Razzle dazzle ’em
Give ’em an act that’s unassailable
They’ll wait a year till you’re available
Give ’em the old wobble bammy
Daze and dizzy ’em
Show ’em the first rate sorcere you are
Long as you keep ’em way off balance
How can they spot you got no talents?
Razzle dazzle ’em
Razzle dazzle ’em
And they’ll make you a star
[Subscription may be required] Today’s Wall Street Journal also ran a story titled On the Road Again: Parents are Spending More Time Than Ever Behind the Wheel by Sue Shellenbarger. Here’s the drift:
It may not seem surprising that Leonard Sclafani, a Manhattan attorney, recently put in a 15-hour day.
He wasn’t working the entire time, though. For about six of those hours, he was behind the wheel, driving his kids to and from school, a hockey game and softball practice in towns around his Westchester County, N.Y., home and in Connecticut. ”We’re nuts” over all the driving, he says. He and his wife rack up 200 miles a week shuttling their children, 11 and 15, to music, sports, school and social activities.
If it feels like you’re doing more driving to raise your child than parents did even in the recent past—you are. A study by the Surface Transportation Policy Project, Washington, D.C., found mothers, employed or not, drive 20% more than average shuttling their kids around. And new federal data released this month show all American drivers are averaging 11% more time behind the wheel than in 1995.
Twenty of 24 working parents I surveyed say they do far more driving than they’d like. Many are racking up the equivalent of more than two extra workdays a week behind the wheel.
It’s easy to blame parents for excessive travel. Ambitious for their kids, many parents do up the ante by ”promoting” them into more competitive—and more distant—schools, competitions, leagues and clubs. Publicity about crimes against kids leads many parents to forbid even short walks.
This morning’s opinion piece by Peggy Noonan is one for the ages.
This, truly, is a good man. And that is a rare thing. Agree with Mr. Bush’s stands or disagree, there can be no doubting the depth of his seriousness and the degree to which he attempts to do what he is convinced is right, and to lead his country toward that vision of rightness. We have had many unusual men as president and some seemed like a gift and some didn’t. Mr. Bush seems uniquely resolved to be as courageous as the times require and as helpful as they allow. There is a profound authenticity to him, and a fearlessness too.
A steady hand on the helm in high seas, a knowledge of where we must go and why, a resolve to achieve safe harbor. More and more this presidency is feeling like a gift.
I’ve been trying to think of ways of dealing with Saddam Hussein short of war. Suddenly, after last night’s speech, up jumps this story. It’s probably obscure and may not be seriously considered by us or them, but it certainly would be fantastic if everything we seek could happen without spilling a drop of anyone’s blood.
>From USA Today comes news that AOL-Time Warner lost in excess of $10 per share during the fourth quarter of 2002 and almost $100 billion for the year. Excerpt: ”The full-year loss exceeded the gross domestic product of Egypt in 2001.”
Last night’s State of the Union speech was being blogged as it was given. Then, there were those who prepared immediate ”analysis” and posted after it was over. Then, there’s James Lileks. He clearly reflected a bit and wrote some outstanding thoughts about the speech. It’s definitely worth your time.
Americans are a resolute people, who have risen to every test of our time. Adversity has revealed the character of our country, to the world, and to ourselves.
America is a strong Nation, and honorable in the use of our strength. We exercise power without conquest, and sacrifice for the liberty of strangers.
Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity.
We Americans have faith in ourselves but not in ourselves alone. We do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history.
May He guide us now, and may God continue to bless the United States of America.
Tonight I also have a message for the men and women who will keep the peace, members of the American Armed Forces: Many of you are assembling in and near the Middle East, and some crucial hours may lie ahead. In those hours, the success of our cause will depend on you. Your training has prepared you. Your honor will guide you. You believe in America, and America believes in you.
There are days when the American people do not hear news about the war on terror. There is never a day when I do not learn of another threat, or receive reports of operations in progress, or give an order in this global war against a scattered network of killers. The war goes on, and we are winning…
Our war against terror is a contest of will, in which perseverance is power. In the ruins of two towers, at the western wall of the Pentagon, on a field in Pennsylvania, this Nation made a pledge, and we renew that pledge tonight: Whatever the duration of this struggle, and whatever the difficulties, we will not permit the triumph of violence in the affairs of men free people will set the course of history…
This threat is new; America’s duty is familiar. Throughout the 20th century, small groups of men seized control of great nations … built armies and arsenals … and set out to dominate the weak and intimidate the world. In each case, their ambitions of cruelty and murder had no limit. In each case, the ambitions of Hitlerism, militarism, and communism were defeated by the will of free peoples, by the strength of great alliances, and by the might of the United States of America. Now, in this century, the ideology of power and domination has appeared again, and seeks to gain the ultimate weapons of terror. Once again, this Nation and our friends are all that stand between a world at peace, and a world of chaos and constant alarm. Once again, we are called to defend the safety of our people, and the hopes of all mankind. And we accept this responsibility…
The 108 UN weapons inspectors were not sent to conduct a scavenger hunt for hidden materials across a country the size of California…
The dictator who is assembling the world’s most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages—leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind, or disfigured. Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained—by torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape.
The qualities of courage and compassion that we strive for in America also determine our conduct abroad. The American flag stands for more than our power and our interests. Our Founders dedicated this country to the cause of human dignity the rights of every person and the possibilities of every life. This conviction leads us into the world to help the afflicted, and defend the peace, and confound the designs of evil men…
As our Nation moves troops and builds alliances to make our world safer, we must also remember our calling, as a blessed country, to make this world better. Today, on the continent of Africa, nearly 30 million people have the AIDS virus including three million children under the age of 15. There are whole countries in Africa where more than one-third of the adult population carries the infection. More than four million require immediate drug treatment. Yet across that continent, only 50,000 AIDS victims only 50,000 are receiving the medicine they need.
Because the AIDS diagnosis is considered a death sentence, many do not seek treatment. Almost all who do are turned away. A doctor in rural South Africa describes his frustration. He says, ”We have no medicines … many hospitals tell [people], ’You’ve got AIDS. We can’t help you. Go home and die.’”
In an age of miraculous medicines, no person should have to hear those words.
Our fourth goal is to apply the compassion of America to the deepest problems of America. For so many in our country—the homeless and the fatherless, the addicted—the need is great. Yet there’s power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.
By caring for children who need mentors, and for addicted men and women who need treatment, we are building a more welcoming society a culture that values every life. And in this work we must not overlook the weakest among us. I ask you to protect infants at the very hour of birth, and end the practice of partial-birth abortion. And because no human life should be started or ended as the object of an experiment, I ask you to set a high standard for humanity and pass a law against all human cloning.
Our third goal is to promote energy independence for our country, while dramatically improving the environment…
Tonight I am proposing 1.2 billion dollars in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles.
A simple chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen generates energy, which can be used to power a car producing only water, not exhaust fumes. With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free. Join me in this important innovation to make our air significantly cleaner, and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of energy.
Our second goal is high quality, affordable health care for all Americans…
Instead of bureaucrats, and trial lawyers, and HMOs, we must put doctors, and nurses, and patients back in charge of American medicine…
To improve our health care system, we must address one of the prime causes of higher costs the constant threat that physicians and hospitals will be unfairly sued. Because of excessive litigation, everybody pays more for health care and many parts of America are losing fine doctors. No one has ever been healed by a frivolous lawsuit and I urge the Congress to pass medical liability reform.
Our first goal is clear: We must have an economy that grows fast enough to employ every man and woman who seeks a job.
After recession, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals, and stock market declines, our economy is recovering yet it is not growing fast enough, or strongly enough. With unemployment rising, our Nation needs more small businesses to open, more companies to invest and expand, more employers to put up the sign that says, ”Help Wanted.”
We must work together to fund only our most important priorities. I will send you a budget that increases discretionary spending by four percent next year about as much as the average family’s income is expected to grow. And that is a good benchmark for us: Federal spending should not rise any faster than the paychecks of American families.
Every year, by law and by custom, we meet here to consider the state of the union. This year, we gather in this chamber deeply aware of decisive days that lie ahead.
You and I serve our country in a time of great consequence. During this session of Congress, we have the duty to reform domestic programs vital to our country … and we have the opportunity to save millions of lives abroad from a terrible disease. We will work for a prosperity that is broadly shared … and we will answer every danger and every enemy that threatens the American people.
In all these days of promise and days of reckoning, we can be confident. In a whirlwind of change, and hope, and peril, our faith is sure, our resolve is firm, and our union is strong.
This country has many challenges. We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, other presidents, and other generations. We will confront them with focus, and clarity, and courage.
President George Bush delivered an outstanding speech to the nation and Congress tonight. The next several entries will highlight portions of the speech and topics of importance. One place to read the full text is here.
* * NOTE * * * Back in December, I mentioned an article Newt Gingrich had written in which he spelled out a five item wish list for America. He went on to suggest that it would make an outstanding checklist or platform for the Republican party. Compare the things on that list with tonight’s speech by the President:
National security
Economic growth
Health care modernization
Litigation reform
Scientific environmentalism
* * ANOTHER NOTE * * * Read Peggy Noonan’s latest column. How well did the President do using her criteria for the ”right kind of speech?”
I’ve launched a search. Having found a couple of positions that appear to be tailor-made for me, I used the company’s resume submission and ”job cart” features to apply. I know the company received the submission, because the bot responded. However, there is simply no way to follow up or pursue the jobs in greater depth.
I’m going to count on some advice from Rob Fahrni.
Over at Focused Performance, Frank Patrick has entered into a dialog about turnaround specialists versus those who would build lasting improvements into organizations. Part of the discussion touches on the ”joy in work” principles that Deming advocated and other points smack of the old command-and-control leadership style that so many organizations still experience.
For me, there is no substitute for helping a company and its executives better apply their own styles in ways that drive new levels of effectiveness. This old addage comes to mind:
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
* * UPDATE * * * Frank also has some interesting comments about Six Sigma and what the rewards and risks can be.
Since January of 2002, I’ve been playing with weblogs and weblogging. My first experience was with a product called Radio Userland. For anyone interested in getting started with a weblog and learning how to experiment, I’d heartily recommend Radio.
One feature that will ”hook” you immediately is the ability to subscribe to updates or news feeds from other web sources. They may be weblogs. They may be news sites. Really, it could be any site that has chosen to provide an RSS feed. J.D. Lasica has written an article that explains how this works.
What JD’s article makes abundantly clear is how many professions could be enriched by using weblogs with RSS feeds to keep people informed and to encourage greater dialog.
With the Radio product, you can subscribe to feeds, they’ll update every hour or so and when you review them, you’ll be able to click on one button and turn that entry in your news aggregator (your RSS feed reader) into an entry in your weblog. Change to any other weblogging tool and you’ll find that you have a multi-step process to go through to read news and make entries out of them.
I’ve been experimenting with Amphetadesk. I simply cannot subscribe (reliably) to as many feeds and count on faithful updates of the news reader. It has promise, but at last look, it’s just not there yet.
Craig Cantoni has been a friend for over ten years now. He and I worked together in Arizona some years ago and he remains one of the true critical thinkers that I’ve ever come in contact with. Other things he’s written can be found in the Arizona Republic or PHXnews.com. Take a look at this:
Republicans should enrich Democrats
By Craig J. Cantoni
As Milton Friedman has said, the debate about the stimulus effect of the Bush tax cuts misses the real problem—namely, that the regulatory state has grown so large that it sucks capital, investment and innovation out of the private sector. The key to economic growth is to cut the size and reach of government, which is something that even Republicans seem genetically incapable of doing.
Maybe it is time for the Republicans to think out of the genetic box and try this idea: Cut the size of government and return the savings to—hold on to your seat—Democrats. That’s right, I said D-E-M-O-C-R-A-T-S. Let me explain.
Take the departments of Commerce, Agriculture and Education—please take them! I picked these departments as examples because three-fourths of what they do is unnecessary.
The total budget for the three is $144.2 billion. Cutting the departments by three-fourths would result in an annual savings of $108.9 billion. The Republicans should propose cutting the departments by that amount and distributing the savings in cash to the poorest Americans—to Democratic constituents, in other words. To illustrate how much money that is, 5.4 million lower-income households could get a check for $20,000 apiece. Assuming that there are four people per household, that comes to about 22 million people.
Other departments could be cut to create even larger checks.
Conservative purists will say that such an idea does nothing to reduce confiscatory taxes on middle- and upper-income taxpayers—that it is another redistribution scheme. They would be correct. But given the Republican failure to cut the size of government in other ways, what is the alternative? At least the idea takes money from government coffers and gives it to private citizens, who in turn will spend it in the private sector, where it will trigger economic growth. And it has a huge political benefit. Twenty-two-million people would immediately switch their loyalties to the Republican Party.
If nothing else, it would be great entertainment to watch Tom Daschle, Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy fight the idea and explain to their constituents why they should not receive a $20,000 check.
Unfortunately, the problem with Republicans is that their underwear is too tight and they don’t know how to have fun, unlike Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton.
Gene Veith is a professor of English at Concordia University in Wisconsin. He’s also the culture editor of World Magazine, one of my favorite publications.
On the op/ed page of today’s Wall Street Journal is his editorial titled Curse of the Foul Mouth – It’s Not Just Celebrities; Profanity is Everywhere. Here are two excerpts that made my day:
Patricia Heaton, of ”Everybody Loves Raymond,” could not take it anymore. Scheduled to introduce a segment of the nationally televised American Music Awards, she found herself getting more and more offended at the sex talk, the leering poses and the nonstop expletives, especially from the emcees, the bleeping Osbourne family.
”As far as I’m concerned,” she said later, ”it was an affront to anyone with a shred of dignity, self-respect and intelligence.” She walked out. Her colleagues were no doubt genuinely surprised that anyone would actually be offended by offensive language.
Such language is like cultural wallpaper now, everywhere present—from cable TV to rap lyrics, from casual conversation to prime-time award shows. At the recent Golden Globes, U2’s Bono sent out to millions of living rooms a word your grandmother probably never heard spoken and certainly never spoke herself.
The existence of profanity is odd evidence of the persistence of religion even for people who think they are secular. Cursing rests on the assumption that the spiritual realm is real. It is ironic to hear people who do not believe in God continually invoking him in their speech. Those who believe that, if there is a God, he is nonjudgmental and omni-nice can be heard calling down divine wrath on persons and things that make them angry. Meanwhile, status-conscious teenagers and fastidious socialites use barnyard imagery that used to mark the vulgar and dclass.
Words have meaning, even if those who use them do not know what it is. And to those for whom nothing is sacred, everything is profane.
For much of the afternoon I’ve wrestled with whether or not to chime in about an entry on Rachel Lucas’s weblog that has drawn over 100 comments so far. By now you know I’ve decided to say something.
Depending upon where you put the emphasis in Rachel’s entry (e.g. a political appointment, a back-pedal by the administration, AIDS, homophobia or what God thinks) you wind up with a little different comment. Here’s what struck me. God loves us all. His arms are open to us all. All of us are sinners in many areas of life. He still loves us. To the extent that any of the comments about Rachel’s entry in any way implied that God has turned His back on anyone, I’d like to refute that.
Either we have Good News to share or we don’t. Rather than take the position of so many Christians who believe they are here to point out right and wrong, I’d rather point to God’s love and suggest that this passage says all about what it takes to ”lose” God’s love:
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to {His} purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined {to become} conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God {is} for us, who {is} against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, ”FOR YOUR SAKE WE ARE BEING PUT TO DEATH ALL DAY LONG; WE WERE CONSIDERED AS SHEEP TO BE SLAUGHTERED.” But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:28-39
Stacy Tabb helped me move this weblog from Radio Userland’s tool to Movable Type. I’ve enjoyed the move, though I miss my news aggregator, the use of shortcuts, the use of stories and a few other features that I grew accustomed to when first learning Radio.
Textpattern is a forthcoming system designed to simplify publishing on the web. It is intended to be very easy to use. Upon installation, only a web browser and a connection to the internet are required to publish and maintain a web site. Little technical knowledge is needed; those who wish to write on the web, but who are perhaps daunted by the learning demanded by markup languages such as HTML and XML and the presentation language CSS, may find Textpattern to be what theyre looking for.
Scott Norvell at Tongue Tied points to a BBC report regarding kids (or kids’ parents) who have chosen to be offended by red ink. If I had a graphic of eyes rolling, it would go here…
I’m an INTJ in the Myers-Briggs lexicon. Another narrative about INTJ’s is here.
As I contemplate opportunities for working with and for someone else, rather than as my own boss, the strengths and weaknesses of the INTJ profile remind me that interacting well can be a delicate balance. If you haven’t reviewed your own profile in a while or gotten back in touch with those things that make human interaction so dynamic, take a look. You may discover that it’s one element in the solution to the rat race so many find themselves in.
How many times have you invested in a business that explained each year’s one-time charge (read expense) as a non-recurring item. Yet, next year, you find some other non-recurring, one-time charge that removes a lot of the earnings the business had been claiming along the way.
McDonald’s has announced its first loss since becoming a public company 37 years ago. Restructuring charges were listed as a cause for the loss. What exactly is a restructuring charge? Did the execs not have the business structured properly to begin with?
It’s time for a return to absolute clarity on the part of execs and boards. If you did it wrong, admit it. If you’re battling a tough problem, say so. If the business surprised you, there’s no shame in mentioning that. Just be prepared to explain exactly what you’re doing now to fix the problems.
I’m looking for weblogs that originate from the Pacific Northwest – specifically, the Seattle area. If anyone knows of a search feature or one of the weblog ecosystems that allows geographic searches for weblogs, let me know. Thanks!
Scott Koenig signed off on December 9, 2002. I’m just now picking up on it. However, in light of this morning’s mood, the speech excerpts he chose are fantastic. Take a look!
Immediately preceding this entry are the words to A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. After posting those words, I flipped over to Rachel Lucas’ weblog and read this. I guess it just shows there is but one true fortress.
Responsibilities, goals and tasks that require your attention sometimes feel overwhelming. There are days when even the simplest of tasks seem to require all your strength and determination. There are other times when life changes in a lot of ways at once.
Lately, as I’ve struggled through some of those kinds of days, words to songs somehow are put before me. Many of these songs have some significance to me from past days of my Christian journey. Others just spring to mind as the answer to that day’s dilemma.
A Mighty Fortress Is Our God
words & music by Martin Luther (1529)
A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing;
Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing:
For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and power are great, and, armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.
Did we in our strength confide, our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:
Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;
Lord Sabbaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.
And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us:
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.
That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him Who with us sideth:
Let good and kindred go, this mortal life also;
The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever.
If you’re thinking about this country, it’s fights, what it fights for and why, there are a couple of things that are really worth your time this morning. Dane Carlson points to a speech given by L. Neil Smith titled, How Many Americans Does It Take to Change a Dim Bulb. Also, James Lileks provides his usual clarity of thought with a writer’s flair.
A shares fell to $68,000 today. Berkshire is the company that Warren Buffett runs. The 52-week high and low are $78,500 and $59,600 respectively.
B shares are priced at $2260.00 which is approximately 1/30 of an A share on any given day. Details for this year’s annual meeting were posted yesterday.
Dan Miller provides one of the finest (free) newsletters every Monday to his readers. Dan owns and operates The Business Source, Inc. He publishes and emails the CareerLink newsletter every Monday. Dan’s business is focused on helping people find work and life excellence.
Dropped into each issue are some clever stories and humorous tales. This one is priceless:
HUMOR – THE CHURCH GOSSIP
Sarah was the church gossip and self-appointed supervisor of the church’s morals. She kept sticking her nose into other people’s business. Several residents were unappreciative of her activities, but feared her enough to maintain their silence.
She made a mistake, however, when she accused George, a new member, of being an alcoholic after she saw his pickup truck parked in front of the town’s only bar one afternoon. She commented to George and others that everyone seeing it there would know that he was an alcoholic.
George, a man of few words, stared at her for a moment and just walked away. He said nothing.
Later that evening, George, quietly parked his pickup in front of Sarah’s house…............ AND he left it there all night.
Some say that fewer than 20% of available job openings are ever posted or advertised. That statistic is used to encourage us to base job searches on networking. You’ve somehow got to find people ”in the know” and make certain they understand what you are seeking.
I’m in a job search by weblog. In my particular case, I intend to relocate to the Pacific Northwest. Microsoft is an interesting possibility, but I’m 48 (almost 49) years old. I’m going to pursue them, but they may ignore me!
Building a network is a bit tougher when you’re planning a move across the country. Today, Frank Patrick provided a link to Ryze. It’s not yet completely clear to me whether Ryze is a playground for networkers or whether serious business networking can occur there. However, it’s great that after only 24 hours in a ”public” search, information is flowing that may help.
I don’t know Frank Patrick. I’ve read his weblog and browsed his web site. It’s clear that we have provided similar services to client companies. Largely about improving operations around time, cost or fewer customer complaints, the techniques that Frank and I employ can be used by companies in all kinds of industries and with all kinds of operational improvement opportunities.
Keep your ear to the ground and if you know someone in the Seattle area who is looking for an operations or technology management exec, drop me a note.
Two Americans have been shot in Kuwait according to this story. This just shows that there is no ”safe-haven” for any of our people once they are on the ground in the Middle East. Even the so-called friendly nations (to the USA) are full of people who want to see harm come to our country and our people.
To that we add the anti-war protests, an unpredictable economy, pockets of high unemployment and unprecedented levels of family debt. Republicans and Democrats will say or do anything to capture the attention of a public that remains ill-informed.
We are living in a time when a relationship with God is paramount. Whatever or whomever you are putting your faith and trust in will fail you. You’ll walk from that relationship or dependency disillusioned, hurt and angry. You’ll search again after a suitable period of anger, and, unless you find a relationship with the one, true God, you’ll find yourself repeating the cycle.
Here’s the loan, lasting answer:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And he will make your paths straight.Proverbs 3:5-6
Yesterday I mentioned that I’m launching a job search in the Seattle, Washington area. Clearly, Microsoft, Boeing, the University of Washington and a host of medical and military facilities make up the largest employers in the region. However, these giants have a tendency to spawn a lot of satellite businesses in the area.
If you know the area and the types of companies that are there, drop me a note. I’m turning the heat up on this effort during the coming couple of weeks.
If you’re not reading Walter Olson’s weblog about the state of our legal system, you’re missing opportunities to really think about where we need reform. It’s outstanding work.
Liberalism—the modern, not the classical variety—dominates the strategic heights of our culture: the universities, media, churches, Hollywood, and the foundations. Liberalism’s most powerful position, arguably, is its dominance in the law.
It seems this is a $249 gadget available for $49.99 after rebates and service activation. Can someone tell me why that’s a bad deal?
* UPDATE * * It seems the color version may be just around the corner. That could be the reason for the heavy discounting. For some, that could also be the source of buyer’s remorse if you jump too quickly at the monochrome Sidekick.
I’ve always felt liberals should be required to answer this question, ”How much do you want the American people to pay in taxes?” If 40% isn’t enough and 50% isn’t enough, what’s the number?
As a return to the blogging world, I’ll point to Andrew Tobias’s latest. He annotates an old story that has flown around the web for quite a few months. While he attempts to go beyond the usual liberal mantra on taxation, he still falls well short of providing any solutions to the burden that taxes are putting on 95 out of every 100 people.
Well, the story is much too long and personal to delve into here, but suffice it to say that I’ve been considering a move to the Seattle area. I’m seeking job opportunities there. Clearly, it’s a grim time to be looking at a job or career change, but it’s time nonetheless.
I spent last week in the Pacific Northwest and have continued my search since arriving back in Memphis. I’m looking for an opportunity to do channel development work with a company like Microsoft or to do strategic planning and operational improvement initiatives with another technology-focused business. I’ve also been looking at administrative positions in a university setting.
If pressed to list skills or experience, here’s how it would go:
Senior operations and technology executive
Strategic planner
Effective communicator
Experienced with most improvement initiatives (TQM, Baldrige, ISO, etc.)
Supply chain and logistics expertise
Profit and loss responsibility
Project manager across a wide array of projects
Senior level Fortune 500 experience
Keep me posted if you hear of something that might be a fit.
I’m posting from the library on the Tulane University campus in New Orleans. Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of the Radio weblog I started on January 13, 2002. A lot has changed since then. I’ve suffered a couple of major outages, changed web hosts, changed from Radio to Movable Type and finally changed the domain and the design of Rodent Regatta.
I’ll have more to say tomorrow about what the past year has taught and what may be in store for the coming year. Thanks to all who read here regularly.
I’ll be traveling the next two days without a computer so posting will be nonexistent unless I stumble into a library somewhere and can get on line. You’ll find something fresh here on Monday. In the meantime…
”Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7
Alan Cornett’s latest entry is about Buddhism and something called The Kabbalah Center. He knowingly quotes narratives about yet another elitist search for meaning and significance and life beyond the shallowness of their entertainment careers. However, coming from a Christian pastor, these are the words that nail it:
Uh, yeah. I think I know where to get my living water.
that must simply be accepted on faith. No matter how badly you may want them. No matter how hard you are willing to work. No matter how much ambition you have. No matter how unceasing and unwaivering you are in your pursuit, some things simply are not under your control.
For driven people accustomed to accomplishment at a high level, this is one of the most difficult lessons to learn and one of the most challenging principles to put into practice moment by moment every day. Those working in job environments where fewer people are being asked to accomplish more or risk a bad performance review are particularly challenged when it comes to patience. Their patience must be with the system they are forced to work in. They simply are not permitted to work without that look of stark terror on their faces all the time. At too many places the people with sanguine expressions are often labeled slackers.
”Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus.” Romans 15:5
Peter Drucker remains one of the rare thinkers in the business world today. His foresight, insight and nearly 75 years of hindsight position him to be one of the people that deserves our attention.
Take a look at what he had to say back in 1999 at the height of the economic and Internet bubble in this country.
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
Henry David Thoreau
Find your song and don’t go to the grave with it still in you. Life is good.
Because He Lives
by William & Gloria Gaither
God sent His son, they called Him Jesus
He came to love, heal, and forgive.
He lived and died to buy my pardon,
An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives.
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
Because He lives, All fear is gone.
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living just because He lives.
How sweet to hold a newborn baby,
And feel the pride and joy he gives.
But greater still the calm assurance,
This child can face uncertain days because He lives.
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
Because He lives, All fear is gone.
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living just because He lives.
And then one day I’ll cross the river,
I’ll fight life’s final war with pain.
And then as death gives way to victory,
I’ll see the lights of glory and I’ll know He lives.
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
Because He lives, All fear is gone!
Because I know He holds the future
And life is worth the living just because He lives!
Let me try again. Carrying this negative energy around is like carrying a twenty-pound watermelon – you can’t give a good hug when you’ve got a watermelon in your arms. It blocks your connections to others…
So here’s what I wanted to know: Does a solo career in bodywork put you on a downward slide to loosey-goosey-land? That’d be my fear. In fact, I might as well admit that’s why I’m telling this story: to confront my own watermelon…
Well, I think we have to cop to that fear, and recognize that finding our calling might get a little internal, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to wig out.
Heres the scenario: a woman made a conscious decision to leave the fast-lane life of an international sales and marketing person in a high tech company to earn a massage certificate and start a business. Po Bronson is obviously incredulous:
”That’s it. I cannot see one more modem,” she vowed. But do what? She knew what she wanted: She missed human contact.
Did you ever feel that way? Email can’t convey what you mean. The virtual instant messenger can never connect with you like someone sitting across from you over coffee.
He goes on:
”Do you ever feel isolated?” I asked. ”Working alone? I mean, you used to travel the world.”
”I get a far more powerful and genuine connection to people now. That’s what I always wanted – to connect with unusual and interesting people.”
”I guess what I really meant was, you kind of dropped out of the traditional status framework. Most people need the context of a company and an industry and a title and a salary level and regular performance reviews to provide a measure of self-worth. How does one forgo that, and dare to go alone… where do you get your sense of importance?
Bing! That’s where we miss it. It’s not the money, it’s not the power, it’s not the prestige. Those are all false gods. Until you connect – I mean really connect – with the people nearest you, frustration lies at the end of the trail. Success is not jetting here and there, great clothes, packed itinerary and all of life’s common problems. That route takes you to a life of loneliness in a crowded room. There’s another path.
This morning Dawn shows what can be done with an external flash on her digital camera. It seems to me that capturing the image accurately to begin with will always wins out over the Photoshop treatment later.
Were it not for business interactions that require me to own a computer that runs Windows, I’d be the worst sort of Apple user. You know, one of those who almost makes it a religious experience to talk about their particular Mac and what it does for them.
One compelling reason for the Mac running OS X is the suite of applications that have been developed around personal photo, video and music collections. An iPhoto demonstration simply astounded me. I’ve searched ever since for a way to have similar functionality in Windows. It doesn’t exist.
Apparently, I wasn’t alone in the search. Walter Mossberg’s latest Personal Technology column describes two contenders in the Windows world. He picks Picasa.
to shut down for an hour each week and watch the television – until now. It’s an incredible piece of work even on the nights when these two don’t flirt with one another. Henceforth, a recorder somewhere will be on or the schedule will be cleared for that hour.
With a word of encouragement today, and a glance at an earlier entry, a friend’s email quoted this verse: ”Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” Luke 5:5
His Strength is Perfect by S.C. Chapman/Salley
I can do all things through Christ
Who gives me strength;
But sometimes I wonder
What He can do through me?
No great success to show
No glory on my own
Yet, in my weakness
He is there to let me know.
His strength is perfect
When our strength is gone.
He’ll carry us
When we can’t carry on.
Raised in His power
The weak become strong.
His strength is perfect
His strength is perfect.
We can only know
The power That He holds
When we truly see
How deep our weakness goes;
His strength in us begins
Where ours comes to an end
He hears our humble cry
And proves again…
His strength is perfect
When our strength is gone.
He’ll carry us
When we can’t carry on.
Raised in His power
The weak become strong.
His strength is perfect
His strength is perfect.
I think of myself as a fiscal conservative and a social liberal or libertarian. I basically dislike the ”career politician” and find myself equally frustrated with people on both sides of the aisle depending on the topic of the moment.
My stance means that I believe there is very little that the government ought to be spending money on besides a few of the Founders’ basics. With that position, if the government isn’t spending much money, it isn’t necessary to tax us as deeply. (We are deeply taxed if you hadn’t noticed.) I also believe there is emperical data to support the notion that with lower taxes, we become a more giving society, thereby caring for many of the social needs that government has been institutionalizing for a century.
Ever since the quest for a moon landing began, people have called for similar (government-funded) efforts of a similar scale for any number of causes. Nothing has ever caught the national consciousness quite like the first few Gemini and Apollo missions.
However, that doesn’t stop the well-meaning from chasing decent ideas (energy independence) for the wrong reasons (a ”clean” environment) using the wrong methods (taxes).
There are two initiatives that could be launched privately on a national scale. One is the pursuit of a 5 to 10-year shift from gasoline (i.e. foreign oil) burning vehicles to vehicles that are powered by fuel cells. (You might make a mental note that fuel cells powered those Gemini and Apollo spacecraft.)
I wrote about fuel cells yesterday. The technology to build the vehicle exists. Your local convenience store or gas station simply isn’t a hydrogen station. Not yet anyway. We need that distribution system for hydrogen to fuel the cars and fuel the iniative.
The second initiative of some national scope is also one of total transformation to a long-standing industry. This nation’s original, monopoly-based telecommunications networks and services are ripe for replacement. Only (flawed) regulatory measures sustain them. In short order, we could see the lighting of important new fiber optic networks carrying IP packets of voice, data, video and entertainment from coast to coast. To get there, we need to let the old ways go away – quickly.
Yesterday, a friend of mine talked about this verse: Proverbs 3:6 ”In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”
The more we talked the more the following song began to plant itself in my brain. The words are simple, but the meaning and the results are powerful. Many don’t understand a Christian’s perspective when it comes to following the paths set before us. Until He has ”directed your path,” you may not understand the power of God’s presence in the life of those who have chosen to follow Him.
God Will Make A Way Words and music by Don Moen
God will make a way,
Where there seems to be no way
He works in ways we cannot see
He will make a way for me
He will be my guide
Hold me closely to His side
With love and strength for each new day
He will make a way, He will make a way.
By a roadway in the wilderness, He’ll lead me
And rivers in the desert will I see
Heaven and earth will fade
But His Word will still remain
He will do something new today.
God will make a way,
Where there seems to be no way
He works in ways we cannot see
He will make a way for me
He will be my guide
Hold me closely to His side
With love and strength for each new day
He will make a way, He will make a way.
Repentance is not an emotion. It is not feeling sorry for your sins. It is a decision. It is deciding that you have been wrong in supposing that you could mange your own life and be your own god; it is deciding that you were wrong in thinking that you had, or could get, the strength, education, and training to make it on your own; it is deciding that you have been told a pack of lies about yourself and your neighbors and your world. And it is deciding that God in Jesus Christ is telling you the truth. Repentance is a realization that what God wants from you and what you want from God are not going to be achieved by doing the same old things, thinking the same old thoughts.
It seems that something as simple as who’ll be first to take the risk underpins our reluctance to invest in the rapid development of fuel cell technology for vehicles and the hydrogen distribution system required to fuel those new vehicles.
However, there is no distribution system for hydrogen. Back on December 27, 2002, NPR’s John Ydstie did a piece covering fuel cells as part of his series on Foreign Oil Dependency.
In that report he mentions H2GEN. This company would like to be the one that puts a hydrogen-generator at every conventional gas station and convenience store across the country. Estimates for the cost of each installation range from $100,000 to $500,000.
Pick 100 major cities with stops along the way and a conservative threshold for coverage is probably a minimum of 10,000 locations. Using back-of-the-envelope math, that calls for an investment range of $1 billion to $5 billion to start the declaration of independence from foreign oil.
This country’s private telecom carriers raised and spent on the order of $50 to $150 billion to build out fiber optic networks that had far less compelling demand numbers. Assume the math above is off by a factor of 2x or 3x. It’s still viable to think of a $15 billion investment that paves the way for fuel cell vehicles and largely eliminates our purchases of oil around the globe.
you pour yourself, your prayers, your dreams and your wishes into something and it simply doesn’t go the way you hoped. You become as exposed and vulnerable as you can possibly be in an effort to be completely honest. At the end of it all, you find yourself alone with God. You’re asking, ”why?” He’s saying, ”follow me.” At that moment we’re to trust Him and follow.
A friend sent these tips my way this past week. They truly bring your focus back to those areas you can control and those things that can make a difference. If you’re a person of faith, you’ll understand them and realize how difficult it can sometimes be to achieve them. If you’re not a person of faith, some of these may seem awkward or even ridiculous to you. If that goes through your mind, I encourage you to read this. It has made all the difference in my life!
36 Stress Reducers
1. Pray
2. Go to bed on time.
3. Get up on time so you can start the day unrushed.
4. Say No, to projects that won’t fit into your time schedule or that will compromise your mental health.
5. Delegate tasks to capable others.
6. Simplify and unclutter your life.
7. Less is more. (Although one is often not enough, two are often too many.)
8. Allow extra time to do things and to get to places.
9. Pace yourself. Spread out big changes and difficult projects over time; don’t lump the hard things all together.
10. Take one day at a time.
11. Separate worries from concerns. If a situation is a concern, find out what God would have you to do and let go of the anxiety. If you can’t do anything about a situation, forget it.
12. Live within your budget; don’t use credit cards for ordinary purchases.
13. Have backups; an extra car key in your wallet, an extra house key buried in the garden, extra stamps, etc.,
14. K.M.S. (Keep Mouth Shut.) This single piece of advice can prevent an enormous amount of trouble.
15. Do something for the Kid in You everyday.
16. Carry a Bible with you to read while waiting in line.
17. Get enough exercise.
18. Eat right.
19. Get organized so everything has its place.
20. Listen to a tape while driving that can help improve your quality of life.
21. Write thoughts and inspirations down.
22. Everyday, find time to be alone.
23. Having problems? Talk to God on the spot. Try to nip small problems in the bud. Don’t wait until its time to go to bed to try and pray.
24. Make friends with Godly people.
25. Keep a folder of favorite scriptures on hand.
26. Remember that the shortest bridge between despair and hope is often a good ”Thank you, Jesus!”
27. Laugh.
28. Laugh some more!
29. Take your work seriously, but yourself, not at all.
30. Develop a forgiving attitude (most people are doing the best they can).
31. Be kind to unkind people (they probably need it the most).
32. Sit on your ego.
33. Talk less; listen more.
34. Slow down.
35. Remind yourself that you are not the general manager of the universe.
36. Every night before bed, think of one thing you’re grateful for that you’ve never been grateful for before.
* * GOD HAS A WAY OF TURNING THINGS AROUND FOR YOU * *
If God is for us, who can be against us? Romans 8:31
people who are searching. Today’s newsletter, which is free every Monday, is full of sage advice. Proof:
WHAT ARE YOU GONNA BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
When you get to heaven God is not going to ask you why you weren’t more like Mother Teresa. He’s likely to ask you why you weren’t more like you. Your responsibility and source of real freedom and success is to discover who you are. Lead with your own unique talents and personality. Be authentically you and let God use you.
More proof:
WORKERS READY TO JUMP Herman Trend Alert: December 18, 2002
Millions of workers are unhappy with their present employment. At least 30 percent, and perhaps as many as 40 percent, have already ”checked out,” according to at least two recent studies. They show up for work every day, but their focus is on where their next job will be. These workers have lost the passion for their work; they are just going through their daily routine.
Monster.com, the electronic job board, reports that 72 percent of the respondents to their survey are unhappy with their employment circumstances. They are ready to move to a new opportunity as soon as someone makes them an offer. The same research showed that only 22 percent are committed to staying with their current employer.
Why are workers so unhappy? Why are they ready to leave their jobs as soon as they can find a suitable alternative?
One reason workers are unhappy is that a significant portion of the workforce became accustomed to moving from one job to another every 2-4 years. With the economic slowdown, opportunities to move have been limited. Many workers feel trapped and just want to escape. Another reason for employee dissatisfaction is the way they are treated by management. Strong leadership can send positive messages about caring about their employees. Unfortunately, too many employers lack strong leaders, so employees don’t feel valued.
A significant number of large companies have taken employees for granted, working them long hours without sincere appreciation. When this happens, people feel used and abused, rather than feeling respected. Practices we might describe as ”inhumane” have been all too common. For insight into examples of what’s turned off thousands of employees, we encourage you to read ”White Collar Sweatshop” by Jill Andresky Fraser. [$12.76 at www.1800ceoread.com/details.asp?productid=039332320X]
The movement has already begun. The employment market will become much more turbulent over the next few years as workers seek positions that are more congruent with their values, provide opportunities for meaningful work, and respond to desires for life-work balance. They’re looking for leaders who are enlightened enough to provide visionary leadership, assertive communication, and inspiration to make a difference.
Copyright 2002 by The Herman Group—reproduction for publication is encouraged, with the following attribution: From ”Herman Trend Alert,” by Roger Herman and Joyce Gioia, Strategic Business Futurists. (800) 227-3566 or www.hermangroup.com.
A bit more Rage:
Today I learned that a friend I have was fired recently from a church. He was the Senior Youth Director. What were other youth staff people told of the reasoning? Did he do anything immoral, illegal, unethical? No. ”He was suited more for ministry than management”. I kid you not. A church fired a guy because he was suited for ministry! I’m laughing as I write this. But it is really really sad. It is a sad day when growing churches are firing pastors for being ministers. It’s a sad day when churches find managers more employable than ministers. I’m going to stop now before I say something I regret.
Having just seen a completely botched handling of a ministerial change at one church, it seems these guys are onto something. I’m reminded of the saying that some churches are like Noah’s ark – if it weren’t for the raging storm on the outside, nobody could stand the stench on the inside.
the new week with quite a rant. I agree with him. When the word ”restraint” is defined, someone must include Israel’s willingness to take very measured steps in their fight with terror as a prime example of what ”restraint” really means.
Will they renew? From Information Week is this article by Robin Gareiss. A couple of clips:
When he looked for alternatives, he saw an unstable telecom industry—24 of the top 30 national carriers have gone bankrupt in the past two years.
More than $10 billion in business telecom contracts are up for renewal this year, according to analysts and lawyers who help negotiate those deals, and customers want to make sure the suppliers they select will be around until the end of the contract.
Ben and Mena Trott are the brains, hands and doer-bees behind Movable Type. I stumbled into Mena’s weblog about a year ago. Stumbling a bit further, I found Pacific Northwest Journal. It’s a photo album of their tour of the Pacific Northwest, but you’ll miss the photos unless you look up in the right hand corner of the web site and click on ”Photo Album.”
Some are returning to work for the first time in 2003. They’ve dreamed the holidays away and now they face the grim reality of work they no longer enjoy with others in the same boat.
Clearly, these people are ”better off” than those who have been searching for work for months. However, life is much too short to spend so many hours of it without the internal rewards that come from doing something you love.
Resources abound for helping you alter your situation. I’ll repeat a few of them:
These are only a few of the best tools for seeking and starting a new direction. There are many more. You can match your personality type to a career path. You can take aptitude tests to discover what you’re best at. You can think back to what you enjoyed most in first grade and somehow find a joyful occupation.
Whatever the tool. Whatever the method. Launch a process of discovery. Discover what God is asking of you. Discover his plan, place and purpose for your life. It’s January 6, 2003. There’s no better time to start!
Twas battered and scarred, And the old auctioneer
Thought it scarcely worth his while
To waste much time on the old violin,
But he held it up with a smile:
”What am I bidden, good folks,” he cried,
”Who’ll start the bidding for me?”
”A dollar, a dollar”; then, ”Two!” ”Only two?”
”Two dollars, and who’ll make it three?”
”Three dollars, once; three dollars, twice;
going for three” .......but no!
>From the room, far back, a gray-haired man
Came forward and picked up the bow;
Then, wiping the dust from the old violin,
And tightening the loose strings,
He played a melody pure and sweet
As a caroling angel sings.
The music ceased, and the auctioneer,
With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said; ”What am I bidden for the old violin?”
And he held it up with the bow.
”A thousand!” ”And who’ll make it two?”
”Two thousand!” ”And who’ll make it three?”
”Three thousand, once, three thousand, twice,
And going, and gone,” said he.
The people cheered, but some of them cried,
”We do not quite understand!”
”What changed it’s worth?”
Swift came the reply:
”Twas the touch of the master’s hand.”
And many a man with life out of tune,
And battered and scarred with sin,
Is auctioned cheap to the thoughtless crowd,
Much like this old violin.
A ”mess of pottage,” a glass of wine;
A game; and he travels on.
He is ”going” once, ”going” twice,
He’s ”going” and almost ”gone.”
But the Master comes, and the foolish crowd
Never can quite understand
The worth of a soul and the change that is wrought
By the touch of the Master’s hand.
Jessica Grossman was twenty-eight. We arranged to meet the first time at a Starbucks, which became awkward quickly, because she needed to pause often while she wiped tears from her eyes. Twice she sobbed and curled up into a ball in her chair. I’m sure it looked like I was breaking up with her – the kind of tenderness between us, yet the necessary professional distance, would be easily misread. I was exceedingly grateful for her emotion, for her openness, because I was really just a stranger. I found her when scouting for doctors who had left medicine.
If you remain in the group who thinks somehow ”things” are going to return to the prosperity, opportunity and excess of the late 90’s, it’s time to read this book. The ”down days” of the last 24 months are not the aberration. The overblown days of the late 90’s were the aberration.
It’s time to find something from which you draw meaning, significance and joy. For some that will be a new or different job. For others it will be in relationships and their faith. For still others, complete career changes may be necessary.
Dating back to years before its founding, Level 3 Communications has sold a toll road that it owned in California. Here’s some detail:
The 91 Express Lanes road runs for 10 miles between the Costa Mesa Freeway and the Orange County-Riverside County line. When it debuted in December 1995, it was the first privately financed toll road to open in the United States in more than 50 years. Since then, the road has logged more than 50 million vehicle trips. The Orange County Transportation Authority purchased the road as part of its ongoing effort to better manage traffic congestion in the region.
Level 3’s ownership interest in the road dates to 1992. At the time, Level 3 was operating as Kiewit Diversified Group, a subsidiary of Peter Kiewit Sons’, Inc., the private construction company headquartered in Omaha, Neb. Kiewit was a principal investor in CPTC, along with partners Granite Construction Inc. and Cofiroute Corporation, a France-based builder and operator of highway systems.
Om Malik is a writer for Red Herring magazine. He has a book coming out in May titled Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist. He also wrote an entry this week titled The Hope for Telecom. With AT&T and MCI raising rates on long distance, SBC and BellSouth just entering the long distance business and a host of players emerging from bankruptcy with a newfound incentive to compete, the telecom industry may continue in just as much turmoil as last year.
Sharon Begley wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal today titled ’Eve’ May Be Offspring Of Many Science Hoaxes. She describes several scenarios that might be unfolding as the Raelians go about ”proving” that ’Eve’ is indeed a clone. Look at this excerpt:
Maybe the Raelians know that Eve is not a clone, ”but believe they can deceive the world by executing a sample switch,” says Mr. Park. ”Stage magicians do this for a living.”
One of the best of those, James ”The Amazing” Randi, says it would be ”ridiculously easy” to switch samples. ”You can have a sample of the mother’s DNA in your hand or your pocket and switch it for the sample you take from the baby,” he says. ”You can make the switch if they’re laid down for even a moment, or you can make the switch by splitting a single sample in two.”
The only way to guard against that is to establish an unbreakable chain of custody. ”You would have to put the swabs from the mother and baby into containers with seals and labels that cannot be forged,” Mr. Randi says from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Someone independent of Clonaid would have to collect the samples. A person schooled in the conjuring arts rather than in science—since magicians prey on the penchant for logical, linear thinking typical of scientists—should act as observer.
Today in a meeting with several people who are considering the ”end-game” in wireless networking and bandwidth sharing arrangements, it became clear that no one seems to have broken the code on how these networks pay for themselves or make money. If you read The Wireless Commons and the Community Wireless Definition, you get some sense of how Wi-Fi might become a ”last mile” solution. However, what if your office is next door to mine and I get my Wi-Fi by hitch-hiking on your network? What happens if your network goes down or you move?
The concept of Wi-Fi everywhere is appealing. However, someone must fund the capital cost as well as the ongoing operating costs of such an ambitious undertaking. Otherwise the infrastructure becomes much too fragile for most vital business tasks.
This old song came to mind this morning. As we launch a new year, this weblog will continue to point to ways that people are finding significance in their lives. Sometimes it comes quite easily. Other times it is amazingly difficult to figure out what is significant about what you are doing, why your work matters or where you fit in the ”grand scheme” of things. Hang in there. Your Song is just the one someone else may need to hear.
YOUR SONG
by Elton John
It’s a little bit funny this feeling inside
I’m not one of those who can easily hide
I don’t have much money but boy if I did
I’d buy a big house where we both could live
If I was a sculptor, but then again, no
Or a man who makes potions in a travelling show
I know it’s not much but it’s the best I can do
My gift is my song and this one’s for you
And you can tell everybody this is your song
It may be quite simple but now that it’s done
I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you’re in the world
I sat on the roof and kicked off the moss
Well a few of the verses well they’ve got me quite cross
But the sun’s been quite kind while I wrote this song
It’s for people like you that keep it turned on
So excuse me forgetting but these things I do
You see I’ve forgotten if they’re green or they’re blue
Anyway the thing is what I really mean
Yours are the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen
I always run three to five years behind in seeing movies. This morning’s rental was A Beautiful Mind. I’m in awe.
Immediately after watching the movie, I came to the office to do some weblog work. The first place I visit is Scripting News, where I find Dave Winer pointing to something Halley Suitt has suggested. It’s a terrific idea and much easier to do than you might realize.
You’re not agreeing to undertake a comprehensive job search for five other people. You’re simply committing to being a friend as others search. Be a sounding board. Be a person who fosters some thoughtful reflection about the avenues your friend(s) might pursue.
* * UPDATE * * * Dave’s looking to teach. We’re all searching for that place of significance that doesn’t stake our own worth and image to the next quarter’s numbers.
I pray you’ll be our eyes, and watch us where we go
And help us to be wise in times when we don’t know
Let this be our prayer, when we lose our way
Lead us to the place, guide us with your grace
To a place where we’ll be safe
I pray we’ll find your light, and hold it in our hearts
When stars go out each night, remind us where you are
Let this be our prayer, when shadows fill our day
Help us find a place, guide us with your grace
Give us faith so we’ll be safe
A world where pain and sorrow will be ended
And every heart that’s broken will be mended
And we’ll remember we are all God’s children
Reaching out to touch you
Reaching to the sky
We ask that life be kind, and watch us from above
We hope each soul will find another soul to love
Let this be our prayer, just like every child
Who needs to find a place, guide us with your grace
Give us faith so we’ll be safe
Needs to find a place, guide us with your grace
Give us faith so we’ll be safe
Bob Evans, editor of Information Week, has written a terrific column. His resolution for 2003? Don’t lose hope. Look at these excerpts:
Pennsylvania’s PowerBall lottery jackpot late last week reached somewhere north of $160 million, and lots of people were talking about what a Merry Christmas the winning ticket would bring. There’s an almost otherworldly fervency to the selection of numbers and buying of tickets and watching the results, as if the one and only way to have any chance of making it in the world is by defying odds of one out of 150,000,000 and winning the loot—it’s as if some of the folks snapping up tickets feel they have no other choice, no other alternative.
...both of my lunch companions said they themselves had paid off their mortgages and eliminated all outstanding debt and were hacking away at some discretionary household expenses in anticipation of the worse that’s still to come.
But the worst of all is the loss of hope. Of optimism. Of will, and of courage, and of entrepreneurship, and risk-taking, and motivation and energy and a sense of doing whatever must be done. I don’t think these, among our most ennobling qualities, are gone, or that they’ve even strayed very far. Rather, I think we’ve come through a lot in the past three years, and particularly the past 15 months, certainly enough to rattle the foundations of any people, any country. What we have that no one can take is our freedom-to act, to think, to live, to grow, to strive, to build, to love, and even to fail. We’ve taken some horrendous shots in the past year or so, but that’s OK-we’re going to emerge stronger than ever before.
I’m looking forward to 2003, and not just because it means 2002 is gone. It’s time for us all to recommit ourselves to being the very best we can be, personally and professionally, in the coming year and beyond. Happy holidays to all of you from all of us at InformationWeek.
I’m looking at the things that are likely to get some press here during 2003. I mentioned Newt Gingrich’s 5-item wish list for the GOP last week. Clearly, those are important national issues that need attention. To that list I’m adding some other things:
Fuel cells as a means of energy independence
Nanotechnology
Wi-Fi as an alternative to the centrally planned, quasi-monopoly phone networks
The search for significance in life and work
In the next couple of days, I plan to produce an ”About” page for this weblog. These items and more will be listed as topics of interest. Then, there’s always some crackpot that needs coverage or ridicule along the way. I’ll pick those stories up as they come along and stir the thoughts.
this week and you’re one of the many people who are ”searching and seeking,” I commend Po Bronson’s new book to you. I bought it yesterday, read a bit last night and have committed to finishing it this week.
I’ll not quote the whole thing, but from what I’ve read so far, I can tell that he deeply explores the search for meaning and passion in life. Here’s an example of the kind of skepticism, fears and misconceptions he encountered as people faced the question What Should I Do With My Life?
The misconception that this question only matters to overeducated Americans suffering from ennui, when in fact almost anybody can find the questions important to them.
The fear that our passions will put us in the poorhouse.
The fear of irreversibility, limiting future options.
The fear of not being on a path with a known destination.
The fear that what we need for ourselves might tear us away from our spouse, partner or friends.
The misconceptions that our life deosn’t begin until we find an answer, when if fact our failed attempts often establish why we will find our future ”answer” so meaningful, that is, in contrast to our past.
These words are from the song by the same title. They speak volumes about the longings that people have to find something they can truly believe in. They are true whether we look at man’s search for meaning in work or man’s search for a fulfilling relationship with his Maker.
One Pure And Holy Passion
Mark Altrogge
Give me one pure and holy passion
Give me one magnificent obsession
Give me one glorious ambition for my life
To know and follow hard after You
To know and follow hard after You
To grow as Your disciple in the truth
This world is empty, pale and poor
Compared to knowing You, my Lord
Lead me on and I will run after You
Lead me on and I will run after You
1988 PDI Praise\Dayspring Music, Inc.
(Admin. by Word Music Group, Inc.)
Mississippi State managed a win over Oklahoma, but can you imagine two Division I teams shooting so poorly for an entire game? It was 23-23 at the half. In college basketball today you accept any win no matter how ugly, but this must have been truly awful to watch. Oklahoma only shot five free throws while Mississippi State shot 19? Hmmm…
It’s December 28, 2002. Wednesday is the first day of a new year. If you haven’t got your goals or resolutions down in writing, there’s no better time than tomorrow afternoon. Find a way to spend a quiet Sunday afternoon and think about what will be significant to you in 2003.
If you’ve never done this before or need a format for thinking about the things that are really important, try this. Dan Miller’s work is impeccable and this tool for goal-setting will bring clarity to you.
Emails are arriving chastising me (nicely) for not having a Plan B for my cable company’s ISP service. They’re right. I should have known.
Here’s the best (read cheapest) way to go. Select a good service for your home or office. Prices vary around the country, but dependable DSL lines or good cable service will run $40 to $50 per month. Memphis has a company offering a T-1 for $650 per month for dedicated internet access (DIA).
No matter what you select, pick some type of dial-up service for your travels and as an alternative method for getting on the web. I should have done this, but I didn’t. It seems to me the worst case cost for such a plan is less than $25 per month. Juno is still free and might get you past a rough spot even though you may have to endure some annoying ads.
Today is the 27th. I’m pointing to something written on the 23rd. During my most recent round of ”dead air,” I missed a lot that was written and probably amplified elsewhere. It will take the weekend to catch up. However, some things are too important to pass up.
Mena has hit on something that is vital. Which weblogs do you turn to for which kinds of information? Which ones can you count on for accuracy? From even the political weblogs is a need for accurate information in spite of a lean to the left or right.
Glenn Fleishman has a weblog so clearly focused on Wi-Fi that you’ll never go wrong using his site to dig out any news about wireless networks and the companies that are moving and shaking in that field.
Next year will be a year where greater focus and trust is placed on weblogs than ever before. The best are rising to the top. The worst are receding into neighborhood tea parties. Never underestimate how important reliability is in distinguishing between the two.
This weblog began on January 13, 2002. It was a form of therapy following September 11th and its aftermath. I’ve struggled with matters of ”good looking design” and some service interruptions in the months since that first entry on a Sunday afternoon.
Now I feel focus is returning. Having the most recent disruption resolved allows me to return to topics that are important. Peggy Noonan’s latest work for the Wall Street Journal’s OpinionJournal.com caught my eye. Here’s a tiny (off topic) sample:
I was reminded again this year that people do what they know how to do. A lot of people tend to go to their default setting when faced with any given challenge. Your default position grows out of who you are and how you think. If your default position on being treated rudely by clerks is patience and mercy you’ll likely go to default patience today if a clerk is rude to you.
But people can change, and the changes within them can produce new default settings. One of the things that can change a person is consistent good fortune, persistent admiration, a luckiness that lasts.
Then, there was yesterday’s wish list from Newt Gingrich. You’ll have to read it, but in keeping with his ability to set a clear agenda and make sure everyone understands what that agenda is, here are five points he says the GOP needs to focus on:
National security
Economic growth
Health care modernization
Litigation reform
Scientific environmentalism
These and several related topics will be regular subjects for this weblog in 2003.
2003 is going to be a year of big changes. It will be a year of searching for significance. Plenty of people spend their entire lives without feeding a deep desire to do something significant. Some have found it. Others substitute a rather harsh cyncism and biting wit for it and call it clever writing or conversation. Pseudo-intellectuals if you ask me.
Life is simply too short. Time is running out. Happiness can be found. Going through the motions of a ”conventional” life with its conventional successes won’t bring happiness. There’s more. In 2003 things are going to change.
Since December 18, 2002, I’ve been without cable modem service. Twenty minutes ago ”a guy” showed up, climbed a pole, measured the signal and found a faulty connection. No explanation.
That’s almost ten days of outage. If I pay them double what I’m paying now, I can ”generally” get problems fixed within 24 hours. That’s right; pay them more and they can ”generally” miss yet another customer service ”goal – not promise.” The extent of the stupidity at the other end of the customer service line into Road Runner is indescribable.
No wonder every major corporation has at least two providers of bandwidth for every important connection. Think about how much money (at least half) a corporation could save on bandwidth expense if a reliable provider with a well-measured customer service system could enter the market. Unfortunately, too many of the recent entrants have patterned their approach after the centrally-planned, quasi-monopoly carriers of yesteryear.
Other than possibly energy, there is no greater opportunity in all of technology today than the one involving the bandwidth service into homes and small businesses. Will it be Wi-Fi? Will it be fiber to the home? Will it be a dependable, hybrid cable service? Time will tell.
Storms here Wednesday night. Roadrunner cable service down since then. This entry is sneaking in during a momentary connection. Regular programming will resume soon.
Writing a commentary for Business Week, Jane Black attempts to draw parallels between FedEx’s failed ZapMail business and the new Cometa Networks. In fact it isn’t just Cometa’s plan that she calls into question. She really questions the whole notion of Wi-Fi on a large-scale basis.
What’s your impression of people who sell things for a living? Does that impression vary based upon what they are selling? Is there a sales style that you like?
Sales as a career is tough. For those who are good, it’s incredibly rewarding. For those who dread the rejections, it can be devastating. How do the people who are successful in sales get past the abruptness of those who don’t want to be contacted?
Is sales ability based upon personality type? Is there any circumstance or industry or method that transforms the saleman into a professional?
LONDON, Dec. 16, 2002—Level 3 Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq:LVLT) announced today that it has been selected by NORDUnet to provide Internet access service to research and education networks throughout Scandinavia. Level 3 is providing NORDUnet with two 2.5Gbit IP ports from diverse locations in Stockholm.
You and I are not likely to see an invoice from Level 3 for their services. Their current target market consists of the 300 largest users of bandwidth worldwide. This makes them the ”carrier’s carrier.”
Level 3’s network is late generation fiber end-to-end. There are no circuit switches. There is no copper. The network is the first of its type ever constructed. It is continuously upgradeable.
The Smithsonian Institution cited the Level 3 Network as:
”The world’s first upgradeable international fiber optic network to be completely optimized for Internet Protocol technology, helping to stimulate the biggest change in communications technology in 100 years.”
Level 3 Communications in Broomfield, CO. has made an aggressive set of moves since its founding. However, the last 90 days have shown the power of this company’s strategy, focus and resolve to consolidate the telecommunications industry. Here are examples:
with a decision by Coca Cola to stop providing quarterly and annual ”guidance.”
”Establishing short-term guidance prevents a more meaningful focus on the strategic initiatives that a company is taking to build its business and succeed over the long run,” Coke’s chairman and chief executive, Douglas Daft, said in a prepared statement. ”We are managing this business for the long term.”
Companies frequently put an employee in a position of ”resign” or be fired. I’ve even heard of situations where an otherwise excellent employee gets fed up and attempts to get fired because of matters such as severance and benefits.
Recently, I became aware of a church situation in which a person was asked to resign. Implicit in the request to resign was a request to keep quiet in exchange for a severance arrangement. How the people at this church thought this request could be kept secret is a mystery. Clearly, the financial statements will show the continued salary. No reception for the many years (over 20) of service is being given, and the individual ”resigned” without having another job lined up.
Is this ethical and moral? Leaving the impression that this was ”the employee’s plan” ”seems not only unethical, but terribly dishonest to the rest of the congregation. Furthermore, based upon the number of people who knew the ”truth” at the outset, the word is rapidly getting out to the rest of the congregation. Your thoughts?
Were I forced to select a single field to concentrate on and pursue employment in to the exclusion of all else – today, at this moment – I’d have to go with some area of the Wi-Fi industry.
There are many unanswered questions and it isn’t obvious to me which companies are likely to achieve stardom in the field. However, given the fact that so many cellular telephone companies are mere clones of their centrally-planned copper wire parents, Wi-Fi has a market opening that you could drive trucks through.
Many of the natural tensions in life involve finding balance. Balance between work and leisure; balance between family and self; balance between stress and depression; balance between instrospection and extroversion. Only when that balance becomes natural to you will you realize you’ve found your passion in life.
When I’m not busy with a million and one things I get depressed and feel worthless, but when I do have a million and one things going on I am stressed and overworked. There is no middle ground.
I’ve been watching and reading this site for some time now. Today, I was torn between discussing the words above and asking questions about today’s photo. Do you remember when many of the great photography magazines included all the details of how a photo was taken: Nikon F2, 300mm, Ektachrome(100), 1/125sec., f5.6?
I find myself wishing for the same sort of instructional information when looking at great digital images. Just how much ”retouching” has been done? What equipment was used and how was it set?
Dawn does a great job in her FAQ of giving information about the equipment and tools that she uses. She also provides an excellent list of instructional sites and resources that have helped her.
...given what we now know, there should be some note that a chemical analysis of JFKs blood would find it indistinguishable from an inventory of Winona Ryders purse.
IBM has announced that it’s diving into the voice-over-IP market with a suite of consulting services.
According to Lozach, service includes consulting, strategy development, integration, deployment, installation, and ongoing management of the network equipment such as the IP-based PBX.
Cisco equipment will be used primarily, according to IBM. However, the company will also support and work with equipment from Avaya, Siemens, Alcatel, and Nortel Networks.
If you haven’t had your fill of the Trent Lott mess, link your way over to Rachel Lucas’ site. You’ll find a post with comments followed by a second one. The fun is only beginning.
The ”you-get-one-of-our’s and we’re-going-to-get-one-of-your’s” school of politics has now been adopted by both the Republicans and the Democrats to the exclusion of anything remotely resembling common sense.
* * UPDATE * * From the school of doing the right thing for the wrong reason will come Trent Lott’s demise as an effective leader in Washington. You can see how it’s likely to play out by reading this.
The IBM customer service stories bring to mind a problem that all companies face. Whose job carries the responsibiliites associated with improving the customer’s experience? Is it the CEO or does he need to focus on building a corporate culture that strives for improvement?
Is it the CIO/CTO? Many of the problems are not solely technology or systems problems. They are problems with The System. Is the customer service department supposed to solve the process problems? How about the sales department? Does each department merely do its own thing trying to improve along the way?
Has quality really become everybody’s job? In most organizations do front-line employees have the know-how and the authority to initiate the kinds of cross-functional improvements that customers seek?
I believe these questions, their answers and the approaches that businesses take to transforming their business processes are essential. The so-called ”rat race” that frustrates so many customers and employees relates directly to the annoyances we have when we simply try to fight through the bureaucracy at our own or other companies.
The absence of any passion and meaning in life stems (only partly) from a life worn down by the endless battles required to accomplish small things. A product return becomes a confrontation. A billiing error continues for months. A one-sided agreement locks you into a cellphone supplier that can’t sustain a phone call for 10 minutes. These things wear us down.
Who can fix them? Who is responsible for fixing them? Does anyone want to learn a methodology for transforming flawed processes into streamlined processes?
Andrew Tobias got mistreated in this weblog yesterday. I wished him ill and I should not have. No, I didn’t hear from him; I just shouldn’t have done it. I was frustrated that he chose to comingle a story about his experiences with IBM’s customer service with some political shots he felt needed to be taken.
Today, he explains the resolution of the IBM customer service problems. As we so often find, IBM is full of people who care and want to help, but ”the system” they work in is flawed.
I’m glad that Andy’s problems are solved, and I hope IBM truly is working on their work processes. The company that is first to resolve issues like when to provide baby-talk instructions and when to work at a bit higher level will win this game.
Dan Gillmor had to stand in at the last minute and deliver a keynote address this morning at the Supernova Conference. He revised, expanded and updated a talk he gave earlier this year and several people took notes. In particular, I’ve looked at Cory Doctorow’s version, and it’s thought-provoking stuff.
The Sporting News is reporting that Mario Austin has finally been cleared by the NCAA to resume his collegiate basketball career. You’ll recall that this is the player that has been in college two and a half years, has successfully maintained his academic standing and is a junior this year. Yet, the NCAA, with nothing better to do, went back and re-examined their own ruling on Austin’s high school transcript and has prevented him from playing so far this year.
A class act – those NCAA lawyers….ummm….attorneys.
Business Week’s December 9, 2002 issue includes an opinion piece by Robert J. Barro titled The Best Little Monopoly in America. He runs a contest judged by Harvard economists to find the best monopoly operating in America. I’ll summarize and paraphrase part of it for you.
The finalists were: The U.S. Postal Service, OPEC, Microsoft, the International Longshore & Warehouse Union(ILWU) and the National Collegiate Athletic Association(NCAA). Narrowly losing out were Major League Baseball, the National Education Association and the Massachusetts Democratic Party. Remember, this is a bunch of Harvard economists doing the judging.
The USPS loses out because FedEx, fax machines & email easily hurdled any barriers to entry. OPEC loses because it now controls less than one third of the world’s oil production and, despite American initiatives, it isn’t American at all. Microsoft lost because the government didn’t see fit to levy any serious penalty, so how can it possibly be the best monopoly?
Two lovely finalists. The IWLU where 10,000 people used their monopoly to raise salaries to in excess of $100,000 per year while limiting the use of technology. Bush’s threat to send in soldiers to unload the ships caused the IWLU to cave, so, again, how can it be the best monopoly?
Your winner?
Finally, we come to the NCAA, which has successfully suppressed financial competition in college sports. The NCAA is impressive partly because its limitations on scholarships and other payments to athletes boost the profitability of college sports programs. But even more impressive is the NCAA’s ability to maintain the moral high ground. For example, many college basketball players come from poor families and are not sufficiently talented to make it to the National Basketball Assn. Absent the NCAA, such a student would be able to amass significant cash during a college career. With the NCAA in charge, this student remains poor. Nevertheless, the athletic association has managed to convince most people that the evildoers are the schools that violate the rules by attempting to pay athletes rather than the cartel enforcers who keep the student-athletes from getting paid. So given this great balancing act, the NCAA is the clear choice for best monopoly in America.
Take a look at how many people on this list have won the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing peace to the Middle East. Sunday, as I passed through a room, I heard Rooney mention how many have received awards, but the fighting continues.
They’ve given The Nobel Prize to some strange people, for example Menachem Begin, Anwar Sadat, Yasser Arafat and Yitzak Rabin all got it for bringing peace to the Middle East. With peace like that, the world could end tomorrow.
Honda has rolled out the fuel cell-powered FCX. I’m no tree hugger, but I like good engineering. Honda will no doubt use their results with this small vehicle to further their exploration of alternative fuels.
You know how the cartoon mouse or bird was often able to lift some enormous hammer, thousands of times his body weight, and wield it with even greater power to flatten the pursuing kitty?
That’s what I feel HTML does to me. Not just HTML, but Movable Type, images, graphic design, layout, CSS, validation and all the rest. Just as I get a little bit comfortable with some aspects of this, I learn that some huge area of specialization exists that I wasn’t even aware of. Dawn’s got a great FAQ area and she asks and answers the question about Movable Type plugins. I had no idea something called plugins existed for MT, nor do I have any clue whether or not I use plugins here.
This is the point where I run whining to ”my designer” to ask questions. Cut to Marlon Brando yelling, ”Stella…Stella…” Only it’s me yelling ”Stacy…Stacy…”
The last time I read a customer service story like this one, it surrounded a product from HP or was it Compaq; no, Dell; no… Unfortunately, it could have been any of them. Part 2 of the story ran today, but the problem continues. We’re not yet to the ”happy” ending.
Unfortunately, any happy ending will be clouded by the political tripe that Tobias chose to embed at the end of his latest horror story. I’m a shareholder in IBM, but in this particular case, if IBM could continue this sorry customer service scenario for a while longer it would suit me just fine.
For some contemporary music and variety our church is planning to buy a new keyboard. Right now, the Yamaha folks have loaned one, but more than one of our musicians have complained that the thing is difficult to ”program.”
Then, quite by accident, I notice that Ben Padilla has got a set of links to synthesizers on his newly redesigned weblog.
Rachel has exams this week! Imagine what that answer sheet must look like.
Oh I almost forgot – I did shoot the .357 Magnum (6-inch barrel). This was an ill-advised decision on my part. First shot caused the knuckles on my left hand to smash very hard into the table thingy (I don’t even try to hold that sucker freestyle – way too heavy). Second shot gave me that feeling you get when you get punched in the nose. Third shot made me think I was experiencing a brain aneurysm. Fourth shot caused carpal tunnel syndrome. Fifth shot created a sensation like my retinas were peeling off the backs of my eyeballs. By the sixth shot, I was angry like I am when I hear Al Gore’s voice on television, and so I mentally dared the gun to cause me any discomfort, and it responded by causing a feeling like all of my spinal vertebrae were collapsing in on themselves. Nice, huh?
After seven months in Australia, our oldest daughter is scheduled to arrive in Memphis this coming Saturday afternoon. We’re counting on cooperation from ”the worst drought in 100 years.” We’re also counting on these fires being no threat whatsoever to the Sydney airport where she’ll change planes. Jonathon, if you’re still a reader, keep us posted as the weekend draws nearer!
Supernova is a new conference exploring the distributed future. With the bursting of the Internet bubble, businesses, end-users, investors, and technology vendors face a bewildering array of challenges. Yet a common theme runs through the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media. That theme is decentralization.
Intelligence is moving to the edges, through networked computers, empowered users, shifting partnerships, fluid digital content, distributed work teams, and powerful communications devices. Each industry sees only a small piece of the picture. Supernova is the first event to bring these threads together. Those who understand the business opportunities, technical underpinnings, and policy implications of decentralization will have a competitive advantage in any economy.
If you’ve been in that funk that so many technical folks are in, these notes may stir some new creative energy for you. Here’s a link to the conference weblog.
In a world of religious relativism, the very suggestion that any one belief might be superior to another is precisely the kind of heresy that will get a preacher tossed to the lions of political correctness. For that reason alone, Mr. Graham qualifies as WORLD’s Daniel of the Year.
I still have high hopes of learning how to put some photographs on this weblog. It’s one thing to have a photo with an entry, but it must be entirely different to produce a photo journal where 8 to 12 small photos or thumbnails are displayed. Before the first of the year, I hope to do both.
An example of a photo within an entry seems rather easy. Linking from an entry to a separate page of thumbnails or a photo ”gallery” requires something more.
* UPDATE * * I’ve found something called Gallery. Should I use it or do I simply learn to produce a photo journal using MT? Then, from the authors of MT, is this approach. More research to do!
I’m behind in all my reading. Samizdata has pointed to a lecture delivered by David Warren titled Wrestling With Islam. I’ve printed the entire lecture so that I can read it over coffee today. I’ve read enough to know that we can learn a great deal from David Warren.
I must therefore end on a pessimistic note, as I look to the immediate future. As a Christian, I feel optimistic that God will lead us, Muslims, Jews, and Christians alike, finally to the best conclusion, in the grand cosmic scheme of things. But as a practical person, using everything I know to understand the present order of cause and effect, I must tell you, that this clash is unlikely to end well.
Meryl Evans cites an article that suggests that dial-up access will be the predominant method of Internet access for consumers through 2006. A likely corillary to this is the use of 400K DSL by small businesses through 2006 as well.
Two concerns come to mind. How will people ever keep Windows PC’s running and secure without some bandwidth to do the downloads? How will investors ever see the returns on their investments in bandwidth companies with a pace of broadband adoption that is so slow?
Just in case you needed a subscription to see it, I’ll give you this excerpt:
STAYING RELEVANT
Here are some resources to help baby boomers fight off hasbeenhood:
New Directions: Firm helps boomers become ”radical career changers” and ”free agents for life.” Contact: www.newdirections.com
”50 Plus” by Robert Dilenschneider: The career strategist’s new book advises aging professionals on how to please younger bosses and master youth-oriented workplaces.
www.thirdage.com: Web site offers discussion groups, dispels retirement myths.
Career Counselors Consortium: Service helps aging boomers rediscover their missions and passions. Contact: www.careercc.org
”Rewired, Rehired or Retired” by Robert Critchley: Tips from an executive at outplacement firm DBM to help older workers remain invaluable.
One of the most telling quotes in the article is this:
Such a rediscovery process will be crucial for boomers in the years ahead, says Dave Corbett, founder of New Directions, a transition counseling firm in Boston for aging executives. His ”Me, Inc.” philosophy encourages them to mold self-employment to suit their needs and passions.
This points to a time when each of us is simply too old to get hired. For some that may come at 40, 45 or 50. For others it may be the basis for a second career after retiring from the first. In any case the age at which age discrimination sets in is much lower than it was even 5 years ago.
There was a time when the job at Alabama was considered a step up from the job at A&M. Probation, money and deep Texas ties put Alabama in a losing posture with Franchione. This is a big loss for the SEC and ’Bama.
Some have suggested that my last few entries are turning this into an ”unemployment weblog.” Nothing could be further from the objective. This weblog is about getting out of the rat race.
During the weekend, I intend to add an ”About” page and post some things that relate to anyone who feels trapped in a race with no finish line. As I mentioned yesterday, this is as much about people who are gainfully employed as it is about those who are suffering some (temporary) depression associated with a prolonged bout with unemployment. Some of the most prosperous people I know feel trapped and are unhappy.
Feeling fulfilled by what you do every day is about more than how your profession or your stuff stacks up in the eyes of the Jones’s! If you don’t have a proven method or process for re-evaluating your career, your job and your interests, let me suggest Richard Bolles or Dan Miller as people who can provide tools for getting you on a better path.
For several years the ITEC trade show has come to Memphis. Never have I seen a group as confounded by the rat race in all my life. I’ve always thought of working trade show booths as equivalent to a public root canal without pain killers. However, today’s show reawakened me to the plight of the American worker.
I’ve never seen so many people who have absolutely no clue about why they have been put on this Earth. Every other booth served to fence off another person or people with a look of stark terror in their eyes. It was if each of them feared they’d be shot at dusk if the show wasn’t a success.
Ask a couple of them what a successful show entailed and they had no idea. Talk about meaning in life; trust me when I say that the ITEC show in Memphis proved to me beyond all uncertainty that people must find something bigger than themselves or some hot technology or the latest quota from their company to anchor their souls.
Jackie Sherrill has fired five key assistant coaches at Mississippi State University. R.C. Slocum has been fired by Texas A&M. Frank Solich is firing assistants at Nebraska. Dennis Franchione went home and went to bed rather than take the A&M job.
Many thanks to Rachel Lucas for yesterday’s words of encouragement. This theme of ”finding your dream” or ”seeking your passion” seems to resonate with a few folks.
After all it’s what most of us are seeking. For some it’s as simple as Is Your Job Your Calling? For others its a process that involves identifying and aligning skills, interests, aptitudes, goals and motivation.
However, to simply say Think and Grow Rich and you’ll transform your dreams into reality misses a fundamental point. Some people have lost the urge and ability to dream. It’s not a lack of motivation. It’s deeper than that.
It’s an inability to see ourselves as deeply engrossed in a field or endeavor as this example from James Lileks:
I support giving money to absent-minded scientists with pockets full of pencil stubs and cigarette butts, the sort of guys who can be found at a coffee shop writing algebra on a shirt cuff, the eggheads whose TV have an inch-thick pall of dust on the tube, and who unwind by listening to Van Cliburn recordings on a monaural turntable. Whether this sort of clich actually exists anymore Ive no idea, but Id like to think so; I have a long-standing attachment to the idea of the Eccentric, the clueless Cuthbert Calculus who cannot remember where he put his keys but can always find Orion in the night sky.
I’m not suggesting for an instant that all of us must become weirdos to pursue our dreams, but the single-minded focus on a something we feel passionate about is so often missed by the masses. More platitudes and ”you become what you think about” frustrates the person that has lost the ability to dream.
There has to be a way to return that person to an earlier state of mind that allows them to see beyond life’s current pressures, frustrations and fears.
In an entry titled Finding Meaning, Rachel Lucas lets us in on some thoughts she’s been having. You can’t imagine how many people I talk to who share this same quandry. Here’s an excerpt, but read her entire entry:
And so in between feverish bouts of work and homework over the last few days, I’ve been doing two things: Reading a book about WWII and thinking about my life and what I want to do with it. I’ve realized that ranting about politicians and celebrities isn’t it. Worrying about the number of visitors and links I can garner isn’t it. Debating liberals about the tax code, guns, and Dubya’s intelligence in my comments section isn’t it.
Back on May 8, 2002, when this weblog was in a different form, I wrote something called The Meaning of Life. It was a response to a question, but it was also a reexamination of another question that bothers everyone.
What will I do with my life that brings fulfillment? Lately, I’ve pondered the old addage about ”do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” What happens to a person when the ability to identify ”something they love to do” is lost? By what method can one discover a passion in life?
What thing or things do you do that you love so much that you can’t possibly imagine being paid to do it? How do you find that thing?
Time and bills and responsibilities and life have a tendency to kick the dreams out of a person. When it comes to a career this can be devastating. Nothing is worse than merely going through the motions, yet it can be quite tough to identify and strike out in a new direction. Many, many people are wrestling with that very dilemma these days. Don’t you wish there were an easy formula for finding your passion?
Here’s the way Rachel is responding, having identified her own passion:
But my focus has shifted and I know in my bones that it’s time for me to do what I’ve wanted to do almost my whole life. It might not change the world, but hopefully, I can accomplish something worthwhile. If you’d like to help in any way, let me know. Advice, suggestions, donations, and references to books I should read are all encouraged. If you yourself are a WWII veteran or were an adult civilian at that time, please write.
I encourage you to read the comments Rachel has received.
For the ”rest of us,” I intend to work on getting some answers during December, 2002. First, how to find something you truly love to do and, second, how to launch yourself down that path.
to be certain she is understood, Susanna posted a masterful entry last night.
As for using fundamentalist Christian as an insult, well, as it so happens, I am about as fundamentalist as you can get, in pure terms that is to say, Im not a member of the evangelical denominations that have to some degree co-opted the term to designate a specific array of beliefs and behaviors. Rather, I believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, that all I need to know about living my life according to his will is in those pages, and I make a concerted effort to order my life along those principles (the degree I have succeeded is a matter of my own will and conscience, not a commentary on whether the Bible is right). The dictionary definition also says that a fundamentalist is rigid in her adherence, and intolerant of secularism. I could give you a nice list of people who would be more than willing to say I am both, so I must be one o’ them.
Susanna Cornett and Arthur Silber were having a bit of a debate when others began to join in. You can find the pointers at Susanna’s site as well as at Arthur’s. Before you know it, the debate is about debating tactics rather than the original point. Then it seems to deteriorate into something like ”people of faith always do or say this or that…”
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal featured a page-one article (subscription may be required) about the threat to cellular from WiFi.
Just as the next generation of IP-only fiber networks will progressively displace the legacy phone companies, WiFi has the potential to unseat cellular technologies. This is consistent with something Ray Ozzie said back in September.
So, there it is. Legacy teleco’s with their centrally-planned networks and 40-year depreciation schedules threatened by next-generation fiber optics. Cellular threatened by WiFi. When bandwidth gets to the curb or the wireless access point, movies by subscription, music by subscription and every other type of information will be moving via IP packets.
Tuesday I pointed to some comments by Pat Robertson. Today Glenn Reynolds links to a couple of sources that have attempted to evaluate Robertson’s comments.
Finding a motive for terrorism may remain illusive just like finding or understanding a motive for other crimes can be puzzling. However, if reading the Koran in context includes the context of the historical actions of its readers through the centuries, it becomes more difficult to conclude that the Koran has been a guidebook for peace.
The list of ways to do something wrong with HTML/XHTML is endless. I’m plugging away at finding as many of them as I can. Yesterday’s entry was supposed to say, Happy Thanksgiving, in a bold burnt orange shade. Not a chance. Having just returned to town, and beginning to catch up on blog-reading, I see that it looks nothing like what I intended. So be it. Perhaps the Christmas entry will allow me some stylistic license…NOT!
I’m off to do a ”story” on EgglestonWorks. This company is at the cutting edge of truly high-end audio components. They manufacture extremely expensive loudspeakers for those with discriminating taste and unlimited home audio budgets. This will be a fun morning.
Much of what Pat Roberston says in this particular articlesounds about right. I don’t know for certain.
Studying the ”guidebook” for a religion seems like the proper way to get some understanding of what the various factions in that religion hold to. Is the Koran the final authority for Islamic believers? Is this book debated as thoroughly as the Bible is debated among liberal and conservative believers in Christ?
Have others looked at this ”religion of peace” matter and found it lacking?
Imagine for a moment that ”officials” barged into your room, seized your computer and began looking for ”illegally downloaded music, movies and software.” What would they find?
Then, what steps would they take to determine these items were downloaded? How will they prove that you don’t own the original media for the items?
It seems we’re about to find out, courtesy of the RIAA and the U.S. Naval Academy.
Motorola pioneered a method of thinking and processing work that allowed it to produce cellular telephones with fewer than 4 defective phones in every million produced. That’s called six sigma. The lion’s share of any six sigma initiative involves transforming the way people think about their work.
James Lileks vividly illustrates how difficult it will be to transform the thinking in so many of the customer service arenas that frustrate us. Not one of the people he dealt with saw or could see anything wrong with the way they handled the situation.
Under the title ”Fact Checking Michael Moore” Glenn Reynolds has quoted some work from Forbes magazine. Piece by piece the Forbes article dismantles several of Michael Moore’s latest rants via his ”Bowling for Columbine.”
Just as with the latest frantic outburst from Tom Daschle, it’s time for the mainstream media to do what it ”could” be best at. Given the ability to quickly rewind to exactly what was said or done in any story, the media should be relentlessly fact-checking. It’s a shame they are so often a party to the story rather than unbiased reporters.
We’ve been asked to consider the possibility that there are many peace-loving believers in Islam. I do.
However, stories such as this one at Donald Sensing’s site about words that can get you sentenced to death under ”Islamic Law” baffle me. No church in the USA would be permitted to carry out such a ”sentence” due to the nation’s laws. How is it that the governments in which Islam is allowed to flourish can tolerate such atrocities?
Is this another battle between ”man’s laws” and ”Allah’s laws?”
After taking a second look at Austin’s high school academic records, the NCAA determined last week that it erroneously declared Austin eligible as a freshman. Attorneys for Austin and the school are contesting the decision, and the NCAA has yet to rule on Austin’s status for this season.
Correct me if I’m wrong. This guy’s been in college. He’s remained academically eligible, if not successful, each year. Now the NCAA says it made a mistake, but they can’t rule on his elibility. Why does it take lawyers at the NCAA so long to make up their minds. Do they simply enjoy leaving kids, their families, the fans and the schools hanging as some show of their power and influence?
This flies in the face of the so-called student-athlete moniker. If the NCAA was really ”concerned” about the students, they’d provide the rulings that allow them to get on with their lives.
Countless times we hear of schools that are awaiting the ruling from the NCAA about probation or a players eligibility, but when it comes to TV contracts the NCAA seems to act with all due haste. They’re pitiful.
I fell asleep last night to some FoxNews interview that had the reporter pressing pretty hard on someone who sounded as if he could speak for Saudi Arabia. I was in-and-out, so it didn’t catch my full attention.
I really dislike the BCS and the illogical thinking behind it. For that reason (alone) I hope Michigan beats Ohio State. With as much basketball as colleges play, adding a 16-team playoff that uses the bowl sites seems like a low-cost way to give football fans what they really want.
Today, Arkansas (7-3) travels to Mississippi State (3-7). It’s a beautiful fall day here in the sunny South. State doesn’t have a chance, but desperately wants at least one conference (SEC) win this season. Get it today, get it Thanksgiving night at Ole Miss or live with it for a LONG off season.
Then there’s today’s little scrap between Alabama and Auburn in the Iron Bowl. It’s in Tuscaloosa this year and I’m hoping the Tide Rolls and wipes that silly little smirk off Tommy Tuberville’s mug.
People at Ole Miss remain livid about the way he treated them when he left for Auburn. Now, Auburn fans are enduring the rumors that smirk-face is headed for Texas A&M. Did I mention that I’m not a fan of his?
Tigers kick up flap with fake FG: With Auburn leading Mississippi State 35-14 in the fourth quarter last week, coach Tommy Tuberville decided to try a fake field goal. Mississippi State stopped Auburn but was called for being offsides. The Tigers went on to score their final touchdown in the 28-point win. Asked afterward if he wasn’t concerned about running up the score, Tuberville replied: ”My number one concern was winning the game.” Two days later he told The Huntsville Times, ”If I had to do it over again, I’d do it in a heartbeat.” Mississippi State coach Jackie Sherrill clearly wasn’t pleased, although he said he ”probably would have been” more upset when he was younger.” ”Again, those things happen,” he said. ”One, you (have to) consider the source and you go on down the road.”
N.Z. Bear ranks his rights. Now, for the love of God and country, would someone please rank our responsibilities as citizens of a free nation that has remained free on the backs and blood of all of those who fought to keep those ”rights” in place?
* UPDATE * * So far, I’ve heard – vote, serve in the military if called upon, support the people in our military, respect the flag, pledge your allegiance to the country’s principles (vague). Come on folks, there’s more to being a citizen of the USA than your right to do this or that!
In essence, the protocol defined in this petition places the burden on celebrities to first prove that their IQs are deeper than their makeup before their opinions, and other like tantrums, see the light of day.
Again, I commend Alan Cornett’s site to you. He takes a very balanced and non-strident look at issues and develops an excellent ”world view.”
His thoughts about SUV’s resonate with mine. I may be overreaching in my interpretation, but Alan doesn’t seem to come at issues from the perspective that Christians are called to be ”the world’s moral policemen.” Right is still right. Wrong is still wrong. Christians are called to more important work than simply keeping that ledger or monitoring what’s authorized and not! Alan gets it.
This morning, Walter Mossberg’s Personal Technology column covers Matador, a new spam fighting tool that combines three methods of ridding your PC of spam.
Have you ever wondered why there is always such tension between the I.T. group and the operational and/or marketing side of a business? If you’ve never been in a large company and witnessed the stop-and-go tendencies in I.T., this article will open your eyes.
If you’re an I.T. professional, don’t take offense. My experience tells me this guy is right on target with most of his remarks.
Something tells me we’re now fixating on things that Jesus considers secondary. First, there’s the What Would Jesus Drive nonsense. Then, there’s the Would Jesus Drive a BMW angle.
Why are these things secondary? Because He told us they were. We have been taught to make material things secondary to our calling. As Christians we’re called to help the needful, feed the hungry, provide shelter to the homeless and the list goes on. It strikes me that some of the folks most concerned with what others might be driving have lost sight of where they should be focusing.
* UPDATE * * Here’s where a bunch of them are focusing!
WHAT DID YOU DO DURING THE WAR ON TERRORISM? The latest TechCentralStation article by Glenn Reynolds provides citizens with some tips on prevention and response in the fight against terrorists and terrorism.
Everyone is sick of the election rehash, and sicker still of the Wellstone memorial story, but: one detail needs relating. Got it first hand the other day from someone who attended. As they were waiting for the event to begin, they noticed a big beach ball bouncing around the crowd, traveling up the stands and down, back, forth. A beach ball.
Who brings a beach ball to a memorial for a dead man? Can you imagine standing in the garage, keys in hand, patting your pockets for wallet and sunglasses, thinking have I forgotten anything for this somber event? Oh, right! An inflatable sphere the crowd can bat around for fun. Its not a memorial service without one.
in our area this morning. We’ve been down or slowed since last night about 7pm. Call the Roadrunner Tech Support line and what do you think you’ll listen to? Right, a loverly violin rendition of Who’s Sorry Now? Yes, loverly!
In January of this year, I began learning how to learn HTML. I’m still not there, yet. Not only have I not learned much HTML, but I haven’t learned how to learn it.
However, every step of the way, someone has said, ”don’t buy an expensive WYSIWYG editor, learn to hand code.” Others would say, ”I don’t like what the WYSIWYG editors do to my code.” I never was certain what everybody meant.
Now, I see some hard data. Can these numbers be right? Thanks, Meryl, for pointing this out.
I feel compelled to keep beating the drum about where the liberal Democrats want to take their own platform and the ideology of their party. Seldom is he seen on the talk shows, but I have to believe that this Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee is one of the ”thought leaders” at strategy sessions.
Tom Smith has written an article titled IBM’s Linux Push Shows AIX Is No Sacred Cow. It’s on line now at The Open Enterprise.
IBM is able to aggressively back Linux, AIX and Windows because it doesn’t face the same religious issues that Microsoft does with Windows or that Sun does with Solaris. Microsoft has undertaken various efforts to undermine Linux, while Sun has opened up somewhat to Linux, though it positions the OS in a very different, lower-end category than its Solaris version of Unix.
The different approaches don’t end there. IBM officials put a whole different spin on the operating system than those companies that have an enormous commitment to their OS. IBM describes operating systems as carrying little more value than plumbing or infrastructure, asserting that IT organizations and big enterprises really don’t want to deal with operating systems anyway.
ASCI Purple is the machine the bomb physicists have been waiting for, said Bruce Goodwin, a physicist who directs the nuclear weapons program at the Livermore lab. For the first time, they will have the horsepower to achieve their dream of a realistic 3D simulation of an exploding hydrogen bomb, a simulation that will take two months of around-the-clock computing to create.
After six months, the people on the Atkins diet had lost 31 pounds, compared with 20 pounds on the AHA diet, and more people stuck with the Atkins regimen.
This finding is from one of the recent studies that compares the Atkins diet to the American Heart Association’s recommended regimen. Read about it here.
What could possibly unseat Microsoft’s dominant position? Start with a lot of security, spam and virus problems. Add a touch of government intervention. Toss in a new licensing plan that smells pretty bad to some customers. Then, slowly add viable competition. Once this whole concoction begins to thicken and you remember that you’re talking about Microsoft and, ”everybody knows they’re invincible, remind yourself of what happened to this company. It can happen – even to the biggest and most dominant.
the bankrupt telecom companies are beginning to rejoin the living. Lately, we’ve seen WilTel Communications, the reincarnation of the Williams Communication Group. Then, you’ve got 360networks and on Friday, we learned that the judge was unleashing XO Communications.
Let’s see how quickly they are either bankrupt again or consumed by another aggressive telecom.
from the Progress and Freedom Foundation provides some excellent insights into what went wrong with the CLECs (competitive local exchange carriers) that came on line following the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The CLECs were to be the companies that ultimately unseated the ILECs or incumbent local exchange carriers. This link takes you to a pdf file that contains the 29-page report.
I’ve linked to Susanna Cornett before. She’s been fairly outspoken about her support of the war on terrorism. This morning, she’s suggesting we take a look at her brother’s weblog.
Apparently, Alan is a preacher in Nicholasville, Kentucky.
I did a bit of research and learned that the Auto-ID Center is behind the development of follow-on technologies for bar codes (i.e. UPC). A quick glance at the sponsor list and I notice that Federal Express is conspicuously missing. UPS is included!
I then learned of the RFID Journal. We’ve been working with RF systems in warehouse management systems for years, but the notion of an RF tag brings a host of questions to mind. Namely, can a small, cheap, user-printable GPS tag be very far behind?
When I read the article that Glenn pointed to it dawned on me that the author never mentioned the ulimtate connectivity to the bandwidth that put the wireless network on the Internet. If fact, he used this statement:
...an inelegant picture-frame sized antenna is now radiating the Internet over a 20-block area.
Wireless end-to-end is not here yet. Within every wireless Internet solution is some long-haul connection that is wired for some portion of the travel. Physics along with cost-effectiveness demands this.
They’re apparently headed further left. I’ve written before about my appreciation for Andrew Tobias’ work in the field of personal money management. His book, The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need, is one of the must-haves on my shelf.
As the years have gone by, his public disclosure of his political positions has become progressively more liberal. As Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, he’s one of the people we can observe to see how the Democrats will position themselves for 2004 and beyond. Friday’s article provides a hint and today’s amplifies it. They’ve decided that what would have gotten more votes is a position even further left of center than the one they’ve held.
Knowing the way these people have ”played” in the recent past, I’d expect any disagreement or criticism of their position to be met with public statements and innuendo such as ”so-and-so believes in eating cats.” I don’t, but I’ve never believed the animals-are-people-too argument, either.
Thanks, Dave. On a cold Saturday morning in November, even HTML makes me feel dumb. I’m not. All this web development that all of these programmers (yes, if you handcode HTML you’re a programmer in my lexicon) have been doing for years blinds them to the ”ignorance” of a novice. Sometimes the experts’ answers to the novices’ questions zoom far overhead leaving a puzzled stare.
I’ve been using the Internet since the early 90’s. I toyed with the web from about 1995 through about 1997. Then, we began to advise companies on ways to build web technology into their strategies for working with their customers. We didn’t do HTML coding.
Here it is 2002 and I’m neck-deep in trying to learn what a tag is and what an attribute that goes with that tag does. I feel dumb. I’m not. There, I feel better – and I will for at least 10 minutes.
I live in the wrong valley. Wait, I don’t even live in a valley. At any rate, the brain trust met for lunch. Wouldn’t you love to know how many acronyms unknown to mere mortals got used?
Mississippi State plays Tennessee in Starkville, MS today. I assume someone from Mississippi State’s sports information department wrote this article.
The Bulldogs, 3-6 overall, are still looking for their first conference victory of the season (0-5 SEC) and must secure a win to keep 2002 bowl hopes alive.
Slick Willie has a better chance of becoming President (or first lady) again than State has of getting to a bowl this year.
There are as many theories about what might happen at Worldcom as one can imagine. Mitch Ratcliffe stakes out a position. I’ve heard other possibilities. Depending upon what the FCC does, Worldcom could emerge from bankruptcy largely free of its massive debt. With the slate wiped clean, courtesy of Uncle Sam, they’d continue to be a formidable competitor.
In the ”About” page that accompanied the original version of this weblog, I talked about people who drive to work, hang their dreams inside the car, go in and work all day, only to reclaim their dreams upon returning to the car at the end of the work day. Some of that seems to happen with Dawn, but I love the photography! A big part of the solution is recognizing the problem. It’s not bad to want to be doing something else. It’s bad to never figure out a way to get there!
Power, position and prosperity as life’s sole pursuits define the ’rat race,’ and ugly excess.
In today’s Wall Street Journal is an article titled Why Grubman Was So Keen
To Get His Twins Into the Y. (You may need a subscription to read it. The story is about the overly ambitious Jack Grubman of Salomon Smith Barney. If you want to see what types of behavior might have been possible in Jack Grubman’s world of telecommunications company analysis, you only need to examine the following excerpts:
Excerpt #1: On Manhattan’s wealthy Upper East Side, it’s an annual race more brutally competitive than the New York Marathon: application for a spot at the 92nd Street Y’s nursery school.
Excerpt #2: The school has 65 openings each year, for children ages 2 to 5. Applications are available only at the end of a school tour. There are just 300 tour appointments. The school books the appointments on the day after Labor Day, starting at 9 a.m. The slots are invariably gone within hours. To get through on the phone, parents line up friends and relatives to engage in a frenzy of speed-dialing and redialing.
Excerpt #3: In the message, Mr. Grubman said he upgraded his rating on AT&T Corp.’s stock in part because Sanford I. Weill, chief executive of Salomon parent Citigroup Inc., agreed to use his influence to help Mr. Grubman’s twins secure admission into the 92nd Street Y.
Excerpt #4: For four- and five-year-olds, the Y charges $14,400 for a full-day program. Threes pay $11,800. Tuition for still-younger children depends on the hours and the days they attend.
Excerpt #5: When Erin Flanagan Lazard was applying to nursery schools last year, she thought, ”I don’t know if my child is a Brearley child or a Sacred Heart child or a Spence child”—rattling off the names of elite private schools that are, in turn, feeders to top colleges. ”I don’t know her that well yet—she’s 20 months.”
Excerpt #6: In fact, it’s not like other schools. The outdoor playground has a retractable roof for rainy days. The annual March fund-raiser and auction has earned the school more than $250,000 in donations in recent years. Past contributions included European ski vacations, jewelry and stays at vacation homes in the Hamptons. At noon dismissal, there is a line of chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Cars and sport-utility vehicles waiting outside.
Excerpt #7: One esteemed alumnus, Robert Katz, special counsel and advisory director to Goldman Sachs & Co.—and the firm’s former general counsel—says that during the course of his professional life, ”No one has asked me where I went to nursery school.”
What have you done for your kids lately? Might I suggest a big hug, an ”I’m proud of you” and an hour of simply talking together? This works whether they are 2 or 22!
We need to find this moron or whatever group is making the silly tapes in his ”prolonged absence.” The notion that he or his followers are ”out there” thinking of attacks with mass casualties, high symbolic value, severe damage to the U.S. economy and maximum psychological trauma repulses me. Let’s find this clown. The world simply does not need him nor his followers.
The 20th edition of the top 500 supercomputing sites in the world is out. There are also summaries and tables for the list sorted by manufacturer, country, etc.
IBM leads the pack again in total performance. HP has a couple of the top spots. Several of the new ”self-made” Linux clusters have made the list.
...then I got this comment. So, now the question is whether or not I ’get it.’
This morning, I was going to add a section called ”Hosting” near the bottom of my sidebar. It was to go beneath the credits, but above the copyright. This is what I attempted to paste into my ’main’ template, but it royally toasted the bottom of my sidebar:
If this PRE tag works, my day won’t have been a total loss!
UPDATE: Oops…I must have not understood how to use it, but I’m too tired to study up on it tonight. All I wanted to do was show you the HTML code I had written/copied. Instead…nevermind.
I could color some of the gray hair. It sounds like the red Corvette doesn’t work. I’m no Al Roker, but maybe some time in the gym wouldn’t hurt. (”The risk to Als career paled against the fact that one in 200 patients dies in surgery.”)
Wardrobe? Hobby? New career? Learning HTML, CSS, PHP and XHTML? Wait a minute. Those don’t sound like midlife crisis endeavors. They sound like things done by people who have lost all sense of direction. Oh well, back to the search for how to type HTML code so that it doesn’t actually render here. Maybe you enclose it in quotes? Or, do you put a ”/” or a ”\” in front of it?
That’s a good thing. Like every other American, I spend a certain portion of each week watching and listening for the signals that business is turning around and beginning to grow again. Sure, there are isolated examples and anecdotal evidence, but thus far, there have been as many false starts as there have been genuine upticks.
Maybe Dane will elaborate on what’s got things so busy for his company!
I still don’t fully get this stuff – at least not when it comes to being able to visualize it and type the right codes in. There must be a link well before the ’bonehead’ link in the food chain and I’m there.
Maybe I need to go back and take some college courses to learn this stuff.
Now that I’ve found out (I think) where a graphic image (jpg, gif, etc.) go in the directory structure at my webhost, I want to start taking and posting some photos. I’m counting on being able to build a directory structure beneath the primary ’graphics’ folder so that photos can be separated by subject matter or photo outings or whatever.
The next step will be to learn something about how photo editing software works. How do I display a thumbnail that then links to a larger photo? How do I keep things fast? What are the dimensions on a thumbnail that are appropriate? Does 100×200 mean the same thing from one computer to the next?
Understand that I’m years behind everyone else in getting my own hands on the web. We’ve developed large e-commerce applications for clients and integrated those app’s to backoffice transaction processing systems. It seems that only a tiny fraction of that work involved HTML, graphics, etc.
Now I want to figure this stuff out and learning on my own is proving to be terribly frustrating. If you’ve read this far and have suggestions about where and how to learn, let me know.
First, read this entry. Remember, the old saying, ”the customer is always right.” Too many customers have now heard that.
Customers now want to redefine businesses. ”If I want it this way, it must be right.” Where does that line start and stop? Should a moronic customer be able to demand a hamburger at Pizza Hut? Should we expect to pick up our next business suit at Home Depot?
Are there no boundaries on what any given business can and cannot do without some customer somewhere screaming, ”bad service?” Sure, we should all strive to build flexible businesses that can truly deliver what the customer wants when they want it, but getting mad at the web host because they don’t send paper crosses some line.
Is there any way to put some HTML code in this text entry box and have it show up as the actual code when the entry is rendered in the weblog?
I’ve been working on using a graphic from Bloggerzone to add a ”Hosting” section to my sidebar. I think I found the place where it belongs in the ”main” template.
However, multiple attempts have been met with the sidebar simply getting hosed up. Finally, I deleted everything I had worked on. So, even after I think I’ve found where graphics go in the directory structure at my host and even after reading for hours about HTML code, no success. If I can display the actual code within an entry, maybe someone can pinpoint what I’m doing wrong.
A full flaming funk has settled in as a result of the day.
I really focused as I said I would this morning. With focus came bad news upon bad news. First, the project has been delayed by the investors in the new business. Second, the seminar was very mediocre.
Tonight’s efforts to figure out how and where to put a graphics file at Bloggerzone so that a template can be updated has led to one frustration after another. Either very late tonight or very early tomorrow morning, I’ll try something besides the Bloggerzone control panel. I’m quite confident the problem isn’t with Bloggerzone. It’s totally with my general ignorance about all things web/Internet. I could bite a nail in two right about now.
Finally, a phone call I really thought might come in today, didn’t. Bring on that midlife crisis. I’d just as soon get it over with.
You thought the Enron scandal and the Worldcom disaster and the Tyco mess had begun the clean-up of all the excesses that undermine investor returns on common stock. You were wrong.
In plain view of everyone who voted for the merger of Compaq with HP was this information. Thanks to Scott Herbold for doing his homework.
every CEO from every company – big or small – should read this article. Following that, they should read the one about ROI on ROI Projects. The CEO should then email these articles to the CIO and CFO with an invitation to lunch. At lunch the CEO should ask, ”what are we doing to prevent the scenarios painted in these articles?”
The question should not be threatening. It should be driven by a firm desire to alter the processes by which technology gets deployed in the business. Whether you come at the articles with a ”technology can help” bias or from a ”we need less technology and more face-to-face” bias, there’s truth in them.
I’ve decided to go to a seminar for the afternoon. It will start at noon and go to 4pm or so.
Sometime today, I intend to find out why the people who were so intent on launching a web-based database project did not follow through yesterday as planned. Clearly, it’s still a ”go,” but a few minor details remain.
Finally, I want to understand more about this Movable Type weblog I have.
When it was set up I had wonderful help. Taking absolutely nothing away from the value of that help, it had a tendency to insulate me from the directory/folder structure behind the scenes of Movable Type. At the same time I was changing to Movable Type, I was changing hosts. At my old host, I could use an FTP program and see every folder and sub-folder in the directory structure of my domains.
I haven’t figured out whether or not I can do that or how with Bloggerzone. Those are today’s goals – learn MT’s directories, learn Bloggerzone’s directories and go to a seminar. You might notice this isn’t very ambitious. All the web-types are saying, ”he doesn’t even know how THAT works?” Well, no, I don’t, and it’s demoralizing.
It’s time to find something new to do. I’m bored. It’s time for something that has meaning and purpose.
I’ve had very little success learning (on my own) this web design stuff. Even the goals I’ve set out for today are as likely to send me to bed frustrated tonight as not.
I think I feel my recurring midlife crisis recurring.
continues to watch for the right kinds of acquisition opportunities. Speaking at today’s UBS Warburg Global Telecommunications Conference, Sureel Choksi used these slides as the basis for his presentation. For details about how to listen to a webcast of the presentation, go here.
Knoxville had bad weather and so did the Atlanta area. Before it got to either of those places Jackson, TN was hit again. There are at least 16 confirmed deaths in Tennessee and more missing.
Lawrence Lee has added the ”On This Day In” feature to one of his weblogs. This feature is one of the reasons I wanted to hold on to my old Radio archives. Though the entries in this particular version of Rodent Regatta date back only to October 14, 2002, its real roots date to January 13, 2002.
Glenn Reynolds has put together some links and some tips for those who are a) wanting to bail out of Blogger or b) just considering starting a weblog. Follow Glenn’s links and follow the links in the comments of those he points to. Oh yeah, Glenn’s right, count on Stacy Tabb for help!
I can add only one thing. The person or organization who comes up with a ’user-friendly’ method for moving weblogs from Radio Userland to Movable Type and back again will have something people will pay for. I miss my Radio archives.
Everyone prefers an adversary who is not a pushover. Winning is sweeter when you beat the best. Losing is less painful when you know you’re beaten by someone worthy.
As the Democrats seek their new direction, they must also seek new leadership. Young, energetic, a gifted orator and a realistic thinker, Harold Ford, Jr. may be someone the Democrats can look to for their future. So far, his squeaky clean reputation and his ability to win on his own merits – without the Ford political machine – make Ford a Democrat that will break the oldmolds.
When the treasurer of the Democratic National Committee believes people should vote for Democratic ”slimeballs” rather than upstanding candidates from any other party, it’s time for change. Given a chance to alter his view, Andrew Tobias reinforced it.
We can’t stay home in bed, but we don’t have to go where ”they” are. The problem is we don’t know who they are or where they’re going to turn up next. Katie was in Sydney at the time this meeting was apparently going on. [via Instapundit]
I guess when you write for the school publications and web site, you must put together headlines like this: ”Bulldogs Will Try To Snap SEC Road Skid At Alabama.”
One rumor has Dennis Franchione leaving ’Bama for Nebraska at season’s end. Another rumor has Jackie Sherrill leaving Mississippi State for the general manager’s slot at the Houston Texans. Everybody wants to head toward home, but could these rumors be right?
* UPDATE * * It’s only 28-14 with about 4:30 to go in the game. Pretty amazing when you think about how much talent Alabama can put on the field and how much talent Mississippi State has on crutches. * * UPDATE 2 * * Bama wins.
I’m sitting here typing on a brand new HP notebook PC running Windows XP Professional. It’s got a big screen, it’s fast, and it only does 4 or 5 quirky things a day. It’s great. 1.8 gigaton processor, 40 gigaton drive, 512 megaton memory. It’s da bomb.
You can’t turn it off, but it’s da bomb. If you turn it off, you’ll have to turn it on, let it lock up, turn it off and repeat – 10 times. Yep, 10 times does the trick. It has run for weeks without being turned off. Turn it off, though, and it will require 10 starts and stops to get it back.
So, I’m sitting here stumbling around. (That’s quite a trick by the way – sitting and stumbling.)
Joel Spolsky pointed to one of the books about W. Edwards Deming’s methods earlier this week. I missed it, but I’m catching up. If you never actually studied methods for making things better – making anything better – Dr. Deming’s work leads the pack.
You can take all the Six Sigma, Baldrige Award, ISO 9XXX and every other “fad,” but you’ll find the roots of each in Deming.
I missed this Dan Gillmor column when it ran on November 3rd. Apparently, some feel we’re being held hostage by our legacy, quasi-governmental phone companies.
They want to claim that the subsidies they received when building their networks didn’t and don’t allow anyone but them to make a decision about who can use those networks. It’s time for competition. I, for one, am not convinced that broadband availability in homes and offices requires government intervention.
They Got What They Wanted Can the Democrats find a purpose?
Every party has a reason for being. The Republican Party was formed in the mid-19th century to achieve a specific historical goal: the end of slavery. From there it became the party of Lincoln, the party that saved the Republic and, ultimately, the party that gave a natural home to those who felt enslaved by big government, high taxes, big regulation.
The Democratic Party had a reason for being too. For the past 100 years it has seen itself as the party of the little guy. It was the natural home of those who felt we must use government to help people in need. The Democrats would take the money of the rich and create with it programs that would ease the lives of the poor and distressed.
That is why the Democratic Party existed. It is why it conceived and fought for a national retirement system for the elderly, and later for free medical care for the poor. It is why it fought too for civil rights, and for equality for all who felt they had not been given equal treatment, from ethnic and religious minorities to women.
Theres nothing like the sound of your daughter giggling and laughing as you race her for the ball; its the sound of delight without reservation, innocence undampened, pure joy in the moment.
Indeed – even when they’re 18, 20 and 22 and they can outrun you!
She’s our oldest daughter and she’s been in Australia since mid-June. We miss her terribly. Her internship at a church there will end in December and she’ll be home for Christmas.
I don’t know Kevin Hartwig, but I like his weblog and I like the type of correspondence we’ve had. He’s a pastor.
Amazingly, he’s posted an entry today that reflects one of the things that Katie has seen in Australia. There is an almost incessant focus on ’the numbers.’ Kevin arrives at the right conclusion and Katie is bringing that same conclusion home with her.
By the way, Kevin suffers from migraines. I’ve heard of this all my life, but I’ve never personally known anyone who fought this battle. If any reader of mine (either of you) knows of a recommendation, send it Kevin’s way.
Good health that frees you from that type of ’distraction’ and pain gets taken for granted. I wish there were a clear and certain physiological solution for Kevin. Hey, I’m not looking for shout-at-the-moon home remedies, but if anyone knows the science and research behind these migraines, clue us in.
Samizdata is offering to add your link buttons to the sidebar. A quick glance at the meter says Samizdata got over 35,000 unique visitors in September and October. If you’re trying to build traffic, this might be one way to do it.
This past weekend a small airplane went missing as it approached an airport on the banks of the Mississippi River. At the time no one was quite certain where it might have gone down.
Last night we heard that sonar had been used to locate an object on the bottom of the river that might be the shape of a plane’s fuselage. From around 6pm to 10pm the object moved about 200 yards downstream.
Divers were going down only to surface in 90 seconds or so. The current in the area was so strong it was pulling their masks off. If you’ve never seen the mighty Mississippi, it’s big, wide, muddy and treacherous.
Apparently, Blogger is looking for templates/designs. There’s a contest. Win and you may get 150,000 people a day to visit a site where your logo could be viewed! Thanks, Radio Free Blogistan.
I like the way Chris’s weblog design works. Scroll up and down a bit and watch his face pressed against the glass. A similar design practice with a different effect can be seen here.
Glenn Reynolds offers alternatives to gloating for some newly elected officials. In particular he offers several links that shed light on the current state of affairs in the music and recording industries.
I’m amazed that people can hold opinions such as this when a President’s popularity rating, the election results and the memory of being attacked by those who will attack again are so clear!
The U.S.A. is not the liberals’ charity fund. What our government is to be about is defined by the Founders in the nation’s original documents. They were very clear then; they’re very clear now.
one morning later. Democrats remain oblivious to the real thinking of the American people. They’re also having trouble doing any serious thinking of their own.
I didn’t post much yesterday. As a matter of fact, my only entry pointed to Andrew Tobias’ column. By this morning he’s had more time to ”compose” himself and formulate a mix of his readers’ emails and his own opinions.
This morning’s column from Tobias shows that he (and likely many of his fellow Democrats) remains clueless about issues such as integrity, smaller government, strong defense and the future of this nation. He simply cannot see the connection between electing slimeballs and appointing slimeballs to the Supreme Court. We don’t need ANY slimeballs at all, anywhere, Andrew! Since when did electing slimeballs become the Democrats’ only way to get what they wanted?
Take a look at how one shell-shocked Democrat tries to express his views this morning.
I believe and predict that the next 2 years will determine the future of third parties and independent candidates in the USA. How the Republicans handle their role will make a lasting impression on voters.
Send 10,000 lawyers to do anything and there will be problems. Send 3 laywers anywhere and one will get lost, but you’ll still have 3 opinions.
At the same time, both major parties have recruited unprecedented armies of lawyers at least 10,000 on the Democratic side for possible recount battles… [Christian Science Monitor]
We’ve sent Jimmy Carter to third world nations to ”oversee” the elections process. Apparently, many counties in Florida need similar treatment, but must be thankful that lots of other places will have lawyers standing by to delay the election results for six months or more.
Voting equipment malfunctions are to be expected. There are 3,066 counties in the United States. Each of these is divided into so many precincts for elections. At each precinct there can be one or many voting machines.
Do some simple estimating: 3066 counties x 3 precincts (this is low) x 3 machines per precinct (this is low) = over 27,000 machines.
When was the last time you could count on 27,000 machines to work correctly in an 8 to 10 hour period? However, you can rest assured that some lawyer somewhere will make the biggest stink of his career thereby making himself an instant celebrity and an official elections analyst for one of the networks.
Today’s column from Andrew Tobias, another activist Democrat, points to Lewis and Clark as examples we should look at when a little rain tempts us to avoid voting. Well done.
Dave Winer is a Democrat. I disagree with his logic about what to do if you want to vote, but are undecided about a candidate. If you’re undecided, there are alternatives to merely picking one party over the other. If you’re undecided, select an issue that is important to you. Find out how each candidate stands on that issue. Today is one of the easiest days of the year to get that information.
We voted very early this morning. Our 18-year old voted for the first time. Tennessee is one of the only states in the country that has no form of gambling. Once again, that issue is on the ballot. We’re also one of the only states that has never had a state income tax. Our gubernatorial election is indirectly about that issue.
Finally, if you remain undecided, ask yourself whether or not you are happy with the amount of money you pay in taxes. How much more or how much less would you like to pay? Which of the candidates seems more likely to influence your tax rate?
It’s always been pretty obvious to me that being a U.S. citizen carries with it some responsibilities. One of those is voting. Cognitive dissonance outstrips my disgust when I hear someone who doesn’t vote complaining about this country.
Rights? Sure, you’ve got a right to complain, but your complaint seems much more genuine when I know you’ve voted. Nobody really knows for sure whether you vote or not, but saying you did when you didn’t is another matter altogether. That one gets covered under the responsibility called ’integrity.’
Ricky Williams, former running back for Texas and now at the Miami Dolphins, has a weblog. No permalinks or evidence of a weblog tool, but his way of overcoming ”social anxiety disorder.”
Take a look at the discussions about female blogging tools. Jonathon talks about things he read elsewhere. Apparently, there was a path from Blogger to Greymatter to Movable Type for many users.
My reasons for leaving Radio were similar to this statement about Greymatter:
Predictably, most abandoned Blogger because of instability and/or lost archives and gave up on Greymatter when Noah Grey departed the scene.
When Dave Winer talked on several occasions about stopping his work, it gave me a reason to think about alternative weblogging tools. When I lost several posts due to either bad PC performance or bad Radio performance, I had another reason to look around. Finally, when I simply could not figure out how to edit templates successfully in Radio, I had yet another reason to seek help elsewhere.
Userland is a private company. We get no information specific to their financial status or their organizational direction. However, they have a terrific tool. Knowing what I know today, I’d still be using their product if I hadn’t become so uncertain about their stability in the marketplace. Please understand that my uncertainty was not based upon any facts I had. I simply couldn’t see Radio Userland thriving without Dave Winer. Maybe that’s not the case.
The history of Memphis has been marked by racial disputes over almost any issue. From race riots to garbage strikes to civil rights marches, this city has always managed to polarize virtually everything.
In the last decade, the citizens have attempted to accept the fact that the ’race card’ will always be played. Doing so has allowed leaders to preempt some disputes by developing a plan that pacifies those who would be most likely to oppose a project.
Racism in this city runs several directions. Outspoken members of the African American race say some rather harsh things about other leaders in the city. The ’good ole boy’ network continues to say things ”privately” that make it obvious that racism remains rampant. Now opponents of the Hispanic community speak out as well.
Last weekend Ballet Memphis conducted the second of its fall shows. With one exception involving a serious injury to one of the dancers, the show was quite a success. However, one of the ’critics’ for the local newspaper, The Commercial Appeal, had the audacity to drop a comment about diversity in the middle of his review. Amazingly, he was writing about a portion of the show in which the cast consisted of 2 black dancers, a Venezuelan, a person of Jamaican ancestry and 2 Hispanic dancers in addition to 3 people from the USA.
In addition to their various races and nationalities, these people ranged in age from 18 to 34, and there was an equal mix of males and females. There were people with sexual preferences that span the spectrum.
I’m sure I’m too old to understand the word ”diversity.” What is clear to me is that I’ve got a better grasp on it than a guy who was supposed to be writing a review of a ballet – not making a cultural statement. Were he to include cultural remarks in future work, I hope he’ll do his homework.
[By the way, if you glance at the photo, daugher #3 is second from the left.]
Kids argue about who gets to play with which toys. Kids argue about their little groups of friends; ”if she’s friends with that girl, we can’t be friends.”
Jane and Jack just can’t seem to get along. Worse is the fact that they want everyone to know about their arguments. Jack spends $1903 per month on clothes and receives $1000 in a Social Security check each month. He only has $274,000 in his bank accounts.
If you haven’t figured out this sob story by now, we’re talking about Jack Welch and the most recent wife he’s two-timed. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal gave us most of the gory details.
His MONTHLY expenses: Food & beverage $8,982, Personal care $425, Vacations $1,482. Cut to the chase. His monthly ”living” expenses total $366,114. They’ve got at least 5 homes. He’s worth over $450 million. She’s worth over $8 million. Her after tax monthly income is $11,360. His is $1.41 million.
They want us to know these things. Jane and Jack have lived a life of privilege for so long, they simply won’t grow up. The lawyers milking these cows have no intention of suggesting that these two warring children should take their disputes behind closed doors.
This is ”life” for two people in a world where Korea has nuclear capability, India and Pakistan have tenuous peace, Bali is under siege, America was attacked on its native soil, Iraq is the playground bully, Chechen terrorists invade Moscow, Israel can’t keep its government together long enough to decide how to handle the Palestinians and Democrats get free media coverage for political rallies all dressed up as memorial services.
This is the ”life” we are leaving to our children. They’ll grow up much too fast.
Using an incredibly readable style of writing, Jonathon Delacour is continuing to educate interested parties. He’s teaching the technologies on which weblogs are built. He’s written off and on about these matters over the last few months.
Yesterday, he gave us some insights about PHP files. Today, he expands on the topics by talking about importing weblog entries. Read the comments. They’re helpful as well.
He then cites an article about a strategic speech given by Sam Palmisano of IBM. As one who just spent the lion’s share of a day helping a local church set up a new network, I can tell you that ’software by subscription’ will grow in popularity. As a long-time investor in IBM, I hope their $10 billion bet pays off!
Even the title of Jonathon Delacour’s latest entry intrigues me. From disconnected sources, I’ve been sensing I should learn MySQL, PHP and Movable Type. I still don’t fully understand the syllabus by which I’m to do that.
However, I do know that when you click on any of the links on the Radio Archives page in my sidebar, you get this. Jonathon may have a way out of this dilemma with scripts, tools and techniques he’s developed.
The migration from Radio to Movable Type wasn’t difficult, but certain features are forfeited. You can’t post to a category without posting that same entry to your home page in Movable Type. If I want to post something about ballet to a category that one of my daughters reads without boring all the PHP scripters with it, I can’t do that in MT. I could in Radio.
You don’t have the rich WYSIWYG text entry box in Movable Type. No more shortcuts. No more one-click posting from a news aggregator. But, there’s a pony in here somewhere!
Many thanks to all those who have responded with inquiries about or interest in working on the web development project I mentioned last night. No other method of announcement would get top-quality responses as quickly as the weblog announcement.
Look at what David Coursey had to say about his travels:
On one recent business trip, for example, I carried a laptop, not one but two PDAs, a GPS device, my iPod, my everyday cell phone and another that I’m testing, and the metal flashlight that airport security almost didn’t let me on the plane with… Each one of those devices has its own unique power supply. (And often I carry a second one in case the first one dies.)
But in the meantime, the PC has become a powerhouse: cpu, gpu, storage, price. The Great Conversion to notebook computers is well under way, and it’s now clear that the most wildly successful wireless mobile productivity device won’t be the 3G phone, or even the BlackBerry, but the ubiquitous and inexpensive WiFi notebook. In a shapeandsize to suiteveryneed.
Do you see any connection?
It’s difficult to imagine the thing we call today’s laptop morphing into the single device we carry. But imagine for a moment that a device similar to those Ray points to could be as functional as the list of devices David carried. Let’s call the ”ubiquitous and inexpensive WiFi notebook” a UWIN (for ubiquitous WiFi inexpensive notebook).
If your UWIN could truly replace a handheld GPS, your cell phone, your PDA and your current laptop, you’d be dealing with only the power issues of that single device. So much of this problem seems to boil down to an industrial design problem. Sure, there’d be some habits that have to change; but, essentially, we’d all be carrying a UWIN that we could count on.
I’m all for research and development in the power arena. I wish one of my cell phones didn’t think it had a 10-minute battery; rather, I wish the battery didn’t think it has a 10-minute life! But, for an optimum solution, I’d simply prefer fewer devices. UWIN!
One of the businesses I’m involved in has identified a need for a web site and back-end database. I’m looking for a developer who has the know-how and experience to do this project for us. This project has a budget and funds allocated unless we have seriously misjudged the scope of the work.
The rough concept is as follows:
* A customer goes to our web site and logs in.
The customer completes a web form made up of roughly 50 questions.
By pressing submit, the web form populates a database made up of that customer’s answers to the 50 questions. (Phase I of the database should be able to handle up to 5000 customer records.)
We need 3 to 5 reports and inquiries for the database in Phase I.
If you know how to do this work or know someone who does, please get in touch with me. Email me for more information. We’re seeking an idea of time and cost within the next 72 hours. We’d then like to have the database in operation within no more than 30 days or so. Let us know if this isn’t a reasonable expectation.
People have designed weblogs and websites using CSS (cascading style sheets) and they’ve eliminated tables. Someone put together an ’index’ of all of those sites using the design you see. That ’index’ site went away and Meryl has resurrected it.
Here’s where it gets fuzzy for me. Clicking on any of the links takes you to a web site that meets the criteria – no tables, all CSS. So what? What can I do with that information?
Can I see the CSS? I can view source and see the HTML, but not the stylesheet. I can’t copy those designs. Can I use them to develop new designs?
My questions aren’t critical; they’re out of ignorance. How can a designer take advantage of this index? Regardless of my ignorance, I’m glad Meryl pulled this back together.
When do you think about your goals for a new year? On New Year’s Day? After the football games are over? Have you ever considered planning ahead of time so that you can ’hit the ground running?’
* If nothing changed in your life in 2003, would that be okay?
If you do want different results one year from now, what are you willing to change?
Everyone has ”dreams.” But unless you can turn it into a goal by making it specific and putting a time line on it, it’s likely to just remain a warm, fuzzy dream.
Goals are benchmarks – they define meaningful action and direction.
Having written goals will put you in a 3% category of the people on the face of the earth.
Have your goals set by November 15th so you can anticipate the beginning of the New Year with confidence and purpose.
In today’s column Andrew Tobias was asked the following:
I face a dilemma and would appreciate your two cents. What do you do when the candidate of your party is a slimeball? Im purposely going to leave the relevant parties out of this so there’s no bias involved. If you were me, would you rather vote for a good person of an opposing party, even though you dont agree with his views; vote for the slimeball of your party, even though you know he would vote the way you want him to; or simply abstain from casting the vote? I’m leaning to a no-vote, but feel like that’s a cop-out on my civic duty.
Tobias answers quickly and without clarifying the question or the meaning of the word ”slimeball.” He wants the slimeball. It’s interesting that he answers this way, because the implication becomes that Tobias wants creditable Democrats and slimeball Democrats over any Republican at any time.
”Slimeball” gives me reason to pause. How far away from ’crook’ is ’slimeball?’ How does a slimeball make a decision between right and wrong? How does a slimeball compartmentalize his life and decision-making? On which matters is he a slimeball and on which is he an upstanding representative for the people?
These questions don’t have to get asked and answered when we vote for those with impeccable reputations.
Andrew Tobias wrote a book titled The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need. He has updated it several times. For someone just entering the work force, it is truly the best financial advice a person could receive. For a person who has been working, but doesn’t manage money well, it remains the finest financial advice I’ve seen. Taken together with Warren Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders, these two resources can lead to financial freedom.
That said, his message has lost some of its luster since he became an activist for the most liberal positions of the Democratic party.
working on a 7-month internship at a church in Australia, we’re concerned every day for her safety and happiness. When she was 2 it was true. When she left for school it was true. When she left for college it was true.
Jonathon makes it clear that Australia can be a dangerous place. Now we have this. I prayed for the ’little girl’ who’d squeal ’hey Daddy’ each time she answered my phone calls. I still pray for her many times each day.
Coverage of the murders in Washington D.C. ignored many essential facts. One of those is the fact that far more people were dying from other ’unnatural causes’ during that killing spree. Susanna Cornett and Rachel Lucas provide some perspective on how irrational it was for us to become engrossed with those murders. The facts found in the statistics point us in some different directions if our genuine concern is for those who die from ’unnatural causes.’
When I made the switch from Radio Userland to Movable Type, I could not find a method (that I could understand) which would allow me to ”import” my old Radio entries as Movable Type entries.
Consequently, none of the work I did from January 13, 2002 through the last entry in early October is visible here. Even the archives feature doesn’t display my Radio entries.
Because of the architecture of Radio, I have every one of those entries sitting in text files on a local PC. Does anyone know of anything I could do to restore, import or link to that work?
Stephen Rittenberg hits this one out of the park. The remaining question is who commits the greater offense – the media for filling their time this way or the ’professional’ for demeaning his profession.
I received this by email today. It makes you think. Would you change some past choices if you could? What decisions would you make if given the chance to ’live your life over?’
Is anything stopping you from making some of those choices today? I’d have learned HTML back in 1996 or 1997 and built a business around the know-how.
IF I HAD MY LIFE TO LIVE OVER
By Erma Bombeck
If I had my life to live over
I would have invited friends over to dinner even
if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded.
I would have eaten the popcorn in the ”GOOD”
living room and worried much less about the dirt
when someone wanted to light a fire in the
fireplace.
I would have taken the time to listen to my
grandfather ramble about his youth.
I would never have insisted the car windows are
rolled up on a summer day because my hair had
just been teased and sprayed.
I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like
a rose before it melted in storage.
I would have sat on the lawn with my children and
not worried about grass stains.
I would have cried and laughed less while watching
television and more while watching life.
I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead
of pretending the earth would go into a holding
pattern if I weren’t there for the day.
I would never have bought anything just because
it was practical, wouldn’t show soil or was
guaranteed to last a lifetime.
Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy,
I’d have cherished every moment realizing that
the wonderment growing inside me was the only
chance in life to assist God in a miracle.
When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never
have said, ”Later. Now go get washed up for dinner.”
There would have been more ”I love you’s” and
more ”I’m sorry’s” but mostly, given another shot
at life, I would seize every minute…..look at it
and really see it … live it … and never give
it back.
Brian Livingston writes for Infoworld and mentioned Glenn Fleishman’s book site back in February of this year. In this article we get an update about Glenn’s standing with Google. If you want to see how many isbn.nu pages are indexed by Google, click here.
If you want to read one of the best sites on the web concerning all things wireless, take a look at Glenn’s other site.
If you simply want to shop for the best prices for books, isbn.nu gets it done!
Real sentiments are delivered to citizens unencumbered by Fox, MSNBC, CNN or anyone else. This comes directly to you unfiltered. They worked tirelessly, but extend their ’thanks.’
attached to this entry at The Truth Laid Bear. I have a suggestion for the delivery method we might use for the roses and the card. They’d make quite an, err…, impression on Saddam.
There’s a template contest going on over at Meryl’s Notes. If you’ve got the know-how and an eye for this sort of thing, give her some help. I abandoned the blue and orange, though you can’t see any of that stuff since the move. That may be part of her goal as well. I’d say, hang on to the logo. Change the color scheme. Keep it readable. There you have the extent of my design talent.
For anyone seeking a scholarly treatment of contemporary debates, take a look at David Barton’s Wallbuilders web site. In particular, you’ll find his Resources to be invaluable. David’s work is largely free of opinions and he is generally careful to point out when he opines or when there are varied interpretations of the Founders’ letters, speeches and debates.
Even if you use this work to develop your own opposing viewpoints, you’ll be working from a scholarly base with facts you can trust. Either these men did and said these things or they didn’t. Either they believed these things or they didn’t.
You can vote for the icon that everyone will use to show that their RSS feed ”validates.” You’d be stunned if you knew how little of that last sentence I really understand.
Here’s hoping that Mark Pilgrim turns his attention to: 1) designing a really top-notch news aggregator 2) an effort that ’integrates’ Radio Userland’s news aggregator with Movable Type 3) an effort that improves Amphetadesk with a new, extended feature set.
and balanced give way to ’accurate and without speculation’? Fox News uses the tagline ”fair and balanced – we report, you decide.” They resemble every other news source each day that passes.
Endless speculations, hypotheticals and wild rumor mongering seem to be the orders of the day. Ratings remain the lone measure of whether a news source is ”doing a good job.”
However, there appears to be no demand from the public for anything different.
I added the validator to my RSS Resources directory[Scripting News]. Also got a very supportive message from Mena Trott re: the post below. Thanks! I think we’re co-creating the most exciting market in the software business today. [Scripting News]
I bolded the last sentence above. Dave is right! For once we may be witnessing two software companies in the same general market segment that can collaborate without declaring some sort of battle of the ages a la Mac v. Windows or Wordperfect v. Word, etc. Class acts – both of them!
Meryl’s weblog turns three, and she’s got goals for three more. I wish I had the know-how to develop templates, but no doubt she’ll get some outstanding options.
Under something called web services is it even imaginable that Radio’s news aggregator could be used in conjunction with Movable Type? Now that would be outstanding.
Okay, my project for today is to rewrite my weblog outliner so it works smoothly with Movable Type, so I can blog the World Series game tonight in the most natural way, just typing and saving, with comments and trackback. It’ll be a Ben and Mena Technology Expo night. So far so good! I have the outliner saving, although the formatting is really sucky. It’ll be less sucky by tonight. Adam Curry emails to remind me that he wants this to work with Radio and Manila. Of course of course. But first I want to make it work with Movable Type. Everyone will expect that it will work with our own blogging stuff. The chance to blow people’s minds is to show it working through the open interface of a competitor’s product. This is how we show web services working, as they were always supposed to, eliminating lock-in, allowing us to enhance each others’ products, and to take the fear out of serving our customers. The BigCo’s don’t get this, they patent stuff and have powwow’s among execs who have no idea what the software is used for. Heh. In the meantime us little folk are building a market. How about that. [Scripting News]
I’ve been making entries to this weblog with Movable Type for about one week now. Prior to that I was posting to the weblog using Radio Userland. I’d estimate that I’m 10% of the way along MT’s learning curve. When I stopped using Radio Userland, I was roughly 60% of the way down their learning curve.
It seems appropriate to provide a brief insight into what I like and dislike to this point. Short story – I miss Radio’s news aggregator. I miss it badly. One of my favorite pasttimes was to post to the Radio version of this weblog from the news aggregator. Each time I got ready to use it, the latest updates from the 120 or so people/sites I subscribed to would be there waiting on me. Today, I use Amphetadesk.
It’s important to note that only the updates would be there. Something that had been written hours before would be gone unless it had been changed. I’d read through my news stories and uncheck the ones I thought I might want to use. After making that pass through the aggregator, I’d wind up with a ”short list” of candidate stories for posting.
This short list allowed me to mentally sequence the items and with a single click of the mouse, post the entry into the text-editing box of Radio. I could then format, edit, expound or whatever before publishing the entry to my weblog. I miss that a lot.
I’ve been trying to use Amphetadesk. It’s currently not up to Rev. 1.0. It shows. A refresh of Amphetadesk continues to show entries from weeks ago for some sites. Copying an entry from Amphetadesk to MT doesn’t bring any of the formatting, links or anything else into MT’s text entry box. All of that must be edited by hand.
Many of the feeds that I previously subscribed to don’t show up at all in Amphetadesk. Examples include Meryl’s Notes, O’Reilly Safari, Kottke.org and NPO Today. Anything I copy and paste from Amphetadesk to MT requires that I add the attribution at the end. Amphetadesk passes no information about where the entry came from when it is copied.
Finally, MT requires that I learn a great deal more about HTML than was required under Radio. There is no WYSIWYG text entry box. I also have a long way to go before I fully understand where all of my information really is and what files it is in. However, I like the fact that I can log into and edit my weblog from any computer on the Internet.
These are clearly early comments. As I learn more, I’m confident I’ll discover features and functions that I like better than Radio. Suffice it to say that what I’m really commenting on here is usability. I give my current experiences a C+ compared to an A- for the routine I had grown accustomed to. Change is hard. The A- came only after 9 months of rather intensive work. Nine months from now, we’ll see how MT and Amphetadesk (or another aggregator) stack up!
”Does your RSS feed validate?” is the question Mark Pilgrim is asking. How can I know? I haven’t even found the referrer logs for a Movable Type weblog, yet.
How on earth can the ”non-programmer” address this stuff? They cannot.
Unless the tools are built with the appropriate compliances, the user of the tool is going to miss something. Sure, the guy with the hammer can still build a wall that isn’t plumb. The guy with the wrench can still forget to tighten a lugnut. Should a writer using Movable Type be producing a non-validating RSS feed? Let’s remember that most writers didn’t start out to build an RSS feed at all. They simply wanted to write something.
We’re talking about writing weblogs here. That’s all I’m thinking about – writing. How on earth can I know what is going on behind the scenes of this tool?
I’d like to comply, but I’d really rather write!
UPDATE: Thanks to Jason Levine, I found this. I haven’t done it yet, but I found it!
And bear with me: this article has a lot of technical jargon. But it’s worth it if you plow through to understand how flexibility and ingenuity in a competitive system will trump planning and central control any time.
Early in Stephen Den Beste’s article for TechCentralStation, he makes that statement. Through an excellent piece he makes no truer statement. The centrally planned and controlled telecommunications monopoly in the U.S. will fail. It appears to be failing rapidly. Let’s hope that it is allowed to fail without the unnatural acts of ”rescue” that our government could use.
This morning we awoke to news that a man was shot while standing on the top step of a city bus in Montgomery County, Maryland. This is likely to be (pending ballistics confirmations) the 13th known shooting by a killer in the Washington D.C. area since October 2, 2002.
There is another shooting that dates to September 13 or 14 that seems linked to the rest, but there wasn’t enough ballistics evidence to absolutely tie this one to the others. For 24 hours we have heard news reports and press conferences where law enforcement officials were using the media to send messages to the killer. Apparently, the killer was then using the FBI’s call center to respond.
Much of this new dialog gave people hope that these murders might be nearing an end. However, for yet another day, we follow a pattern – a single shot, a wounded or killed victim, a police dragnet that shuts down an area minutes after the ”report of the shooting.” Following all of this is endless speculation by the news services about who this might be, whether or not it’s a terrorist, why the police can’t him or them, etc.
Following each shooting and the talking heads conversations, the killer appears to alter his geography or the profile of his victim or some other minor aspect of his mode. Saturday night he struck 90 miles south of D.C. This morning he returned to Montgomery Co. where the majority of his shootings have occurred. As the news media pinpoints where each shooting has happened and posts those on a map, you see that the first 12 shootings worked generally North to South and alternated (somewhat) from East to West.
Now, he’s apparently starting over. Several of his shots have been taken from wooded areas. It seems that ever since the Defense Department announced that some of its high tech surveillance planes would be scanning the D.C. area, he has not altered much about the way he operates.
Let’s hope that the type of surveillance being done can identify movement into and from this wooded area for a period of several hours. The break that is needed just might come through.
Every Monday I receive an email newsletter from Dan Miller at The Business Source, Inc. Dan has been doing career advisory and counseling services for many years. His web site is at www.48days.com. Not a week goes by that I don’t find at least one or two ’keepers’ in the newsletter. You don’t need to be searching to benefit. He simply publishes outstanding material for anyone who works for a living.
In yesterday’s newsletter, Dan titled one article ”Dream Jobs to Go.” Here’s what he had to say:
Last week I talked about unusual jobs in this space. Lots of people asked more questions about putting unusual interests to work – in ways that really do generate income. How would you like one of the following?
How to Get Started Earning Money as a Poet
How to Get Started as a Professional Organizer
How to Break Into Romance Writing
How to Get Started as a Wilderness Guide
How to Break in as a Mystery Shopper
How to Bum Your Way Around the World on a Boat
”Dream Jobs to Go” has these and many more unusual titles. Most of the material is in inexpensive ebook format, meaning you can purchase and download it instantly. Check it out:
Managing technology in a small business defies many of the practices that are used to make multi-million dollar decisions in a Fortune 1000 setting. This morning David Berlind at ZDNet profiles a company that struck gold when Boston announced plans for the ”Big Dig.” The company really thinks before spending even $15,000 that might be deferred. Here’s an excerpt:
Outside of a handful of very low-cost investments, Spinelli’s mantra appears to be ”steady as she goes.” When does Spinelli think that things will loosen up a bit? His estimates are not nearly as optimistic as those that I’ve heard from vendors. ”I’m guessing that things aren’t going to change for about two years,” he says. ”And even then, that’s just when we’ll reassess the situation. That’s not necessarily when we plan to start spending again.”
This is the kind of thinking that goes on every day in literally thousands of small companies across the country. These aren’t the stories we see in magazines, essays and industry reports. Why talk about $15,000 when someone has considered buying 15,000 computers? We’d be far better off with few stories about the latter and a lot more case studies of the former.
David Isenberg sent Smart Letter #78 to his subscribers today. In it he publishes a letter that was sent to FCC Chairman Michael Powell. Signed by 41 people with an interest in the state of telecommunications, the letter lays out a plan permitting the ”fast failure” of the traditional telecom model.
There’s not yet a link, but keep visiting and it should be here soon.
Susanna Cornett has a lengthy update, timeline and opinion piece about the D.C. area murderer. This series of crimes should be resolved no later than the end of this week. Why? Because the killer appears to be more interactive with law enforcement and that opens up the possibility of errors and slip-ups.
Instead of merely planning his attacks, he (or she) is now planning attacks, safer escape routes and methods for leaving messages without being detected.
I was asleep at the switch when this essay first appeared. However, it’s excellent.
100Mbps as a normal part of people’s lives drives a wave of changes far more profound than ’windows update.’ At 100Mbps an 8GB (8×10E9 bytes) movie downloads in less than 11 minutes. Video conferences replace phone calls and trips. Real time collaboration takes on new forms.
If you figure that the top 12 to 15 long haul carriers of data and telecom traffic are in the process of consolidating into a set of about 4 to 6 players, the telecom company of tomorrow is likely to remain a very, very large company. Who will the players be? That’s the $64 billion question!
Jon Udell discovers that Apple’s latest Mac’s are turning up where we might not expect them. Apple would do well to read these signs and take the ”switch” campaign down a new path.
Visibone has developed some terrific resources for web designers or those merely interested in keeping references handy for the things you don’t use very often. Meryl points to some of the newest tools in this entry from yesterday.
Beauty is Only Screen Deep: What happens when web designers really get designing for the web? Sarah Horton, co-author of the Web Style Guide, ponders the meaning of beauty and quality in the context of being a good web designer. [Boxes and Arrows]
I’ve always thought the comparison between the architectural process and the software development process was nearly perfect. Just about every issue that faces an architect when attempting to gather requirements and decisions from a client has an analogue in software.
If Architects Had To Work Like Web Designers: ”Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.”[Dane Carlson]
”The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.” ~ Robert Frost
I guess there’s no ’perfect’ weblog tool. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a weblog done with pMachine. It’s amazing how fast this change seems to have happened. I suspect Movable Type’s features actually aided the transition.
Speaking of Change…
... you’ve probably already noticed some.
We’ve changed from MovableType to pMachine to run the backend of the website. Nothing wrong with MT. pMachine just has a few features that are real nice to me.
One feature you’ll notice right away is the integrated forums (click on the ”Discussion Boards” link to the left). They aren’t as nice as phpBB, but integration is nice. You don’t have to register to view the website or leave comments. But, if you choose to register, one username will work for the entire website.
The look & layout will continue to change over the next few days. It’s pretty boring now, but I’ve got plans to spruce it up a bit. Here’s your chance for input. Tell me what you like. Tell me what you don’t like. Tell me if anything isn’t working. Tell me if my color choices aren’t working.
I do have one special request. I would really like a nice grahpical masthead for the website. But, graphics are not my thing. If anyone would like to help out, let me know. [Sakamuyo]
on Fox News this past Tuesday morning said that police had increased the number of sniper suspects getting round-the-clock surveillance from 6 to 10. Is it possible that someone in the four that were added has had to lay low?
Could it be that the sniper has no clue as to what the air surveillance technology really is capable of so he’s afraid to act?
Will his pattern change over the weekend?
In the blizzard of facts and fiction that fly from news sources we discover that reporters begin to quote each other following a press conference. If someone in the back asks a question that begins with, ”we’re getting reports that…,” every other reporter goes on TV saying ”some reports say…” and they quote whatever they’ve heard.
Too often the ”reports” unravel like a cheap sweater once a single snag is found in the original rumor.
Let’s hope and pray that by the time we head to work on Monday, some resolution of the D.C. area killings has been reached.
I no longer feel the sniper is military. At least not our military. Anyone with that kind of training and military expertise from the U.S. military who could be called a ”sniper” I have a much, much, much higher opinion of than this murdering douchebag. He seems particularly stupid and I sense possesses an extremely low intellect.
I apologize for any implication to our fine men and women of the US Armed Forces.
Anyone that cold-blooded, cowardly and unwilling to confront his victims face to face is a big pussy and deserves to be riddled with bullets from every law enforcement official in the tri-state/District area.
I hold Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and Osama bin Laden in higher esteem than this pig.
I hope God himself comes down and squeezes the life out of this backwoods, inbred, ridgerunning, briar picking, toothless hayseed piece of garbage.
Looks like some redecorating is going on over at Mena’s place. My first view of her site made me aware that there were different weblog tools. It also made me aware that a weblog could have just as much design flexibility and variety as any other type of web site.
I know – these aren’t major discoveries for 9 out of 10 people. I was the other person at that time. I couldn’t spell HTML and now I can get at least 2 of the letters without looking them up!
After seeing Dollar Short, I began to prowl around the Movable Type sites as they updated. The more I visited those, the more I found great designs that seemed to result from using Movable Type.
Well, Movable Type may have not caused the good designs, but it was obviously setting an example and many people were taking design seriously as they built their weblogs. Mena may be raising the bar again!
ColorMatch 5K This utility will help you select a matching 6-color palette for your website. Define a single color that you like. Matching colors will be calculated. [Sanjay’s Journal of Coding Tips]
My experience with Meryl’s recommendations thus far is excellent. She typically steers you to a practical and understandable reference or resource. Check this one out.
Books for the Asking: ”After spending a year trying to sell her book to publishers and receiving 70 rejection letters as a reward, Laurie Notaro, a newspaper columnist in Phoenix, decided to do it herself. Working with iUniverse, one of many companies that offer ”print on demand” services, Ms. Notaro paid $99 to have her book designed, laid out, stored as a digital file and printed and bound only as copies were ordered. Several months later she sold the rights to her book, plus the concept for a new one, to a major publisher for a six-figure sum.”[Dane Carlson]
I’m never sure which news services respect the notion of the permalink; i.e. a permanent link that I can point to and have someone read this months from now and still get to the link.
That said, there is soon to be quite a battle for new business management and accounting software in the small and medium business(SMB) arena. Oracle wants a piece. Microsoft wants a piece. The large players want to lower themselves to the SMB arena. This article focuses on Microsoft, but mentions a few of the others.
I’ve just received the first report of someone getting to the new design using the www.rodentregatta.com URL. Up to now people have had to use the alternative termporary URL www.stevepilgrim.com/rodent. This is because the DNS changes have not fully updated the router tables around the web. Hang in there! It’s updating.
For those of you who read weblogs only via your news aggregators, you’re missing the great work from Sekimori Designs. You’re also not seeing Rodent Regatta right now. The new RSS feeds are INDEX.XML and INDEX.RDF. Once the DNS updates are complete, you should be just fine using www.rodentregatta.com/index.xml and www.rodentregatta.com/index.rdf!
I had no idea there were so many weblog tools. Joe points to a site that lets you select a set of 5 weblog tools that you’d like to compare.
>From experience I can tell you that there’s no substitute for putting your hands on the product and attempting to use it. This is particularly relevant to those who have been using one tool and are considering a change. Breaking old habits and forming the new ones is always tough, but knowing what you’re getting into in advance is worth a lot.
Alison Fish has some updates to her site – I like ’em – and she points to a tip about search engines. It seems that everywhere I turn and everyone I talk to has a different opinion about what lifts your standing with a search engine.
REACH Buying 10-Gigabit Wave Ring from Level 3 Linking
Japan-U.S. Cable With Key California Markets
BROOMFIELD, Colo., October 16, 2002 Level 3 Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq:LVLT) announced today that it has signed a multi-year, multi-million-dollar agreement to provide optical wavelength services to REACH, one of Asias largest international carriers.
REACH has agreed to purchase a 10-gigabit wavelength ring from Level 3 linking Los Angeles and San Jose with the Japan-U.S. cable landing station outside San Luis Obispo, Calif. The Japan-U.S. cable is a high-capacity undersea cable system connecting the mainland United States with Hawaii and Japan. REACH will use the wavelength from Level 3 to enhance communications services it currently provides to its customers in both Asia and North America.
REACH is one of the leading international communications companies serving the Asia-Pacific region, said Glenn Russo, senior vice president of transport services for Level 3. This agreement highlights the value and flexibility of our wavelength service, which allows international carriers like REACH to expand their out-of-region footprint quickly and efficiently by using the Level 3 network, thereby avoiding unnecessary investment in their own facilities-based network infrastructure.
With Level 3s (3)Link Global Wavelength service, companies with large bandwidth needs can purchase single or multiple wavelengths of light on any of Level 3s North American, transatlantic or European network routes. Level 3 terminates the wavelengths at on-net customer facilities, where customers can interconnect with the wavelength using their existing SONET, IP or ATM equipment, thereby reducing their network costs, shortening time to market, and maintaining network control.
Level 3 expects to activate wavelength segments for REACH using ONTAP, Level 3s proprietary online customer network management and service provisioning system. Among other capabilities, ONTAP enables delivery of wavelength and private line services when customers require them, rather than in the weeks or months that it typically takes other carriers to deliver transport services. This allows customers to tie their network purchases directly to revenue opportunities, rather than basing their orders on speculative long-term projections. ONTAP also enables customers to check Level 3s capacity inventory and prices, plan and order circuits, and manage their Level 3 network via a Web-based interface.
REACH owns and operates a global communications network that links every major market in Asia, as well as markets in North America and Europe. The company maintains an ownership interest in more than 50 cable submarine systems, operates a major satellite system and runs Internet data centers in Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. REACH is a 50-50 joint venture between Telstra Corporation Ltd., the Australian national communications company, and PCCW, the primary fixed-line carrier in Hong Kong. In fiscal 2002, REACH had revenues exceeding US$1 billion.
About Level 3 Communications
Level 3 (Nasdaq:LVLT) is an international communications and information services company offering a wide selection of services including IP services, broadband transport, colocation, metropolitan and intercity dark fiber services, and the industrys first Softswitch based services. Its Web address is www.Level3.com.
The company offers information services through its wholly-owned subsidiaries, (i)Structure, Corporate Software and Software Spectrum. (i)Structure provides managed IT infrastructure services and enables businesses to outsource costly IT operations. Its Web address is www.i-structure.com. Corporate Software and Software Spectrum help Fortune 500 companies acquire, implement, and manage software. Their Web addresses are www.corporatesoftware.com and www.softwarespectrum.com.
Forward Looking Statement
Some of the statements made by Level 3 in this press release are forward-looking in nature. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements. Level 3 believes that its primary risk factors include, but are not limited to: changes in the overall economy relating to, among other things, the September 11 attacks and subsequent events, substantial capital requirements; development of effective internal processes and systems; the ability to attract and retain high quality employees; technology; the number and size of competitors in its markets; law and regulatory policy; and the mix of products and services offered in the company’s target markets. Additional information concerning these and other important factors can be found within Level 3s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Statements in this release should be evaluated in light of these important factors.
Jonathon Delacour’s ”Distant No More” could have been written the week following 9-11-2001. Yet, a year later, it describes another nation that had lived with a sense of safety that was dashed in an instant. It’s a must-read if for no other reason than to understand this:
   ”That naive sense of invulnerability has been destroyed. On current figures for the dead and missing, Australia lost more of its citizens per head of population than did the United States in the September 11 attacks.”
You may want to add a little space to your blogroll!
What should be exciting about this to the weblog community is that the approximately 5 million EarthLink subscribers are literally just a few clicks away from trying blogging. [Dan Bricklin]
They’re bringing in the high tech aircraft to watch the D.C. area. One report said that equipment on one of the planes is capable of pinpointing a muzzle-flash from extreme altitude and then tracking the target.
HERE’S A LENGTHY story suggesting that the government is taking the possibility of terrorism in the D.C. sniper case more seriously than it appears. I certainly hope so. But I’m kind of tired of this pattern of treating terrorism as almost unthinkable. That sounds like what’s at work here, and it’s irritating, as Matt Welch wrote after the Hadayet/LAX shooting, to be treated as ”children who need to be lied to.”[Instapundit]
Voice over IP is the wave of the future. Think about every small office you know about. They have some type of phone system with several phone lines coming into the office. For each of those lines they pay the traditional phone company’s ”business line rate.” Often that number approaches $50 per phone line.
Now picture the day when that small office replaces its existing phone system with one that is capable of handling calls via ”VoIP” – that’s voice over internet protocol. In other words, they beef up their Internet bandwidth slightly and connect an IP phone system to it. No more $50 per month per phone line.!
Clearly, the next step is wireless. Add an 802.11X wireless capability in the office and, using these technologies, an iPAQ becomes a cell phone! Glenn Fleishman picked up this story.
Form of iPaq, Shape of PSTN: Telesym offers an interesting product that turns a PocketPC, like an iPaq, into a PDA-to-PDA to PDA-to-PSTN (publicly switched telephone network) portable phone. It works over standard 802.11b networks, and requires a gateway to add the phone capability. The trend continues.
David Isenberg has seen a similar capability. He talks about it in issue #77 of his (excellent) newsletter.
I’m busy moving all of my RSS subscriptions from Radio over to Amphetadesk. That’s no small trick.
Then, I’ve got to learn the most effective way of posting from Amphetadesk to Movable Type. It won’t be hard, but it won’t be the same set of mouse-clicks that Radio Userland permitted.
Finally, there’s that matter of DNS propagation. I changed the DNS record at the registrar this afternoon. We’ll see how long it takes.
This entry marks the last one to Radio for a while. I have a new weblog design that should appear consistently at www.rodentregatta.com after the DNS propagates. In the meantime, you can view the startup of the new weblog at www.stevepilgrim.com/rodent/. UPDATE: About the RSS feed. The new one is index.rdf! Those of you using rss.xml may want to update your aggregators!! Again, no need to change your bookmarks. We should be at full speed again in 2 or 3 days!
Style Switcher and Business. Another whiz bang tutorial from A List Apart shows you how to build a style switcher using PHP. When I briefly worked on my site’s redesign (which, of course, has… [meryl’s notes]
75 painful questions about your customer satisfaction: ”Customer satisfaction is not something that you achieve then tick it off on your ’things to do’ list, it is about continuous improvement throughout the whole organization. But in today’s quest for highly advanced up to the minute customer service, some of the fundamentals appear to be brushed aside. Fundamentals such as what the customer actually wants, for example. Perhaps it is time to go back to basics. To actually ask the consumer instead of taking answers for granted. Do they want high-tech, electronically run call centres that reduce costs and cut queuing time or would they rather wait for longer in order to hear a human voice? Do customers want to see facts or product advertising (or both!) on your web site?” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
Rules for the RIAA. Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper weighs in on the music/copyright debate with a scathing column about the music industry’s foolishness:
Be sanctimonious: Claim to be more concerned about the artists than about your profits. You are selfless; your only interest is paying the musicians, without whom you would be nothing. Pray that nobody remembers countless rockers who signed away their souls on recording contracts and were dumped the moment their sales started slipping.
Misunderstand your market: When you count the songs being swapped on peer-to-peer networks, do not notice that most are moldy oldies. It’s still theft, you argue, even if you yourself stopped paying royalties for those songs in 1961. Blame piracy, not taste, for your inability to sell new songs that no radio station will play.
Lie: Go on Kazaa, count the MP3 versions of songs you produced, old and new, and multiply that number by the current retail price of a CD; howl that you are losing a fortune. Forget that a Buddy Holly album sold for $2.95 in 1958; you sell records for much more now, and that’s the price you use when calculating your losses it’s more impressive. LinkDiscuss (Thanks, Kevin!) [Boing Boing Blog]
Paradigm? No, pair of standards: The change by the Wi-Fi Alliance two weeks ago to their Wi-Fi trademark certifying interoperability represents a challenge for the re-education of journalists and users. I’ve used Wi-Fi generically for almost two years, as it was a simpler and friendlier way to say 802.11b while implicitly discussing interoperable 802.11b equipment. The Wi-Fi Alliance made the right choice, in my opinion, but certainly muddies the waters. You can no longer say, ”Wi-Fi operates at 11 Mbps.” You can say, ”802.11b operates at 11 Mbps” or ”The 2.4 GHz certified flavor of Wi-Fi operates at 11 Mbps.” [80211b News]
Wasted and wounded. From The Sydney Morning Herald: The Australian toll: Confirmed deaths – 30; Missing – 180; Injured – 113 Prime Minister John Howard supported the opposition’s proposal that next Sunday be declared a national day of mourning, as details on events and specific opportunities to express grief on the day were… [Jonathon Delacour]
We’re barely in the first inning of this terrorism war. They are only getting warmed up. We’ve only started with Afghanistan. Whether these sniper attacks prove to be terrorism or not, the recent communiques from Al Quaeda indicate an intent to do more to harm us. In fact, they may well be the wake up calls to sleepers around the globe.
Our support for one another and for those in positions of authority is critical right now. We can prevail. We will prevail. But during dark days we’ll need each other. If you’re unclear about how you fit in the overall picture, I encourage you to start today with Day 3 of a 40 day journey!
long enough to see the opportunity that is facing the computer industry? Sun is down, but not out. Apple is up, but not a force, yet. Linux advocates continue to hawk ’linux on the desktop.’ Nobody likes buying from a monopoly. Microsoft is attempting to do to AOL what it did to Netscape.
Microsoft is a powerful, savvy competitor, but between the frustration over its new licensing/pricing and the monopoly standing that it has in so many markets, we’re approaching a time when we’re as beholden to Microsoft as we are to the public utility.
Now is the time for Oracle, Sun, Apple, Linux advocates – even IBM – to launch a viable alternative to Microsoft’s control of the desktop computer.
Analysts see layoffs at Sun. The server giant could cut as many as 8,000 jobs, or 20 percent of its work force, according to a Merrill Lynch analyst. Other analysts also predict layoffs. [CNET News.com]
Wal-Mart is doing its part. Somebody pull this group together and bring an open source alternative to the masses!
What kind of bandwidth would be required to either stream or download the contents of a DVD? With fiber to the curb, any home could receive programming using intelligent ”edge” devices that are capable of storing 20 or 30 movies and or writing the data to DVD’s. Fiber to the curb is one bottleneck. The digital rights debate is another. Are there others?
Wal-Mart cues up a rival to Netflix: ”The service is similar to that offered by Netflix, the pioneer of online DVD subscription rentals. Customers pay a fixed monthly fee and receive by U.S. mail a limited number of DVDs for as long as they want with no due dates, late fees or postal charges. Wal-Mart plans to charge $18.86 per month. Netflix’s main plan charges $19.95, a price at which customers can rent as many movies as they want during a month but can have only three out at a given time.” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
Koinonia Christian Fellowship is an awesome God loving church. It’s regular weekend attendance is well over 1000 people and we’re continuing to grow. If you’re ever in the Hanford area, y’all should come check it out. [snellspace]
Best and worst states to run a small biz: ”Appropriately enough, the hands-down winner is Nevada, a state better known for another kind of gambling. Why? A pro-business regulatory environment, affordable housing and, I suspect, a good year-round climate have combined to make the Silver State a mecca for fast-growing startups.” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
Bali. Haven’t been writing in the past two weeks but I had to comment on this. I’ve walked past the sites that were bombed several times on various trips to Bali. One time I stayed in a hotel up the road. Needless to say this will have HUGE repercussions for Indonesia.
The US Embassy in Jakarta is asking American’s to leave Indonesia if they don’t absolutely have to be here. Our family is NOT leaving at this time, but we are making preparations to do what is needed in the future. (FWIW, this is the third or fourth time we’ve done this since we moved here in 1997).
There are many detailed articles on these events, here are just a few:
Somewhere in Redmond, Microsoft has their .NET iniative/technology on a slow simmer. Unwilling to call last year’s announcement vapor, they continue to talk about security, trustworthy computing and such. Meanwhile, companies such as Oracle have a full business management system (no, this isn’t Quickbooks) available for a monthly subscription price on line. All you need is trustworthy bandwidth. The future is here now.
to be the front end to all business process work. This initiative, whose deliverable is many months away, attempts to position Jupiter as the server component and Office as the client component.
All the jargon and buzzwords are here, but we’re still talking about enormous costs and products that seem destined for corporate America and not small businesses.
Faster Mac’s are inevitable. For Apple to make the inroads they want, they must continue to build on the strength of Linux/Unix and solve the pricing disparity that arises when someone switches from Windows software to OS X software.
IBM Promises Muscle for the Mac. Big Blue announces a processor to power a new line of Macintosh computers. The chip is designed to put Macs neck-and-neck with Intel’s Pentium line—and even start new ’computing wars.’ By Robert McMillan. [Wired News]
The egos couldn’t handle it, but there certainly appears to be some horsepower in an Apple (client)/Sun (server) relationship. Sun’s trading at $2 or $3 per share and has around $6B. of cash. Putting these two together and tapping into IBM’s chip and Linux expertise could create a meaningful competitor for you know who.
’Lord willing and the creek don’t rise’, I’ll be moving off of Prohosters this week. With no warning whatsoever, they are down again. My site, a friend’s site and their own site won’t come up. They may be back together by the time you’re able to read this, but right this instant the whole hosting company appears to be down. Unacceptable, particularly with this attitude. Big Kahuna sounds great to me. Some high volumesites are hosted there. They actually want weblog sites. They’ve got a great control panel for your domain, hosting and email management. Yep, Bloggerzone is a subsidiary to HostingMatters. Some super people work there.
TRAFFIC COUNTS QUESTIONED AGAIN But, what are they questioning – meter readings or meter methods?
Making fun of some coverage of political weblogs, Brian Carnell writes that Instapundit’s 40,000 visitors a day amounts to ”1.2 million readers a month,” which he suspects is more people than ”than read the Weekly Standard, National Review, The Nation and Mother Jones combined.” In order for Instapundit to have 1.2 million readers, Glenn Reynolds would have to be so compelling he attracts 40,000 unique daily visitors and so repulsive that all 40,000 don’t come back the next day. Looking at just one of the dead-tree publications supposedly dwarfed by Reynolds, The Nationreported a paid circulation of 94,000 two years ago, most of whom read 3-4 issues a month, and Alexa reports that the magazine’s Web site gets considerably more traffic than Instapundit or Andrew Sullivan. [Workbench]
with Bruce Willis and Richard Gere fictionalized the life of an international terrorist skilled in disguise, weaponry, cunning and careful, meticulous planning. Washington, D.C.’s sniper seems to fancy himself that way, if we’re to believe media reports of a card left by the sniper and the pattern he has followed thus far. He’s simply not able to take his methods to the level of international intrigue depicted in the movie.
Why does he take weekends off? To let things cool down? Because there’s not enough traffic to get lost in? Could it be he’s holding down a weekend job?
Dance Listings. AMERICAN BALLET THEATER World premieres and a tribute to George Harrison. Tue., 7: Opening night gala; Wed.-Fri., 8; Sat. 2 and 8; next Sun., 2 and 7:30. Through Oct. 27. [New York Times: Arts]
Did the recent tapes released by Al Quaeda give the go ahead for this type of attack? Why Bali? Why are they concentrating on civilian gathering points?
Our volatile, dangerous neighbor. Reports about the terrorist attack in Bali are confused, with some news sources suggesting that a single car bomb was responsible and others mentioning two separate explosions, seconds apart. The explosion(s) and resulting fires are thought to have killed over 180 and injured more than 300. Although CNN states that… [Jonathon Delacour]
Our eldest daughter is still doing an internship at a church in Australia. How far from Bali is she? How does Al Quaeda view Australia?
Investing by the video generation has been chronicled on CNNfn and CNBC. They’ve used ’capitulation’ to describe a time when all the stock investors bail out, sell everything and move their money to savings accounts or something else they consider ’safe.’ As always, they use this word as if there will be a single trading day when ’capitulation’ will be obvious. Not so.
Recent trading activity shows that with each uptick in the stock market, some investors bail out of the market at the new ’higher’ price. From this behavior we get part of the reason for the dramatic (i.e. 200-300 point) swings in the DJIA. However, this repeated pattern is steadily removing more and more of the ’bubble investors’ from the market.
Roy Blount Jr.. ”The last time somebody said, ’I find I can write much better with a word processor.’, I replied, ’They used to say the same thing about drugs.’” [Quotes of the Day]
P. J. O’Rourke. ”A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.” [Quotes of the Day]
For those people who believe a sudden uptick in this country’s economic fortunes might be just around the corner, I offer this dash of cold water:
Lucent is today announcing the layoff of 10,000 (additional) people. They are seeking to lower their breakeven revenue point. They are taking huge write-off’s. They are battening down the hatches.
No economic forecast should be based on a company in the midst of the telecom depression. Nor should any single company’s fortunes be used to extrapolate the economy’s direction. However, taken with other indicators, like retail sales dropping last month, auto sales dropping last month and other layoffs announced this week. Sure, GE announced a 25% increase in quarterly profits, but it remains to be seen how many other companies will post similar results.
Next week is a big week for third quarter earnings announcements. Stay tuned. We’ll see what the mood is coming out of those announcements and heading into the Christmas selling season.
When I moved this weblog off the Radio Userland server to its own domain, I selected Prohosters as a host for the domain. I regret my decision.
Prohosters suffered a lengthy outage shortly before I selected them. What they did to resolve the outage made me believe that they were stepping up to better gear, better management practices and new levels of service to their customers.
Then, I read this response from the CEO of the company to a customer. Clearly, the CEO realized that the language on his web site describing Prohosters policies and practices didn’t really communicate what was intended. ”You can host multiple domains, so long as you don’t sign up for one of our entry level plans.”
I can endure that confusion as long as they satisfy customers. I can’t endure outages. Each day that I learn something more about weblogs, Radio Userland, web hosts and ftp software, I become more convinced that my weblog’s outage earlier this year started with an incorrect email from Prohosters about where HTML files should be placed.
Thus far, I’ve had no email or notice from Prohosters concerning this latest outage. Phone companies don’t do it. Utility companies don’t do it. Cable TV companies don’t do it. Why should we expect a web host to do it? You may see some temporary disruption in this weblog over the coming week or ten days, but be assured, I’ll be back!
Eugene McCarthy. ”Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it’s important.” [Quotes of the Day]
NOW HERE’S THE GUY THAT MADE ”NUCULER” A WHITE HOUSE FAVORITE Just a simple peanut farmer from Plains
Folks having fun with George Bush’s pronunciation of the word ’nuclear’ may not recall former nuclear submarine officer Carter’s troubles with the word. There’s some possibility that no ”nicer” human being ever held elected office. The trouble with that was and is, the President must make 10 decisions each day that don’t allow for him to be a nice guy.
Wired News: A Site for Your Eyes. Wired News has a different appearance, but the new design isn’t just about look and feel. The site now complies with standards recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium for greater access to all users. By Jon Rochmis. [Wired News]
Bravo, Miss America!. The new Miss America is sticking to her message, even though it’s unpopular with the pageant officials. Miss America 2003,... [cut on the bias]
Kevin Werblog says Voice over IP coupled with Wi-Fi is the killer app: David Sifry’s blog pointed me to Kevin’s post. David expands on Kevin’s point by expanding the notion to public spaces. There are products that do PBX-based VOIP with any Wi-Fi network from SpectraLink and now Vocera. But the real issue in public spaces is authentication and billing: how do you handle a captive portal login from a telephone or badge interface? Obviously, you partner with aggregators to integrate authentication in the phone through corporate IT configuring systems. Boingo + VOIP = VOIPo? [80211b News]
Interactivity. For quite practical (that is to say, not frivolous or completely dunderheaded) reasons, much of today was spent combing through old PHP, folding some layabout code into the Textism Publishing Engine (codenamed Textpattern), in particular the commenting system that ran here sporadically last year. Back then it was duct tape and baling wire holding it together; now the various bits have been streamlined into something resembling a cohesive whole, albeit one assembled by zealous bureaucrats on an encounter weekend all flipcharts, Nerf Bats and tears.
One big accomplishment of the day was figuring out how to prevent the resubmission of form data when a window is refreshed/reloaded. Figuring this out brought much joyful relief; so much so that I flung open the windows, inhaled deeply, hunched over, and played air guitar for thirty seconds.
Anyway, it (the commenting thing) needs to be tested out, and this is where you come in. Complete, if you would, the following assertion:
10 – 12 Software Development Jobs Available !. Security clearance needed at the Secret to Top Secret level. However, exceptional developers with no clearance should apply also.
Required skills: * Perl, JavaScript, HTML, web servers (such as Apache), SQL, CGI, DBD/DBI. * Candidates with experience in DHTML will be a plus. * Secret/TS clearance (exceptional developers with no clearance should also apply) [The FuzzyBlog!]
Here’s another example of one of those moonshot-scaled projects.
Let’s hope they can execute better than others have. Two of the best companies around are involved in this one, and both companies understand what’s at stake. I’m a little surprised they’ve decided to ride the EDI horse a while longer. This says something about the state of readiness of end-to-end XML-based solutions.
Abandon $15.8 million of software and you can bet there’s been some time expensed up to this point that easily pushes this one closer to $20 million in total costs. I worked on a $10 million project in the early 1990’s. I saw the things that could go wrong. That project succeeded, but not without some major restitution from a key provider of software and know-how.
Since that time we’ve worked on some sub $1 million projects. The risks are huge. In fact, some of these smaller projects come closer to bet-the-company than at Lexmark. Software is the grease on the business process skids. The transition to new software is the most disruptive initiative any business can take. So often these projects don’t get properly scoped, planned and executed, and it amazes me that we haven’t learned the lessons.
It’s no more rational to cheer this jump in stock prices than it would be to cry about the last two weeks of losses. If, as I suspect, we’re facing a 10-year period beginning in 2000 where the stock market averages 7% or 8%, then we’re also facing many ups and downs to achieve that average. You won’t see anything like the 15% a month jumps that some companies experienced in the late 1990’s and early 2000. A rare, exceptional company may turn in some sort of outsized performance, but we’re going to have to love good old compound interest once again!
When I initially heard about Sun’s focus on Linux on the desktop, I assumed they’d be adopting one of the popular distributions of Linux. What possible value can there be in going out on their own to produce a totally new distribution? Is it possible this is merely a branding issue? Will Sun sell more computers running Sun Linux (Sinux?) than Red Hat Linux?
While I’m in a frame of mind to learn something about Apache and Linux and some of the scripting tools, I’m in no mood to try to distinguish between over 90 different distributions of Linux.
Why so many? Why so fragmented? Wouldn’t a few sacrifices bring greater celebrity to the whole concept of Linux and reduce the confusion?
As a business person, this discovery of the DistroWatch web site explains why Linux will struggle. No business man can afford a ”bet-the-business” decision on an operating system that has no clear path to survival. Microsoft can breathe easier knowing that these factions won’t sacrifice for the ”greater good.” Lindows: As Windows as we want to be. The upstart operating system company asks a judge to dismiss once and for all Microsoft’s trademark claims and its attempts to get the site shut down. [CNET News.com]
when the truly small business (5 to 50 employees) can affordably replace analog switches and key systems with ”converged” VoIP systems. Whether one takes Worldcom’s hosted route or whether one turns to IP phone systems, the demand is certain to be huge when the economics of the change are understood.
LET’S HOPE THIS SNIPER IDIOT DECIDES HE WON’T BE TAKEN IN FOR QUESTIONING
SNIPER HUNT:Unqualified Offerings has a good roundup of sniper coverage, along with personal observations about the effect of the attacks on his young son. I don’t tend to think these attacks are ”terrorism,” if that’s a synonym for Islamacist violence, but they’re certainly terrifying a lot of people. UO is also by far the best place to read honest, coherent arguments against an attack on Iraq. [Posted 10/9.] [Virginia Postrel’s blog]
Hymnal. Pop music is probably one of the last places a conservative would normally look for reinforcement of his worldview. Rock and roll, which has dominated pop music since the 1950s, is inexorably associated with liberalism in the minds of many conservatives. But in fact, there have been a significant number of songs on the pop charts during the rock era that are explicitly conservative. I have compiled a list of these conservative classics. Bruce Bartlett [Textism]
Neil Cavuto just reported on FoxNews that Jim Seymour died last night due to complications from routine surgery.
Here’s a fitting tribute to Jim, his work and his life.
DOES THIS MEAN CLOSE ENOUGH REALLY IS GOOD ENOUGH? Thankfully, he ain’t doin’ brain surgery
Sun CEO: We’re ”good enough”. Scott McNealy says an early push to get customers on the high-end Solaris OS may have been a mistake, but not one that’s slowing the company down. [CNET News.com]
”I just rattle my golf clubs and say, ’Come on down. If you think you can run this sucker, have at it.’”
by running this letter about what the music (RIAA) and movie industries (MPA) are trying to do. I’m so quick to recoil that this guy’s first paragraph would have cost him his point! However, his letter is worth reading if you hang in there.
Our firm most often works with the SMB (small-to-medium) client segment. Microsoft defines this as 500 PC’s or less. We define it as companies and individuals with fewer than 50 PC’s and most often 5 to 15. Here’s the scenario: A lawyer with 5 office workers is downsizing. He’s decided to move everyone to their homes. After the move there will only be the lawyer and 3 other workers working from home. However, each of the 4 people will have at least DSL or cable modem access from home. (assume that is between 500Kbps and 1.5Mbps of bandwidth for each) Here’s the objective: Allow these 4 people to work at home as if they were at the current office. No new learning curves for new applications. Easy connectivity. Ease of sharing information. Here’s a constraint: They want to use exactly the same applications they are currently using. They use Microsoft Office – Standard & Professional. They use Goldmine for their client database. They use Quickbooks Pro for their accounting. They also use a shared filing system on the file server for Office documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.
Top Five ASP.NET Web Services Tips. Alex Ferrara, coauthor of Programming .NET Web Services, offers a brief comparison between ASP.NET Web services and .NET remoting, and then delves into five useful tips for developing ASP.NET Web services. [O’Reilly Network Articles]
Here’s the question: Can these four people ’subscribe’ to an ASP that can ’host’ all four of these applications or needs? At what cost per month per user? They’d prefer to ’subscribe’ to Office rather than install it on each PC. Here’s the challenge:They want an answer in 24 hours. Did I mention this was a lawyer?
Paolo’s onto something here. Collaborative technology offers the potential to have a vast array of experts brought to bear on all sides of a business problem or opportunity. Clearly, there are the issues of human interactions, sacrifices for the greater good of the ”the group” and the satisfaction of the paying client, but his notion of a large collaborative organization resembles today’s Big 7/5/3 consulting firms.
Would somebody please come talk me down off the roof of my building before I drop this pile-of-horse$#!- Windows 2000 box 18 stories to its much-needed death. Thank you. Update: damn, stupid, freaking, driver conflicts….*#&%$ *@*&%! [Camworld]
A nice review, Mr. Lettice. This makes me want to really dig deeper into this whole Linux, Apache, PHP, Perl, etc., spectrum. Can a lowly user of Windows make any headway trying to understand this stuff? Can a lowly weblog author transform himself into a webmaster?
Report: Wi-Fi Networks Too Risky. Consumers and businesses lulled by the ease and speed of wireless networks, be warned: The federal government has deemed Wi-Fi LANs not secure enough. Wireless tech providers ask, ’What else is new?’ By Elisa Batista. [Wired News]
”For every 10 blocks in Manhattan, Morse usually detects about 60 wireless access points on his PDA. Between 50 and 60 percent of the networks are not protected by passwords, much less higher-end encryption, he said.”
Dan Gillmor: ”I sense lately that people are beginning to grasp what’s at stake in the larger battle, even though most people don’t know the Eldred case. Your rights, including free speech itself, are fundamentally on the table.” [lawrence’s notebook]
MC Escher in Lego. Lego enthusiasts have implemented three of Escher’s optical illusion paintings (including ”Ascending and Descending,” pictured here), using Lego! LinkDiscuss (via MeFi) [Boing Boing Blog]
So long AL&D, and thanks…. For all kinds of reasons these past couple of weeks have been [expletive deleted] beyond belief. Even so, I could never have predicted this. I owe an enormous debt to Tran Huu Dung and Denis Dutton. Almost every day since 1998, I’ve relied on them to help me stay connected to the best parts of myself.
Later. Happily, it seems not all is lost. [Jonathon Delacour]
when it reopened after September 11, 2001. What we continue to see is the slow process of letting all the air out of a market that had become over-inflated. Just when we see one industry that looks ripe for the picking, we see others that simply cannot recover. From March of 2000 when the markets peaked through all of the negatives to today, we are still dealing with poor business performance and uncertainty.
Two Magazines Are Shut and a Third Revamps. Mutual Funds magazine and Upside magazine announced separately Monday that they were shutting down. And Red Herring announced that it was selling itself to a majority investor. By David Carr and Nat Ives. [New York Times: Technology]
This slide is likely to progress through the first six months of 2003. Should interest rates suddenly get some upward pressure, we could see another year or two of doldrums. The telecom depression won’t start a recovery until the rest of the economy perks up.
Applescript or Unix script…I believe there is some kinship between those tools and some of the ”other scripting languages.” I’m not sure what makes a language a scripting language. I can list some things that I think are scripting languages – PHP, Perl, Python. Are there others? I’m reasonably confident when I select a hammer from the tool box instead of screwdriver. The task before me is understood well enough to make the right selection. Programming languages might as well be Aramaic, ancient Greek and Sanscrit. What tips you off as to which tool to reach for?
Java, C#, Python, and Ruby. I try to avoid religious wars of all kinds, especially those that revolve around programming languages. But I can’t resist agreeing with Sam Ruby’s vote of confidence in favor of the modern scripting languages: ... [Jon’s Radio]
Dan points to customer service problems from time to time. Whether web-based or face-to-face, some forms of customer service are becoming more predictably unreliable. Fast food is one that has reached, after a 15 year decline, new lows. Could this turn around? Must fast food be a place where only the desensitized eat? It’s not so much a need for healthier menu selections or a cleaner restaurant – those are the basic table stakes to be in the game. These chains need to reassess what the term ”fast food” really means. What does one expect when they drive thru or walk up to the counter?
Mark Pilgrim. I see Mark Pilgrim wrote about our hour-plus phone conversation last week, so I’ll let you read his version. I’ll just add that Mark has the makings of a good conference speaker as well as a writer and developer – sign him up while he’s still available. [Paul Boutin]
Windows to Byzantium. There are not many stories that combine the Yankees, Babies Hospital, gardens, Yeats, Hello Kitty, and death. Tobias Seamon has one, and names the names. [The Morning News – Features]
and he or she will come away just as frustrated as I am because of messy details like DNS servers, pathing to proper files or trying to make some HTML code or tag behave as you want it to. And we wonder why we’re having a technology depression?
News.Com: ”Content Management Server 2002 will retail for $42,000 per processor.” [Scripting News]
Jonathon’s fighting the really technical stuff. I’m simply trying to understand the terminology used by web hosts. Can one host multiple domains on a single web hosting account? Must one have a separate account for each domain? Can something called a subdomain be used to create an ”illusion” of multiple domains when there’s only one account?
What screen do I go to? What do I type?
Disillusionment. Today is Labor Day in Australia, a public holiday, so we’ve had a long weekend, which I’ve spent almost entirely in CSS Hell. A client asked me if it would be possible to create a CSS-only design for a commercial site, based on a layout created in Photoshop. ”Sure,” I… [Jonathon Delacour]
I’ve had a new HP notebook (Pavilion zt1290) since late in July. It requires between 8 and 10 restarts to start it. HP has been on the phone with me twice. During one call the machine was taken almost completely apart. Three BIOS updates, reformatted drive twice – you know the drill(s).
With the machine off, you press the power button. During start up the machine locks – tight! You must power it off. The next time it starts, it gets a bit further in the process, but locks again. This continues for between 8 and 10 starts followed by power off before I can get to a stable Windows desktop. Solution? Leave it on. However, that defeats the purpose of buying a notebook, doesn’t it?
HP’s new notebook: How low can it go?. Hewlett-Packard will unfurl a new Athlon-based notebook for small businesses on Monday, including one model that will retail for $899—its cheapest to date. [CNET News.com]
THE UNECONOMIC BLOGOSPHERE: This little piece struck me as extremely persuasive – in fact, so persuasive I wish I hadn’t read it. It’s about how the Internet, for all its joys, has yet to show how it can possibly make money:
This destruction of value is what makes weblogs so important. We want a world where global publishing is effortless. We want a world where you don’t have to ask for help or permission to write out loud. However, when we get that world we face the paradox of oxygen and gold. Oxygen is more vital to human life than gold, but because air is abundant, oxygen is free. Weblogs make writing as abundant as air, with the same effect on price. Prior to the web, people paid for most of the words they read. Now, for a large and growing number of us, most of the words we read cost us nothing.
”YEMEN, A PROBLEM THAT NEEDS TO BE SORTED OUT” A bit of understatement
A FRENCH TANKER was attacked off Yemen, today, in U.S.S. Cole fashion. Yemen is a problem that needs to be sorted out.
UPDATE: This BBC story says that Yemen denies that it was an act of sabotage, though the French say it was a boat full of explosives. I think Yemen doesn’t want to be viewed as a problem in need of sorting out. Too bad, guys. Nothing you guys couldn’t sort out yourselves, of course. . . . [InstaPundit]
as I’ve gone about errands today, it occurs to me that HostingMatters offers an affiliate program. Thus far, I haven’t found such a thing at Prohosters. Surely, there is some material difference that I’m overlooking. On the surface of it all, HostingMatters appears to be a web host with a particular skill and focus on somerather high-traffic weblogs. There’s a lot to be said for that. Add the opportunity to steer someone that direction for dough and the choice gets more enticing. ...but the pain of it all UPDATE – ERROR: A more careful reading of the HostingMatters web site tells me they have a ”reseller” program, but not an affiliate program. Apologies to all those who went there with their hopes up!
LSU Supercomputer Is Super Cheap. Built at a fraction of the usual price, Louisiana State University’s new supercomputer is one of the world’s largest. Officials hope the new machine will stimulate ongoing research, attract top faculty and boost economic development in the Bayou State. By Katie Dean. [Wired News]
This is what I miss when I don’t update my weblog for an afternoon. Thanks to Joe for pointing this out and Meryl for finding it at Lockergnome. Alison left me a comment about Style-O-Matic. These appear to be useful for those who want to have the answers in the back of the book. You’re trying to learn HTML or CSS. You think you’ve done it correctly. These tools help you know for certain.
BECAUSE OF STEVEN VORE’S PROBLEM AND THE RESPONSE TO IT I wonder which host Steven selected?
and because I’ve got a copy of an email from Prohosters that incorrectly tells me what my host server path should be for my weblog, I’m considering switching hosts. There is a side of me that believes The Outage was ultimately caused by that email. Believe me, I dread switching again! However, life is just too short to do business with people that take customers for granted or become opening confrontational over mere inquiries. Hiding behind lawyers, threatening lawsuits and generally being contentious isn’t my idea of a worthy supplier.
We live in a time when alternatives are plentiful – for anything and everything. Again, I worry about the delays, confusion and drudgery that will be required to make a switch, but I certainly would like to align with someone I could stick with for the next few years.
STILL ON BLOGSPOT? Consider moving here instead. I can’t vouch for this particular service because I don’t use it. But it’s provided by the folks at HostingMatters, and I’ve been very happy with them. [InstaPundit]
Now for the round of research. How many domains can be hosted under a single hosting plan at HostingMatters or Bloggerzone? How much space? How much download traffic per month? How many email accounts? How will an existing email account be handled in a move?
I’ve been working since 4:30AM. Email finally flushed through (after UUNET cleared its constipation), so I’ve been catching up on that. I’m about to leave for the first half of the day. Instead of working here, I’m going to do some volunteer work down at The Memphis Leadership Foundation, and then spend some time this afternoon learning more about web design and weblogs.
The morning has already been frustrating. Since 1997 we’ve attempted to work off-and-on with a company that makes its I.T. decisions using a seat-of-the-pants approach. They were scheduled to show up here later this month for a detailed presentation for 2 days on how they could (finally) upgrade software that has now been through 12 new versions since they began using it in the mid 1980’s. Today’s product doesn’t even resemble their original software.
However, a manager, upon receiving the agenda, shot from the hip and suggested that the agenda wouldn’t provide them with what they needed. This was precisely the agenda that their I.T. people had requested. They haven’t communicated internally and are faced with having to start all over with a different software supplier. I simply cannot take the risk with our company when I know that this manager makes decisions without facts. Five years of chit-chat and discussion is long enough. They either need to paint or get off the ladder.
Either way, we won’t be the ones holding the brush or steadying the ladder!
MAC ATTACK: Maybe it was the dank air in Provincetown that did it in; or my ceaseless use of iTunes. But it’s a little embarrassing for Apple to have such a high-profile ”switch” ad campaign going on and have one of their most enthusiastic switchers see his computer collapse from mechanical problems within a few months. [Andrew Sullivan]
I’d love to see the UNIX/Linux world gain some serious traction beyond the servers. Apple and Sun are two companies that have the potential to foster that in a big way. Clearly, Intel’s bread is buttered with the Microsoft dollars, but should Sun or Apple ever see a way to bring their ”better” idea to the Intel platform… Well, you get the idea. This switch thing is lacking in two important ways. First, the software licensing as you bail out of Windows to OS X is hefty. Second, Apple must shed some of its image as solely for the digital prepress niche having spent years building that image.
Ted Turner alone wouldn’t make this a cause to support. However, Sam Nunn has studied and sought support for the efforts to curb biological terrorism for many years. He’s remained true to the vision he spelled out when he retired from the Senate.
”You don’t want an Einstein or a Russian biological warrior to be starving,” Mr. Buffett said…”
This sounds like a real organization doing real work on a very specific set of high-risk problems. Let’s hope Buffett’s donation and advisory role entices others to participate and help.
E-Mail Hits Snail-Mail Pace. Uh-oh, there’s trouble at UUNet, the super-network that handles about half of all Internet traffic in the world. If your e-mail is slow on Thursday, that’s why. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News]
A GOOD ARTICLE FOR THOSE STILL LEARNING Nevermind the (harsh) criticism of Microsoft
Zeldman talks about Microsoft.com’s redesign. What a lame Web team they have working over at Microsoft. What, you guys still using FrontPage? Geesh. Don’t you care about standards? Don’t you care about delivering the best possible experience for IE6 users? Don’t you care about accessibility? I guess not. You know, tons of Web designers are out of work. Why doesn’t Microsoft fire this team and get someone who understands the Web of 2002? [The Scobleizer Weblog]
Today’s culture and today’s job market create the illusion that everyone is on the fast track. Everyone is Stanford educated or Harvard educated or whatever. Everyone is not! People in today’s world fabricate, embellish, inflate – people lie. Employers often do such a poor job of checking backgrounds that these lies are allowed to linger.
Don’t cave into the temptation to ”market yourself” by using fiction. Your background is solid. Your skills are needed. Your experience is unique and there’s an employer out there who needs you. Don’t damage that!
DAWN OLSEN HAS LEFT THE BLOGSPOT and moved to a slick new Sekimori-designed site that’s now here. A problem with Blogger was the immediate cause of the move: ”I am shocked at how dependent I have become on the technical tools that I take for granted. Without them I feel helpless. I feel the walls closing in on me.”
Look, I am incredibly grateful for what Pyra, Blogger, and Blogspot have done for the blogosphere. But now I cringe whenever I see a blogspot link—or even the telltale URL that tells me the site is blogger powered. Because I know that the link may not work, or that if it works now it probably will stop working later.
Really: if you can afford to move, do. You’ll be doing yourself, and the rest of us, a favor. These folks have done it, too. UPDATE: Misha has made the move too! [InstaPundit]
THERE’S A HINT HERE ABOUT THINGS TO COME You’ll never guess – don’t try!
Yacht’s Up: Wireless on High Seas. Using the newest of technologies has always been part of the challenge for those competing for sport’s oldest trophy in the America’s Cup. Kim Griggs reports from Auckland, New Zealand. [Wired News]
Category fiddling. I showed Loren a trick the other day that I might as well share with the group. Even if, as he says, an MT plugin is probably a better way to do it. Problem: Loren has several different poets he wants to write about and maintain category pages for. How… [Caveat Lector]
THESE TWO ARE UNBELIEVABLE Comments like this one fry me
KEEPING THEIR ANTICS IN THE NEWS, Reps. Jim McDermott and David Bonior are now defending their behavior in a press conference.
This’ll keep it alive for a second weekend of Sunday political talk shows. How many of those are there left between now and the elections? Democratic leaders ought to be fuming over this.
UPDATE: And here’s someone who says their ”Vietnam-era veteran” claim is, well, a dodge. There’s also a link to a transcript of their This Week appearance. [InstaPundit]
Company logo needed... Check out the design of this site, with the big blue moon in the upper left corner. (People reading via RSS: click here.) Now check out ranchero.com. The graphic in the upper-left corner there is just a place-holder. I need a company logo graphic to go in that space, something that looks at least as cool as the blue moon on inessential.com.
If youre a graphics guy, and would like to take up this challenge, I can offer no money… inessential.com]
Now that I’m watching for tools, technologies & resources, they seem plentiful. Last night Steven mentioned Perl as a backend tool for database work. I’ve got to figure out whether Perl and PHP offer similar capabilities and overlap or whether they are completely different technologies for different needs.
Then, this morning, Scott points to a PHP conference. He also suggests some IDE’s (integrated development environments) for PHP. Then there’s more about Perl.
ever since I mentioned that the 7-year old and the 9-year old hadn’t weighed in. I found readers in comments. I found readers in email. I found readers posting on their own sites. There’s a body of information beginning to take shape here. I’ll try to get it organized and presentable in the next couple of days. Or, if you’re in a hurry, take a look at what Alwin suggested.
Two Simple CSS Tutorials. Web Page Design for Designers has a feature that gives a simple overview of CSS for those who are still trying to figure it out. It explains positioning, one of the… [meryl’s notes]
FIVE MILLION LINES OF CODE IN FIVE YEARS That’s 4000 lines of code every business day!
Five years ago today was my first day working on Groove – an incredible journey, and yet it’s only just begun. In 1996, I had begun to feel some frustration within the Notes customer base as they were trying to push it in ways that it hadn’t been designed for – particularly outside the enterprise – and as its eMail component began to dominate the usage model. Upon further analysis, this relentless drive toward eMail caused me to question the fundamentals of centralized, application server-based architectures as the basis for effective dynamic collaboration.
I’d been working on Notes at that time for thirteen years, and in that it was my first day after leaving Iris/Lotus/IBM, October 1st of 1997 was quite exhilarating and more than a bit scary: I was returning to zero. My mind was abuzz: the first order of business would be to write up a document that described the essence of where my head was at. Over the next two weeks before incorporation, I’d use this rambling ”Market Opportunity” document, along with a companion technical piece, to recruit the core team. We worked out of my attic for the next few months, and then moved to a big space with just some tables and whiteboards, trying to get our minds around ”peer” communications and transaction systems, pouring through Richard Light’s XML book that we found at Borders - trying to figure out if we should bet on this stuff, making early key decisions about C++/COM vs. Java (it was first supposed to have been in Java), and so on. Whatablast...
It’s been fun to revisit the founding documents, if only to put things into perspective. The technology and business environments have gone through extreme highs and lows in the interim, while we’ve sought to stay focused and persevere, believing in that specific business value proposition. And with the help of those who have believed in us, we’ve been afforded the opportunity to touch hundreds of thousands of users with self-empowering desktop collaboration software, and to work very closely with about fifty of our blue-chip global enterprise customers to create real and immediate business value, growing steadily month after month.
What has been accomplished through these five million lines of code in these five short years, and in terms of bootstrapping and building the beginnings of a new geometrically-growing market in 18 months, has been nothing short of breathtaking. (By comparison, Notes was first launched on its fifth anniversary – Dec 7, 1989 – at a half million lines of code.) With deepest sincerity, I salute my co-founders Ken Moore, Eric Patey, and Jack Ozzie, and the hundreds of talented, caring and believing people at Groove Networks. An incredible team, amazing individuals. Happy fifth.
But we’ve surely only just begun. Although centralized contextual collaboration has been yielding value for many years and continues to mature (congrats) and merge into the application server market, dynamic ”desktop collaboration” empirically shows all the signs of a new and substantial growth market, as business units return to basics in terms of understanding how use technology to make their extant interpersonal work practices more productive, and as IT continues to struggle with supporting dynamic interpersonal work in the hostile and unsecure environment that Internet eMail has become.
Here’s to creating real and substantive value through technology, and here’s to the next five, ten, and fifteen years… [Ray Ozzie’s Weblog]
NOW HERE’S A LIST OF TOOLS, TECHNOLOGIES & RESOURCES Congrats to Mark, Well done!
There are four lights. One year ago today, my (now former) manager told me to shut down my weblog and remove all traces of it from my server. (91 words) [dive into mark]
Good CSS Article on Lists. From the normally good folks over at A List Apart comes ”CSS Design: Taming Lists”. While I was groveling through it I ran across their excellent article from 2001 on A Web Designer’s Journey. I say ”Normally Good” since I’m still upset with Zeldman’s 99 % of Sites are Obsolete article but I haven’t blogged my objections yet (it’s coming, it’s coming).[The FuzzyBlog!]
Modesto Bee: Blog Believers. Wow, very nice of the Modesto Bee to run a story about Webloggers in Modesto without even mentioning a Modesto-based blog. [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
A few emails and comments later and I see that the problem of outfitting a web developer’s toolbox is tough! I’ve had one person say that all they need is XHTML, PHP and MySQL. Those technologies are bound to be of use them because of some set of specific tools. For example, another person has said Notepad, Photoshop and webmonkey are all the tools and resources she needs. Another person has indicated that NoteTab Pro is the lone tool in the box.
Lend a hand. Steve thinks his loyal readers are snubbin’ him, not this kid! Problem is I’m just not a web guy. I can make my site limp along but I don’t know how to create a real web presence. I know some guys that do however, try this feller. I think the answer you seek is all the above, and a WHOLE LOT MORE! Read. [Rob Fahrni, at the core.]
UPDATE: Here’s what it appears to be boiling down to: A serious web site/weblog developer probably ought to know HTML, PHP, MySQL, CGI, JavaScript and Perl. Those are basically what I’ll call ”technologies.” A good web designer knows HTML, CSS and Photoshop. That’s 2 technologies and one tool.
Then, there is the issue of ”tools.” What tools does one use to implement those technologies? Some use Notepad. Others have other tools, but they still focus those tools on the production of the technologies mentioned.
The other piece of all this that has come to light is the need for what I’ll label ”resources.” These are the books and web sites that can teach you the technologies. I’m not quite to the point of having assembled a do-it-yourself curriculum for the (extreme) novice, but I might be getting closer. Stay tuned for a more useful ”presentation” of all this in coming days (hours?).
IF ONLY THE MEANING OF THE WORD ”TREASON” WERE MORE EXPANSIVE Like we’ve done with ’harrassment’ or ’discrimination’ or ’right-&-wrong’
JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT THE BONIOR/MCDERMOTT STORY was going to be eclipsed by the shenanigans in New Jersey, George Will hits them again:
Hitler found ”Lord Haw Haw”—William Joyce, who broadcast German propaganda to Britain during the Second World War—in the dregs of British extremism. But Saddam Hussein finds American collaborators among senior congressional Democrats.
Not since Jane Fonda posed for photographers at a Hanoi antiaircraft gun has there been anything like Rep. Jim McDermott, speaking to ABC’s ”This Week” from Baghdad, saying Americans should take Saddam Hussein at his word but should not take President Bush at his. . . .
Bonior, until recently second-ranking in the House Democratic leadership, said sources no less reliable than Hussein’s minions told them that inspectors would have an ”unrestricted ability to go where they want.” McDermott said: ”I think you have to take the Iraqis on their value—at their face value.” And: ”I think the president would mislead the American people.”
McDermott and Bonior are two specimens of what Lenin, referring to Westerners who denied the existence of Lenin’s police-state terror, called ”useful idiots.”
Yes. And in their idiocy, as useful to the Republican Party as to the Republican Guard.
UPDATE: Michael Crowley thinks the same thing:
You can be sure some Democratic Party leaders were choking on their coffee this morning. At a time when Democrats are trying to raise questions about a war with Iraq without appearing unpatriotic or pacifistic, ABC’s ”This Week” featured an interview with two liberal congressmen who probably convinced plenty of viewers they are both. . . .
Both Bonior and McDermott seem genuinely moved by the human toll of economic sanctions against the Iraqi people, and there’s nothing wrong with their efforts to remind us about the real human suffering in that country. But trusting Saddam Hussein to be a nice guy is not the way to end it. And so when the conservative Republican Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma later suggested that Bonior and McDermott had sounded ”somewhat like spokespersons for the Iraqi government,” he wasn’t entirely out of line. And chances are, some surely dismayed senior Democrats would privately agree.
Privately, yes. But I was hoping for a bit more public repudiation from the Democrats. They may just be hoping that this issue will go away, but by not speaking out they’re making it easier—and fairer—for Republicans to paint the entire Party as matching Bonior and McDermott. [InstaPundit]
Yesterday on NPR’s All Things Considered, a report on a college town in the state of Georgia that’s installing WiFi over the whole downtown district. The college is paying for it (only $85K). Of course this is a great idea, it’ll make the college much more attractive and the town more useful. But they totally have the wrong idea about what it will be used for (or ATC asked the wrong people). It will be used for email, instant messaging, reading news, and blogging (and probably porn too). It’s not just about finding out what’s happening in the town or at the college—it’s about what’s happening in the world, and creating stuff that’s part of the world. People still think of the Internet as something like TV, so by extrapolation of course town-level WiFi must be like local TV, but geez folks, get a clue—the Internet is two-way not one-way. [Scripting News]
Samuel Johnson. ”Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.” [Quotes of the Day]
Someone asked, ”what is the thing that you cannot NOT do?” The more I dig into this business of web pages on the World Wide Web, the more interested I become. I think I’m thankful that I wasn’t consumed by the craze and the bubble, although I wish I didn’t feel as though I was getting started 5 laps (read years) behind. I have no clue how to make a living toying with this, but I enjoy learning in this field as much as in any field I’ve seen in quite some time. The lone problem I face is in knowing how to learn! Who are the masters? Where are the best sources of knowledge? What’s the sequence of prerequistes and upper level coursework? Where are the blind alleys and how do I avoid them?
IT’S THE POWER SYNDROME A job for so long without power now has unquestioned authority to intrude
On a Mississippi back road, the most powerful person in the state is the flagman who controls how traffic passes during construction. For too many years, security people were asked to be transparent to the traveling experience. Now, not only are they asked to be visible, human nature has them exerting their power over busy travelers.
Our wise leaders might dump those ”random” security checks at airport gates. I don’t know if random checks could do any good, but they might be a little more useful if they were actually ”random.” They’re not, and everybody knows they’re not. If you’re first to the gate, you get a bonus search. This is how it worked at the beginning of the year, and this is how it works today. Why bother? I think the airline employees just enjoy hassling the eager beavers who rush the gate. [Ken Layne]
when I asked, ”what are the basic tools in the toolbox of a web developer?” I had hoped to use the list of recommended tools as a way to form a syllabus for study. If anyone cares to take a shot at some suggestions…
UPDATE: Good news! I wasn’t snubbed by both - the 7-year old next door was out of town and the 9-year old down the street didn’t log on this weekend!
THIS ONE WON’T GET EASIER Both sides have dug in deeply
Dan Gillmor responds to Jack Valenti. Dan Gillmor interviewed Jack Valenti last week in his column and did the impartial thing, representing Valenti’s beliefs as fairly as possible. This week, Dan takes Valenti’s arguments apart, looking at what Hollywood’s agenda really entails:
So the movie and music companies are going back to Congress for another helping. They are asking for laws that would force technology innovators to restrict the capabilities of devices—cripple PCs and other machines that communicate so they can’t make copies the copyright holders don’t explicitly allow. Amazingly, the entertainment industry also wants permission to hack into networks and machines they believe are being used to violate copyrights.
Here is what it all means. To protect a business model and thwart even the possibility of infringement, the cartel wants technology companies to ask permission before they can innovate. The media giants want to keep information flow centralized, to control the new medium as if it’s nothing but a jazzed-up television. Instead of accepting, as they do today, that a certain amount of penny-ante infringement will occur and then going after the major-league pirates, they call every act of infringement—and some things that aren’t infringement at all—an act of piracy or stealing. Saying it doesn’t make it so. [Boing Boing Blog]
Sprint PCS names new president. Charles Levine steps down a week after news that the cell phone provider’s subscriber numbers dropped. Len J. Lauer is replacing him. [CNET News.com]
SERENDIPITOUS CONVERGENCE First the articles, then the bookstore, now this entry all in one day
Before I left home this morning, I stumbled into two articles. The first is an interview with Kevin Yank of Sitepoint.com. The second is an article by Kevin about PHP and MySQL. I had just recently had a conversation with someone who told me that web pages ending in PHP instead of HTML reflect a level of flexibility for future needs that HTML alone might not provide.
So, I wound up at the bookstore. As I pulled into the parking lot, I realized that what I really want to understand is something Kevin mentions in the interview. ”Asking a developer whether he tends towards one language is like asking a carpenter whether he tends toward one of his tools.” Bing. That’s it!What I want to know is what the well-equipped web developer carries in the toolbox. There’s editing and scripting and server-side includes and a whole host of other terminology. But, if you were to be sent to the proverbial isle with a laptop that contained the tools you needed to develop web sites that are in demand today, what tools would be on it? For the sake of this drill, let’s forget about battery power – call it infinite. Let’s forget about bandwidth – call it plentiful. Forget about the host – you’ve got one and it’s properly equipped. The only other condition is you have to pack before you leave – no downloads, no credit card purchases once you are there - just what made it into the toolbox before you left!
Tell me this – which tools would be essential to you? Surely, some of those below would go in the toolkit, but what else? Which of these would you throw away? Remember, you’re trying to help a novice know where to start on the long, long learning curve! What’s essential to becoming a good, mainstream web developer and what’s not likely to get used?
PHP
Java
Javascript
.NET
CGI
HTML
XML
DHTML
XHTML
Perl
Python
J2EE
MySQL
a browser
a text editor
a wysiwyg editor
a photo editor
key websites you’d use? books? articles?
Maybe Jonathon can help!
A beginners guide to Movable Type, MySQL, and PHP. Over the next few weeks I’ll be moving my Movable Type weblog from an Australian Web hosting service in Australia to one in the USA. My esteemed compatriot, Allan Moult, and I intend to document the process as thoroughly as we can. I’ll be writing from the perspective of a… [Jonathon Delacour]
AIRBRUSH AWARD: Snopes reports that the photo of President Bush holding an upside-down book, featured on many lefty blogs, is a fake. (Via Henry Hanks). [InstaPundit]
LONG-RANGE IS ABOUT 12 MILES Long haul packets will still travel over these kinds of networks
Proxim to sell long-range Wi-Fi gear: The article doesn’t nail down exactly what the crux is, but Proxim appears to be entering the long-range wISP market for fixed point-to-point wireless with a line of equipment that will cost $2,000 to $6,000 per installation. It’s unclear how many customers you hang off that and what the customer-premises equipment will cost. [80211b News]
today and I purchased SpamAssassin Pro after a 14-day trial. I’ve learned a lot about spam just by using the product. There’s only one additional feature I wish for. Now that I’ve spent all this time ”training” SpamAssassin, I want to upload my ”blacklist” to them and have them curtail spam at the ISP. As a matter of fact, I’m willing to combine my blacklist with 1000 others and let all of that mail get stopped at the ISP as well.
Webref Spam Solutions. Spam Solutions II on WebReference Update provides resources and suggestions for getting spam under control. Yes, there have been many articles written on spam. This isn’t a long article and… [meryl’s notes]
CAN SADDAM JAM J-DAMS? Joe Katzman is onto a disturbing possibility. Can GPS encryption solve this problem? UPDATE: According to this probably-reliable account, if GPS is jammed it just reduces the accuracy somewhat. (Thanks to Jay Manifold for emailing the link.) [InstaPundit]
I’ve read with interest the discussions about various RSS feeds – 0.91, 1.0, 2.0, etc. A couple of times, I’ve found myself wondering if all the time and talent isn’t being wasted on the feed when the aggregators could use some help.
When my Radio news aggregator refreshes every hour, I go through it making a first cut. All of the entries show up with check marks by them. I uncheck the stories I may keep and delete the rest. When I’m through with this step, I’m left with a list of possible posts in the news aggregator that made the first cut.
I then glance at this remaining list and determine what I might want to post or editorialize. Mentally, I come up with a sequence for the posts and by pressing ”POST” the story is moved to Radio’s text entry box where I can add a heading or title, and add, change and delete text. I then publish the finished entry.
The beauty of this approach is two-fold as I see it. First, I can publish things with not much more than a mouse-click or two. Second, when the story moves to the text entry box, it carries with it two very important attributes. One, all of the links are preserved (because of WYSIWYG, I think), and, two, a final attribution showing the site where the original entry came from is appended to the entry.
Until third-party news aggregators provide this functionality, complete with the preservation of the links, making entries to weblogs will require multiple windows and manual restoration of the links that are part of the entry. There’s more to Radio’s news aggregator than meets the eye!
To my knowlege nothing of this sort exists for Blogger, Movable Type or any of the other weblog tools. If I’m wrong, someone correct me.
Mark Pilgrim is developing a RSS 2.0 template for Movable Type, documenting his design decisions as he goes. Nice work. His guid element is not a permalink, which is totally valid, and his is the first feed to do that as far as I know. [Scripting News]
Process on a Shoestrong. The Process Group October Newsletter covers shoestring process improvement and practical project and process documentation. Process improvement is one of the first to go when making cuts. If it’s cut,... [meryl’s notes]
Rome, AD … Rome, DC: ”They came, they saw, they conquered, and now the Americans dominate the world like no nation before. But is the US really the Roman empire of the 21st century? And if so, is it on the rise – or heading for a fall? Jonathan Freedland sifts the evidence.” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
from a ”whatever operating system you prefer” to a ”Linux appliance on your network” strategy. We sell business management software to the SMB (small & medium business) market. Typically, we focus on companies that distribute hard goods, have inventories and sell products that have an after-the-sale warranty and service obligation. Too often, we’ve made a sale and launched an implementation project only to discover some old, tired Windows 98 machines with too little memory and a NOS (network operating system) that is missing patches & updates or is simply too old. Red Hat, IBM, Sun and even Toshiba may be taking us into the era of the Linux appliance dropped neatly into a Windows network.
to deal with the energy needs of this nation. I hate the word ”paradigm.” If ever there was a time for our ”energy paradigm” to change, it’s now. Years ago Nicholas Negroponte opined that ”everything wireless would become wired and everything wired would become wireless.” He was right. It seems to me that something similar could happen in the energy world. Everything that runs on oil and gasoline might run on electricity and things that run on electricity might run on oil or gasoline or fuel cells or some alternative. What are we doing to pursue a better way?
Go Ahead. Enjoy Yourself.. There are thousands of reasons Stephen Green has built up the huge readership enjoyed by his blog, VodkaPundit. Here is… [Dailypundit]
NO QUESTION ABOUT THIS Google is a powerhouse with huge potential
Google News Could Change Online News Industry: ”With the new Google News, I think I’ve seen the best implementation of the global newsstand to date. The service calculates what are the most significant stories being published at any given time, and ranks them according to time published, number of links to the story, and credibility of the publishing organization. It then presents them in a way that highlights news by its importance. The Google News main page is a sort of ’front page’ of a global online ’newspaper’ (or a more accurate analogy might be ’wire service’), with stories placed in categories including top stories, U.S. news, world news, sports, business, science-tech, health, and entertainment.” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
”The shooting was the latest in a string of violent attacks against Christians and Westerners, who have been increasingly targeted since Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s decision to crack down on Islamic extremist groups and join the U.S. war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in neighboring Afghanistan.” Seven Christians shot dead in Pakistan [USA Today : Front Page]
MICHAEL KELLY SAYS THAT AL GORE IS UNFIT FOR PUBLIC OFFICE: Gore’s speech was one no decent politician could have delivered. It was dishonest, cheap, low. It was hollow. It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of constructive ideas, very nearly of facts—bereft of anything other than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious lies. It was breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault delivered in tones of moral condescension from a man pretending to be superior to mere politics. It was wretched. It was vile. It was contemptible. But I understate.
Joe Lieberman is more polite, but he’s down on Gore, too, as is Ed Rendell, who’s running in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania. Gore may remember another Tennessean, Frank Clement, who gave a speech that didn’t help his national prospects. How long, oh Lord, how long, has Gore been hitting the wrong note? As someone who was once a big Gore fan (I worked quite hard in his 1988 campaign), I’m just disappointed. [InstaPundit]
Suggestion to homeowners – never get your house painted. For if you do, you will find that first some minor repairs need to be made. The carpenters, upon performing these repairs, will remove some siding and call you over to look inside your walls. You will realize that, for some extended period of time, water’s been leaking through the tiles in the shower. And the need for even more extensive and expensive repairs will become evident.
Save yourself the trouble. Don’t paint the house. Just wait for it to fall down around you. [Steven’s Weblog]
At better shops that sell men’s suits, you see a similar phenomenon. Under the guise of great customer service, you select a suit and before you know it, that suit is ”laid out” with a matching shirt, tie, belt and pocket handkerchief in the worst example of the ”presumptive sales close” you’ve ever seen.
Lately, a dentist tried a similar tactic with me. ”Don’t you want some whitening with that root canal?” No, and I don’t want to help you make any more boat payments either!
GORE’S INCONSISTENCY: Henry Hanks supplies these two classic Gore quotes:
I want to state this clearly, President Bush should not be blamed for Saddam Hussein’s survival to this point. There was throughout the war a clear consensus that the United States should not include the conquest of Iraq among its objectives. On the contrary, it was universally accepted that our objective was to push Iraq out of Kuwait, and it was further understood that when this was accomplished, combat should stop.
That was 1991. Then there’s this week:
Now, back in 1991, I was one of a handful of Democrats in the United States Senate to vote in favor of the resolution endorsing the Persian Gulf War, and I felt betrayed by the first Bush administration’s hasty departure from the battlefield even as Saddam began to renew his persecution of the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south, groups that we had, after all, encouraged to rise up against Saddam.
More PowerBlog’in. I’ve been messing around a bit more with Jon Davis’ PowerBlog. I’ve decided to use it for one of my sites, so now I have a Blogger site(this one), a Radio powered site(that one over there), and I’m going to create a third for story length posts(it’s over there). [Rob Fahrni, at the core.]
Got a specific domain registrar and/or webhosting company you’d recommend? [Steven’s Weblog]
Take a look at Dotster as a registrar. Take a look at Prohosters, Pair and HostingMatters for your hosting needs. I make nothing if you use any of these links. I’m in no way affiliated with any of these other than as a customer.
TONY BLAIR has released the full dossier on Saddam. Click here for the full text. Say, didn’t they do something pretty much exactly like this shortly before the invasion of Afghanistan? [InstaPundit]
Do I need to understand this? Sometimes I feel as though I’m wandering around amongst those who are making Microsoft Excel’s user features work behind the scenes. All I know is how to add or multiply two cells and get a third. How important is it that I understand what Dave is saying about RSS and RDF and their differences?
I’m drowning in stuff like PHP pages that I would have thought would be HTML pages and text entry boxes that are WYSIWYG vs. Source. So far, I’ve only had to be concerned about how hot the coffee is or is not in the waiting room of the service department at Acura. Am I now going to have to change my own CV joints?
I’ve gotten to know Phil Ringalda over the last few weeks in all the discussions about RSS 2.0, and I like him, and would like to work with him in the future. I don’t say that lightly. This evening he posted a note on his weblog that he was giving up trying to get RDF to make sense inside RSS. As I read his essay I could feel two-plus years of exhaustion overwhelm me. I found myself writing a comment after his essay saying, among other things ”RSS is not a brilliant format. It is a compromise. It is for syndicating news feeds. That’s all it is for, for the 18,000th time.” It’s time for RDF to pack its bags and leave. RSS deserves some dignity, as does RDF. Emphatically, once and for all, they are not the same thing. Peace be with you RDF. Leave RSS alone. Thank you. [Scripting News]
COALITION CANT: In the text of the speech, I am unable to find any constructive suggestion made by Gore as to how to tackle Saddam’s threats. Perhaps his lamest line was accusing the administration of dividing the country by hewing to a foreign policy of the ”far right.”
DESTRUCTIVE ENGAGEMENT: But, as befitting a man whose administration slept while al Qaeda’s threat grew, Gore seems more concerned with what Germany and France think than with any threat to this country or elsewhere from Saddam’s potential nukes and poison gas. [Andrew Sullivan]
HOW CLOSE COULD BEOWOLF COME TO THIS? With this many processors, any Linux cluster would be fast
Lab to sample Linux for weapons work. Los Alamos National Laboratory is buying a $6 million, 2,048-processor Linux supercomputer to see how well nuclear weapons simulation software will work on simpler computers. [CNET News.com]
”If you can imagine yourself not doing what youre doing, do something else. Do whatever it is that you cant not do.”That was a Wonderful Remark. Trawling through Mark Pilgrim’s posts on RSS, I stumbled on a paragraph that made me pause, consider, and realize that at last I’ve returned to what Don Juan called ”the path with heart.” [Jonathon Delacour]
Unmirror Project. Picture Yourself is a project that has received The Mirror Project’s stamp of approval. It’s similar only in that the pictures are not reflections. Instead, they’re pictures we take of ourselves… [meryl’s notes]
HP revamps business printers. The company announces several additions to its business printer lineup, including a new color laser printer priced under $1,000. [CNET News.com]
Kodak EasyShare LS443. Photokina 2002: Kodak has announced the four megapixel tree times optical zoom EasyShare LS443. The LS443 features a new ’Variogon lens’ from German lens maker Schneider-Kreuznach. The camera also features a… [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]
This article describes the impact of property use on surrounding property owners – an outside battle. However, many of the protestant churches in this country continue to go through battles on the inside. These battles are known as the ”worship wars.” They typically stem from the debates about how many services to hold, whether those services should be traditional or contemporary, and what exactly is meant by contemporary!
Similar in nature to the 20-year old feud involving the moderates (i.e. liberals) vs. the conservatives, it seems Christians continue to find ways to undermine their own message and mission by fighting amongst themselves. If ever something could win the title of ”Ultimate Rat Race,” these disputes are among the front runners. Our churches are fostering today’s pop culture under the guise of inclusiveness!
MORE UGLY TELECOM NEWS, BUT ANOTHER $2.2 BILLION PHONE DIRECTORY SALE
In the Internet era, it continues to amaze me that the old phone directory business commands such a (seeming) premium.
Sprint loses wireless customers. The telephone company has cut off subscribers who failed to pay their bills, but its long-distance business picked up customers from ailing rivals. [CNET News.com]
and influence to form a serious apolitical initiative with the goal to make the USA completely energy self-sufficient. This shouldn’t be about reducing oil imports from a particular nation or launching a tree-hugging conservation plan. We should identify every area in which some foreign resource is required to provide some form of energy that we require here. From Duracell batteries to gas for lawnmowers, we need a comprehensive strategy that provides a declaration of energy independence by 2006.
Fuel cells by 2004. Good write-up of MTI Micro Fuel Cells, a tech start-up that is promising to ship a commercial fuel cell for personal electronics by 2004. I so want this technology—laptops that run for days, PDAs that run for months. LinkDiscuss (Thanks, Pat!) [Boing Boing Blog]
that I can get RSS feeds from a company’s stock page at Yahoo? This gets interesting in a hurry for those who track specific businesses.
Yahoo Finance RSS feeds. A couple of months ago, I encouraged Jeremy Zawodny to check out the blog scene. I knew he’d flourish in the environment, and guessed it might have some interesting effects on Yahoo!Finance where Jeremy works. Sure enough, check out this wonderful hack: ... [Jon’s Radio]
”MIT WANTS TO START NOTHING SHORT OF A GLOBAL REVOLUTION IN EDUCATION”
Learn for free online. Over the next 10 years, MIT will move all its existing coursework on to the internet with a project called OpenCourseWare (OCW). ”There is no revenue objective for OCW, ever. It will always be free,” insisted Ms Margulies. [BBC] [Loebrich.org]
move toward weblogs? Is it reasonable to think that one could make a living providing assistance to those papers that wanted to establish weblogs for an entire staff and in some cases provide a multi-author weblog for certain features? What do you suppose the credentials for such an expert need to look like?
ALEX BEAM NOTWITHSTANDING, rumor has it that the Boston Globe is interested in weblogs and is planning a weblog-related initiative for its Boston.com site. I hope it’s true.
UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis emails with this link, which leads to more info. Cool. [InstaPundit]
Qwest expects to restate $950 million. The local telephone company, already facing federal probes of its accounting practices, says it expects to restate $950 million in revenues and costs for optical-network capacity sales. [CNET News.com]
WORLD MAGAZINE MENTIONS THE $5000 TO $6000 PER DAY
in consulting fees paid to “teach” diversity. Clearly, they are not teaching diversity. They are undermining the Founders’ viewpoints. I read the article twice before bedtime last night, then awoke to this post:
Freedom on Campus Narrowly Defined. WORLD magazine’s cover story last week was “BMOC: Big mandate on campus: College ‘diversity’ activists grab freshmen at orientation-and won’t let go until everyone holds the same view.” (free registration required)Here are some provocative quotes from the article:”[L]eft-liberal ‘diversity’ trainers have found in orientation programs a ready-made crop of captive and impressionable audiences ripe for reeducation on issues of sex, race, and gender. The basic messages: People of color are victims; whites are their tormentors. Homosexuality is normal; abhorring the behavior is bigotry.”“Alan Charles Kors, a University of Pennsylvania history professor and co-author of The Shadow University, calls orientation programs like Amherst’s ‘Thought Reform 101.’”The final paragraph summarizes how un-free some institutions of higher learning have become:... [Professor] Kors believes such force-fed “tolerance” smacks of creeping totalitarianism. While Americans need frank and open debate on matters such as race and ethnicity, he said, “these are not issues for indoctrination. Indeed, they do not even reflect everyone’s chosen intellectual or moral agenda, and free individuals choose such agendas for themselves.” [kuro5hin.org]
It is clear to me that there is a vast difference in the consulting business that “teaches” diversity and the intent of the inscription at Ellis Island. “Bring me your college-age children and we’ll brainwash them for you.”
Norman Vincent Peale. ”Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture…Do not build up obstacles in your imagination.” [Motivational Quotes of the Day]
Weight Watchers and The Atkins Diet. The debate over how to lose weight has intensified recently. The official position of the US government for the last 30 years has been that a low calorie diet, heavy in carbohydrates and low in fat, is the healthiest diet. However, during that time many people have lost weight with the opposite diet, low in carbohydrates and high in fat. A July cover story in the New York Times Magazine, titled ”What If It’s All Been a Big Lie?,” followed by a September cover story in Time, titled ”What Really Makes You Fat?”, both discussed the fact that the low calorie diets don’t have any more scientific evidence going for them than the low carbohydrate ones, and that low carbohydrate diets may be reasonable and safe for many people. We’ll compare one low calorie diet, Weight Watchers, with one low carbohydrate diet, the Atkins Diet. [kuro5hin.org]
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has become one of Amazon.Com’s top 500 reviewers, writing 86 reviews in two years. ”Speaker Gingrich is an avid reader,” his reviewer bio states. ”He does not review all of the books he reads. You will not find any bad reviews here, just the books he thinks you might enjoy.” [Workbench]
PEOPLE IN NEED OF A CLUE: This bus driver felt threatened and responded, well, inappropriately:
A Prince George’s County school bus driver who ”felt threatened” by a disabled mother and her 8-pound puppy left a busload of special-needs children at a police station twice last week while he sought a restraining order against the woman.
Bus driver Lawrence Ware complained that Linda Stiggers Yancy of Riverdale Park stepped onto the special-needs bus to inquire about an incident in which her 14-year-old son, Gregory, had been bullied by another student on the bus.
Mrs. Yancy, who has spinal problems and walks with the assistance of a cane, was holding her papillon puppy, Joey, in her arms.
The bus driver’s explanation: ”I felt threatened.”
That has the ring of one of those P.C. excuses: ”I felt uncomfortable,” or ”I felt diminished and unappreciated,” etc., etc. It’s enough to make me wish for a return to an era when people were a bit less concerned with how they ”felt.”
Or at least to an era when a man would have been embarrassed to say he felt threatened by a disabled woman with an eight-pound dog. [InstaPundit]
SMART SHOPPERS BE AWARE There are things you can do to retake control!
As of about 9pm last night Angie and I our now the owners of a new Hyundai Elantra GLS and a car payment. We got an excellent deal, that was part my negotiating and part luck. Before we went, we purchased a Consumer Reports New Car Price Survey. It gave us accurate numbers to negotiate from and was definitely worth the $25 we spent on it. I negotiated more than 25% off the sticker price of the car, actually getting the price lower than what the dealer showed me was his invoice. I don’t for a moment believe that he lost money on the car, or even made no profit. I’m not stupid. As Angie flatly told the sales manager, ”How do we know you didn’t just go over there and make that up? That’s what Dane would do?” It was shortly after this comment that he came back with the price we wanted.
As far as luck goes, it always helps if the car you negotiating over has some reasonably major ”defect” that you really can live with, but you for the sake of argument don’t want. The only silver 2002 Elantra on the lot had a spoiler. Angie’s had a Hyundai Scoup with a spoiler for the last 6 years and let me tell you, the only thing it added to our driving experience was more weight in the back. So I balked, over and over and over again about that spoiler. When our negotiating got stuck, and the sales manager wouldn’t budge, I just pointed out the spoiler and said I’d walk. He said stay, and wrote a new offer exactly like what I wanted.
Our other bit of luck had to do with timing. We went in on the 20th of the month, because we figured it was close enough to the end of the month that the salespeople would be hungry, and we lucked out and went on one of the hottest days this year. We were the only ones on the lot kicking the tires, and when we went in to negotiate, we were the only people in the building. It must have been some sort of car sales karma, because as soon as we signed on the dotted line, the lot filled with potential buyers. [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
1844design.com. >> Regardless of what you were feeling before you hit the site, you will feel some of what Dan feels as you explore his inspirations... [Coolstop Daily Pick9/21/02] [jenett.radio]
the more convinced I become that I’m glad we don’t have ”open source buildings.” You know, the kind of building where any architect can make additions and changes. I’m also glad we don’t have ”open source legal documents.” Imagine what your will would look like if any lawyer could add a little or take away something.
All of these add-on’s and plug-ins are fine, but getting support has got to be a bear. MT doesn’t really want to support third-party plug-ins, do they? The plug-in folk can’t be certain that their plug-in isn’t going to ”step on” another plug-in, can they? I love all these features, but who-ya-gonna-call when it breaks?
MORE EVIDENCE OF DROPPED BALLS at the FBI: ”Two weeks before the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks, a desperate FBI agent begged his superiors to…” It’s time to fix these problems. [InstaPundit]
Once you’ve read Breakdown by Bill Gertz or spent some time at his website, you’ll realize that we’re very likely to hear more of these stories. I say we spend enough time on them to understand how they can help us ”fix things” for the future. However, to merely investigate, hold hearings, debate and harangue will be counterproductive and will likely expose us to even greater breakdowns.
Engineers Meet for Mass Mind Meld. Engineers of all stripes convene this week to talk interdisciplinary shop. With all the big science knowledge before them, they’re as giddy as kids set loose in a candy store. By Katie Dean. [Wired News]
EXERCISE IS A PAIN IN THE NECK and the knees, and the shins, and the…
Exercise Won’t Kill You, It’ll Hurt Though. The old saying is that ’exercise never killed anyone’. That alternative – sedantary lifestyles and obesity – probably will. But just because it won’t kill you doesn’t mean exercise is painless. One of the biggest reasons why dedicated people stop excercising is because of injury. They usually lapse back into a sedantary lifestyle while recovering. Having discovered the joys of pain myself, I thought I’d share my discoveries with new or aspiring fitness enthusiasts. In this article, I’ll write about the most common injuries sustained while running, and what to do about them so that you can enjoy your workout. [kuro5hin.org]
HP and Compaq sell lines that are focused on business users. Typically, these models ship with Windows XP Professional rather than XP Home and they include less ”cutesy” software. Often they ship with one of the business productivity suites.
I bought an HP Pavilion zt1290 from HP’s consumer notebook line with the idea of reformatting the drive with Windows XP Pro. I’ve had nothing but trouble as I attempted to recover all the appropriate drivers, etc. It’s a great notebook PC, but I’d swap with HP in a heartbeat if they’d let me upgrade to their EVO line of notebooks!
I’d love to understand why I’m wired in such a way that I simply cannot grasp the details associated with changing a weblog template. I’ve been to college and graduate school. I’ve worked on some tricky automation problems over the years. I’ve raised three daughters past the age of 18 with reasonable success. For some reason, the hands-on coding of HTML where there are macros escapes me. Every time I try to tinker there, I cause outrageous problems.
Scoble’s Redesign. Well, for the first time, I feel I really understand what’s going on in the HTML here. I’ll write more if anyone is interested. If, as I suspect, my mom is the only one reading this, then I won’t bother. [The Scobleizer]
First, HP quit selling to them. Then, Cisco punted. Now, 3COM. Is Dell paying suppliers too slowly? Is the sale of hardware to consumers and corporations going through different channels yet again?
Someone point me to a link or link(s). I noticed that Ingram Micro is tightening up in the credit policy area and plans a restructuring. Are we staring at another shift in the computer supply chain? Remember when there was a Computerland, MicroAge, Inacom and Entre in every city? Remember when IBM and Sears had computer stores? Then, mail order hit in a big way. Today, we have a few remaining computer dealers from yesteryear, but they are integrators or VAR’s, etc. We have big box retailers in the game like Circuit City, Best Buy and CompUSA. How does this industry look in 3 to 5 years? Dell will likely have a say in how it sorts out.
Microsoft takes the plunge: announces Wi-Fi gateways: Microsoft today announced its several wireless products, along with some related wired gateway hardware. The offerings, as expected, aren’t very exciting, mimicking the commodity consumer gear on the market already. Where Microsoft might be able to make a difference is in their massive technical support operation. One of the consistent complaints about consumer Wi-Fi products is the inability to get solid tech support time after time. Whatever you think about Microsoft, they wrote the book on accountability and follow-up for technical support, and we’ll see if they can execute on that with Wi-Fi gear as well.
We’ve long known that the historic telecom monopoly would one day give way to free-market telecom companies with next-generation IP networks. The move from one to the other isn’t painless (at all) and it is not something that happens overnight. Look at some of these death struggles:
WorldCom Creditors Said to Be Restless. Bert C. Roberts Jr., WorldCom’s chairman, and John W. Sidgmore, its chief executive, are coming under increasing criticism from the company’s creditors. By Seth Schiesel and Simon Romero.
Global Crossing Memos Released. Executives at Global Crossing raised concerns about accounting at the company as early as August 2000, investigators at the House Commerce Committee said Thursday. By Bloomberg News.
Let’s think about this a moment. 60GB of bandwidth usage for nineteen days. That’s 60GB over 1,641,600 seconds or about 286Kbps for every second so far this month. Someone correct my math, but I’m using an 8-bit byte for this calculation.
I’VE USED ABOUT 60GB of bandwidth so far this month. That’s especially high since Stacy Tabb designed this page to be extra-lean that way. Good thing I’ve got an unlimited-bandwidth setup. [InstaPundit]
Today I spent three hours attempting to renew antivirus definition subscriptions at a client’s site. That’s 3 hours to provide a credit card number for a file server and six personal computers. One computer was running Windows XP, one was running Windows 2000, the server was running W2K Server. The other 4 computers were running W98SE.
Two of the machines couldn’t renew their antivirus subscriptions over the web. Others required as many as 6 Liveupdates to complete the task. Those machines required a restart after every liveupdate. Finally, the two machines that couldn’t be updated via the web required a phone call to Symantec. Long hold times. Lengthy explanations and Q&A to insure that what I wanted was what I needed!
Finally, I was provided with the subscription code I needed, but was told that I had to wait 24 hours so that Symantec’s servers could be updated. That means a return to the site tomorrow morning. Pick whatever hourly rate you want to for providing network support services. This effort is too expensive for a small business. Admittedly, this particular issue won’t have to be addressed again for 12 months, but it’s still to costly for something so ”simple.” Yes, I understand how costly it would become to troubleshoot a virus were it to get in there, but that’s not the problem here. This is simply renewing a magazine subscription! Think about how easy they make that!!!
ANOTHER VIEW OF JOURNALISM, WEBLOGGING AND NEWS REPORTING
JD on the Panel. J.D. Lasica has posted first impressions from the J-school panel:
Last night Dan, Rebecca, Meg, Scott and I participated in a 90-minute panel before Paul Grabowicz’s and John Battelle’s students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. About 75 folks showed up. (At one point I asked how many people there hoped to work in a newsroom one day; only 6 raised their hands. How many people had weblogs? A dozen raised their hands.)
As I said at one point last night—and I welcome all thoughts about this—a journalist is anyone who is an eyewitness to or an interpreter of events, and who reports them as honestly and accurately as possible. Period. You don’t need the resources of the New York Times newsroom behind you to validate you as a journalist.
I’m interested in feature – function – benefit. Some call this the, ”why do I care” statement. If all I get is news items in a web page with no technique other than cut-copy-paste to get the item wherever I want it, where’s the benefit? Why is this news aggregator superior to the others? Why, in particular, is it superior to the one bundled into and interfaced to Radio?
It may be that the answer to each of these questions is, ”the product isn’t aimed at you, idiot!” No, seriously. I may be stumbling around in places that nonprogrammers don’t belong. That’s fine. However, if it’s aimed at ”the masses,” the questions are relevant!
BLOGOSPHERE UPDATE: Eric Alterman has finished his Ph.D. (history, Stanford) as of Friday. The dissertation: ”Two Lies: The Consequences of Presidential Deception.” (The lies are Yalta and the Cuban Missile Crisis.) Apparently he’s going to add two more lies—Tonkin and Iran/Contra—and turn it into a book. (Will the publisher put a blurb on the cover: ”Improved—now with more lies!”? Er, maybe not, but that has a suitably Kausian sound to it.)
I wonder if he’ll be posting more than once a day now that the dissertation is done? I haven’t asked, but I’ll bet the real barrier is MSNBC’s set-up. It seems that Big Media websites don’t allow posting with the convenience of programs like MT or Blogger, with the exception of NRO, which has just incorporated Blogger into its setup. I wonder why more places don’t do something like that? [InstaPundit]
Dave Barry: ”The question you’re asking yourself is: Does South Florida contain the highest concentration of morons in the entire world? Or just in the United States?”
If you’re like me, you don’t put much stock in the various blog-ranking schemes, since none of them, I guess, can claim anything approaching scientific usefulness. But this system has the real added bonus of providing a long list of people who link to you, which introduces you to sites you’ve never heard of, and reminds you of those you’ve inadvertently forgot.
PEACE IN OUR TIME? Not likely. Saddam’s latest gamble is less an indication of his intent to disarm than a sign of how desperate his plight is. He wants to use the inspection issue – its vagaries, details and endless process – both to split the Security Council (i.e. France) and to buy time. This was, of course, always a risk and one of the strongest arguments for by-passing the U.N. altogether. But Bush’s speech was smarter than Saddam may recognize. The resolutions Bush invoked mean that Iraq must do far far more than simply play the inspector cat-and-mouse game again. It must actively disarm, destroy its weaponry, allow U.N. monitors a long-running role in the country, and give up its active sponsorship of terrorism. The White House is therefore absolutely right to throw the issue back to the Security Council with the assertion that ”this is a tactical step by Iraq in hopes of avoiding strong U.N. Security Council action. As such, it is a tactic that will fail.” We’re now headed, I think, for a fight over what genuinely unfettered inspections require and which resolutions Iraq is supposed to adhere to. I say: unconditional, unfettered, military-backed inspectors with no time limit on their withdrawal; and every single U.N. resolution. Apart from the obvious need to have real access anywhere any time, it also seems to me that inspectors should have the right to interrogate Iraqi scientists and be in a postion to offer them political asylum if needs be. The regime’s very existence impedes genuine inspection, which is why some political space must be created for inspections to work adequately. My best guess is that there will be several rounds of shenanigans and a great deal of brinkmanship in the weeks ahead. But whatever happens, the U.S. cannot let the inspections regime return to the farce of the 1990s. Meanwhile, war preparations need to continue apace. They’re the reason we have this concession. They’ll be the reason we get any more. [Andrew Sullivan]
xian TV. Have I mentioned I’m going to be on television today on ”The Screen Savers”... So, back to TV, I’m still a beginner, learning, but I’m enjoying the ride. Meanwhile, the Amazon rank of Dreamweaver Savvy spiked after the tutorial went up on the Screen Savers site, and the topic ties in with the charter of this blog (the ”being about blogs” thing) as well as a book I’d like to write. Traffic is high today from the tutorial page...[Radio Free Blogistan]
THIS SEEMS ABOUT RIGHT – I BOUGHT A G2 ROUGHLY 45 DAYS AGO! They also announced the S45
Canon PowerShot G3. 0600 GMT: Canon has today announced the PowerShot G3. This new digital camera appears go slightly further than the typical ’product refresh’ we’ve seen recently. The G3 now has a ’proper’ hand grip with a… [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]
Getting back into Weblogging. Thanks to Chris Pirillo for snapping me out of my blog-free rut that I’ve been in. I had dinner with Chris and Gretchen on Saturday night and Chris showed me some stuff that just got me fired up about this industry again. I want a new computer. His is so freaking fast. Nothing like having a 2.4GHz machine. Being around Chris you start seeing this industry as fun again. It’s definitely what I needed. What did he show me? Moveable Type for one. I’m pretty impressed. Although I didn’t see enough to make me move off of Radio. And a tool called ”Top Style” which lets you build standards-based Web sites. [Scobleizer Radio Weblog]
Thursday night, 9-12-02, I installed the 14-day trial of SpamAssassin Pro from Deersoft, Inc. This is the product that is based upon the technology in SpamAssassin, which is the spam fighter for Unix email servers. Bottom line: SpamAssassin Pro is leaking like it was shot with a shotgun.
I installed the product at 7:45pm. It trapped a spam message at 7:48 and I thought, ”this is it!” I checked email again at 9:30pm. SA had put 7 junk emails in the junk folder, but 4 pieces of spam were in my inbox.
At 8:00am the next morning, I had 48 spam emails that SA had moved to the junk folder. However, immediately after checking email, I began to receive spam messages that SA didn’t or couldn’t trap. Throughout Friday, I was having to manually tell SA to block certain email senders. This effort is very similar to building rules in Outlook.
After clearing both the junk folder and the inbox of all spam last night at 5pm, I didn’t check email again until today at 2pm. There were 14 pieces of spam in the junk folder, but 40 pieces of spam in my inbox. How on earth did the spammers figure out so quickly how to get by SA? It’s frustrating. My next trial is probably going to be Walter Mossberg’s suggestion of ChoiceMail.
Saturday: Dropping Spammers from Great Heights. Good news! The state of Washington won its first anti-spam case ! Huzzah. The law here says that unsolicited email is not per se illegal, but rather is a civil violation if it fails to include a legitimate return address, has a misleading subject line, is mailed to Washington state individuals who have opted out from receiving UCE, or misuses Internet resources, like relaying through mail servers that don’t allow this (even if they’re technically set up to allow it). Here’s the law … [GlennLog]
Three medical students of Middle Eastern descent who were stopped as suspected terrorists on Alligator Alley early Friday morning remained detained after they were overheard in a Georgia restaurant vowing to make America ``cry on 9/13.’’
Federal sources involved in the investigation said they believe the three men – all U.S. citizens – were playing a stupid joke on another restaurant patron who gave them a suspicious look.
All three were on their way from Illinois to take medical training in Miami.
Federal sources said the men could be released as early as today with a ticket for blowing the I-75 toll booth near Naples.
The sad thing is it was entirely credible. If Mohammed Atta, et al., could spill their guts to lap dancers, this kind of talk seemed to fit. I just hope this won’t stop someone who encounters something similar in the future from calling it in. [InstaPundit]
UPDATE:Some are now backtracking on parts of this story. However, it seems that these were indeed three medical students who were ”joking” in a way that would arouse suspicion. It also seems that they were ”uncooperative” with police and the highway patrol officers. Finally, it appears all were of middle eastern ancestry. I’d rather have errors on the side of caution and take steps the instant we suspect something. As George Will indicates in today’s (9-15-2002) column, ”too soon is better than too late.”
Ray Ozzie points to the Wired article and then paints a picture of the tools of collaboration that we’ll soon be using. His statement that bandwidth isn’t a scarce commodity is right on target. Those who win or lose will be separated by their view of that concept.
Unplugged U. This is the breeding ground for the next wave of technology-augmented communication, coordination, collaboration. When these people enter the workforce, the nature of the workplace will be transformed … from the edge.
In case it’s not obvious: we’ll spend the vast majority of our time blanketed in bandwidth. (2.5G? 3G? 11G, 54G.) And the cellular/PCS phone isn’t likely to be the access device, fundamentally because of the walled garden value added services ”smart network” business model that emerged from a view of spectrum as a scarce commodity. It’s not.
Smart devices, operating in a peer manner via generic plumbing and thin servers. Powerful software, thin services. Cool PCs of a broad variety of mobile form factors; pocketable WiFi devices – even phones. Personal, ”federated” and transparently self-synchronizing with one another.
As Dan so estutely observes in this essay when he talks about the role of cell phone usage, we continue to change how we choose to fill the time in the ”whitespace” between our activities. Ponderous thought, then radio or walkman, then mobile voicemail and conversations, then blackberry or i-mode or sms messages, then …?
Perhaps most importantly for enterprises, technology has enabled the whitespace to be leveraged by time-pressured people on the move, already significantly reducing the cost of coordination within sales forces, and between laptop-armed managers and executives. Reduced human transaction cost, reduced agency cost. To a line of business with critical processes and projects that are people- and knowledge-intensive, time and coordination matters, and collaboration technology delivers.
Perhaps most importantly for individuals, technology has enabled the whitespace to be filled with whatever happens to be meaningful to us. We’ve got choice, and ultimately we’re in control of our own time and attention.
Exciting things are happening in edge-based communications; we’ve just barely scratched the surface. If you want to know where things are going, ask a teenager or new college recruit. Talk to the oyayubisedai. It’s relevant. [Ray Ozzie’s Weblog]
Bugged by browsers. Some days Im just totally bugged by the situation with browsers. OmniWeb has way too many problems with CSS. Mozilla, though wonderful in so many ways, drives like a tankand I keep reading tales of how it eats its bookmark file. A little scary. MSIE doesnt let me block pop-up ads or block images from specific servers. Chimera wont let me set my font preferences, which Im rather picky about. I think that eventually Chimera will be my main browser… [inessential.com]
Attracting readers by sending them away: ”Site traffic multiplies in proportion to outbound links. Of course quality, focus, information-density and presentation are essential. But all else being equal, a site that links religiously will attract orders-of-magnitude more traffic than a site that ignores the rest of the web.” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
You just gotta love the ”news” these days. CNN.com’s front page says ”Authorities … detonated a package early today after stopping three men who they believe may have been plotting a terror attack.” (emphesis mine) Following the developing story link, we learn that, ”Bomb squad investigators saw wires sticking out of a package in one of the cars, and used a water cannon to blow it apart, an official said. The package turned out to be medical equipment.” No explosives have been found in the vehicles, so far. Webster’s says that detonate means ”To cause to explode; to cause to burn or inflame with a sudden report.” [Steven’s Weblog]
Those damned cowboys. As Neal Stephenson’s fictional Yamamoto observed, crude and stupid is tolerable. Crude and smart is absolutely, positively unfair. [InstaPundit]
ADVANTAGE PRESIDENT BUSH This is the best I’ve read about what the President pulled off
Ive been reading reactions to the Presidents UN speech, and Im amused at how people dont seem to get it. Oh, now hes being a multilateralist? Now he believes in the UN? No. That speech was the equivalent of that fabled kung-fu move that removes your opponent’s heart and shows it to you, just before you crumple. Its of a piece with the administrations behavior since 9/11: Let all the carpers and obstructionists gather on the tip of the thinnest branch, then show up with a saw and announce they have five minutes to come hug the trunk, which incidentally is covered with sap and stinging ants. It was sheer malicious brilliance to cast the entire case in terms of UN resolutions, because it mean the UN had to chose: either those resolutions mean something, or the UN means nothing. Why, it’s almost as if the UN painted itself into a corner – and woke up to find this rude simple cowboy holding the brush. How the hell did he do that? [LILEKS (James) THE BLEAT]
BUSH CALLS HIS OPPONENTS’ BLUFF: Will Saletan at Slate is honest enough to realize that president Bush has essentially outmaneuvered his opponents. Ignore Will’s silly credentializing with the left. Like many others, Will’s short memory simply ignores Bush’s campaign pledge to take Saddam out if he didn’t renounce weapons of mass destruction. But the good news is that Will recognizes that Bush has spectacularly called the U.N.’s bluff. As he puts it, ”If you think that an American invasion of Iraq is unwise and that the world would be better off with unfettered U.N. weapons inspections backed by the serious threat of force, you’re probably right. But if you get what you want, thank Bush.” Even Howell Raines had to concede that the president is right today. The Times will now, of course, try to wriggle out of this. They call for a ”thoughtful and resourceful plan” for weapons inspections, whatever that means. But they’re flailing. They can hardly back Saddam, but very shortly, when Saddam refuses to allow real and meaningful inspections, they will have to choose between supporting Saddam and supporting Bush. Even the Bush-haters on 43d Street may have to back the president, a delicious irony not lost on the White House. (Liberal journalist Patrick Tyler tries yet another anti-Bush spin-job today, but it’s looking desperate).
CHECK: It seems clear to me in retrospect that Bush’s summer strategy has been really, really smart. Let Cheney and Rummy threaten unilateral strikes. Get all those boomer lefties with Vietnam complexes to get so scared that they all but beg the president to go through the U.N. And then go through the U.N.! Now what do the Bumillers and Tylers and Kristofs do? Either they have to fess up and say they have no problem with weapons of mass destruction in Baghdad or they have to back real disarmament, which will, of course, mean war or regime change. The Times will try to argue for a long inspections regime, for the same merry-go-round that the Clinton administration fecklessly tried forever. But last March, they opined that ”unless [Baghdad] fulfills those cease-fire requirements now, Iraq invites the kind of coercive actions Mr. Bush has threatened.” (My italics.) It’s now six months after ”now”. How much longer can we afford to wait? Once again, advantage Bush. [Andrew Sullivan]
TOO MUCH TIME IN THE SUN This is an outright disgrace
First, Florida should have been able to pull off this election without a flaw. Second, Florida should have known the eyes of the world were on them, again. Third, Reno uses the Clinton practice of stonewalling and hanging around muttering stuff about recounts, polling errors, etc. Don’t these people have any dignity left at all? You lost. Shut up. Go away.
Today I visited with a guy who has a bunch of older PC’s – long story. He’s considering some possibilities for them. One idea is to turn as many of them as possible into simple personal productivity and browsing PC’s. Here are my questions:
How old and tired can gear be and still run one of the distributions of Linux?
Can a 200Mhz Pentium with max RAM of 64MB do it?
Which Linux distribution is best for those not interested in hacking the OS?
Which Office clone is best for old, tired PC’s running Linux?
Could you run Linux/StarOffice or OpenOffice on a 386 class machine?
Someone said that editing weblog themes is simply programming around the proprietary stuff. For those who ”get it,” I’m sure that’s what’s required. For those of us who don’t get it, it certainly would be nice to see a template or theme modified using a WYSIWYG tool.
Blog Template Dreamweaver Tutorial Up at The Screen Savers Site. My taped appearance is this coming Monday, September 16, but TSS has already put the online tutorial component up at their site. The tutorial covers a little more ground than we were able to get to in my segment. On the air, I basically just show how to edit colors and fonts in an existing template, but the tutorial also addresses making custom templates, integrating a blog into an existing site design, and building a blog template from scratch. I’m just back from New York last night, so wading through a bit of a backlog in several arenas. [Radio Free Blogistan]
Update: Background Image Links. A light and tasteful background graphic may be just the touch you need to spice up your next project. Our updated collection of background graphic links is your gateway to thousands of downloadable borders, tiles, and textures specifically for use on Web pages. 0912 [WebReference News]
Making Journalism Pretty. News Page Designer is a sort of Gigposters.com for newspaper design. Layout artists from all over the globe post their work for open viewing and commentary. Some of the critiques come from experienced professionals with genuine insight. I wish this [typographica]
Yesterday, we buried my father-in-law. He served
valiantly as a soldier in World War II. He served
steadfastly as a member of his church. He served
lovingly as a husband, a father to three wonderful
daughters and a granddaddy to seven outstanding
grandchildren. The two oldest grandchildren could
not attend the funeral because they too are serving
in places too distant to get home in time for the
funeral. However, as the five grandchildren who
were present rose to sing in his honor, the voices
of the two missing could be heard clearly.
The moment that overwhelmed hit me as I stood
shoulder-to-shoulder with two of the young men
who called him ”granddaddy.” As we slid the casket
into the hearse and stepped back, our loss felt real
and final. These two fine people could no longer
hide the holes they were feeling in their hearts.
The moment portrayed all that he had so
quietly given to each member of the family.
We’ll miss him, but we’ll continue in service
in a manner that will honor his memory.
Commenting Temporarily Offline. The UserLand comment server, radiocomments.userland.com, seems to be down. I saw in the support forums that if you have Script Debugger installed you essentially can’t view a radio blog because of this (time out type things) so I stripped the comments to see if it makes it better.[The FuzzyBlog!]
my Windows XP Professional notebook boots very slowly. Comments on my weblog aren’t working at the moment, but I’m hoping that’s a coincidence and not the new security that this 50MB monstrosity brought to my computing experience.
Microsoft had better watch itself. I’m confident they are not forever invincible. No business in history ever has been.
Windows Security Bulletin. SECURITY ALERT: If you use Windows XP your system is vulnerable to a very simple attack that could let any… [Leoville]
For all the men and women killed in action while serving in this nations military services, we declare a holiday. For all the men and women killed as innocents in an unprovoked attack on our country, we go to work. Certainly, I’ll go to the memorial service at church tonight. You’ll see a sequence of posts today that includes thoughts, sadness and honor for those who died last 9-11.
However, our duty is to strengthen this nation. Make it better. Protect it. Prepare it. Remember them, but move forward with an aim to reduce the likelihood that such a cowardly deed could ever find its way to our soil again.
NO 9/11 MEMORIAL PAGE HERE: I’ve thought about what to do to observe the anniversary of last year’s atrocities, and I’ve concluded that the main thing I can do is to keep on blogging. I could have put up a fancy photo page or quoted the Bible or Winston Churchill or, following a suggestion actually aimed at the TV networks, rerun all my coverage from this time last year.
But, what I did last year was blog about what was happening, as it was happening—something that won me (rare) praise from Jim Henley, which because of its rarity (and believe me, it’s rare) is not to be taken lightly. And besides, it’s what I know how to do. Fancy memorial pages aren’t what I’m good at. (Go here for one of those.) So while I’m going to post a couple of retrospective items, I plan to spend today thinking about today, and tomorrow—not last year. [InstaPundit]
ANOTHER FINE PIECE OF ANALYTICAL WORK Glenn’s analysis is always rock solid
Wired-less magazine on Wi-Fi: The whole article is up, so I can comment in depth. Conceptually, the piece is flawed: as is the case with much technology/social journalism, the author and editors picked a poster child, Sky Dayton, and his company to a lesser extent, and made them the avatar for an industry. Dayton and Boingo are important components in the evolution of commercial hot spot service, but are one set of nexi. It’s an important distinction: they’re not the center, but they’re at one center of many. Did this article want to be a profile of Sky Dayton and morph into a Wi-Fi piece? [80211b News]
I’m glad Rumsfeld is Defense secretary, not just because he’s smart, quick-witted, and as articulate as George Bush is tongue-tied, but because he knows that the difficult long-term challenge of defense transformation is his most important job. [Posted 9/11.] [Virginia Postrel’s blog]
LOOKING BACK: Here’s something I originally posted at about 10:30 in the morning on 9/11. It’s held up pretty well, I think:
TOM CLANCY WAS RIGHT: (Reposted from earlier today) And we’re living one of his scenarios right now. Not much is known for sure, but it’s obvious that the United States is the target of a major terrorist assault. There’s a lot of bloviation on the cable news channels, most of which will turn out to be wrong or misleading later. Here, for your consideration, are a few points to be taken from past experience:
The Fog of War: Nobody knows much right now. Many things that we think we know are likely to be wrong.
Overreaction is the Terrorist’s Friend: Even in major cases like this, the terrorist’s real weapon is fear and hysteria. Overreacting will play into their hands.
It’s Not Just Terrorists Who Take Advantage: Someone will propose new ”Antiterrorism” legislation. It will be full of things off of bureaucrats’ wish lists. They will be things that wouldn’t have prevented these attacks even if they had been in place yesterday. Many of them will be civil-liberties disasters. Some of them will actually promote the kind of ill-feeling that breeds terrorism. That’s what happened in 1996. Let’s not let it happen again.
Only One Antiterrorism Method Works: That’s punishing those behind it. The actual terrorists are hard to reach. But terrorism of this scale is always backed by governments. If they’re punished severely—and that means severely, not a bombed aspirin-factory but something that puts those behind it in the crosshairs—this kind of thing won’t happen again. That was the lesson of the Libyan bombing.
”Increased Security” Won’t Work. When you try to defend everything, you defend nothing. Airport security is a joke because it’s spread so thin that it can’t possibly stop people who are really serious. You can’t prevent terrorism by defensive measures; at most you can stop a few amateurs who can barely function. Note that the increased measures after TWA 800 (which wasn’t terrorism anyway, we’re told) didn’t prevent what appear to be coordinated hijackings. (Archie Bunker’s plan, in which each passenger is issued a gun on embarking, would have worked better). Deterrence works here, just as everywhere else. But you have to be serious about it.
For now, the terrorists have won. They’ve shut down the U.S. government, more or less. They’ve shut down air travel. They’re all over TV. But whether they really win depends on how we deal with this; hysterically, or like angry—but measured—adults.
Last night I was reading over the archive pages for the week of September 11. It’s quite shocking to start at the bottom of this page, where the subjects are French coffeehouses with no loitering policies, and disputes about who had the best abs at the Video Music Awards (I still think Alicia Keys should have won), and then scroll up into, well, a whole different world.
But, of course, the world wasn’t really different. While Alicia Keys was sporting her fine abs, people who wanted to build a society where women would be stoned to death for doing that very thing were putting the final stages of their plan into action. We didn’t actually wake up into a different world on September 11. We just woke up. [InstaPundit]
Round-the-World 24-Hour Chorus of Mozart’s Requiem. CNN: ”The worldwide ”Rolling Requiem,” which began as an idea in a church in Seattle, Washington, next will be taken up by choirs in the Australian cities of Sydney and Brisbane as local time reaches 8:46 a.m.”That’s a beautiful idea. [Steven’s Weblog]
Was half asleep this morning with the radio on, and NPR says we’ve got one of those color-coded terror alerts again. I spent half a second trying to remember if orange meant ”run for your life” or ”hide in the closet and cry,” and then I remembered none of it means anything, and I started laughing. Nothing like some color-coded nonsense to lighten up the mood this week, eh? Homeland Security: Garanimals for grownups. [Ken Layne]
In response to my post ”What people of faith saw on 9/11?” Enda asks:
”I know you are a religious man, could I ask, does 9-11 changed, somehow, your religious believe? God is there, I know it, you know it, but why we, as human race, makes religion as a reason to hate others?”
Well, Enda, you ask two questions really. First, did 9/11 change my religious beliefs? That is the easy one. No. My faith was not shaken by what happened on 9/11/01. My faith is placed in God, not in the actions of men. I believe what occurred was the act of evil men. God has given us free will to chose good or evil. Sometimes they are small goods and small evils, or sometimes they are large. I believe on 9/11 we saw both huge good and evil. But this is the way it often is, in response to large evil we see large good. This is not offsetting. In other-words, the large good doesn’t make up for the large evil, but it does make it more bearable. As a human, the evil of 9/11 was horrifying and the heroism gave me hope. But ultimately, I know that my hope lies in God and life eternal with Him. Question two is much harder. I’m no theologian, just a simple lover of God, but I’ll take a stab at this. Why do humans use religion as a reason to hate others? I believe that ultimately this is because religions are man-made. Religion is really a perversion of the longing and desire for meaning which is placed within us by God. This longing for meaning is placed in us so that we will seek God. God made us in order that we have relationship with Him. That is our one, ultimate purpose. Religion takes that longing and translates it into a list of rules that we need to perform to please God. Now lists of rules can be helpful, to the point that they lead us to live holy and righteous lives that draw us closer to God. But sooner or later we become legalistic. We use the rules to justify our way of life. I’m better than you, because…. People use religious differences as an excuse to justify their hatred of others.
So, in 1959 many American’s were concerned about electing a Catholic President (John F. Kennedy), because they thought he might impose his set of rules on them. It is easy for American’s to forget, but anti-Catholicism was rampant and virulent. In pre-WWII Germany the Nazi’s hated the Jews at least partially for their success. The weren’t pribumis (natives), so why should they be so successful? Shouldn’t pure blood Germans be the most successful people in Germany? Sound familiar, Enda? Not to different than the feelings many Indonesians have towards non-native Indonesians (usually of Chinese blood). Then it is so easy to strike out at someones religion in the name of your own. Political, social, cultural, economical and many trivial issues get cloaked in the blood of religion. As if that makes it all justifiable. Were the crusades about religion, no. Are the disputes in Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Palestine, Poso, Maluku or anywhere else really about religion? I don’t believe so. They are about greed, hatred, revenge and power.
So, 9/11 was a horrifying, but not particularly deadly example of this. I say not particularly deadly because historically much larger numbers have been killed for ”religious” reasons. (In Maluku alone the deaths are somewhere near 9,000). What made 9/11 particually horrifying is that it happened in an instant and all of us watched live on TV. Was it really about religion? No. It was about hatred and revenge and power. America has done many things that have brought rise to these feelings among Muslim people. America will have to deal with that. 9/11 was done in the name of Allah. Muslims around the world will have to deal with that.
Religion is about men. Faith is about God and our relationship with Him. In the aftermath of 9/11 I do not cling to religion. I cling to faith in God and His love for me. I cling to my weak and feeble attempts to develop a meaningful relationship with Him and His acceptance of them through His salvation. [So many islands, so little time]
OPPORTUNITIES IN CALIFORNIA Sometimes I wish I could be in the thick of things
The UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism invites you to a Sept. 17 panel discussion on: Weblogs: Challenging Mass Media and Society Weblogs have received a lot of press lately, and journalism Weblogs are proliferating. Are Weblogs rejuvenating public discussion?. Are they an alternative to mass media? Join us in a discussion with: Rebecca Blood Author of ”The Weblog Handbook” and creator of Rebecca’s Pocket, one of the first-wave Weblogs. Dan Gillmor San Jose Mercury News Technology Columnist and author of Dan Gillmor?s eJournal Weblog Meg Hourihan Co-author of ”We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs,” co-founder of Blogger.com, and creator of megnut.com, one of the earliest weblogs J.D. Lasica Online Journalism Review Senior Editor and author of the New Media Musings Weblog Scott Rosenberg Salon Managing Editor and creator of Scott Rosenberg’s Links & Comments Weblog Tuesday, Sept. 17
6:30 pm Journalism School Library
North Gate Hall
UC Berkeley
The event is free and open to the public. Please pass this invitation along to anyone else who might be interested in attending. (Directions to the J-School) Street parking should be available within a few blocks of the school, which is on the northern edge of the campus. If you have any questions contact Journalism School New Media Program Director Paul Grabowicz at grabs@uclink.berkeley.edu [Radio Free Blogistan]
We all know what happened a year ago today. I’ve been writing about it for 12 months, just like many of you. Other writers are much closer to the attack sites, and I believe they’ll have much to say today, and it will be worth reading. I recommend anyone linked off the right side of this Web page. Read this long post... [Ken Layne]
Moving on. Moving from Radio to Movable Type, part 1: preparing a script that exports Radio archived entries to a format that Movable Type can import. Status: coded not tested. [Krzysztof Kowalczyk’s Weblog]
We know that the plane went down before it reached its target – that the hijackers failed to strike a national symbol, a populated area. They failed.
And we know that the people on the plane fought back. On a random day, on a random flight, they found themselves – unwarned, unprepared, unarmed – on the front lines of a vicious new kind of war. And somehow, in the few confusing and terrifying minutes they had, they transformed themselves from people on a plane into soldiers, and they fought back. And that made them heroes, immediately and forever, to a wounded, angry nation, a nation that desperately wanted to fight back.
This excerpt doesn’t even begin to do justice to a long and sensitive column. Read it all.
By the indicators I place most confidence in, we’re looking at individual economic pictures that won’t begin to resemble the trend of the 1990’s. Passbook savings rates may look like stellar returns during the next few years.
We are also terribly dependent on foreign oil that comes from increasingly unreliable suppliers. As this country prepares to escalate the war on terrorism, we should launch a (privately-funded) all-out assault on the technology that makes us a completely self-sufficient provider and consumer of energy.
Technology Review: Handspring Treo 270. Simson Garfinkel. While my column in Technology Review magazine, ”The Net Effect,” examines larger issues of the digital age-with particular focus on privacy-here I’ll bite into specifics. Each month I’ll profile a new gadget that is both captivating and significant. [Tomalak’s Realm]
GRAPHIC DESIGNERS HAVE ALWAYS AMAZED ME For those who missed Part I
I Need A Logo, Part II. This got buried in another thread so I’m bringing it out into the open. Although the effort may be supremely quixotic in the minds of some posters here, I would like to do my part to encourage people to Stop… [typographica]
Q. What do Doc Searls and Andrew Sullivan have in common? A. No permalinks in their RSS feeds. At least that’s what I think I’m seeing when their posts pass through my aggregator.
MAKING MONEY WITH A WEBLOG – PART VIII See part VII here
BLOGGING FOR CASH? John Scalzi has a very smart piece on how or if blogs can ever make real money for writers. Bottom line: he thinks they’re inherently loss-leaders. I fear I agree with him. [Andrew Sullivan]
become obvious in hindsight. Gertz’s book and articles such as this one make it clear that an organized effort to bring the USA down has been under way. Our response is the only piece that remains in question.
SOMEHOW I MISSED THIS PIECE on the Iraqi / McVeigh connection yesterday. This stuff has been rattling around the blogosphere for a while; it’s good to see it getting more attention. I’d call this case not proven, but worthy of further investigation. [InstaPundit]
Cuts And Caps.. he gorgeous Briar Press, a resource for printers and enthusiasts, offers free downloadable ”cuts and caps” for use in ”print,... [dollarshort.org]
How to Get Rich: ”A young man asked an old rich man how he made his money. The old guy fingered his worsted wool vest and said, ”Well, son, it was 1932. The depth of the Great Depression. I was down to my last nickel. I invested that nickel in an apple. I spent the entire day polishing the apple and, at the end of the day, I sold the apple for ten cents. The next morning, I invested those ten cents in two apples. I spent the entire day polishing them and sold them at 5 pm for 20 cents. I continued this system for a month, by the end of which I’d accumulated a fortune of $1.37. Then my wife’s father died and left us two million dollars.” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
I could be wrong, but assuming this guy could keep investing his daily sales in new product for 30 days and assuming prices and costs remained steady and assuming he didn’t have to buy a fleet of trucks and apple polishers, he’d have had $26,843,545.60 at the end of that 30th day. Have I missed something?
Hey, but that wasn’t why Dane pointed us to this.
BREAKDOWN How America’s Intelligence Failures Led to September 11
I just began Bill Gertz’s book today. It is absolutely fascinating. If you want some deeper insight into what went wrong and what has been going on since the early 1990’s with respect to our intelligence community, this is your book!
Powertoys for Windows XP. Ones I downloaded: an thumbnail maker and a power calculator (I haven’t had a scientific calculator for a while). [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
SUCCESSFUL RAT RACERS ARE CREATING RATLET RACES Baby pig = piglet, baby rat = ratlet?
Actually, ”successful rat racer” is an oxymoron. You aren’t really successful until you’ve found your unique path out of the rat race. One who creates a ”ratlet race” is simply a moron. We shouldn’t be inflicting our ways of life on our children unless we’re certain we’ve found the right way. Striving, driving, assertiveness, pushing, overbooking – these are not the ways of the truly successful. Much of the time they are the ways of scared rats.
Hectic lives rob kids of sleep and health: ”What’s particularly troubling to physicians is that parents are often behind these problemsthey simply don’t make routine bedtime a priority. Many are hectic, sleep-starved people themselves, and they forget that children are not miniature adults; kids are hit much harder by sleep deprivation. ’If you are keeping your child up until 11 p.m. for family time, you need to re-examine your life.’ says child psychotherapist Barbara Braun-McDonald of Brewster, Mass.” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
I NEED THE ELEVATOR SPEECH That’s a business explanation in 30 seconds or less
What’s the feature, function and benefit associated with changing from RSS 0.9x to 1.0 to 2.0? How will a writer of a weblog benefit? Will more web sites be able to offer RSS feeds? Will the RSS feeds post faster from whatever aggregator is used to whatever weblog tool is used? What I’m talking about are user benefits – not programmer benefits. Are there any user benefits?
RSS 2.0. RSS 2.0 does not exist yet. It is the code name for a proposed merging of the RSS 0.9x and RSS 1.0 branches. It is basically RSS 0.9x + modules (imported via XML namespaces). RSS 2.0 is an attempt to maintain a core of simplicity (the greatest strength of RSS 0.9x) while allowing for the extensibility of decentralized module development (the greatest strength of RSS 1.0). (812 words) [dive into mark]
I updated the Radio weblog archive feature to include support for weekly archives. Starting the week on Sunday, each archive page displays the entire week of posts. An example of the weekly archive page for this week. [lawrence’s notebook]
9-11. So what was the lesson of 9-11 that the US has failed to learn? I think it’s that God doesn’t think we’re as important as we do. [Scripting News]
GOOD GOALS FOR TECHNOLOGISTS A synopsis worth reading and rereading by those developing tomorrow’s technology
Bob and Dan are dead-on: The browser has served us well. It has provided a means by which we can have universal access to applications, transactions, and published information. But in the meantime, the PC has become a powerhouse: cpu, gpu, storage, price. The Great Conversion to notebook computers is well under way, and it’s now clear that the most wildly successful wireless mobile productivity device won’t be the 3G phone, or even the BlackBerry, but the ubiquitous and inexpensive WiFi notebook. In a shapeandsize to suiteveryneed.
For a while, we were seduced into thinking that we should optimize costs by reducing the PC to being a dumb terminal, or by stopping the upgrade cycle, or by reverting to a simpler, generic OS. But as we by necessity deal with more and more PCs in our lives, and as we use them in more and more locations, and as we’ve come to terms with the fact that we can’t imagine doing our jobs without them in the course of our work with others, it has become clearer that the most critical thing to optimize is our time. And in order to do that, we need more appropriate technology, not just simpler tech.
It’s finally dawned on many of us that our software has fallen behind our infrastructure, and that we need significant upgrades to our systems and application software that bring them into an era of ubiquitous computing and communications. We need to prepare for, and to embrace a whole new generation of system and application software that leverages our computers and networks specifically and tangibly to increase our interpersonal productivity and agility. To enable us to spin more plates; or to keep them up in the air in a more measured manner.
Software that embraces mobility, synchronization, security, and manageability as transparent core attributes. Software that recognizes ”people” as being just as important as ”documents”. Software that recognizes transparent peer communications as being equal in importance to server communications. Software with a new model that synchronizes applications and activities, not just data or documents. We need to use multiple devices as seamlessly as we use one device; we need to be able to use them collaboratively as intuitively as we’ve used them alone.
Servers and browsers are like two peas in a pod, and the Web has largely run its course. In terms of the value that we can get from our own personal computers and the Internet, however, we’re still at the dawn of a new era. An era in which software matters, and architecture matters. [Ray Ozzie’s Weblog]
A COUPLE OF STATEMENTS FULL OF INSIDER KNOWLEDGE OR POLITICS? What lies behind each of the highlighted sentences?
It is amazing what desktop to Web software can do with people that are really leveraging themselves. Something about doing things on servers is passive, weak, and remote. Given trends in computing and networking it is extremely possible that in less than 10 years a person could run a personal site on their PC that interacts with a million people for not much more than what you pay today. Why be on the wrong side of history (or spend the time learning about stuff that won’t matter in a couple of years)? [John Robb’s Radio Weblog] By the way, I’d rather sell one, two or five thousand books a year for a product with integrity than… [Russ Lipton Documents Radio]
Configuration of the new HP zt1290 Pavilion is almost complete. The last thing I do will be the configuration of email and the move of the old *.pst file. However, this laptop won’t go into use for email until SpamAssassin is installed.
Did someone say SPAM?. It’s funny to read John Robb’s ideas for stopping the spread of SPAM because I just got off the phone with a good friend who was going off about all the SPAM in his mail boxes. It’s a total pain in the butt and I’d like for it to stop. [Rob Fahrni, at the core.]
NOT ONLY IS THE SPLIT HEALING – THEY NEED EACH OTHER The humans involved in art and science may have 2 cultures, but the disciplines intertwine
Our eldest daughter went through college with a double major in math and music. When it came time to write her thesis, she wrote about combinatorics in math and music.
Our youngest daughter has studied ballet under a former ballet dancer who today creates fractal art using sophisticated mathematical models.
Digital Web Buzzes in September. Time to go back to school and say farewell to summer. Designers can educate themselves on Web standards and a good place to start is at Digital Web Magazine where [meryl’s notes]
Henry David Thoreau. ”Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.” [Motivational Quotes of the Day]
Without world order people and businesses get into ruts. We have a low tolerance for risk and we fixate on trying to protect what we have when living in uncertain days. Prosperity cannot return until the natural tension between the economic drivers of fear and greed begins to shift. World order is tough to guage when we have such heightened media coverage of what would otherwise be regional stories. Fires, child abductions and the West Nile virus have dominated news coverage while public debates about Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan continue as ”noise in the background.” Since 9/11 we have been paralyzed (i.e. traumatized) and fearful of the next shoe to drop. No one is taking much risk economically. Markets are bouncing. Even the Cold War years were marked by periods of relative calm and some certainty about the ultimate outcome. Today it’s difficult to identify our heroes. Who should we listen to? On one hand we find pundits of a traditionally liberal ilk hawking a war with Iraq. We find members of an avowed conservative administration urging caution about identifying our enemies. Order isn’t what we have, but we worry that we might not recognize order if and when it returns!
SCOWCROFT AWARD NOMINEE: Readers may remember how last October and November, large numbers of pundits, analysts and experts both opposed the war in Afghanistan and confidently predicted its failure. Undeterred by their failures last time around, some of the same people are now opposing a war against Iraq. It seems to me a public service to remind readers of some of these people’s records. Brent Scowcroft, one recalls, opposed the war in Afghanistan and was a loyal fan of murderous tyrants in Moscow and Bosnia and Beijing throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Yet few major media outlets cited these failures of judgment in anointing Scowcroft as a serious commentator on our current predicament. WHY NOT IRAN? You may have noticed from Maureen Dowd’s recent column that one of the latest flimsy excuses for doing nothing about Iraq is that we should expedite regime change in Saudi Arabia as well. After all, they’re a terrorist-sponsoring, Islamist-funding, barbaric autocracy as well. Amen, MoDo. But first things first. Let’s get Iraq’s and Russia’s oil supplies up and running first, can we? But the really interesting thing about the belated liberal fixation on the evil of Saudi Arabia (with which I concur) is the strange absence in their argument of any mention of Iran. Why isn’t the New York Times on the warpath there? Well, the obvious reason is that it might mean some support for president Bush, which is unthinkable. But the second reason is that it might reveal that the assertion that Iran is already some kind of democracy would collapse. Michael Ledeen has another astute piece on National Review, showing the Times’ blind eye to the evil regime in Tehran. Don’t miss it. (And if you want a real guide to the context of our war on terror, don’t miss his book, ”The War Against the Terror-Masters,” which is our book club selection this month. You won’t find a more concise and informative primer on why we are at war, and how we can win.)
IS BUSH READING SUN TZU? Okay, it’s a long shot. But Bush’s long silence, the contradictory messages from his administration, and mysterious arms buildups around the world leads one reader to wonder whether the president has been boning up on the art of war. Two maxims stand out: ”When near, make it appear that you are far away, when far away that you are near.” And: ”Offer the enemy a bait to lure him; feign disorder and strike him.” Wishful thinking no doubt. But then this president is often under-estimated. [Andrew Sullivan]
Amid all of these discussions are people who are completely caught up in our nationalistic ways. Again, order isn’t clear.
Now is the time for a great resurgence in this country. Against the backdrop of turmoil are those willing to step forward and distinguish themselves and this country for the new millenium. We may have to redefine what it means to live in an era of threats from enemies who are cowards. We may have to learn to live with loss as Israel has. What we cannot do is freeze in place.
AN UPDATE AND A RECOMMENDATION How do you make something good even better?
Many tools exist for creating weblogs. It isn’t entirely clear which product is the market leader or by what measures one determines a market leader in weblog tools. However, Radio Userland must be among the top tools for weblog writers.
With that in mind, I’d like to offer an update and a recommendation to the developers and users of Radio Userland. (By the way is the product Radio and the company Userland or is the product Radio Userland and the company is Userland Software, Inc.?)
First, the update. Saturday, I pointed to a frustrated Radio user’s post. Then, this morning, I experienced the third instance of Radio ”overwriting” a previous day’s posts. I buried this last link in a post about 20 marketing and advertising questions that appeared in the New York Times. That’s where the linkage to the recommendation begins.
Radio Userland or Userland Software, Inc. should undertake a review of several things to improve its standing in the weblog community. In no particular order, here’s a set of requirements reviews to make certain Radio is meeting the needs of its target audience:
A technical review to make certain all features perform as designed.
A documentation survey and review to make certain that the appropriate levels of documentation exist and are well-organized and accessible.
A feature and wish list review to determine the most-requested new features and functionality that customers are asking for.
A specifications review to make certain that appropriate (not minimum) hardware specifications are in place prior to installing Radio.
A prerequisites review to identify/specify what types of users Radio Userland is seeking and what skills they must have to do certain things to (and within) Radio. (A product pointed to lawyers and librarians probably has a little different feature set than one pointed to PHP programmers.)
Move Over Google Answers. The New York Times has buzzed in with its Abuzz, a free interactive knowledge sharing community. ’Course it’ll take time for people to hear the buzz and switch from fee-based… [meryl’s notes]
why did this weblog tool literally delete or overwrite the posts I had made yesterday before leaving town on a day trip? Four posts were there when I left my desk. This morning, I realized they had not yet upstreamed – nothing unusual for my copy of Radio Userland’s software. So, the normal way to ”flush” those is to (1) STOP RADIO, REBOOT THE COMPUTER, LAUNCH RADIO WITH NO OTHER APP’S OPEN (particularly Outlook) (2) Post something new to flush the stalled posts from the prior day.
You can now clearly see that nothing posted for Monday, September 2, 2002. Later todayI hope to move this copy of Radio to the new HP laptop and see if that provides any greater reliability.
20 Questions. It is time again to ask 20 questions about advertising, marketing, the media and popular culture. By Stuart Elliott. [New York Times: Business]
Take a look at this site. Over on the right side are the blogrolls. Notice that there is a small triangle that indicates those sites that have recently updated. How does that work? Could a feature such as that be used to group weblogs into reading lists as an alternative to the news aggregators?
may be the alternatives to RSS aggregators. Possibly by grouping links in the blogroll or by properly grouping favorites/bookmarks into reading frequencies, one might achieve the same thing that we get from RSS aggregators. In effect you wind up with daily, weekly, monthly and infrequent reading lists or something of that sort. However, neither of these choices streamlines the posting process once you decide to comment about something you read. How do the masters do it?
For some reason I had low opinion of external bookmark managers (without trying them) even though my bookmarks are out of control. I became an instant convert after trying Powermarks for mere 30 minutes. It almost removes the frustration of not being able to find a page bookmarked some time ago. [Krzysztof Kowalczyk’s Weblog]
Can one copy his or her #home template out of Radio and into Dreamweaver and actually see (WYSIWYG) the current color and graphical scheme? Can you then edit that scheme in Dreamweaver and paste the template back into Radio? Must other templates be similarly edited? Is a step-by-step process documented anywhere for doing this?
It would be outstanding to see this done on The Screen Savers. Best of luck to Christian Crumlish on this upcoming appearance!
Dummy Blog Set Up for Tuesday’s Template Demo on The Screen Savers. By all rights I should be barbecuing right now and by all means not laboring, but as a mostly self-employed guy who’s job right now is mostly promoting his most recent book, not to mention a guy with not enough time to do all the things he wants to do once he finds them, I’m instead working on the tutorial for my demo on TV next week while B is down in Palo Alto visiting her family. Here’s my outline so far… [Radio Free Blogistan]
A couple of weeks ago there were several posts about spam and possible solutions. At the time it seemed to me that the tool most people liked best was SpamAssassin. Is that still the case?
Geek-Mail.. I’ve started signing all my emails with a PGP signature. So, if you get mail from a dollarshort or movabletype.org… [dollarshort.org]
Several people are talking about aggregators right now. I’ve enjoyed the linkages that exist between Radio Userland’s ”built-in” aggregator and the text entry box of the weblog tool. It’s nice to wake up to all of the sites you want to read nicely aggregated in one place.
It’s also nice to be able to post from those aggregated stories by merely ”pressing buttons.” There’s very little cut, copy and paste required. However, there are drawbacks. First, on my system, some sites don’t come through the aggregator in a timely way. Further, the Radio Userland aggregator provides that linkage only to its own weblog tool.
The perfect aggregator would be independent of the weblog tools, but permit a ”linkage” to be established that facilitates posting. I’ve been playing with Amphetadesk. It doesn’t like some of the RSS feeds that I’ve been getting via Radio Userland. It’s unclear at this point what’s wrong with those feeds. Examples include prominent sites like: www.boingboing.net and www.bitworking.org. This last site actually causes my copy of Amphetadesk to perform an abend!
The other gripe I have about the Amphetadesk aggregation screen is the absence of any dates and times for the posts. One of these days the perfect tool will arrive!
Jeremy Zawodny Dreams of the Perfect RSS Aggregator. He may be giving Radio’s aggregator short shrift, but Jeremy has done a good job of breaking down several approaches to RSS aggregation and providing his own wishlist:
I’m on a quest to find the perfect RSS aggregator…. I’m thinking of a server-based process that can gather all the data and give it to me in one of several ways. Maybe I can just point my browser at it and catch up on the newsjust like AmphetaDesk. That’s great for when I’m on-line and in a surfing mood. I’d like it to do RSS auto-discovery. I’d like the option of having updates sent to me via e-mail and possibly instant-messenger. Heck, I’d like to be able to subscribe via e-mail or IM as well…. Anyone know of such a beast? Sounds like it’d be a fun project to build. [Radio Free Blogistan]
FORD AND GENERAL MOTORS Another Radio user bolts for MT
I’m so frustrated with my blogging tool of choice that I haven’t been posting, sorry. My guess is that things will be quiet for a bit longer. I’m going to change from Userland Radio to Moveable Type. But it is going to take a bit. I’ve got a lot to learn before I can get things up and running. I’ll continue to post with Radio until I can make the transition, but I can’t guarantee that I’ll be posting a lot.
Why the change? Radio is a great tool, but it is unstable (at least on my machine). Often, after entering several posts it will choke and hang or crash. If I’m not prepared I can lose all that I’ve written. I’m tired of dealing with Radio’s flakiness. Also, I’d like to use a server-side tool so that I can post from anywhere. Radio supports this, but you have to have your main machine on an ”always-on” internet connection. I don’t have one. [So many islands, so little time]
Telecom is going through a fundamental state-change. From the labor intensive, centrally planned quasi-governmental monopoly to a highly automated, customer-driven technology industry. Some company or companies will emerge as the ”Intel’s” of telecommunications.
Why shouldn’t you be able to scale your home or business bandwidth with little more than a credit card and a web browser? The long-term answer: you will! The short-term answer: legacy thinking!
BellSouth Warning Hits Baby Bells. PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Another earnings warning from BellSouth Corp. (BLS.N) slammed shares of other Baby Bells and wireless companies as investors feared that the battered telecommunications industry had not yet hit bottom, analysts said on Friday. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology]
Five words or Less. Michael Barrish: I am alone Mark Pilgrim: I am blessed. Karl Never tell me the odds. Jonathon Delacour: Life is a beautiful dream. Shannon Campbell I reap what I sow. Steve Himmer How did I get here? Bearman I have… [Burningbird]
by Andrew Tobias
I had a cup of coffee. Black. Nothing fancy.Not bad. Of course, to make the coffee I had to get some water from the tap. And for that, water had to get to the tap…
I would like to see someone write a book called, quite simply, A Cup of Coffee. It would have a chapter on everything involved or at least as many as could fit (decaffeination? color printing on the sides of coffee cans?). And it would be written for a broad audience who of us is not intrigued by how the world works? but especially for high school kids. And there would be two points to it. One would be to teach a lot of stuff, like how running water works and how coffee is grown and what steel is (and who Bessemer and Carnegie were) and how hot it has to be to melt and why whatever its in doesnt melt, too (or, OK, but how did they forge that?) . . . so it could be a somewhat painless, maybe even fun, high school science text. But the bigger point would be to show the centuries of astonishing effort, sacrifice and genius that have gone into the simplest things we take for granted. The hugely complex interdependence of our world. And the cataclysmic tragedy it would be if, having come this far, we allowed our most primeval of fears and hatreds and superstitions to screw it all up. [Andrew Tobias – August 30, 2002]
Marking Time. This is true. A year ago today I left what had become a life of perpetual flux, wherein time and the familiar seemed ever more contorted to fit available space; in which everything was a jumble, topsy-turvy, all muddled up. [Textism]
THERE IS NO END TO THE BAD NEWS IN TELECOM All forward progress will be impeded by some more bad news
Qwest Debt Rating Cut by S.&P. to Low ’Junk’ Grade. NEW YORK (Reuters) – Standard & Poor’s on Tuesday cut Qwest Communications International Inc.’s(Q.N) debt rating two notches to a low ”junk’’ grade, citing lower-than-expected second-quarter revenue in the No. 4 U.S. local phone company’s phone operations. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology]
Don’t buy a computer, particularly a notebook PC, with Windows XP Home on it when you expect to upgrade it to Windows XP Professional. The hassle is simply too great. I don’t need all of the whirlygigs that came with the HP zt1290 Pavilion. However, the effort to locate all of the appropriate drivers and install them on XP Professional has been enormous and is ongoing.
A wonderful discovery – HP has a BIOS download for the Pavilion. It produces a bootable floppy which can be used to flash the BIOS. A typical discovery in the IT industry – the zt1290 Pavilion does not have a floppy drive! Ain’t computers fun?
HP works to reverse its PC slide. The computing giant, facing an eroding slice of the PC market, says it intends to reverse the downward trend in the coming fiscal year. [CNET News.com]
MACROS IN RADIO BY EXAMPLE John’s example makes this almost understandable
I think this is telling me that as long as I can identify which macros are currently in use by the theme I have for my Radio weblog, I could position those same macros in another design and still wind up with the functionality that I have now. That may be easier said than done.
If you are using Radio (and it is running right now) and you are interested in customizing your site’s theme: here is a list of handy macros you can use. They are pretty powerful, particularly if you need specific things automated. If you are a developer and have built macros that we can add to the list, please let me know so we can add them.
They are really easy to use. For example: if I insert <navigatorLinks> which is a macro that publishes the links I have in my menu on the right, in the editing box when it is in ”source” view (the little toggle switch at the bottom of the editing box), I get this:
ROB (AND KEVIN) ARE DOING SOME REDECORATING AT THE CORE This one will be fun to follow as it changes
Thanks Kevin!. This site has been in need of a facelift for quite a while. I have all kinds of ideas but I lack the skills to actually pull it off. It’s nice to know someone like Mr. Kevin Medeiros because he isn’t lacking in web design and graphics design skills. [Rob Fahrni, at the core.]
People like Largent and J.C. Watts were part of a 1994 incoming class in Congress. They had the first reasonable shot at revolution in many years. Some said they’d only serve 2 terms and stuck with it. Others made claims, but became career politicians.
Now we are losing many of those folks as well as Fred Thompson and other notables. The weblog rhetoric, criticism and punditry is at a fever pitch. Does any of it lead anywhere?
When I look at the time sink associated with writing about government, discussing government on TV and radio, and writing about the writers who write about government, I begin to wonder if there’s a higher place of service for most of these people.
This makes parts of the answer clearer, but it also introduces more unknown worlds.
Yesterday I asked why RSS 1.0 is called RSS. A bunch of interesting responses, some of which I collected onto a single page. Several different points of view represented. Esp read Seth Cousins story, it’s a bit of a rambler, he’s a techie but a RSS newbie. As the day goes by I may add more points of view. It’s good, we’re making progress I think, and no flames. Thanks. [Scripting News]
I START TOMORROW My appointment in the dentist’s chair is at 9:45a.m.
and I will faithfully stick to a plan that will allow me to lose some weight when I get up from that chair. New habits, new tastes and new discipline will be needed to make it happen, but it will. Great advice.
Diets & Desires. At the beginning of this month, I switched to a low-carbohydrate diet. I have cut wheat, corn, potato, and most… [The Sakamuyo Log]
WHAT’S THE RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOB? What are the alternatives for sites with no RSS feed?
Question for all you smart people: Can you recommend a good news aggregator/search engine that doesn’t just search the big papers, wires and network news sites? I need something to search small dailies, weeklies, little teevee and radio stations, international papers, etc. This is for daily research on a new project, so I don’t need a feed for a public Web site. I would, however, like to have a private page where these searches would run and update throughout the day. Also, I need something either free or with a good long free trial period. If you’ve got any suggestions, please leave a comment. Thanks y’all! [Ken Layne]
but, T-Mobile is the old Voicestream. I think you know how I feel about them:
”PAV”
So, I’m carrying a Handspring Treo 300 with Sprint’s new service. I’m not browsing and emailing as yet, but I love the simple convenience of a single device rather than having to tote a Palm and a phone.
Combo Phone/PDA. Wow! I saw this little baby yesterday afternoon while we were waiting for a seat at our favorite Mexican restaurant. I couldn’t resist walking up to the man, much to the chagrin of my wife, and asking what OS the device ran on and where he got it. [Rob Fahrni, at the core.]
was removed from the box approximately 1.25 hours ago. It wouldn’t boot. After holding for HP, then providing the model number, serial number, my phone number and assorted other details, I was told by the person at the other end of the line that he would connect me with a service engineer immediately. After some more time on hold, the service engineer wanted to know the model number, the serial number, my phone number and all of the previously provided details. I never questioned this while on the phone. I’m now on CD 5 of 5 attempting to recover the configuration that was supposed to have been installed at the factory.
Once I can get this system to boot correctly (one time) I plan to blow away all of HP’s notions about the right software to have installed (WinXP Home, etc.) and install Windows XP Professional on a freshly formatted hard drive. From there, I can begin building the new notebook to suit my needs.
The problem below is about a phone company – surprise, surprise. However, the opening line about serving one another is so true. Who do you serve? Who does your company serve? Who are the products you sell serving? No matter how far we take this ”knowledge-based” economy, products must work as expected. When they don’t they must be replaced with something that does work and quickly!
”PAV”
We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs. Meg’s book (and Matt’s and Paul’s) is out! Finally, finally, finally. I got a chance to look at a copy of it on Saturday…it’s nice to see it in its final form, the product of several months of hard work and aggravation. It’s a wonder any books get published at all, what with the lack of interest that (certain) publishing companies show in getting them out into the world. Anyway, it’s out now … [kottke.org]
Rob speaks for a lot of people. I have two additional ideas about this professional baseball strike. First, I wish the fans would strike first. Don’t go. Don’t watch them on TV. Don’t say you won’t, then cross the line. Just strike! Without a TV audience, a ballpark audience and all that goes with both, the billionaires and the millionaires will get the message.
Second, let’s take it a step further. Let’s permanently strike. Take every dime that you’ve spent watching or supporting professional baseball and give that to your favorite college’s baseball program. Before you know it, we’ll have America’s pasttime back where it belongs!
Go ahead and strike!. There so darned much going on in the world today. I say to professional baseball ”Go ahead and strike!”, I’ll never go to another game if you do. Who needs professional baseball when we have kids that play like pros? If you caught any of the Little League World Series games over the last couple of weeks you know what I’m talking about. [Rob Fahrni, at the core.]
I’m patriotic. With my patriotism comes some blind loyalty. It is troubling to see others who appear to ”throw in the towel” on our President. I believed him when he said this would be a long ordeal and a lot of it might not be an entirely ”visible” war. I also suspect he’s finding that some allies, participants and targets in this war cannot be quickly and certainly defined.
I respect a lot of what these posters have written. However, anyone who says ”voting a straight Democratic ticket” is a solution to our present situation raises questions about their own judgment.
Quick to Boycott Bush, Republicans?: Bill Quick, a smart and iconoclastic conservative-leaning libertarian (or libertarian-leaning conservative; whatever), announces that
George Bush’s disgraceful and dangerous performance, which has so far included dragging his feet on dealing effectively with Saddam Hussein, as well as hypocritically and ludicrously pretending that the loathesome terrorist nation of Saudi Arabia is an ally of ours, has effectively destroyed my confidence in the man, his administration, and his party.
Therefore, absent a drastic turnaround in the focus and actions of the Bush administration, I will register my displeasure this fall by voting a straight Democratic ticket at the national level, and I urge others to register their protest in any similar way that will result in a clear message being sent to our leaders: If you fail in your sworn duty to defend the US constitution and, implicitly, the American people from obvious threats like Saddam Hussein and the Islamofascist Saudi regime, you will be thrown out of power and out of office.
Meanwhile, Layne declares the warmongering toward Iraq a scam, and pronounces:
Bush has failed. His moderate-conservative ideas die in the Arabian sun, because he belongs to the Saudis. On Tuesday, Bush is meeting the Saudi ambassador in Crawford. He is in deep over his head. I would never accuse Bush of allowing the Sept. 11 attacks or faking his mourning over the deaths of so many people. But his ”with us or against us” rhetoric is horribly hollow. He wants to stop the evil enemy? Then why is the evil enemy spending the night at the Texas White House? [Matt Welch’s Warblog]
People who think Washington is passing big laws that screw up the Internet should read Ernie the Attorney’s legislative agenda for DC. It’s funny but when you’re finished rolling on the floor, give it some thought. The courts and a little civil disobedience can fix a lot of bad laws. [Scripting News]
Sitting here in Memphis on the muddy Mississippi, it is still easy, even since 9-11-01, to think of certain geopolitical machinations as a ”world away.” The notion that assissinations are ”go ahead signals” is indeed sobering. The weblog challenge is to remain free of the conspiracy theories, wild extrapolations and disjointed logic that can so quickly slant a thread of discussion. Sources and their integrity are paramount.
Trapped in Jakarta’s hotel of broken dreams. Did you know that hundreds of Pakistani and Afghani refugees came to Indonesia planning to sneak into Australia and claim asylum? Most have returned home or are stranded in Indonesia because the Australian government has instituted new policies to keep them out. [So many islands, so little time]
A MODEST PROPOSAL: Spoons describes the first InstaPundit-related marriage proposal. I’ve been following this development for a while, and I’m glad to see it bear fruit. [InstaPundit]
The masochist Tim Blair reads Maureen Dowd columns so you don’t have to. This time, the quoted sentence was so stupid and ridiculous I actually clicked over and read Dowd’s slop. You know how some older children try to act toddler-cute to get attention? You know how repulsive it is to see a large, ugly child act like a baby? That’s how Dowd writes. It’s shameful.
Anyway, the sentence that inspired Blair’s post mocks Bush for saying the word ”bovine” while on a jog. Dowd read an AP story about Bush running and working at his ranch. Running with a reporter, Bush passed a cow and said ”bovine.” This really got Dowd going… [Ken Layne]
Steve Forbes needs to right this ship. The family has much too long a history of excellence to allow the flagship publication to dwindle because of his runs for national office. Frankly, with a weblog and some more frequent publishing, Steve might have a greater impact on national affairs than by trying to become a TV-friendly personality!
Now Steve Is Running to Revive Forbes. Forbes magazine is sinking quickly, losing almost half its advertising pages over the last two years, but Steve Forbes is jumping back in to try to turn it around. By David Carr. [New York Times: Business]
about the digital rights/intellectual property debate by reading Aaron’s suggested letter!
Aaron Swartz wrote a template for a letter to a congressperson that outlines an enlightened view of the mischief that Congress has been up to on behalf of the entertainment industry. [Scripting News]
A BIG ENDEAVOR I’ve got the urge to get back in the game
would be appealing right now. The post below makes it sound as if they are literally building a temporary city in the middle of the desert. Last night I watched a Discovery channel show about the Gibraltar Bridge, a 9 mile (conceptual) bridge design that might one day link Europe to Africa. With towers 3000 feet high and structural challenges never before solved, the bridge would cost an estimated $15 billion and would be the largest construction project ever.
Yesterday, we mentioned moonshot-scaled projects in bits and bytes. Sometimes, at the end of the day, it is very difficult to see progress with those kinds of projects. That’s part of what makes them so difficult to manage. However, the brick layer knows how much he gets done each day. It would be fun to tackle a project of epic scale that has such high visibility.
Burning Man Wi-Fi: Raines Cohen, veteran Mac god and doer of good deeds, signed his latest post to the BAWUG wireless list with the following tech detail from Burning Man: from Black Rock City, Nevada (site of Burning Man) via Tachyon satellite wireless (thanks to Cliff Cox of Oregon Country Fair Embassy), current initial 802.11b coverage (SSID ”internet”, open) covers about 2/3rds of the city (soon to be Nevada’s fifth largest) from a single node on Playa Info’s tower ”downtown” at Center Camp, will be upgraded through addition of repeaters as the city grows and as PlayaNET public-access kiosks and intranet network comes online. [80211b News]
Deals Within Telecom Deals. Many telecom deals conducted in the late 1990’s demonstrate how executives were able to enrich themselves through holdings in outside companies from which they bought equipment. By Gretchen Morgenson. [New York Times: Business]
Make certain that users of other news aggregators have a way to import/export their subscription lists.
If I understand correctly this project has the potential to provide a news aggregator to users of Movable Type. I’m not sure how MT users get their news and post it, but Radio Userland users have an ”integrated” news aggregator for subscribing to favorite RSS feeds and then posting directly to their own weblogs.
Weblog Policy: A number of people at Groove have started blogs, and I’m really trying to encourage more to do the same. The more we live it, the more that we’ll learn from it, and the more that we’ll learn through it as we’re engaged in conversations with our customers. And thus, the sooner that we’ll be able to improve our products and services based upon what we learn. Of course, there are many questions that arise when an employer encourages employees to operate more ”in the open”, and so our counsel, Jeff Seul, has taken a first pass at creating a ”blog policy”. Check it out. [Ray Ozzie’s Weblog]
LIKE COUNTING CHICKENS IN A HEN HOUSE With the doors open at each end!
Is This One Nation, Under Blog?. Weblog software use grows daily—but bloggers abandon sites and launch new ones as frequently as J.Lo goes through boyfriends. Which makes taking an accurate blog count tricky. By Lia Steakley. [Wired News]
I.T. PROJECTS SCALED TO LUNAR LANDING-SIZE Most moonshot projects fail
Many I.T. projects get caught in scope creep and other project management failures that lead to cost and time overruns. This is almost guaranteed when the project starts out as a multi-year, multi-million dollar notion. John Robb captures the essence of this. He had earlier pointed to another company-killing strategy. He then offers an alternative using weblogs to decentralize publishing.
SUCCINCTYLY DESCRIBING A CITY Can you capture the essence of other places in so few words?
Ernie the Attorney says new N’awlins’ mayor Ray Nagin is ”truly working to make a change in this city.”
I hope so. I love that town—it’s my birthplace and I grew up there, even though I consider Los Angeles to be my true hometown. What I learned as a kid in New Orleans was that all politicians are crooks, priests are political drunks, unions are run by people who never worked for a living, police trouble can be easily fixed if you’re white and have a few dollars, blacks and whites will always battle, health codes are a joke, roaches run the town, nutrias and poorly planned levees are sinking the whole city about an inch a year, horrible violent crime is accepted as part of the civic life, and no World’s Fair or gambling or Anne Rice or Middle East oil crisis is going to save NOLA.
Last time I sort of lived in New Orleans, staying with my childhood friend P. Lindsey Williams, a bunch of famous people had bought houses in the Garden District and up by Audubon Zoo. Courtney Love, Bob Dylan, Tom Cruise … Trent Reznor already had his house/studio by Esplanade, east of the Quarter. Mick Jagger maybe owned a place around there. But they were all—with the exception of Reznor and Rice—absentee owners. They dropped by now and then. New Orleans was a freakin’ theme park for them. They were the most famous people in town, yet they didn’t live there. Their income came from L.A. and New York and London.
New Orleans is a small town compared to the big American cities. I’m guessing here, because I’m tired and don’t feel like doing the Google, but I recall the city having around a quarter-million residents. Jefferson Parish was thriving, to the west. The smart people with jobs were also moving across the lake to Slidell, where Ernie lives. Around the French Quarter and St. Charles and the … what’s it called, the Riverwalk? The MoonWalk? ...tourists pour a bunch of money into Orleans Parish. Dentists, nurses, ophthalmologists, middle-class S&M folk, they all come for the conventions. But way back in 1994, the city was losing its people. By 1995, it had the worst murder rate in the nation. Who the hell wants to live in an economically doomed death factory?
Anyway, I hope Mayor Nagin can change the centuries of corruption, graft and filth. It would be nice if people could live there safely and do business. They already live real fine, when it comes to food and drink and fun. [Ken Layne]
Let’s take all of the companies involved in selling bandwidth (cable, wireless, legacy teleco, nextgen teleco, etc.) worldwide into bankruptcy. Then, let’s forgive 75% of their debt. Clean up all the accounting questions and past sins. Ninety days later, let them all come out of bankruptcy on the same day with 6 months worth of working capital. From that point, let them price their services to the marketplace and let’s see which ones are standing in a year. In other words, which companies are truly offering what the marketplace needs looking forward?
You can be up and blogging with Radio Userland in five minutes or less. It’s at the point that you want to begin to treat a weblog like other web sites and make custom changes to the look and feel that you’ll blog down. Unless you’re ready to learn (and know where to look for training on) macros, scripting, HTML, XML, CSS, and other assorted web arcanery, you’ll hit a roadblock. The best-looking weblogs are run by people who are either experienced web designers or programmers who know multiple languages/scripting techniques, etc.
Essential Blogging. With weblogs-or ”blogs”-exploding all over the Web, the only thing lacking for power users and developers is detailed advice on how choose, install, and run blogging software. Written by leading bloggers, Essential Blogging includes practical advice and insider tips on the features, requirements, and limitations of applications such as Blogger, Radio Userland, Movable Type, and Blosxom. This book will get you up and blogging in no time. [O’Reilly Safari]
GOOD SUPPORT COSTS REAL MONEY and comes with a warranty
Support Has Its Price. Once, customers with software problems could count on free help. These days, companies are turning product support into a source of additional revenue. By Rogier Van Bakel. [New York Times: Business]
Wireless Web Comes to Starbucks Shops. SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – As if the caffeine wasn’t enough to get customers going, Starbucks Corp. (SBUX.O) on Wednesday launched coffee drinkers into cyberspace with high-speed wireless Internet access at some 1,200 cafes. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology]
Automatically inserting images before offsite links. Desired effect: we want offsite links to look different than local links. In addition, we want offsite links to be preceded by a specific image (a globe, in this case) to indicate that they point to another site. Uses MT-Macros and MT-Regex. (295 words) [dive into mark]
Is merger adding up for HP’s sales force?. Facing HP’s first earnings report as a combined entity with Compaq, the new company’s sales team has won some, lost some. Can it show that one plus one equals more than two? [CNET News.com]
Ordinarily I’m willing to forgive software problems because I’m uncertain about whether I’ve done something wrong or not. In this case, I’m frustrated with Radio. Last night I spent almost an hour preparing and posting 10 to 15 items. When I look at the local home page, they aren’t there. When I look at the public home page, they aren’t there.
My news aggregator is set up so that I can post something from it to the text entry box. Upon completion of the edit, I’m automatically returned to the news aggregator. There I can see the check mark next to the items I’ve posted. Everything ”worked” as it normally does, but all of those posts are gone!
Having used this product for 7 months, I know how to post something from the news aggregator. I did nothing new or unusual. Yes, I’m frustrated again with Radio!
WHY NOT?Buying cellular time is like purchasing prepaid phone cards
Cingular Gives (Minutes) Back. But Cingular’s competitors aren’t about to let customers roll over unused minutes. Also: Britain’s looming ban on DWY…. A bittersweet departure for telecom expert…. and more…. In this week’s Unwired News. By Elisa Batista. [Wired News]
A TREATISE ON VALUE Telecom gives way to bandwidth
Most of the following posts are about telecom companies and their struggles. No one disputes that the telecom bubble and its implosion were as noisy as when the dot com bubble burst. The noise is one thing, the signal in all of this is likely to be quite another. Picking up the pieces of the telecom bubble is likely to produce outsized returns for the insightful.
First, a bit of background by way of bullet points:
a majority of voice phone calls will one day be placed over IP networks
the Internet is here to stay as a part of personal and corporate communications and data processing and IP packets are the fundamental unit of measure
video and data have grown dramatically to surpass voice calls as a component of bandwidth usage – more digital packets
copper has limits rooted in physics that fiber optics can surpass by orders of magnitude
glass fiber and optoelectronics are improving at a rate that is roughly comparable to the rate seen in personal computing, microprocessors and the Wintel phenomena that dates to roughly 1981; i.e. Moore’s law applies to optoelectronics as well as PC’s
with improvements in fiber optics are comparable improvements in price:performance
These facts point to some conclusions. First, communication isn’t going a way. No matter how many telecom’s buckle under the accounting problems, mismanagement or turmoil, people are going to continue to process, store and move information. The most conservative estimates of Internet traffic growth show rates of increase in the neighborhood of 80%-100% per year. If those estimates are off by a factor of two, remarkable growth in the movement of voice, video and data is still expected.
This brings us to value. If we need communications networks and those networks are likely to switch from a legacy copper foundation to a fiber optic foundation over time, some company (or companies) is likely to emerge as the low-cost producer of bandwidth. That company has the potential to gain an outsized share of the market for communications in the future. (Remember, fiber in the ground may constitute a fiber glut, but NOT a bandwidth glut. It takes optoelectonics in the network to light it and turn it into bandwidth.)
Value may get created in the ”last mile,” where wireless, cable television and traditional local phone companies are competing. Value may get created in the ”long-haul” business where a company provides the connections to the metro networks. Wherever one chooses to look, there is a strong likelihood that a company or companies will emerge with a near monopolistic control of the economics of bandwidth. Those required to maintain an old, tired legacy network while attempting to build their own fiber optic network will be faced with suboptimal pricing as one network’s revenues subsidize the others.
As one looks at the telecom valuations today, it is easy to see that none of them are prized catches. However, a time to look for bargains is when everyone is looking elsewhere. Future wealth will result from buying bargains when they are on sale. Telecom is on sale. The trick is to assess which of these companies has the vision, grit and resources needed to prevail. Extraordinary value will accrue to those who understand the transition from legacy telecom to bandwidth.
Qwest to Sell Yellow Pages For $7 Billion. Qwest Communications will sell its yellow-pages directories business to a group of financiers for $7.05 billion in a move that would help it avert a bankruptcy filing. By Andrew Ross Sorkin with Barnaby J. Feder. [New York Times: Business]
XO SLIPPED RATHER QUIETLY INTO BK Now Icahn is taking a run at it
Icahn Extends XO Note Bid. The High River Limited Partnership of Carl C. Icahn said that it would extend until 5 p.m. Tuesday an offer to buy as much as $331 million in senior secured loans of XO Communications. By Bloomberg News. [New York Times: Technology]
WHY STEVE CAN’T PROGRAMThis is tremendously helpful – I’ll try harder!
Just What Is Programming?. Though I don’t think I’m particularly great at it, I was pretty much brought up in ”the old school” of programming – editor, complier, linker. I’ve often argued that ”HTML isn’t programming” and gotten annoyed when someone refers to ”programming the computer” when all I was doing was using it (working with a spreadsheet, for example, or adding a program to a PC’s autoexec.bat file). Dan Bricklin’s Why Johnny can’t program puts a whole different perspective on things, and helps me understand where these other folks are coming from. Good job. [Steven’s Weblog]
The James Bond spy camera. Frustrated with my current digital camera (a Sony DSC-S70), I followed a link from Scripting News to Ray Ozzie’s weblog, where he sings the praises [Jonathon Delacour]
WHAT IT PERMITS VS. WHAT WE IMAGINE IT PERMITS? Debunking DMCA myths – Declan McCullagh – c|net – The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has a lot of implications for all of us that create intellectual property, both software creators like MM, and users like you. While we have heard some rather dire predictions from open source and computing freedom advocates, sometimes the claims they make regarding the content of the law are not 100% correct. McCullagh argues that by using hyperbole and scare tactics to motivate people to oppose the DMCA, the opponents may be doing themselves a dis-service by sacrificing their credibility. What do you think? If you oppose the DMCA, do you know what is really in there? [Matt Brown’s Dreamweaver Blog]
Mark Twain. ”He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it – namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.” [Quotes of the Day]
Newsweek: “In 1997, those with the geek gene began to hand-create what are now considered Weblogs. Around that time James Romenesko’s link-dominated ‘filter’ site, focusing on news about the media, became an industry institution. A few other blogs, like software guru Dave Winer’s Scripting News, also achieved cult status. But as of 1999, Weblogs were measured by the dozen.” [Scripting News]
The first time a company that has done this has a problem, there will be yet another round of lawsuits and accusations. This won’t work and the companies that are subscribing to such methods know it. This is mere window dressing.
Ronald Reagan. ”Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.” [Quotes of the Day]
know whether to select RSS 0.91 or RSS 1.0 when a weblog offers both? What are the differences? Does one brand of news aggregator require one and another brand the other?
Russia, Iraq, Iran, and N.Korea together form a coalition that resembles the Cold War threat. With Iraqi/Irani oil and money from oil, some of Russia’s economic woes diminish. With Russia’s nuclear arsenal, some of Iraq and North Korea’s wish list could be filled. This sounds ominous.
Earlier this week, I posted something about digital rights. I’m afraid this debate is now between the lawyers and politicians, and frankly I’ve lost track of ”the right idea.” I have no problem with a musician, composer or film maker wanting to be paid for their work. I also see their concern about posting their work on the Internet under some honor system for payments. Further, I can see that sharing music or sharing video might prevent appropriate payments.
What I’ve lost track of is the ”other side.” Has someone pointed out the right idea? Clearly, I’m opposed to lawsuits against ISP’s and heavy-handed snooping inside personal computers to search for *.mp3 files or whatever else they think they might find. However, assuming the tech side of this debate agrees that people deserve to be paid, what ideas have come up? Is it simply the ”I pay a monthy fee for x downloads” idea? Doesn’t that leave the art in digital form and subject to the same open sharing system. In other words, will that really work?
I’ve heard all the stuff about being accused of being a pirate, etc. That name calling isn’t the part of the debate I’m asking about. Are there practical solutions that permit both sides to get what they want? If anybody knows where I should look to come up to speed on this, please let me know. Thanks.
Do you ever start to type something into Radio and realize that the font in the text entry box is not what you normally see? It happens to me quite a lot. Like right now. I’m typing away in Times Roman or whatever and normally my posts are in Verdana. At other times this text entry box opens up ready to go in Verdana.
I often see this when I’m going back and forth between posting and the news aggregator. Every post I make requires a little editing. I bold my titles. I make sure that the spacing is right. Sometimes (and this post is likely to be one of them) I have to post then edit the same post to use the ”clear formatting” option (it’s in the ’paragraph’ drop down menu). That pulls the text closer together.
After 7 months of using this tool and trying to learn something about weblogs, HTML and Radio, I sat down yesterday and captured (nearly) all of the things I wish for in my own weblog. From what fonts to use to what colors to how a link mouseover works, I put stuff in a document. I listed favorite sites and why they were favorites. Everything I put in the document had to do with look-and-feel not content. We’ll see where it leads!
The late Philip Crosby spent a lifetime teaching others how to build quality and prevention of errors into every business process. I may have my estimates crossed up, but I think I recall that Crosby’s estimate of the cost of rework in companies was 25% of sales for a manufacturing business and 40% of expenses for a services business. It would be interesting to correlate those guesstimates with the ones IDC came up with.
As much focus as we think we’ve placed on productivity, efficiency and effectiveness, Deming, Juran and Crosby truly showed the way when it came to methods that build quality into processes. I agree and would love to pursue an effort to make K-Logs part of the on-going solution.
A snippet from CFO magazine (thanks Omar). This is definitely something that K-Logs could solve: U.S. researcher IDC estimates the cost of ”knowledge deficit” defined as costs and inefficiencies that result from intellectual rework, substandard performance, and inability to find knowledge resources at Fortune 500 companies is about $5,000 per knowledge worker per year, and rising. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
Hi folks. I’m out of town for my sister’s college graduation. The usual gun-toting security team is guarding the house, so rob somebody else. [Ken Layne]
Memphis has been my home for a lot of years. On August 16, 1977 I was packing to leave for my second business trip since college. Elvis was at home the week he died.
This 25th year since his death has seen quite a resurgence of coverage at Graceland as well as the creation of a series of events in the Memphis area that have drawn large crowds.
My fondest Elvis story growing up really amounts to six or eight stories over a period of years. Each Christmas when Elvis got home, he’d head over to Madison Cadillac. The six o’clock news would invariably have a story of several people who happen to be in the car dealership and were given brand new Cadillacs by Elvis. The great part of these stories is that the media never caught him in the act. It made news, but the gift wasn’t given to make the news!
Virginia Postrel quit blogging to work on a book. Today, she’s come out of hiding long enough to throw us something to chew on. You’ll just have to see for yourself.
Does anyone else see Doc Searls’s posts as one continuous post in the news aggregator? Any time I see something he’s posted in the news aggregator, it’s a part of everything else that he’s posted on that day. Have I got something set wrong or are the permalinks on his site ignored by the news aggregator?
THIS SEEMS LIKE SUCH A LOGICAL CONNECTION I hope they pull this off!
I’m probably more clueless about this than I realize, but aren’t there dozens of editors around – some from small shops that might really be willing to ”strike the right deal.” Better still, some of the participants might welcome some sort of reciprocal arrangement with Radio Userland.
Jake continues his plea for a browser-based editor that does the basics and doesn’t cost and arm and a leg. If somebody has one for a reasonable price, I would be more than happy to talk to them. Look at this way: given our sales growth, a nice editing widget (that works on Windows and Mac and provides spell check) that costs a couple of $$ could probably provide enough income for some smart developer to live on by early next year (or at least pay for the mortgage/rent, a car, and a trip to Hawaii for a week). [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
customers don’t require any attention. It doesn’t appear that EchoStar has much legal exposure here. They may be guilty of a little apathy toward customers and poor customer service, but cell phone companies have gotten away with that for years! ”PAV”
ChoiceMail, the ultimate anti-spam weapon?. I just read about ChoiceMail, a whitelist-based email service that ”turns your inbox into the equivalent of your front door” where people have to knock and identify themselves as human via a quick web form (hello, Cluetrain) before their message is allowed in. This is exactly the idea I’ve been… [0xDECAFBAD]
Groove V2.1 is nowavailableonoursite. Congratulations to the Groove team on yet another on-time delivery. A faster product (less computation & I/O, new tunneling protocols, and more), with improved usability. Download or upgrade! [Ray Ozzie’s Weblog]
I trust that what Mark says is true, but, as always, I have questions:
What does he mean by ”they don’t work very hard at finding RSS feeds?”
What does he mean by ”stubborn insistence on making RSS visible?”
I thought my choice of subscriptions determined which RSS feeds my news aggregator would go find. However, I have seen some intermittent results with Radio Userland’s news aggregator. That usually takes the form of a site that I’m subscribed to and I know has an update not coming through in my next refresh of the news aggregator. Maybe that’s what he means by ”not working very hard.” The visibility issue is a mystery to me.
Ultra-liberal RSS locator. One of my biggest pet peeves about the current generation of news aggregators is that they dont work very hard at finding RSS feeds. The other side of this coin is their stubborn insistence on making RSS visible. RSS should be completely invisible. (573 words) [dive into mark]
Dave Winer on Radio vs. Movable Type. As someone else pointed out in my comments, I left out some Radio features that MT lacks. Thanks again, Dave, for adding all that. All of my comparisons so far are a work in progress, and I’ll probably rewrite them as Stories when I have some free time, heh. [Radio Free Blogistan]
The Declustering of America: ”With the new telecommunications technology, it is increasingly easy for a firm to operate in a dispersed manner”. Although only really discussing geography, I find articles like this fascinating, of course, because today are living early forms of the ”next company” described by Peter Drucker: ”By now the new information technology Internet and e-mail have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications. This has meant that the most productive and most profitable way to organise is to disintegrate.” [Ray Ozzie’s Weblog]
I particularly like the one that starts, ”You are a Knowledge Weblog (klog) sales rep calling on an IT department and its customers. What tools do you need to explain your product? To make your case? To guide decision making? To boilerplate deployment and maintenance? Here is a partial list of what a klogging tool vendor’s marcom department might produce…”
HOW LONG TO FREE CASH FLOW Or would that show the wrong attitude?
Many people simply don’t have the resources to hold on for 12 months or so while the business builds to a point of throwing off more cash than it consumes during the startup months. Has anyone uncovered a business that can build free cash flow quicker?
Heres what a few people who started businesses in their twenties thought was key to pulling it off. Seize your opportunity: maybe you should go into business for yourself. It doesnt really matter how old you are, what matters is your attitude. # [John Henry on Business]
TRYING TO GET THIS STRAIGHT Digital Rights Management = copy protection, right?
Software companies tried (some years ago) to copy protect software. Most, if not all schemes for this were dismal failures. Now, whether music, movies, documents or any other digital data, one segment of the population wants to insure that they get paid and that there isn’t widespread bootlegging of their creative efforts. The other group says, I want to be able to use what I buy any way I want to; I have no plans to profit from my use of the product, and I don’t want to buy it six times just because I change computers or TIVO’s or whatever else.
The first group is trying to protect itself with lots of (unworkable) technical possibilities mandated by and overseen by government lap, er, watchdogs. The second group says, ”trust us.” They want to put all of this on some global honor system free of technical and political barriers to using the CD, DVD, download or whatever else as they see fit. Have I got this about right?
One group says, ”let me scan my own groceries and I’ll be honest.” The other says, ”the criminals among you won’t scan ALL the groceries, so we’d better scan for you.” Is that the current state of this debate?
DAN GILLMOR SAYS that ”digital rights management” should be called ”digital restrictions management.” Well put. It’s your rights that are being restricted. [InstaPundit]
Mark Twain. ”Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” [Motivational Quotes of the Day]
When IBM completes the acquisition of Price Waterhouse Coopers, they’ll be adding roughly 30,000 to the headcount.
IBM cutting 15,000 jobs. Big Blue is eliminating 15,600 jobs, primarily in the services division and microelectronics division, the company revealed in an SEC filing. [CNET News.com]
BEAUTIFYING THE BLOGOSPHERE: Radley Balko has a new, Sekimori-designed blog. So does David Kenner, who has a nifty ”Across the Web” feature in the upper left corner. [InstaPundit]
I’ve been carrying a Palm and a cell phone and wish for the single device that replaces both. Tomorrow I’m giving the Handspring Treo 300 a try with Sprint’s 3G network. I’ll let you know. (Mossberg mentioned it at the end of this review.)
”PAV” The T-Mobile offering did not impress. It’s not great as a phone and there are too many trade-off’s as a PDA. My findings matched those of Walter Mossberg.
T-Mobile’s Pocket PC Phone. I’ve just written about different options for phone/PDA combos… The question is only who’ll be the first to do it right. I’m still waiting for Danger’s Hiptop (which will be branded by T-Mobile as Sidekick). Same T-Mobile (ne as VoiceStream) just launched a new phone based on Pocket PC Phone edition. [Krzysztof Kowalczyk’s Weblog]
PHOTO DETAILS PLEASE Just shut up and admire the work!
I love to find photo albums such as this one. For those of us just learning digital photography, I always wish for a few pertinent details. Type of camera, how much Photoshop retouching was done, resolution, type of photo album software used, etc.? These would be nice for starters. Without those details for learning, you’re left just to admire the work!
Who hasnt heard of the colonel and his unique story? The key was being a savvy salesman. How many of you would have kept pursuing your dream, like he did at age 62? I guess success comes when were ready. Are you doing all you can to prepare? # [John Henry on Business]
have the calm assurance of being exactly where God wants them to be. It’s a constant struggle between my ’driven to achieve’ side and the side of me that attempts to understand and live by Faith. I like the tone of Joe’s responses to Russell.
More from Russell. ”But Joe, you don’t actually HEAR God or anything right? It’s just a sort of sensation I hope…”Russell
No audible voices yet. ;-) And yes, it is very nice to live in the tropics. 80+ degrees most days, but the mornings do get cool here in Bandung. [So many islands, so little time]
Were it not for all of this time and effort in learning how to ”program” a weblog to look and behave and default to the features I want, blogging professionally would be a dream. I’d love to spend the lion’s share of my day researching and blogging the latest on leadership, quality, customer service and the techniques that lead to business excellence.
Paul Harvey once said, ”do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” That’s a certain recipe for getting out of the rat race. As always, the shout from the masses is, ”Yes, but how?” (YBH)
Blogging for Dollars: Giving Rise to the Professional Blogger. What about the notion to pay people to blog for commercial sites covering genre-specific content? By providing financial incentive for great bloggers to publish, we remove economic constraints and enable them to devote their energies full-time to producing compelling content and to creating outstanding Weblogs. [O’Reilly Network Articles]
VALIDATION, W3C, PHP, SCRIPTS… This post and the next show the deep hole I’m down in and still diggin’
Markover. Once blog entries are simple files on disk, they are more directly ameanable to a wider range of tools. For example, I wrote a simple perl script which will take each entry and pass it through tidy to correct XTHML violations. Of course, to make the resultvalidate, I hade to change the head and foot html, so I figured, why not steal from the best? [Sam Ruby]
Groove advocates are now blogging in a bigger way. I’m trying to figure out why I sometimes see files with ’.shtml’ as the file type. At the same time I’m trying to figure out Groove, CSS, XHTML, HTML, why I need to know Perl, what CGI does for me, what the heck PHP is and how to ”program around the proprietary parts of a Radio template…” and the list goes on. For a former exec with a large staff and an I.T. department, this stuff grows more perplexing daily.
The trouble right now is understanding how and from whom to learn.
about bloggers who link to someone to get a return link and then link again and so on… That’s not what this is about. This is about trying to find a way to learn some of the junk that is required to modify a weblog to make it look better. It’s also about trying to learn all these acronyms and all this jargon that techies love.
Joe corrects my misstatement and provides some links. I post this here to help those of you who have emailed and said you’re following along trying to learn with me.
”Which one do I choose to do this XHTML 1.0 thing right? Where’s the place to learn more about what all of this terminology means?” W3C.org is a good place to go. Zvon.org is another excellent resource. I also suggest learning as much as you can about the basics of HTML before taking on XHTML. Just my opinion… [jenett.radio]
Joe Jenett is taking his weblog to the XHTML 1.0 standard and CSS. I use a text editor (not very well) called NoteTab Pro. When I start a new web page, it prompts for the kind of markup I’m doing. In the XHTML choices are:
XHTML 1.0 Strict
XHTML 1.0 Transitional
XHTML 1.0 Frameset
Which one do I choose to do this XHTML 1.0 thing right? Where’s the place to learn more about what all of this terminology means?
Somehow this whole problem sounds as if it was concocted and compared to the Year 2000 panic just to create news where there was none. Perhaps there is a change coming. However, in the normal course of equipment replacement cycles, this one seems rather easy to solve.
Russell, I love you too!. Russell thinks that I’m a ”religious nutter” because I care about what God wants in my life. Or, maybe it’s because I think I can know what God wants me to do? Or, maybe it’s because I believe there is a God? Who knows, but being the link slut that I am I’m happy anytime someone points to my blog. Back at you, Russell. It is great to see another xpat blogger. [So many islands, so little time]
WE’RE ABOUT TO MOVE TOO FAR Not every business failure includes broken laws
This may be appropriate. However, with the mainstream media fanning the flames, those with financial struggles are burning at the stake. When a business fails, it doesn’t necessarily mean a crook was in charge. When an individual files for bankruptcy, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he or she broke the law. Whether public or private, companies will fail from time to time. Sure, there have been some recent cases with extreme abuses uncovered. Lest the pendulum swings too far the other direction, we need to remember that trying and failing doesn’t always imply wrong-doing.
SOUNDS LIKE A LOT OF WORK What happens when XHTML 2.0 is approved? I’d love to understand all of this stuff!?!
>From News and Notes at coolstop... A minor version upgrade to the entire coolstop/2002v1 site is now in progress. The goal is to improve accessibility and convert all coding to be 100% compliant with W3C XHTML 1.0 and CSS specifications. Though it may take longer (realistically), I’m shooting for having the entire site upgrade completed before coolstop’s 5th Year Anniversary on October 14, 2002. I’m working on the main page (and its components) now and it will be uploaded when done additional sections of the site will go online as they’re completed. If all goes well (with a little luck), I just might meet the ol’ deadline… ;~) [jenett.radio]
I’m glad to hear this. After all of my frustrations with HTML coding and trying to understand how to modify templates in Radio Userland, it is a little comforting to hear of a truly talented designer who ocassionally has frustrations.
In a recent inquiry to someone who has done some excellent design work, I inquired about altering my Radio templates. The response was direct. ”It’s just a matter of designing around the proprietary code though, right?” That’s what I’m told. But, how does one identify the proprietary code? I can’t drop a simple site meter GIF into a template without hosing the entire home page.
Why I am not a web designer. I got started drawing up Yarinareth today. I have the beginnings of a color scheme (David said he wanted sky colors and I am trying to oblige) and a top banner. That took me about two hours (what with swearing… [Caveat Lector]
an additional 1 percent of the nation is out of work, with more unemployment to come
an estimated 90 percent of all publicly traded companies are bankrupt or insolvent
inflation is now at 20% and triple digit inflation is a real possibility
your countries annual economic growth rate has gone from 7% to 0 (or possibly into negative numbers)
the annual per capita income has been reduced by 75%
This is the reality that Indonesia awoke to…The next few months are going to be critical times…
”Look at the nations and watch—and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.” Habakkuk 1:5 [So many islands, so little time]
what the telecom industry has been guilty of in the past when we hear about accounting manipulations in one of today’s giant companies. The facts show widespread abuses of customers dating back to the earliest days of the centrally planned, monopolistic industry.
Today we fight spamming and slamming. Remember the ominous tone of the phone company employee on the other end of the phone when he or she said, ”without our ’inside service’ option, any problem with your inside wiring will be your own responsibility.” These statements were being made to people who hadn’t had a change in their phone wiring in thirty years.
Now this:
The Odds of That. In paranoid times like these, people see connections where there aren’t any. Why the complex science of coincidence is a conspiracy theorist’s worst nightmare. By Lisa Belkin. [New York Times: Science]
EVEN PILOTS WITH 8000 HOURS RUN CHECKLISTS FOR PROCEDURES Jon’s checklist is handy if you change PC’s, move your site or simply want to understand Radio better
Radio deployment descriptors. A few weeks ago, I spent some time showing an InfoWorld colleague, Mark Jones, how I use Radio. As always in this kind of situation, I was reminded of: ... [Jon’s Radio]
Jason DeFillippo’s Blogrolling.com now supports OPML. If you use Blogrolling.com for your blogroll, you can use Radio’s radio.macros.blogroll macro, or Manila’s opmlBlogroll macro to add the blogroll to your site. Optional parameters for these macros let you control the appearance of links to recently updated sites. [Radio Free Blogistan]
Sometime later this month, the first public, large-scale, non-Pyra-run installation of Blogger will go live. It’s a unique partnership/licensing deal that we’ve been working on for a few months. So, we’ve got an all-new and improved base on which we want to actually invest (and that was written by people currently working for the company). That’s huge. Besides Rudy and myself, there are currently four other people spending most or all of their work time on Pyra stuff.
So our plan, if you were wondering our plan, is to improve our current stuff and build more useful services and tools that you will like and some of which you’ll pay for. We hope.
Required reading not only for Blogger users, but people keeping an eye on whether the free really is ending, not to mention where this whole bloggerama thing is going. [leuschke.org]
XP ”protection” can render music backups useless. By default, Windows Media Player encodes your music collection using your machine’s unique key, so that you can’t share, loan or give away the tracks you rip to your machine. What that means is, if you have some file-system or OS corruption and reinstall from scratch, then restore your music collection, it will be unusable. You won’t be able to play the files. There’s a backup utility that’ll preserve your license keys, but if you fail to employ it, you’re SOL—MSFT’s position is that you need to start over from scratch at that point, re-ripping all the CDs in your collection. Speaking as someone with 30GB of MP3s, ripped from over 1,000 CDs in a process that took days, I gotta say, I’m glad I’m an OSX user. LinkDiscuss (via On Lisa Rein’s Radar) [Boing Boing Blog]
Blogger sites have no RSS feed unless they’re Blogger Pro sites
Many Movable Type sites don’t have a feed
Some of the most prolific bloggers are Blogger & Movable Type users
The only way I know of to find an RSS feed for a site is this
Question(s): How do they do it? Were it not for the news aggregator, I couldn’t possibly browse to every site of interest to me and extract the things I want to post by copying and pasting. How are the Movable Type people doing without a news aggregator as a source for posts?
Cloudmark released SpamNet Beta 6 on 8/2. Let’s see if it’s improved. They say ”SpamNet users will see significant improvements in SpamNet’s ability to properly identify spam in the next few weeks.” [jenett.radio]
SOMETHING DOESN’T SOUND RIGHT All of this smacks of vultures hastening the death of their prey
WorldCom has long claimed that UUNET handled 30% to 50% of the Internet traffic. AT&T is now claiming that it and WorldCom both handle around 15% of the Internet traffic.
In the same breath AT&T seems to say that the failure of Excite created a need to switch an amount of traffic similar to what WorldCom is carrying. First, was Excite carrying 15% of the Internet traffic near the time of its bankruptcy? I don’t think so.
Second, if WorldCom’s only customers were Internet customers, AT&T might have a point. Considering voice, data, Internet and proprietary technologies, switching WorldCom’s customers is going to require capabilities like ONTAP – not AT&T’s, ”completed in less than 2 months.”
While they are radically different companies with big differences in customer count and contract types, Global Crossing’s downward trend ought to tell the bankruptcy court, creditors and WorldCom what to watch out for. While legal maneuvering has been going on, Global Crossing lost two thirds of its value. No doubt this says something about customers being willing to pay fees to get out of contracts early.
With WorldCom’s mounting woes, we could see that business valued at unbelievably low numbers in the next 6 to 12 months.
When is a book ”published.” What really has to happen? Is it assigned a number? Does one copy get printed? From the date of an author’s completed work to the date the book is on store shelves, where are all the delays?
”We Blog” is not published. Correction: according to the Wiley site, ”We Blog” isn’t being published until August 13, 2002. You’d think I’d know when… [megnut]
For years it has been extremely expensive for a small business to automate key aspects of its supply chain. Unless driven by a large customer (Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble mind) small businesses seldom took advantage of EDI feeds of order acknowledgements, accounts payable invoices, etc. Instead, many well run small businesses printed purchase orders and faxed them, hand-entered receipts of goods and manually keyed in invoices for supplier shipments.
Web services has the potential to bring on dramatic change. With today’s generation of accounting and business management software, small businesses are prepared to remove much of the human intervention that was required in the supply chain. This article shows that the trend starts in the BigCo’s, but the prospects for the Forgotten 5000 are clear. Tech giants back new Web services. Microsoft, IBM and BEA Systems plan to announce new specifications that they hope will spur use of emerging software designed to foster business interaction over the Internet. [CNET News.com]
that Ebbers wasn’t a party to all of this? Could it be that the reason they don’t yet have ”the goods” on him is because he wasn’t requesting or influencing the accounting fraud? The previous indictments were clearly intended to make Sullivan turn on Ebbers.
”Which blogging tool permits you to be up and writing in the shortest amount of time with the assurance that you are building XHTML?” Is this what’s really important? Why is XHTML so important? What are the steps to learning XHTML? Master HTML first? This junk just gets thicker as more trial-and-error work is required to insure that your weblog is ’validating’ and ’accessible’ and who knows what else.
The wonderful Cathy Seipp has a new UPI column … about blogging! (Conflict of interest! I’m mentioned in the piece! Somebody call Bill Kovach!) [Ken Layne]
”...I set myself the task of walking every last block of Manhattan with a camera, and recording anything extant and noteworthy.” Is Gotham the New Interstate?. Most graphic designers are lazy about type, so when they find a font they like, they stick to it. In the 90s, everyone used Interstate. Dmitri Siegel interviews Tobias Frere-Jones, Interstates designer, to see if hes drawn the next big face. [The Morning News – Features]
Trellix adds blogging to its Web tools. The company, which sells software designed to simplify Web site development, is set to announce that its tools now support the creation of Web logs. [CNET News.com]
Read what Dan Bricklin has to say about this deal.
Are we moving to some differentiation between blogging tools? Trellix for those who don’t know HTML? Radio Userland for programmers? Movable Type for graphic designers? What are the genuine points of difference between the blogging tools?
FINANCIAL REPORTING WITH THE COLOR OF CREATIVE WRITING
Charter reported a narrower loss, and so did RCN. It’s all in the reporting style and how the news is ”colored” by the words. RCN REPORTS BIGGER LOSS THAN EXPECTED The RCN Corporation, the cable television, phone and Internet provider backed by Paul G. Allen, said it would have a larger second-quarter loss than it had expected because of ”the severe slowdown in the telecommunications industry and the economy, and the limited available capital” within the sector. The company said it had curtailed growth plans and had nearly $900 million in asset impairment and other costs. RCN, of Princeton, N.J., reported a net loss of $1.09 billion, or $10.46 a share, compared with a loss of $676.9 million, or $7.38 a share, a year earlier. Sales rose 15 percent, to $128 million from $111 million. David C. McCourt, RCN’s chief executive, said that the company added customers to its network during the quarter and that ”we continue to fine-tune our marketing and service delivery strategy.” (NYT)
but may still have difficulty getting the stink of the criminal and regulatory investigations out of his clothes. Then, there’s still the matter of the restatement.
PAVING THE COW PATHS Re-engineer? We can’t re-engineer; this was never engineered to begin with!
Ford, Caterpillar Team With SAP on Supply Chain Project. ”After evaluating various software vendors, Ford and Caterpillar found that no packaged applications currently on the market could fully meet their needs. The two companies decided to work with SAP, which had about 80% of the requirements in place.” (By Marc L. Songini for Computerworld, 8/5/2002.) [Brent Sleeper’s Web Journal]
For a company famous for saying, ”Quality is Job 1,” this project appears to be quite a contradiction. Rather than determine why they are having to manage 600,000 parts, they are launching one of the largest software undertakings of its kind. There’s lots of good rhetoric about ROI and ”rigorous governance process,” but what are we really trying to do here? Isn’t this an automobile company that’s trying to provide quality transportation to its customers?
Last Post From Radio. Last Post From Radio. Pamphlet is now complete enough for me to switch to it for my full-time blogging tool. To recap my history… [BitWorking]
First, make sure you are a novice when it comes to editing and reading HTML code. Then, go try to sign up for the extreme tracker for your weblog. You’ll fill their silly little form out from top to bottom at least 3 times before you get ”authorized.” It took 5 times for me.
Finally, just try to find in your home page template where it is that you’re supposed to paste the extreme tracker HTML so that their little icon shows up and the site metering really works. You’ll cut, copy and paste the code in 4 or 5 places trying to make your weblog refresh in the browser without giving errors. Ultimately, you’ll delete it all, search for whatever problem continues to give browser errors, watch that problem mysteriously disappear and you’ll quit.
You’ll realize that all HTML coding is trial-and-error work going back and forth between possible syntax changes and a browser to see if your syntax changes produced the result you wanted. Nothing about HTML coding is predictable beyond bold, italic and underline. At least no one has shown me the tools that make any of it predictable.
Goodnight!
this is good news for Rob and others who work at Microsoft! I’m hoping he’s right and the customers begin to see a different side of the company as well.
Howdy net neighbor!. A softer Microsoft?? It’s true. In the end it’ll make Microsoft a better place to work and, most importantly, the customer is going to VERY happy! [Rob Fahrni, at the core.]
but I had no idea the InstaPundit was less than a year old! Was it something else before it was a blog?
OVER A YEAR AGO, before InstaPundit was even a blog, I advised the White House to pursue a stream of Clintonesque mini-initiatives. Now TAPPED is complaining that he’s doing just that. Advantage: InstaPundit! [InstaPundit]
and all of your life support equipment could be run on only a single operating system, which operating system would you want that to be? (Sheds a whole new light on ’blue screen of death,’ doesn’t it?)
Question 2 – If you were in control of the software selections at a large Microsoft customer today, what would Apple need to change to entice you to make a sweeping conversion? Same question for one of the Linux distributions?
Paul Boutin’s article truly is excellent. I can almost understand what he’s trying to tell me. I’m still an HTML rookie attempting to understand things like how to make HTML changes around the ”codes & macros” of Radio’s templates.
How do we know to whom to listen? Mark Pilgrim’s book is also terrific. Does his advice agree with Paul Boutin’s? Does it matter if they do? What if they don’t?
The Webmonkey Talks Standards. Paul Boutin has written a wonderful new article for Webmonkey: Web Standards for Hard Times. In it, Paul makes the… [Buzz]
DAN BRICKLIN HAS BEEN WORKING ON SOMETHING NEW (???)
Something new from Trellix soon… I’ve been spending a lot of time helping prepare for a product announcement at Trellix later this week. I’m really excited about it and will post more when I can (probably Thursday or Friday). [Dan Bricklin]
Recent Titled Posts (Radio Nav Enhancement). Thanks to a head’s up from Lawrence Lee at Userland, I’m testing out a list of titles of recent posts in the navigation column of this page. OK, the first try was ugly. I’ve now put .recentPostTitle and .recentPostWhen into the style sheet in the template with the same characteristics as the .small style. Let’s see if that helps…. [Radio Free Blogistan]
”YOU CAN THINK OF IT ALMOST LIKE THE LOBBYISTS IN D.C.” Enough said – I think I get the picture! Sam liked used metal desks.
Sam Walton’s Town Gets Sleeker. Because manufacturers large and small want to be in Wal-Mart’s backyard, Bentonville, Ark., has become sleeker, spiffier and more, well, suburban. By Constance L. Hays. [New York Times: Business]
make you appreciate a CEO like Warren Buffett even more than you might. In the Owner’s Manual for Berkshire Hathaway investors, item #1 says, ”Although our form is corporate, our attitude is partnership. Charlie Munger and I think of our shareholders as owner-partners, and of ourselves as managing partners. (Because of the size of our shareholdings we are also, for better or worse, controlling partners.) We do not view the company itself as the ultimate owner of our business assets but instead view the company as a conduit through which our shareholders own the assets.”
Item 8 says, ”A managerial ”wish list” will not be filled at shareholder expense.”
DO THESE PEOPLE GET IT? Prices are going down – not up
Sprint PCS to Charge for Checking Minutes. CHICAGO (Reuters) – Sprint PCS Group (PCS.N), the nation’s No. 4 wireless telephone company, on Tuesday said it will deduct air time starting August 28 whenever customers use their cell phones to check their phone usage. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology]
”PAV”
NOT SURPRISING Not a lot to pay for a Get-out-of-jail-free card
Embattled Analyst Donated to Democrats. Jack B. Grubman, an analyst at Salomon Smith Barney who is under investigation for potential conflicts of interest, gave $100,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in June. By Bloomberg News. [New York Times: Business]
until after you’ve crossed the swamp! HP may have called Dell’s bluff. Canon says, ”no thanks.”
Canon Won’t Supply Printers to Dell. TOKYO (Reuters) – The head of Japanese office machine maker Canon Inc said on Tuesday his company will not supply printers to PC maker Dell Computer Corp, which aims to enter the printer business but may need a manufacturing partner to do so. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology]
for anyone involved in strategy, operations and the deployment of effective systems for corporate excellence. Maybe this is a more important area of focus than the hands-on look at Apache, CGI, Perl, MySQL, etc.
Strategic XML. There is no question that XML will provide the foundation for the software systems of the next decade. Mapping the course from todays systems to the interoperable Internet-enabled systems of the future is a daunting task.Strategic XML analyzes the IT systems of a typical large corporation and gives specific, fully-functional examples that show how XML can solve problems today while positioning your company for the demands of tomorrow. Strategic XML addresses XML web content publishing, a simple workflow system, an offline order processing system, SOAP client and server examples, legacy system integration (using COBOL), and a unified Web and print documentation system based on XML and XSL. [O’Reilly Safari]
In this much longer post from Glenn Reynolds, one can find an excellent summary and overview of what many bloggers have been discussing for many months. An excerpt:
. . . The ”warblog” crowd is hardly a testosterone-drenched bunch of Rambos. Personally, I’d love to live in the pre-September 11th world, when seemingly all we had to worry about was who had the best abs at the Video Music Awards. But that world, as it turned out, was a fool’s paradise, as people were in fact plotting to kill as many of us as possible just two days later.
Odd, then, that it’s people who point this out who are accused of intolerance and warmongering. [InstaPundit]
I’D NOT BE CAUGHT QUARRELING WITH THAT REASON Thanks Rob (and wife)
Mornin’ Y’All. I’ve discovered a few new web sites I’d like to share with all two of you that keep coming back for more abuse.So many islands, so little time: ”My final reason may sound crazy to you, but it is the ultimate reason. My wife and I firmly believe that it was what God wanted us to do. [Rob Fahrni, at the core.]
YOUNG ASIAN COP ALARMS SPAMASSASSIN More fuel for the spam fryer
What to Do About Spam?. Cory Doctorow believes that technologies such as Vipul’s Razor will succeed in eliminating spam, a view that Bruce Sterling challenged in his recent talk at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention. [O’Reilly Network Articles]
THINKING ABOUT LOGOS, SITE REDESIGN AND FONTS Dreamin’ about stylin’
Parkinson: Typography for the Masses. Probably some of the best typographic logos out there. They are not the trendiest or flashiest logos, but it’s all soooooo well crafted. My favorite examples are the Before and After and this one is my favorite, so simple yet… [typographica]
Ars Technica Reviews Mozilla. Ars Technica has released a detailed review of Mozilla, not just from the perspective of whether it is good enough… [Buzz]
MERYL YOURISH takes on a critic from MetaFilter. This is pretty much barrelfishing, but it’s kind of fun to watch. Excerpt: I’ll pass. It gets tiresome after a while, listening to people like Todd keep making excuses for murderers, and then getting on the case of those of us who refuse to do so.
No way that moving XML data into a spreadsheet insures accurate financial reporting. The integrity of those running a business is the only thing that insures accurate financial reporting! The next thing we’ll hear is that only Microsoft’s accounting software products provide the kind of accounting integrity that businesses need! Bah.
Microsoft touts accounting format. PricewaterhouseCoopers and Nasdaq join the software maker in a pilot program promoting the use of a file format aimed at accurate financial reporting. [CNET News.com]
It’s not a secret that the telecom industry has been coughing uncontrollably for almost two years. A few have wheezed out. Others remain viable, but with an undeniable tickle in their throats. That tickle goes like this: 1) prices for all forms of telecom services are falling 2) costs must be cut 3) to cut costs they need to invest in newer equipment 4) to invest in newer technology, they must right off the equipment they have been using that was set up on a 20-year depreciation schedule 5) where will they get the cash when some of their customers are failing and the sales department can’t find enough new customers to replace the price drops, much less the lost customers? Example: Let’s say prices in telecom are falling only 20% per year. We’ve seen T-1 lines fall from $1500 or $2000 to $700 in the last 5 years or so. We’ve seen a long distance minute drop from $0.20 to less than a nickel. How many new customers must a teleco find just to stay even? The answer: 25% more customers are needed just to keep sales flat. Move the price decline in some services to 40% and you need 67% more customers.
A Phone Company Has Quarterly Loss. The Citizens Communications Company, a seller of telephone and Internet services in 24 states, reported a wider second-quarter net loss on higher costs for things like job cuts. By Bloomberg News. [New York Times: Business]
APACHE, MYSQL, CGI, PERL How long would it take a 48-year old to learn?
Where does one start? How would one go about learning these technologies? Does this require the purchase of 1 or 2 cheap PC’s and simply downloading this stuff? Who has the right tutorial or workbook or reference to take a complete novice from a standing start to at least a working familiarity with ”the issues?”
Apache Administrator’s Handbook. The Apache Web server runs more than 55 percent of the sites on the Internet, making it the number one Web server, and more widely used than all other Web servers combined. Apache 2.0 is the first major release of Apache since its inception, and represents a complete change in Apache architecture-one requiring that administrators and developers learn new procedures and techniques for configuring and maintaining the Apache server.Apache Administrators Handbook is a practical, hands-on guide to the installation, configuration, and administration of the Apache Web server. It will show you how to build and configure Apache with the features and modules you need, how to secure the server, how to interpret log files, and how to tune the servers performance. While aimed primarily at Apache server administrators, the book also contains information for developers interested in building dynamic Web sites on top of the Apache server using either CGI or mod_perl. [O’Reilly Safari]
DON’T YOU JUST LOVE TALES LIKE THIS ONE I hope there’s something to it!
Tech Blog’s Ben Sullivan sent this story on the mysterious flying black triangles. (My wife and I spotted one of these weirdo things while driving up to Tahoe for New Year’s 2001. They’ve been seen all over the world, and are often seen flying over our chunk of the California desert near Edwards AFB. It is a damned dramatic thing to see with your own eyes.)
Anyway, the Space.com article is based on a National Institute for Discovery Science hypothesis. Based on 150+ reports (including one from me), NIDS says the triangles might be ”lighter-than-air, blimp-style craft of the U.S. military’s making.” NIDS makes the case that Big Black Deltas, or BBDs, are U.S. Defense Department airships. They are so large they can carry massive payloads at low altitudes, cruising at speeds three to five times as fast as surface ships. Among a range of NIDS observations, the group believes the BBDs are powered by electrokinetic/field drives, or airborne nuclear power units. These craft also fly at extreme altitudes, high above conventional aircraft and the pulsing of ground-based traffic control radar. Elecrokinetic propulsion means that no propellers or jets are used. A hybrid lighter-than-air craft would rely on aerostatic, lift gas, like a balloon. No helicopter-like downwash would be produced. Except for a slight humming from high-voltage control equipment—and in older BBD versions an occasional coronal discharge—a Big Black Delta makes no noise. Given a slew of BBD capabilities—from silent running, diminished drag, elimination of sonic shockwaves, to operation from ground level to full vacuum—NIDS calls for pushing this black world technology out into daylight for commercial benefit.
Who knows? Black projects manage to stay secret for decades, with whatever little leaks quickly stomped by DoD and DoE’s well-oiled counter-propaganda machine.If these things are giant transports, we may soon see them in Iraq. The Afghanistan campaign saw several test planes—spy drones—thrown into quick service. These triangles have been flying around the United States for a dozen years or more. Imagine one of these giant blimp-deltas leaving Edwards with 50 tanks or choppers and 200 troops inside … and landing in Kurdish Iraq half a day later. (If these are truly airships, they wouldn’t even need runways to land. The GoodYear blimp lands in a small field off the 405.)
Then imagine Southwest Airlines getting a fleet of these buddies. $99 fares to Greece—and your car flies free! Meanwhile, Janes.com is reporting that Boeing’s Phantom Works is working hard on ”experimental anti-gravity projects that could overturn a century of conventional aerospace propulsion technology.” But they’re having trouble with the cranky Russian, Dr. Evgeny Podkletnov, who claims to have made some big advances. And Russia is tired of seeing its government-funded technology turn up in U.S. high-tech operations. [Ken Layne]
in the www subdirectory, they can indeed become corrupted. Mine have on two different occasions. At this point, I’m thinking it happens if I ”rush” Radio. If I get ready to move on or post something else while Radio is somehow processing/upstreaming/gathering news or whatever else it does without telling me, I believe files can get hosed.
Further, I believe a backup of the www subdirectory is sufficient to allow someone to completely download a new copy of Radio and restore his or her work using the www folder. But, I haven’t seen that written anywhere, so I could be wrong.
Windows Scripting Solutions offers a useful batch program that will append a date to a filename. I’ve been meaning to take the advice of a bunch of Frontier users and regularly save backups of my Radio Userland root files, which reportedly can become corrupted, though I have yet to experience this problem firsthand. [Workbench]
Back from Vacation. We’re all back from vacation, well-rested and relaxed. There were plenty of other activities to take up the time, though – including hang gliding over the Kitty Hawk dunes and splashing at the beach & pool (being cautious of the pirates, of course ;-)
I think it’s pretty interesting that this site’s got enough content for at least 165 search-engine created referrals each day even during a ten-day no-posting period. [Steven’s Weblog]
The wonders of having readers! I have to post my brains out to get 165 on a good day of active posting. On vacation or with outages I actually seem to lose referrers!
Commingling. I was at a party this weekend, and a woman said, ”Oh, I love your website!” I freaked right out of my socks. ”I used to read it every single day,” she continued. ”Ever since you changed the look, though…. It just seems so boxy.” You are hereby served notice that there will be a new design of the .org by the time classes start. Expect even less interesting drivel (yes, less, and less interesting) here whilst I fill my blogtime otherwise. Also that I continue to be freaked. Sockless. [leuschke.org]
CSS GAINS GROUND We see it more and more on
All the blogs around
CSS, How Do I Love Thee?. James has come up with a most creative contest to win Eric Meyer’s awesome book. Consolation Champs: Eric Meyer on CSS Contest. [meryl’s notes]
[WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE AHEAD] I GOT AN EMAIL FROM A U.S. MARINE with an Arabic-sounding name. It was the very first abusive email I’ve ever gotten from someone in the military—and I’m pretty sure this guy really was a Marine, because it came from a USMC domain, though I suppose he could be a civilian employee just pretending. Why was I so hard on Syria, he demanded to know… The guy didn’t include his rank, which I hope is low. But if you’re reading this post, buddy, then read this. [InstaPundit]
Jeff, Steve… Loren?. Steve Himmer has taken OnePotMeal into Movable Type country. Same marvellous writing, spiffy new design, and a whole lot more power and flexibility under the [Jonathon Delacour]
The New Frontier of Mobilespam. Tired of all that spam littering up your inbox? Now you can look forward to text-message spam on your cell phone. Only this time, you pay for it. By Noah Shachtman. [Wired News]
between Radio and Movable Type seem insignificant. Novice users will find rich feature sets in both of these products. However, the target audience for each seems to be quite different.
I’ll be running a comparison of Radio and MT this coming week. [Radio Free Blogistan]
Global Crossing to Recommend Buyer Soon. Global Crossing, the troubled long-distance telecommunications company, is expected to announce a deal this week to sell its international fiber optic network and other assets. By The New York Times. [New York Times: Business]
About 1 in 5 Americans currently run their own business, but a new study shows that many more aspiring entrepreneurs yearn to join that club. Forty-seven percent of 1,014 adults questioned randomly in early July said they dreamed of starting a business. What do you think their #1 reason is? Go ahead and guess. # [John Henry on Business]
I noted that SpamNet is free and ChoiceMail’s introductory price is $29.95. SpamAssassin seems to be free, but possibly focused in the Unix world, though derivatives of it target Windows users.
So much for price – which one works best?
Was Gordon Gekko Right About Greed?. Greed, it seems, is everywhere. But now that our collective avarice has been revealed, perhaps we should ask about the nature of this greed that so appalls us. By Daniel Akst. [New York Times: Business]
I.P.O. Plums for Titans of Telecom. Many top executives of telecom companies received I.P.O. shares of upstart companies that had won contracts to sell equipment or services to the big concerns. By Gretchen Morgenson. [New York Times: Technology]
Dan Gillmor: ”I’m at New Paradigms in Using Computers day at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose. It’s the 10th annual event where bright people in the technology and social-science arenas talk about the state of the art of the user interface and what we can do to make it better.” [lawrence’s notebook]
ESCAPE FROM THE RAT RACE Requires finding something you love to do that others want or need
Its a lazy summer Saturday. Perfect for a day of golf, but other commitments require my time. Fortunately there are entrepreneurs like this young man who are providing just what I need, a half-hour at the driving range. Now I can make it until Sunday afternoon. Who hasnt considered turning their hobby into a business? Only truly focused individuals can change their hobbies into profitable business. # [John Henry on Business]
THE BLOGOSPHERE GETS RESULTS: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a story on the Cynthia McKinney 9/11 campaign donation issue originally identified by the IndePundit, with additional analysis from an initially skeptical Jim Henley. McKinney’s response is to compare herself with Martin Luther King.
The details the story provides on the donors, however, don’t make that a very flattering comparison. [InstaPundit]
WHAT IS THE JOURNALISTIC PROCESS? For those of us not schooled in journalism
”Dave” says, ”I want to start an outline about what a weblog is, because there’s more to say. Maybe it’ll be a three-column table. In column 1, a topic. For example: Fact-checking. In the second column, how centralized journalism does it; and in the third column, how it works in the weblog world…” Another row. In column 1, ”Research”. In column 2, ”A reporter spends two weeks interviewing experts, with transcription errors, dumbing-down, etc added.” In column 3, ”Experts spend a lifetime trying new ideas, learning from their mistakes, and learning how to explain their philosophy. Weblogs let them publish their ideas without intermediaries.” [Scripting News]
I’m becoming more reflective of what I’m doing, why I’m doing it and how it relates to the people close to me, I love my work, business is good, and the people I work with are great, but I guess since September 11th, I now have a better appreciation of another way of life. Do you ask yourself similar questions? Have you started to ask, Whats it all about? # [John Henry on Business]
THE FATTEST PEOPLE IN RESTAURANTS ARE EATING SALADS.
I just saw Gary Taubes, author of ”What if it’s all been one big fat lie” take apart (not merely mild sparring—literally decimate) two doctors on Charlie Rose (who is recovering from heart surgery). One of the doctors was the head of the American Heart Association. Personally, I believe Gary. It has always been my contention that eating high fat makes me feeeeel better. It also helps me keep off the pounds and keep my ”numbers” in the excessively healthy category (I remember sitting in a room of extremely fit people in a mandatory ”health” program at USAFA and getting my numbers disclosed to the class—the doctor said, and I quote verbatim: ”you have the worst diet but you are the healthiest person here. This is really strange.” [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
Sean Nolan: Amazon RSS. ”Wouldn’t it be nice to have an RSS feed for all weblog-related books at Amazon, so that when new books became available you’d know about them? Thanks to the magic of web pipelines, it’s become a pretty trivial thing to put together.” Excellent! [Scripting News]
COMPANIES SPEND LIKE CRAZY TO GET CUSTOMER FEEDBACK Focus groups, surveys, etc. – HP should cultivate this!
HP Exploit Suit Threat Has Holes. Hewlett-Packard appears ready to back down from suing a security company for releasing an exploit code to the public. By Brian McWilliams. [Wired News]
GOALS AND PROCESSES All work is a process – Philip Crosby
Setting Goals. When I first started working, I thought setting goals was cool and would go a long way. After 10+ years in the workforce, I’m bored with them…
See also recommended resources for process work... [meryl’s notes]
GETTING THE VOCABULARY RIGHT I’m in favor of Radio’s desktop site being the Content Management Console
Fully half the battle in learning this stuff (HTML, web design, etc.) is understanding the jargon and terminology. I slow to half the speed limit trying to be certain I’m doing what my tutors are trying to tell me to do with words I’m uncertain about.
In The Weblog Handbook, Rebecca Blood uses a term frequently that I haven’t seen employed before: linktext, the words used to describe and provide context for a link. Example: ”Composing linktext has given me practice in thinking through a subject by writing it down.”
The person who appears to have coined and popularized the term is Jorn Barger, publisher of Robot Wisdom. He defines linktext as all of the text used to describe a link, even if some of it is not included in a link, and calls the actual text of a link anchortext. [Workbench]
Analyst: Apple to lie down with Intel. Will the Mac maker pick up Intel’s chips? Signs point to yes, says Andrew Neff, the analyst who foresaw the HP-Compaq merger. He also predicts Sun will ally with Dell. [CNET News.com]
WAITING FOR ”THE LITTLE TUTORIAL” Thanks in advance
Third-Party Help with Blog Templates. If you want edit or tweak the various templates that most blog programs use to render web pages from the content stored in their databases, consider using a third-party web design tool. Even if you prefer to work directly with code, an editor such as BB Edit or HomeSite (or TextEdit or Notepad, for that matter) is infinitely preferable to working within the constraints of a text box on a web form. (You can’t directly search for text in such a form, for example). If you like working with a wysiwyg editor smart enough to be able to ignore the custom tags (what Radio calls macros), such as Dreamweaver, GoLive, or even FrontPage by now, gopod help us. In dreamweaver, I was able to rearrange the table columns on the home page to put the menu down the right side, mostly by dragging table cells around. Soon, I’ll try switching all the formatting to CSS. I’ll probably write up a little tutorial for my book site, since I didn’t discuss this use of Dreamweaver in the first edition. I could show how to tweak an existing template and how to turn an existing site design into blog templates. I’ll be sure to post here when the tutorial is up. BTW, I could use the help of a ”real” designer (I’m a writer, Jim! not a graphic designer) to get this site beyond inoffensive. [Radio Free Blogistan]
Mozilla bookmark group swapping: a proof of concept. I have an idea that there could be an RSS aggregator or similar that outputted Mozilla tab-bookmark files. Wouldn’t it be cool if every morning, you sat down to your browser and had a tab-file that would load up all the day’s news stories (say, every link from the previous day’s Boing Boing or Wired News or Slashdot)—click it before you take your shower, and by the time you’re done, voila, tabbed newspaper! LinkDiscuss [Boing Boing Blog]
What percentage of the knowledge one has with Radio, transfers to Movable Type for the users who switch? How about the reverse situation? Does Movable Type know-how yield quicker results with Radio? What are the essential skills with each? HTML? MySQL? CGI? Perl? What are the prerequisites for creating a unique, well-designed weblog?
MT 2.2 here I come. Mark Pilgrim is having fun with MT 2.2’s MySQL support as well as waxing lyrical in my comments about MT 2.2’s new plug-in architecture: ...we’re [Jonathon Delacour]
WHERE DO YOU RANK? This weblog didn’t even wiggle the needle
THERE’S A NEW AND DIFFERENT Blogosphere Ecosystem listing based on 2263 weblogs. The universe and ranking aren’t the same as NZ Bear’s. I’m still not sure exactly how meaningful the exercise is, but everybody seems to like talking about it. [InstaPundit]
Honey, Who Shrank the Circuits?. In a breakthrough that sets the stage for integrating devices into the wires themselves, scientists report new advances in nanotechnology. By Lakshmi Sandhana. [Wired News]
Be gentle with me, Google. #1 spots on Google might be dropping like flies but Mark Pilgrim and yours truly are doing just fine. I’m currently #1, 2, 3, 4, [Jonathon Delacour]
AT&T: WorldCom fears overstated. Ma Bell is on the warpath as it aims to assure the market that it can pick up the slack even if WorldCom’s Internet backbone vanishes overnight. [CNET News.com]
What if there were a way to build your business, year in and year out, regardless of fluctuations in the economy or the activities of your competition? Everyone knows about it, but hardly anyone does it well. It’s time you learned to use it. Even Jesus of Nazareth used Word-of-Mouth: the world’s best-known marketing secret. # [John Henry on Business]
Small. Its not me: I finished judging entries last week (though just the idea of me pointing to the timely completion of anything sets off such a roar of distant laughter I probably shouldnt even … oh never mind).[Textism]
Yesterday on Mac Net Journal fellow Northwesterner Rob McNair-Huff asked: Do you visit the weblogs you read? One thing, though, has changed for me for sure: I almost never visit weblogs anymore that dont have RSS feeds. Example: Zeldman. [inessential.com]
Does anybody know if M&Ms ”expire?” In a drawer in my office, I found a 16 oz. bag of peanut M&Ms that is obviously from Christmas (red and green and the bag says ”season’s greetings”), but there’s no expiration date on it and I don’t know which Christmas it would be from.
I’m going ahead and eating some, so if there are no further posts to this site, you’ll know what happened. [The Shifted Librarian]
This weblog has been down for over nine days. I wish that down time had something to do with a trip to Tahiti. It didn’t.
Something got hosed when I attempted to depart from the old location to the new location. I explain what happened here.
ERIC OLSEN has a whole lot on the Fort Bragg spouse-killing incidents. Apparently a big story will break shortly. I’m guessing we’ll find overlapping instances of infidelity here, but that’s just that: a guess. I haven’t followed this very closely. UPDATE: Reader Anne Salisbury seems to think that the above pot implies that I think infidelity is a justification for murder. Nope—just a motive, and one of the oldest. But I guess we’ll know soon. [InstaPundit]
Photoshop Contest. Photoshop Contest does full-time what Fark does part-time, post an original photo and lets everyone go wild in modifying the photo. Some are rip-roaring funny and others are a work [meryl’s notes]
During the month of August I plan to move this copy of Radio to a new computer. Risk = potential outage. Then, I want to begin work on a theme/set of templates/design modification that makes Rodent Regatta a little different from the usual Radio themes. There are tools out there and offers of help. Risk = another potential outage.
Here’s the way I figure it. If each change to Radio Userland – other than a simple, vanilla post carries the risk of an outage, why not get the outages out of the way all at one time? Clearly, it is my style to plan before doing with an eye toward preventing an outage. What this past week and a half has shown is that even the simplest of changes risks a lot of downtime.
The Call of the Blog. A lot of malaise in Blogaria lately. Some complaining of bloggers block, some on-again-off-again, plenty wondering if blogging is what they need or want to be doing with their time. Others are noticing that blogging isnt all cat pictures and… [Caveat Lector]
and adapters that allow the cards to work in PC card and Compact Flash slots will also be available.
Camera makers unveil new media format. Photo giants Olympus and Fuji Photo Film announce a new removable media format despite analyst concerns that camera buyers already have to deal with too many storage choices. [CNET News.com]
comes into the coffers of Berkshire Hathaway as free cash flow. To continue to grow the company and achieve the target rates of return that Warren Buffett has suggested, this cash flow must be periodically invested in out-sized opportunities. It doesn’t prevent an investment in smaller opportunities when the potential is so obvious. Soon those ”smaller opportunites” add significant power to the underlying companies.
at a rate that has been variously estimated at 50% to 80% per year. That’s down substantially from the 100% growth every six months that was tossed around during the dotcom craze, but it’s still a serious growth rate. Even with the cost of bandwidth falling, someone stands to capture the leadership position in this business. With all of the turmoil, it appears the pie will get sliced up between a lot fewer players than before!
will come. It takes time, but ”Dave” will link to you during your early stages and then others will discover your site. The flow can also evaporate very quickly, so be careful.
At one point someone mentioned that he wanted all the smart people – lawyers, librarians and programmers – to have a tool that allowed them to write a weblog. During the nine days of this weblog’s outage, it became clearer to me than ever before that Radio Userland is a (primarily) a tool for knowledgeable HTML coders and computer programmers. There are exceptions, but to fully understand and take advantage of the buried treasure in Radio Userland, one must know a lot more than their chosen field of expertise unless it is programming.
I’ve stuck with Radio Userland. A bit later, I’m going to write a story about the outage and what I think finally happened. I’m also going to write another post about the next steps with this weblog. Anyone seeking to become the ”bell cow” of the blogging trail is going to have to do some things differently!
Phil Wainewright has an interesting post on his weblog today about Radio UserLand. I don’t fully agree with the conclusions (or assumptions, perhaps) he makes about UserLand’s business strategy, but they were just provocative enough to make me think. [Brent Sleeper’s Web Journal]
...BY THE THROAT TRYING TO SQUEEZE OUT ONE MORE GOLDEN EGG.
BASEBALL TO FANS: UP YOURS! As reader Bill McCabe puts it: ”On the eve of a strike, Major League Baseball shows its love for the fans by sending a Cease & Desist Order to a fan site dedicated to the New York Mets.”
They don’t think of ’em as fans, Bill. They think of ’em as sheep to be fleeced, just the way the folks at the RIAA and MPAA think of music and movie fans.
[InstaPundit]
Dane Carlson is one of the most determined and resilient people I know when it comes to sticking with a problem until it is resolved. With dozens of other more pressing priorities, Dane stuck with a trouble-shooting regimen that ultimately paid off. Thanks aren’t enough when I look back on what Dane has contributed.
Three other people contributed ideas and suggestions in an effort to find the cause of this weblog’s outage. Lawrence Lee attempted to confirm that Radio Userland was not at fault. Rob Fahrni and Joe Jenett each took stabs at brainstorming the possible causes of the outage.
My heartfelt thanks to each of you for sticking with this when I was ready to throw in the towel.
OFF THE AIR From Saturday, July 20, 2002 until Tuesday, July 30, 2002
This weblog has been off the air for 9 days 7 hours and 25 minutes. What began as a ”simple” move of the site to a new domain and webhost resulted in total chaos.
I won’t know for another couple of days whether everything is working again. I have a checklist that will be completed during the next few days to complete the transition.
This may not work, but assuming it does, you need to change your bookmarks, favorites and blogrolls. It is 11:50pm CDT on Saturday, July 20, 2002. If all goes well, this site will be relocated within the next few hours. This weblog is leaving http://radio.weblogs.com/0100740/. Look for it at: http://www.rodentregatta.com/ Thanks, Steve Pilgrim
I always wonder where they originated. As I understand it, Daypop ranks the top 40 posts to weblogs based upon how often the posts are read or linked to or something. This implied that if something begins to run up the charts at Daypop, a bunch of weblogs are covering or repeating the item. Yet, I can’t find where I missed this one in the weblogs I read today. It’s no big deal. I continue to try to figure out how all these weblogs align with (and against) each other.
This was worth reading, though, and none of the weblogs I read today picked it up.
The Memphis Redbirds play the Tacoma Raniers in AAA baseball tonight at Autozone Park. We’re taking the night to regroup with friends, family and the hot dogs.
9:30pm Update – A muggy night for baseball in Memphis. Redbirds won in 8th with a single by the DH with one man on, two outs and a full count.
KEEP THEM COMING It’s great that the web lets you learn from the pro’s in so many fields
Is it sharp or not? I’ve started posting images from my Nikon Coolpix 5700. I’ve now shot about 500 images. When everything goes well, the camera is awesome. It does take some getting used to the focus and manual settings, though. I’m still learning about the camera and probably will be for years. But, right out of the box you can see that it makes pretty darn nice and clear images. All of the images posted so far are unretouched images straight off of the camera. I think in the few hundred images I’ve posted so far you’ll see a good range of different types of subjects. You’ll also see that I used flash a lot (I bought a new Nikon SB-50DX flash that is pretty nice). [Scobleizer Radio Weblog]
John Robb: ”The gain in homes over the next decade will make your head spin.” [Scripting News]
Andrew is liberal in some ways that I cannot begin to fathom, but in personal finance and money management, he’s been rock solid for an awfully long time. Take a look at Andrew Tobias’s notions. Here’s an excerpt.
Andrew Tobias: I get The Van Eck-Tillman Real Estate And Bank Letter, billed as Adrian Van Ecks Confidential Letter On The One-Half of U.S. Wealth in Real Estate ($90 a year, call 800-219-1333). From its June 6 letter: From coast to coast, the American real estate bubble has been puffing up ever more dangerously in the past 30 days. My gosh, when I think about the several boom-and-bust cycles I have observed and reported on in the past 40 years, I wonder just how high this one can go and how much longer it can last before it begins to come apart. When it will end is still hidden from us mortals. But the fact that it will end and end badly cannot be in doubt or dispute.
Can this be right, ”it took the computer company more than two years to track down and fix the problem?”
Wrong Phone Number Costs Gateway. PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP)—Computer giant Gateway Inc. has been hit with a $3.6 million jury verdict for a wrong number that flooded another company’s toll-free telephone line with calls from thousands of angry Gateway customers. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: Technology]
My military ambition. Not so long ago—in response to my throwaway remark that the German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn looks like a Panzer commander—someone commented: [Jonathon Delacour]
The Kirov Sparkles in a New Turn With Balanchine. ”Jewels,” capped by an astonishingly magical performance by Svetlana Zakharova on Thursday, is the latest work by George Balanchine to be performed by the Kirov Ballet in New York. By Anna Kisselgoff. [New York Times: Arts]
tearing down the command-and-control thinking that won two world wars and built a prosperous nation. In our zeal to rid ourselves of tyrants in leadership positions, we also ridded ourselves of many benevolent dictators who could build strong businesses.
We replaced them with pop-psychology management thinking that, while often sound in theory, is difficult to put into practice. Poorly practiced these fads or leadership-by-bestseller concepts lead to some horrible failures. Drucker, Deming, Juran and others had it right. In far too many places, we simply missed it or we allowed endless government intrusion to sap the optimism of our business leaders! Lately, we value style over substance.
The talent myth. I couldn’t help being reminded of the steady deterioration in corporate and political leadership over the last twenty years while reading The Talent Myth, Malcolm [Jonathon Delacour]
DOES YOUR BUSINESS HAVE A SURVIVAL STRATEGY? Does your management team know how to develop one?
”There is nothing in sight that will provide an impetus for a spike in growth,’’ writes economist William Dunkelberg in his midyear scan of the small business horizon. Call this the desert island economy. As you do all you can to survive, each day brings renewed hope of recovery. Are you going to let the media’s mood determine your business success? # [John Henry on Business]
Niche market sparks an unlikely franchise – charged up with unusual power. Call it the mother of all narrow-retailing concepts. It’s one-stop battery shopping, with batteries for everything from automobiles, RVs and lawnmowers to electric razors, remote controls, camping lanterns, smoke detectors and backup power systems for hospitals and other institutions. That’s a unique a gimmick. What’s yours? # [John Henry on Business]
BROOMFIELD, Colo., July 19, 2002 – The following statement can be attributed to James Q. Crowe, chief executive officer of Level 3 Communications, Inc.(Nasdaq:LVLT):
for evaluating knowledge management tools as they might be applied in small organizations. We also do some small business consulting and advisory work and our clients want a tool, but often lack the disciplines to use them well. Terry says this, ”But Radio is still a lot closer to reaching the mythical Zero Contribution Barrier that I believe is critical to any long-term KM success.”
A DECENT SUMMARY OF AN EARNINGS CONFERENCE CALL Although ”backed by Warren Buffett” seems a bit of overstatement
Level 3 Posts Smaller Second – Quarter Loss. PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Level 3 Communications Inc. (LVLT.O), the high-speed communications company backed by investor Warren Buffett, on Thursday posted a smaller-than-expected second-quarter loss but warned it saw mixed signals for a rebound in sales. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology]
Conclusion. Due to a long-standing bug in Radio, I am unable to include the full text of this post here, for fear of damaging your News page. Please click the item title to read this post safely. [dive into mark]
John Ruskin. ”In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it: They must not do too much of it: And they must have a sense of success in it.” [Motivational Quotes of the Day]
airlines wouldn’t spend so much painting airplanes. Politicians wouldn’t spend so much on banners, handbills and signs. Companies wouldn’t spend so much on corporate identity packages. Imagine the cost of changing a logo or color at a place like Federal Express.
I’m confident that part of what draws me into a weblog or web site is the design. I know good design when I see it, but I surely do wish I could create it!
Why to build your own template. During a spell of blogsurfing yesterday, I repeatedly ran across links to Paul Andrewss blog. The other end of one such link spurred me to do what Jonathon Delacour calls fossicking around in the blog archives. Only then did I… [Caveat Lector]
Free XHTML and CSS Courses. Yes, Virginia, there are still good stuf available for free on the ’net. Latest is the Westciv Self-paced Course on HTML 4.0 and XHTML for CSS. Sounds like they’ll be [meryl’s notes]
Linkless. I just dropped the [Links] section on the navigation bar for this site. I went in to drop BurningBird and looked over the list and realized how out of date it was. Too much work to keep it up to date so now I am just gonna let Google do the work, with the addition of the ”related sites” link under [misc]. [BitWorking]
TIPA awards 2002-2003. TIPA (Technical Image Press Association) has announced the results for ’Best Photo Products in Europe’ from the European Photo & Imaging Awards 2002-2003. Best Digital Prosumer camera went to the Olympus… [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]
strike some kind of vigilante justice nerve somewhere within me. Prosecution seems too good for one who would do this sort of stuff. Anyone with children must know the sickening feeling Rob mentions.
Sick individual. Furious. That’s how I feel right now. A man kidnaps a five year old girl and kills her. The police had better find him before the general public does, otherwise there may not be much of him left to prosecute. Sickening, just sickening. [Rob Fahrni, at the core.]
I worked with some AT&T products that were thought of as the ’first’ convergence of the phone and personal computer. They were, of course, built on Unix. I was impressed at the serious power that was obvious in Unix as contrasted to whatever version of DOS we had at the time.
Now, I see Apple. They have found Unix and Unix has found them. I really want them to be successful. I’m a Windows user. I will probably remain a Windows user for the next 24-36 months. Sometimes, when I see stuff like this, I wonder if we’ve really advanced much at all beyond DOS.
WE MAY NOT BE WOWED BY THE DELIVERY, BUT THE WORDS RESONATE He’s done it again only better!
Greenspan Coins a New Phrase. The man who gave us ”irrational exuberance” is back, with a phrase that sums up the late 1990’s even better than that one did. ”Infectious greed.” By Floyd Norris. [New York Times: Business]
WHILE THERE IS EXCELLENT POLITICAL PUNDITRY Keep an eye on the comments to this post; things might get interesting
as someone attempts to gain notoriety!
in these links, I have to admit that part of my fascination with some of the high-traffic bloggers has to do with their site designs. You see, I’m trying to inch closer to the renaming of this weblog and its move to a new domain. Ideas seem to flood in when reading all of these non-techie weblogs.
IS IT POSSIBLE FOR LIBERALISM TO BE RIGHT EVEN IF KATIE COURIC ISN’T? Mickey Kaus dares to ask the question, as he notes that Ann Coulter was right about the ”airhead” issue. Plus, Jack Shafer zeroes in on hypocritical crony capitalism by The New York Times.
I have to say, I find the ”airhead” controversy even less enlightening than the ”trifecta” controversy. But hey, I’m on vacation, so this stuff seems less important to me than usual.
The Times story is likely to have legs, though, and illustrates why it’s going to be harder than many pundits think for the left to pillory Bush and the Republicans for financial chicanery—the left sold its financial soul long ago. They’re down to trading puts and calls on it now.
UPDATE: If you’re less bored with the ”trifecta” story than I am (like, you know, if you’re not on vacation) Brendan Nyhan has an update over at SpinSanity.Com. I have to say, I find the Al Gore trifecta story the funniest part of this whole long-running affair. [InstaPundit]
This story is so wrong. First, the headline makes one think Level 3 is either considering the adoption of or re-evaluating its existing stock option plan. The second sentence is correct. Level 3 has had (from its beginnings) an ”outperform” stock option plan in which options have been expensed at the time of the award.
The latest press release simply clarifies the proxy. The bottom line involves connecting a few dots. Level 3 recently sold $500 million worth of convertible bonds to three institutions. The cash was earmarked for general corporate purposes including the acquisitions of assets while the telecom industry is going through consolidation. What better time to make sure you are able to retain the talent and know-how that is needed to ramp up the network with new customers and increased traffic!
The best way to use the mainstream press is with the Internet. Let a story headline direct you to a company’s press release or announcement. Facts from the horses mouth are better than Associated Press news feeds.
Alvin Toffler. ”The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” [Quotes of the Day] (me thinks he never saw Radio templates, macros and HTML)
John Kenneth Galbraith. ”It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled sea of thought.” [Quotes of the Day]
One of the goals of this site is to provide you with tools to help you fix your Web site.
It’s not easy to take a Web site that’s underperforming and make it better. There are aesthetic issues, marketing issues and, most importantly, technical issues. That’s where Doctor HTML can come in to help. You can’t fix the technical issues if you don’t know what they are.
[Web Pages That Suck—Examples of Bad Web Design]
For many small businesses, the summer months mean a sales slowdown. New prospects become hard to locate, and current deals become: ”I’ll have to think it over” or ”I’ll get back to you in a week or two.” How do you handle that? Here are a few pointers, which can help. [John Henry on Business]
at Fireland. You can get world reaction here. I don’t know either of these people, but I’ve often wondered if Joshua Allen is related in any way to Dean Allen. (This is probably another of those all over the board posts, but both Joshua and Dean are terrific designers.) Anyhow, I wish Joshua and Alexis all the best.
gets added to the shopping list. Terry Frazier weighed in with a comment and an educational post about my question earlier today. I also got a comment from Dave Rogers. Thanks to both of you! Oh, and Rob made a couple of great suggestions without coming right out and calling me a dummy. If you haven’t already, check out the apple cores for permalinks.
So Long, and thanks for all the posts. What a marvelous party this has been, and what wonderful people I’ve met, but it’s time, and past, for me to move on. This posting will be Burningbird’s last. I wasn’t sure how to close the weblog down. [Burningbird]
Does anyone have advice on how to determine the right tool for the job? Is it logical to think that someone just starting in digital photography will find all they need in Photoshop Elements, and because it’s from Adobe, the upgrade to Photoshop would be an easy transition?
Adobe Elements 2.0. Adobe has announced an new version of Elements. Version 2.0 adds a variety of new features and improvements including a Glossary of digital photography terms, Quick Fix dialog which can add immediate fixes in… [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]
SUMMER IS CLEAN UP, PAINT UP, FIX UP SEASON Another great-looking design by Stacy Tabb
SAMIZDATA HAS MOVED and has a new site designed by the lovely and talented Stacy Tabb of Sekimori. Visit it, admire it, and set your bookmark accordingly. [InstaPundit]
can be defined in a variety of ways. We define it as:
keeping up with the Jones’s
materialism as a path to happiness
everyone knows we’ve got to get more
climbing the corporate ladder to say you did it
working all day and going home too tired to pursue your dreams
letting the liberal media tell you how things really are
There’s more, but that gives you the essence. One of the corporate myths has to do with measurement, compensation and ’getting results.’ Nine out of ten organizations don’t have metrics that really cause the results they seek. In fact, those metrics cause results that have to then be ’fixed.’ Steven and Joel capture those notions with these posts!
Measurement Dysfunction. ”As a result, workers began doing just about anything to get customers off the phone” Boy, does that sound familiar. ”If you’re in a helpdesk or call center, for example, and you’re measuring your people on the number of calls they’re taking, that’s what they’re going to do – take calls. [16-Jan]
Today, Joel writes about the oft-seen but (mostly) un-planned-for effect that measurements can have upon individuals’ and organizations’ performance. We call it ”getting just what you measure,” and too often the measurements are the only thing looked at by mid-level management. This ”metric of the month” leaves employees feeling powerless to really do what’s best for the customer; when they do they get ’dinged’ by their manager for making the weekly stats look bad. Beat that horse too often and he’ll just give up on the customer entirely.
What? You don’t want your customers given up on? The trick is to find the measurements that really encourage the behaviour you want… not just the ones that are easiest for ”the system” to give you (like number of calls taken, or time per call). [Steven’s Weblog]
ANOTHER REASON THAT TELECOM COLLAPSE AND REBIRTH IS INEVITABLE.
Few people debate the fact that all of us use the phone at home, in business and on-the-go more than we did even ten years ago. Few people argue with the notion that we will be using one or more of these to an even greater degree in the future. We probably won’t stop at Blockbuster, but we may ’order’ a movie feed from Blockbuster. Those same phone calls may become video calls. Demand for bandwidth is a given!
The industry is facing the death throws of a 100-year old legacy, copper-based network. This centrally-planned, government subsidized relic is currently operated by a relative handful of monopolists or executives from the monopolists’ ranks. Their rule is coming to an end. Some of them don’t even know it.
Replacing that old network and its kings and lords will be a modern, continuously upgradable fiber optic network that passes IP packets end-to-end. Running that network will be a group of people who understand Moore’s Law, rapid time-to-market and the concept of price-elasticity-of-demand. They’re anything but monopolists!
I had an experience similar to the one mentioned below when one of our daughters phoned home from Boston while dancing with the Boston Ballet for a month or two. Little did we know we were facing a $700+ bill until after it arrived. We had done our homework in advance, fortunately, had documentation for the rates we had been quoted and got adjustments made to the bill. The relief was not easy to get nor was it immediate, but in an age of $0.045 per minute long distance rates, $700+ was not going to be paid!
Other than the airline industry, where you can be arrested for inquiring about the sobriety of the pilots, no industry treats its customers the way the telecom industry has. Better times are on their way, though!
SprintPCS Nightmare. I’m broke. I barely have enough money to get by through the next month. And my ”royalty” check I received this weekend was only 36.00 – I was expecting 1000.00. Still, I can manage. I can manage…until today. Don’t worry… [Burningbird]
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVING INVESTOR CONFIDENCE No surprises, please
The week ahead: Big-name earnings. Investors will turn their eye to corporate earnings this week, after a string of financial scandals that rocked Wall Street and individual investors. [CNET News.com]
I’ve got some friends who aren’t that interesting as well! (After editing, the sentence became: When she looks at blogs she sees the weblogs she knows; and misses the enormity of the medium.)
I’m beginning to get the impression that there is some kind of history that colors Dave’s view of the book or Rebecca or something said in the past. What I can tell you is that this comment about ”her friends” doesn’t flow naturally from a reading of Rebecca’s book.
much of the end-game for Worldcom could be visible by the end of the week. We may not precisely know who the participants in a takeover will be, but we should get a clearer picture of what will happen to the business.
SYMPATHY IS HARD TO MUSTER But, desperation can be an ugly thing
Silicon Valley Without Trimmings. Having already gone from boom to bust, many dot-commers are coming to something worse. Now, in Silicon Valley, a part of the dot-com class is being defined by what it needs to return. By John Markoff and Matt Richtel. [New York Times: Business]
Auditing Woes at WorldCom Were Noted Two Years Ago. Two years ago, WorldCom notified Arthur Andersen of improper shifts of expenses that were appearing in the international department, but the transactions remained on the company’s books until as recently as last month. By Kurt Eichenwald. [New York Times: Business]
LEADERS WHO KNOW WHAT TO DO AND LEADERS IN TITLE ONLY Guiliani is the gold standard from now on
MATT WELCH WRITES that the FBI and Los Angeles’ Mayor Hahn failed the truth test after the LAX shooting: Well, at least now we know how Mayor James Hahn and the local FBI leadership will treat the public during a time of violent crisis: Like children, who need to be lied to. . . .
It is one thing to be reluctant about jumping to conclusions—a perfectly normal and admirable tactic in high-profile law enforcement. But it is quite another to cross the line into actively encouraging a rattled public to conclude that it wasn’t an act of terrorism. . . Residents of L.A. need to trust that their leaders, when under fire, will shoot straight. Hahn and company have failed their first major test. [InstaPundit]
On Being a Sensualist. The world that lieth in wickedness, the sensualist, has no taste nor relish for that bread which cometh down from God out of heaven, and nourisheth the soul up unto eternal life. Thomas Lechtworth, They that wait upon the… [Burningbird]
on Friday, but they meet again on Tuesday with the court. This company’s stockholders won’t see a dime. Worldcom will be faced with deciding what business(es) it wants to emerge from bankruptcy with. Otherwise, the creditors and the court are likely to break the business into pieces and sell them in an attempt to recover some of the money. The company’s sales in 2001 totaled $21.3 billion. That’s a fair amount of telecom market share to throw up for grabs.
AN INTERESTING PERSPECTIVE ”Dave” is back – I mean really back; it’s great!
As with any product or service, the novice simply has to dig around, experiment, ask questions and watch others to learn why one product or service is good or bad or better or worse for the need or want. Take digital cameras as an example. A novice user of a digital camera would probably be overwhelmed (or would seriously undervalue) the features of a truly high end digital camera.
The same is true with weblogging. Radio Userland may be the right software for hackers or programmers or whatever they want to be called. Movable Type may be the right choice for some other skill level or interest level or whatever. How can the novice determine that? Just this morning I heard of another tool for weblogging that I’ve not even seen mentioned in six months of fairly intensive weblogging. Somebody ought to take a minute or two and elaborate on the lines of dileniation between all these products. We novices could then stay out of the hair of those who have contempt for us!!! I found Rebecca Blood’s book worthwhile. I am a novice. I admit that. However, novices need resources such as Rebecca’s particularly if they are coming from some field other than software development, website development and whatever other spins people want to put on the names for those people and industries involved in computer work.
I owe every bit of my weblog to ”Dave Winer” and the people who are users of the Radio Userland product. There are things about the tool and the ”community(?)” I don’t like. Those things don’t prevent me from learning more, using the tool more and wishing for the stuff that I don’t like to change. It is easy for me to see how a pioneer in the weblogging area we’re talking about might not need the same resource that I need. Does that then make that resource bad? I don’t think so. You really need to read all of what Dave had to say this morning. Some of it has been edited since I first saw the beginnings of the post in the news aggregator. Here’s an excerpt:
It’s the software. In 2002, we’re beginning to get to a category of software, with lines of delineation—Movable Type is different from Manila, and Radio is different from Blogger, if one wanted to study a category, the products are lining up to accomodate. Other than that there’s little that each blog has in common with other blogs. It’s like trying to figure out what word processing documents have in common. People did try to do that in the late 70s and early 80s, but then the market exploded, and that ended all speculation.
Of all the books in process, I hold the most hope for the BlogRoots folks: Meg, Matt, and PB. They put enough time into it (the O’Reilly book was a rush job) and they (appear to) have the right premise. It would have been possible for a philosophical book to have lasting value, but to do so, they should have gotten a social butterfly to edit it, one who crosses all the lines with ease, someone who likes everyone and who everyone likes, but somehow doesn’t have to kiss ass to do it. (Note: I am not that person, as you can see I don’t suffer fools without complaining, I don’t write to make friends, and I know it.) [Scripting News]
ROBERT’S EXCITEMENT IS CONTAGIOUS When was the last time you were this enthusiastic about a purchase?
More great Nikon Coolpix 5700 images. Think digital cameras aren’t there yet? Look at these shots, taken and posted yesterday. The Nikon 5700 is looking like a very awesome $1200 camera. In particular, look at this image. Along the bottom, you can see the full image as it came off of the camera. These are unretouched images. Awesome. I have this one on my desktop right now (I applied a little sharpening in Photoshop, and also increased the contrast slightly to accentuate the color—I cut off some of the darker pixels by using Photoshop’s adjust levels tool). If this is the kind of thing we can expect to see, we’re going to see a whole new age of photography. Ansel Adams would be thrilled. Oh, by the way, http://www.pbase.com is awesome for sharing photography with others. I’m going to send them some money to help them stay in business. [Scobleizer Radio Weblog]
HOW MANY BLOGGING TOOLS ARE THERE? And to think, some people still handcode their entire weblog
Sunlog and uni.tb. The new Sunlog 2.2 is now ready for download. It’s blogging software based on PHP and MySQL, and (as far as I know) is the first blogging package to support… [PapaScott]
the Soviet Union was considered our most worrisome enemy, they spent over 10 years in the mountains of Afghanistan. When Bush says the War on Terror won’t be quick, he knows what he’s talking about.
New L.A. Daily News Column From Me: Its on the LAX fiasco. I argue that we should be very worried whenever the FBI bends over backward to avoid using the word terrorism in connection with cases involving Egyptian or Saudi nationals. [Matt Welch’s Warblog]
if all the Blogger users had RSS feeds? Why would you ”turn off” your RSS feed if you are a Movable Type user? I’m told the default installation of Movable Type includes the RSS feed. What advantage do they gain when they remove it?
into the Mac-users-are-smarter debate has more to do with left brain/right brain than smarter. Today, at the Apple Store here, I took a look at the iBook and the Powerbook again. For someone wanting to own a notebook style computer for the next three years, it seems to me you have to look at the Powerbook. To take it to the proper amount of memory and equip it with wireless, you’re looking at a number north of $2700 or so. For $3200 you can buy a faster Powerbook fully equipped.
Here’s where it gets tough to justify. I’m a former Fortune 500 exec. Much of what I’m involved in simply demands that I have MS Office or complete compatibility. That means buying a copy of Office for the Mac. Then, some of the other tools I need must be purchased. Bottom line: I’m going to buy a new Windows XP notebook. The Mac would be great (and great fun), but I simply cannot justify the higher cost associated with software licensing.
Does this nearly ANALytical assessment make me smarter or merely stingy?
Are Mac users smarter?. Or do smarter people use Macs? According to the research firm Nielsen/NetRatings, ”Mac users are more web savvy than the average netizen, make more money, have used the web longer on average, and are 58% more likely to build their own web page.” Hmmm. [Yahoo] [MSNBC-c|net] [Steven’s Weblog]
Thomas Carlyle. ”Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.” [Motivational Quotes of the Day]
Someone has suggested that there are people in the blogging world who link to others merely to get links in return. I link to a lot of sources. Other weblogs I read have a link in almost every post. Is there some written or unwritten rule I’m breaking?
Second, I’ve been accused of shouting. Apparently, the fact that the titles of my posts are in all caps gives some the impression that I’m shouting as one might in a chat room. Never was that my intent. I’ve composed compound documents all my life and some of them have all caps in key headings or section breaks. Is that shouting? Again, what are the rules of the road?
CASTING THE FIRST STONE More from career politicians when what we need are leaders!
THE PROBLEM WITH FINANCIAL SCANDALS is that when you start digging you find that people from both parties are involved. That was the problem with Enron, and it looks like it’s happening again. [InstaPundit]
epersonae. Always happy to find a good blog I didnt know about before. epersonae is one such. Its proprietor Elaine kindly emailed me apropos of the Paynter interview, did not mention her blog, so naturally I went to see it. Saw… [Caveat Lector]
More government eyes on Qwest. The General Services Administration, the federal buying and procurement agency, is reviewing the contract status of the embattled telecommunications company. [CNET News.com]
says that US officials also believe al-Qaeda operatives have uploaded 2300 images containing encrypted information to the internet auction site eBay since the start of 2002.” Hunt for hidden web messages goes on. New claims emerge of terrorist steganography – but one expert warns that apparently supporting evidence may be misleading [New Scientist]
I wish he’d do another 30-day tutorial on ’laying out a CSS theme for your weblog.’ If someone could simply show me how each and every element on the page got there, it would help. This has to do with macros and templates. I still wrestle with where something on the rendered page originates from!
Dame Edna Everage. ”My mother used to say that there are no strangers, only friends you haven’t met yet. She’s now in a maximum security twilight home in Australia.” [Quotes of the Day]
The next time you’re grumbling with a fellow Entrepreneur about ungrateful employees, chiseling customers and high tax rates, take a moment to share a happier bit of news: how you recently made your business more efficient, because efficient Entrepreneurs survive in tough times. # [John Henry on Business]
Microsoft to Enter Wi-Fi Hardware Business This Fall: Details are scanty, but remember that Apple has sold its AirPort equipment, Wi-Fi certified, since 1999. Microsoft and Intel joined Wi-Fi certification trade group WECA (Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance) several months ago and both received board seats. Several readers pointed me to many articles, including ones at InfoWorld, and this laughable pretense at an interview that’s really a press release. [80211b News]
[May require a subscription] – Last Friday I spoke of the telecom industry as one with no conscience. Today the Wall Street Journal runs this. Is it any wonder that this industry trades at roughly 90% off its market highs? Is it any wonder there are countless scandals, fines and bankruptcies?
Today, Worldcom’s Sidgmore said avoiding a bankruptcy filing ”is looking much more difficult.”
With demand for bandwidth continuing to grow, many companies attempting to sell assets or parts of their operating businesses, could Level 3 be at precisely the right place at the right time to take advantage of a ”perfect storm?” Someone must think so as the stock has traded up from an opening of $2.89 on Monday to a close of $5.59 today; and this in the face of a general market decline this week. We might be witnessing the start of telecom industry transformation of historic proportions!
There are debates about options and their ”accounting treatment” in today’s public corporations. There are investigations. There are restatements of past financial statements. Why? (Because there have always been!)
The real cause is tightly tied to the fact that accounting is an opinion. Each year around tax time someone passes the financial information for an individual or small business to six or eight accountants. They are asked to prepare a tax return. In the best of these articles the tax returns are then submitted to one (or more) IRS agents. In no year that I’ve read these articles has there been a precise agreement between any of the 6 or 8 accountants. Further, the IRS agents usually disagree.
Take an example: is the purchase of a personal computer an expense or a capital investment? At Sally’s Crafts Store where 4 new kilns, 2 dishwashers and a new loom were purchased, it may be a capital expenditure. At Federal Express it may be an expense. If it’s part of 5000 PC’s being purchased at Citigroup, it may be capitalized.
Most often the rules have more to do with past practices, consistency and a formal declaration of changes in practices than they have to do with law or accounting regulations.
Certainly there are attempts at fraud in some companies. Sometimes those attempts are elegant and difficult to catch. Other times the fraud stems from a change in practice that isn’t disclosed in hopes of buying the company some time until things improve.
We are entering a period in which every public company and, quite possibly, some large private companies will be scrutinized. Stock analysts have caused 30% to 40% drops in market caps when companies have missed their ”whisper numbers” by a penny. The SEC can now cause similar fluctuations by beginning a sentence with, ”We are looking into the accounting practices at…” The solution is not a team of federal auditors. The solution lies in several key reforms:
Stop the ridiculous and excessive executive compensation programs.
Disconnect executive compensation from stock performance and focus it on business performance.
Expense stock options as if they were any other form of expense.
Send convicted offenders to jail.
Hold the boards, the audit committees and the outside accounting firms accountable along with the CEO and CFO of the business.
Warren Buffett has often said, ”I’d rather be roughly right than precisely wrong.” Intent is a difficult thing to evaluate until you see the extremes of an ulterior motive. Let’s get roughly right about these accounting opinions, make the needed changes in laws and enforcement and get back to running businesses – not stocks!
TED BARLOW (permalinks not working—you Blogger types need to call Stacy Tabb and find something more reliable) says that I was wrong to cite Media Pundit’s take on the Harken affair. [InstaPundit]
It’s funny, a couple of years ago, driving up to San Jose, you’d see all these ”Adopt-A-Highway” signs sponsored by all kinds of different .coms. Yesterday, the only .com I saw on an ”Adopt-A-Highway” sign was ”Careers.com”. [snellspace]
Our Town. A village that dies overnight, a town where the ground is on fire, real-life Atlantises Margaret Berry collects stories about normal towns where strange things happen. [The Morning News – Features]
...FOR THE LAST MILE really look like? Where will a cell phone hop on fiber for long haul needs? Where will these 802.11a/b users really get their bandwidth? What role does wireless networking have in the future IP network architecture? Is it solely a last mile phenomenon?
ACTUALLY A GREAT REVIEW OF AN INNOVATIVE PRODUCT And not so much on the politics of Microsoft or Sony’s domination
”Why Not Hate Sony?” David Pogue asks, sort of rhetorically, in his latest column for the NY Times. He’s comparing Sony to MS, and the negative emotions that law-breaking, monopolistic enterprise evokes in some people, including yours truly. Perhaps it’s because while Sony makes a lot of different products, they haven’t driven anyone out of the marketplace. I can buy a TV, or a video camera, or a digital camera, or a PDA, or tape recorder, or a robotic dog from any of a number of other credible vendors. Perhaps it’s because Sony products are often actually innovative, and usually work the way you expect them to. [Time’s Shadow]
DAN’S WEBLOG HAS NOTES FROM THE INTERNET LAW PROGRAM.
Control freaks tightening their grip on the Internet by Dan Gillmor. Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor and author of several important books on our technology-influenced future, was the program’s pessimist. He’s been jetting around the world for several years, warning of what’s coming. And what’s coming, he keeps saying, is a victory of the control freaks. [Tomalak’s Realm]
Sea Explorer Uncovers Kennedy’s PT 109. Dr. Robert D. Ballard, who discovered the Titanic, the Bismarck and dozens of other lost ships, on Wednesday announced his latest find: PT 109, John F. Kennedy’s wartime boat. By William J. Broad. [New York Times: Science]
The World’s Smallest Postings. Steve Himmer (or should that be Opt Himmer? 5 Himmer?) subtly started something yesterday* that was intriguing to say the least: Is brevity really the soul of wit? Or, more precisely, am I capable of saying anything without rattling and… [Burningbird]
Home businesses and other tiny companies are getting financing, thanks to micro-enterprise-lending programs that have sprung up around the nation, this is a concept that came to the U.S. in the early 1960s and is going strong today. Many banks won’t make commercial loans for less than $50,000, but the small entrepreneur does have financing options. # [John Henry on Business]
ANOTHER DESIGN ENDORSEMENT What should a good weblog design cost?
I MENTIONED BLOGGER DIFFICULTIES BELOW. I should have mentioned that if you’re tired of Blogger, Stacy Tabb can set you up with a new, pretty site like this one. And she’s cheap! reasonable! UPDATE: Hey, check out the new, Sekimori-designed Andrew Olmsted site. Cool. [InstaPundit]
and then see in reality is a G4 iBook, 800Mhz, 512MB, 30GB drive, combo drive, wireless NIC for $1500 bundled with a special agreement from software vendors for migrating my Windows software to the Mac for around 10% or 15% of the purchase price of the software!
Rumors Buzz as Macworld Looms. Macworld New York is just around the corner and the rumors surrounding Apple are heating up. RumorTracker is a new site that gathers all the rumors into one place. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News]
Too much?. Okay, do we really need all these books about weblogs? Is it really that complex a thing that we need instruction? I think the basic how-to at blogger.com does a fine job. Or better yet, just look how others are doing it, and jump in. I think we’re reaching the over-sat… [brilliant corners]
Other than reference books on HTML, web design and such, I only have one book on weblogs. It’s great. Sure, some of what is in it will be obvious to someone who has been prowling weblogs for a while, but much of it is aimed at the person who wants to build a serious weblog with decent readership. Pick up a copy of Rebecca’s The Weblog Handbook. It is more than worth the $14.00 (or $11.20 at Amazon). She knows what she’s talking about.
WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE AHEAD – Bush Honors Medal of Freedom Winners. Bill Cosby brought a little humor into President Bush’s presentation Tuesday… [Dailypundit]
Finance Chief at Worldcom Failed in Bid to Raise Cash [New York Times]
Worldcom Lenders Consider a $3 Billion Secured Credit Line [Wall Street Journal]
PRODUCT PROMOTION Apple & Nikon may be missing the boat!
WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE AHEAD – Robert Scoble rants about Apple’s new found method of trying to minimize product rumors and leaks. Nikon catches some flack as well. The best part of this is Robert’s link to Phil Askey’s reviews at dpreview; they are indeed the best!
Why can’t big companies figure out that it’s the smaller sites that get people excited about their products? Heck, I was really close to buying a Macintosh. By the way, Phil Askey writes the freaking best reviews of any product anywhere I’ve ever seen. Any journalist who wants to see how to review a product should see his stuff (his Nikon 5700 review is only about 1/2 of what he usually does on cameras). I’m in awe. [Scobleizer Radio Weblog]
Joe and I will talk in the next couple of days. Over the past few months I’ve listed a set of sites that have the look and feel that I hope to achieve. It is not my intent to copy any one site. There are features that I want to build in that I’ve seen at various places.
I’ve got a name picked out with the domain registered and hosted already. I’ve got ideas about the ”theme” of the site and a possible logo/graphical look. I need someone who knows how to translate the vision into CSS or HTML or macros or templates or whatever it is that makes up a weblog. Along the way we’ve also got to keep things running and working while bringing all of the existing posts forward!
Steve Pilgrim: ”I wish I knew of someone in the Radio arena who provided [weblog design services]!” Hello! You do know someone like that… here’s a clue and here’s another. Sorry, I just couldn’t resist that one ;~] [jenett.radio]
No disrespect intended by the Stacy remark. I’m hoping that Bryan might be willing to take on some custom CSS development for some Radio bloggers that want a new design!
Check out Bryan’s new site as well. It looks great!
HEY, KATIE! ANOTHER INSTRUMENT TO LEARN (We miss you!)
Fake Didgeridoos Anger Aborigines Who Consider Instrument Sacred
By LEILA ABBOUD
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
FREELAND, Md. – For thousands of years, Australian aborigines have painstakingly harvested the hollow branches of eucalyptus trees to make didgeridoos, their sacred musical instrument.
Aborigines walk through the bush in northern Australia, tapping on trunks to find those that termites have hollowed to just the right thickness, giving what is said to be the world’s oldest wind instrument a sound quality somewhere between a foghorn and a trumpeting elephant. [Wall Street Journal]
Let’s throw in a little…humor!. Mike Sanders has joined the conversation about anger. In particular, I found the following comment to be quite fascinating: Much of my blogging about terrorism has been negatively affected by anger. The feelings were ”How dare that blogging friend not… [Burningbird]
Oscar Winner Rod Steiger Dies at 77. Rod Steiger, who played Marlon Brando’s mob-connected brother in ”On the Waterfront” and won the 1967 Oscar for best actor for his role in ”In the Heat of the Night,” died Tuesday. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: Arts]
IS MY HTML HEAVY? Ya know, there’s always something to worry about!
Does the Site Need Weight Watchers?. Latest and coolest bookmarklet: Page Weight & Speed (IE only, drag this link to the browser Links bar.) from Gazingus. It calculates the file size of the currently loaded HTML [meryl’s notes]
THE MT TYPES ARE OUT IN FORCE Read this and the next post and you’ll see what I mean
Template modules. Did you ever notice how easy it is to use the same piece of markup in more than one blog template? Dont you just hate it when you have to make the same change to, say, your blogroll in your… [Caveat Lector]
We have Categories!. Thanks to the personal time and efforts of Ben Trott, I now have categories again! As far as I’m concerned, Ben is a steely eyed missle man! Now, all of you – go out and buy Movable Type…. [Burningbird]
Small Pearls, Loosely Joined: There is a lot of beauty in the world. Butterflies and kittens and rainbows…and Doc Searls writing about his kid. It’s all a matter of attention. [Time’s Shadow]
AUDIO REVIEWS AND SUSPENDED BELIEF From the people who tell you they can hear a power cord
An employee of a local Starbucks once took an entire paragraph of some six or eight sentences to describe the ”Coffee of the Day.” It was ”nutty, but had the hint of a mossy flavor as it cooled…” I was in tears, but tried to be polite and stifle the laughter.
However, I’ve read these audio reviews for years just for the hilarity! Power cords hooked to speakers provide you with a deafening sixty cycle hum right before they melt. Apparently, some folk can hear them even when they’re quiet. ”qbullet.sidesmiley”
Casting doubt on hi-fi reviews. ”particularly solid and clear bass, extended but without ever being excessive” ”tonality of most instruments and voices seems generally natural, with just a hint of dryness occasionally” ”a slight loss in tangibility of sound, which in turn makes for a little less listener involvement” ”Imaging is excellent and there is no detectable change in character with level.” On their own, you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that these quotes come out of a hi-fi magazine. However, you might be surprised to learn that these quotes are describing different digital interconnects. [kuro5hin.org]
to Yipes. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. They continue to have an outstanding idea for last mile connectivity. Will Level 3 continue to provide services to the new Yipes?
Investors buy Yipes assets to re-form. The metropolitan network operator finds a quick route out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy: a sale of its assets to investors forming Yipes Enterprise Services. [CNET News.com]
LogoLounge. LogoLounge is inspiring for logo designers. Get logo news, monthly picks, featured designer, and trends. [Link HotFeet] [meryl’s notes]
For whatever reason, this reminded me of Stacy Tabb who has apparently focused on providing weblog design services to others. I wish I knew of someone in the Radio arena who provided similar services!
Prison on the Park. Central Park is a lot of things: the pastoral center of New York City, a relaxing stroll on a Saturday afternoon, a patch of grass lined with horse manure. Its also home to a minimum-security prison. Clay Risen investigates. [The Morning News – Features]
WHILE I WENT ON VACATION, the Christian-Pacifism debate continued, mostly (natch) among Christian bloggers. Here’s a recent post with links back to others. [InstaPundit]
No One Ever Said Friendship Was Easy. The best and the most troubling aspects of the Pilobolus Dance Theater came through clearly on Saturday when the company presented the third program in its summer season. By Jennifer Dunning. [New York Times: Arts]
Balloonist’s Next Try: How High. Steve Fossett finally made it around the world in a balloon. Now, in a sailplane, he’s going to try to set the world record for altitude. Kim Griggs reports from Wellington, New Zealand. [Wired News]
The post below has factual errors in almost every paragraph. From the spelling of Warren Buffett’s name to the conversion price of the bond deal, this article gets it wrong. Please be careful (and I’ll do the same) when you are attempting to cover news. Some of the BigPub’s have made errors on this story as well. The particulars are covered well by going straight to the horse’s mouth.
Part of the problem appears to stem from bloggers trying to write authoritatively about things that lie outside of their expertise.
heard his name pronounced with increasing contempt by members of Congress as the afternoon wore on. It became humorous as they asked ”Dick” questions. ”Dick” could only bob and weave.
TONY WOODLIEF figures out the whole corporate-cheating thing: It’s not that colleges and B-schools aren’t teaching values—they’re just teaching other values than, well, not cheating and stealing. [InstaPundit]
WISHING FOR AN iPHOTO FOR WINDOWS Anyone know of a similar app for WinXP?
Top Ten iPhoto Tips. Yes, at first glance, iPhoto appears deceptively simple. But there’s a Unix-compatible database lurking beneath that beautiful Aqua surface. This article gives you five ”data in” and five ”data out” tips that will help you get the most from this very cool iApp. [O’Reilly Network Articles]
TENNESSEE’S INCOME TAX BATTLE: A lot of people have emailed to ask me what I think about it. Generally, I refer ’em to Bill Hobbs, who has been covering this issue like a blanket. (Just go there and start scrolling down).
I did write something about this issue for the Nando Times a few years back, and it has held up pretty well. (It’s gone from the Nando site, but thanks to the miracle of Google you can read it here.) The big problem is that Tennessee’s elected leaders have tried to address this problem by sleight-of-hand rather than persuasion. Every time they’ve done that, they’ve hurt their own credibility, and every time they’ve hurt their own credibility, they’ve reduced their ability to sell it in an aboveboard fashion.
It’s a bipartisan problem. Ned Ray McWherter, our last governor, was a Democrat—and perhaps the sharpest Tennessee politician in my lifetime. Don Sundquist, the current governor, is a Republican (and, ahem, not quite as politically sharp as McWherter).
Neither tried running on a pro-income tax platform; both said they were against it until they were in their second and final term, at which point they came out in favor of the tax. (In Sundquist’s case, he was giving anti-income tax speeches until just weeks before he decided to support the tax)... [InstaPundit]
Welcome back Noah. Noah Grey is back with his incredibly elegant weblog, and his beautiful photographs. I am just now dipping my toes into the Black & White photo world. I’ve long been held by the rich hues of color photography, enamored of… [Burningbird]
didn’t permit Warren Buffett’s usual method of structuring these kinds of deals. Everyone involved wanted to do a convertible preferred equity deal with similar terms. Instead, under Delaware law, the deal had to be structured as junior convertible subordinated debt.
Because of the friendship and longstanding business relationship between Mr. Buffett and Level 3’s chairman, Walter Scott, Mr. Buffett suggested that Mason Hawkins at Southeastern Asset Management be the lead investor.
All investors expressed an interest and willingness to consider further investment in the business. Expected uses of the proceeds will be for industry consolidation where the opportunity to buy a list of customers is available. They would transfer to the Level 3 network.
You can listen to the conference call about the deal here.
Buffett joins Level 3 investors. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and two other companies are investing $500 million in the network operator. Is a new round of consolidation in the cards for the networking industry? [CNET News.com]
STILL LOOKING for a business that produces or ships something tangible!
A recent report shows that the number of out-of-work managers and executives under the age of 40 who are starting their own businesses has risen in each quarter since Sept. 11. In the first quarter of 2002, 36 percent of 3,000 unemployed respondents said they had started their own companies. The survey, conducted quarterly, indicates the figure is up from 25 percent in the fourth quarter of 2001 and up from 6 percent in the third quarter of 2001. What about you? # [John Henry on Business]
More Angry Voices. Interesting comments in the the Value of Anger posting. As I expected, this is not a subject that people treat lightly. However, I was surprised at how personally some people took this posting. For instance, Dave Rogers disagrees, strongly, with… [Burningbird]
WELL, I HAVEN’T MOVED on the latest Blogosphere ecosystem ranking, though Steven Den Beste is catching up. More power to him: he rules.
I’m a bit troubled by Bear’s suggestion that my proposal for open traffic counters will accelerate the separation of the Blogosphere into non-egalitarian spheres. I certainly hadn’t thought of that as a possible consequence of my proposal, and I don’t really see that it follows. Of course, my proposal was aimed more at big sites like Slate and The American Prospect than at bloggers, though that’s okay too. [InstaPundit]
ANGER ESSAY CONTINUES TO HIT NERVES Warning: Long post & strong language
We are what we believe. That is to say, much, if not all, of how we view ourselves is tied into what we believe about ourselves, life, the world and the other people in it. It seems to me that this is why it is sometimes so hard to change someone’s mind about anything that is important to them. I don’t value anger. I don’t believe anger is a useful emotion…
...Right now I’m angry at myself because I am wholly inadequate at expressing to you the fallacy of your belief and the danger it poses and the damage it causes. I’m going to have to work on this one for a while. [Time’s Shadow]
SOMETHING WEBLOGGING IS DOING FOR ME Learning to endure some filth and discomfort to uncover some gems
For much of the last 20 years, I’ve been a person who would (sometimes too) quickly assess whether another’s point of view was consistent with my own or not. From that point, I had a tendency to then tune that person in or out for the rest of time. It was often a variation on the ”what you are shouts so loudly, I don’t hear a thing you’re saying” school of thought. Examples include numerous liberal politicians who, once rejected over an issue, remain rejected without a hearing on all subsequent issues.
Early in this (almost) six month old experiment in weblogging, I took a similar position. Quickly, I thought I could assess whether a given weblogger had values I shared or not. However, as time has gone on, I’ve found that I’ve left some subscriptions in my news aggregator because I truly want to know what some of the ”most read” people on the web are saying. I’m finding specific points of view where I agree with a person with whom I don’t share a single additional value.
This approach now reaches beyond the individual to the subject matter. I’ve spent much of my life deciding what to put in my mind and what to leave out. Lately, I’ve succumbed to sites about subjects I have little or no interest in. It has been amazing. I’ve found some incredible resources just by cracking the mind open a little more. So far, there’s been no lasting damage! Don’t be misled. I continue to be rather guarded in what I elect to read, watch or focus on, but letting in a few contrary opinions hasn’t hurt!
Thoreau and the Search: I’ve been sort of following an ongoing analysis of Thoreau’s Walden Pond at In a Dark Time, a weblog of, I dare say, exceptional, value. Read the entry for the 4th of July. I would only quibble with this: How many millions of dollars are spent in psychotherapy to learn about the self? Foolish reliance on others to help us permits little progress. In the end we are the ones who must create change. If only we were strong enough to heed Thoreau’s suggestion that we are all capable of exploring our own ”streams and oceans.” Yes, a foolish reliance on others is counter-productive. But a guide can be invaluable. Even a guide can only help, ultimately it is the one seeking who must do the work. Nothing worthwhile is ever won without effort. You must do the work. But know also, that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. [Time’s Shadow]
I think this got started with Burningbird’s post about anger followed by several responses. When time and sanity prevail, I’ll take a look at these. Instinct tells me there are times when anger is the proper response, although some of these posts seem to be saying that’s not the case. I’m assuming that documented evidence says those who remain relatively free of anger live longer. What will be interesting is whether or not any of these posts mention prescriptions as a solution to anger or the ultimate in anger management. Is the conventional psychiatric diagnosis and prescription, ”you’re angry-take some Prozac?” Does anger stem from depression? What’s the difference in frustration and anger?
With the New York Times essay on fat, ”Dave” quitting smoking and all of this talk about anger, I’m reminded of three things I’ve heard prescribed for successful weight management throughout a lifetime – proper food intake, proper exercise and proper emotional balance. Getting there in any of these areas isn’t always easy. Managing emotional balance in the face of so many challenges can often be more difficult than the other steps. When something we feel strongly about (OS X-Windows, Conservative-Liberal, War-Antiwar, ProBush-AntiBush, etc.) gets trashed thoroughly by a TV commentator or a weblog or an associate, some people react quickly sending their blood pressure through the roof? Are they angry or not?
Another Voice on Anger:Michael Webb has written something on anger, far better than I ever could. Worth reading. [Time’s Shadow]
This… and that. There’s been a lot happening in Blogaria these past few days, while I’ve been preoccupied with events IRL. Even though I’ve to catch up, I’m [Jonathon Delacour]
Drake S. Tempest, Qwest general counsel, said, ”We have no reason to believe that we are the subject of any investigation by the Department of Justice. It is outrageous that we would learn about an investigation in this way. We have disclosed everything asked of us and have cooperated fully with the SEC and Congress.”
Never Mind. New Zealand company backs Hussein stepson. The owner of a New Zealand cargo company who sent Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s… [Dailypundit]
An Old Ballet Is Made New. A familiar old ballet may look unexpectedly new when the Kirov Ballet of St. Petersburg comes to the Metropolitan Opera House on Tuesday. By Jack Anderson. [New York Times: Arts]
AN ODOMETER FOR YOUR WEBLOG? We do indeed need more of these comparable metrics
TRAFFIC: The American Prospect has released revised traffic figures, and Andrew Sullivan is giving them hell for it. For comparison’s sake, InstaPundit’s figures (which you can see for yourself by clicking on the Extreme Tracking icon at the bottom of this page—a degree of transparency that commercial websites should consider providing) are 440,062 unique visitors for June. [InstaPundit]
THAT LIGHTENING WENT THROUGH HERE (MEMPHIS) It was as amazing as any lightening I’ve ever seen – sorry Glenn’s house took a hit
I’M BAACK! The bad news: Stately InstaPundit Manor was struck by lightning in my absence, knocking out the upstairs air conditioner (the control board looks like somebody took a blowtorch to it) several TVs, and my DSL connection. The computer’s OK, but the router and modem are dead, dead, dead. Regular blogging will resume shortly. Hope you had a good week! [InstaPundit]
You’ve hit my core, Frank, with your poke into ”reinventing myself.” I don’t think of it in terms of ”freshening my authenticity.” Authenticity’s nice, but I’m talking survival here. Actually, it’s more than surviving. The issue here is thriving. If it weren’t for discovering the availability of reinventing the self, I either wouldn’t be on this planet any longer, or I would be here in vastly diminished form.
All Y’All Got Blogs. Perseus Publishing put together a neat collection of articles on blogging, including both an article by me that appeared in The Seattle Times and an article that talks about me (by J.D. Lasica). I feel privileged to be in the middle of such interesting company. The book is slightly too cutely called we’ve got blog (all lowercase, k d lang fans), subtitled ”how weblogs are changing our culture.” The book ships in a week or so; I got an advance copy just today … [GlennLog]
Remember ”slamming” – the tactic of switching your long distance carrier without your approval. How about absurd long distance rates? Have you ever received a call from your current long distance provider simply letting you know that your next phone calls will be at a new, lower rate? Of course not.
There’s an old quote in some of Warren Buffett’s writing that says, ”you never know who is swimming naked until the tide goes out.” With the Internet bubble now a memory and telecom players failing right and left, it’s no wonder that Qwest is being investigated, Worldcom’s executives will be on Capitol Hill Monday and SBC is paying a fine.
We may be looking at an industry that is as short on integrity across the board as many that I’ve seen over the years!
Frank Paynter has asked us to be patient as he readies an interview with Tom Shugart. Though I have no idea of Tom’s relationship (if any) to Alan Shugart of Shugart & Seagate disk drive fame, the Shugart name and several recent business scandals have reminded me of the early days of the ”small” disk drive industry in the U.S.
Does anyone remember the great Miniscribe disk drive scandal? Not only were bricks put in the boxes they were shipping, but they were shipping boxes of bricks to their own finished goods warehouse and accounting for the shipments as sales – not inventory. Before we assume that Enron, Worldcom and Andersen are somehow new phenomena, a bit of history might be in order. From government to business, you’ll discover there’s not much new under the sun!
”Price is what you pay, value is what you get.” Jonas looks like he’s got a value number in mind and is trying to name his price before a fire sale is necessary.
Advertising at $9.00 movies is the subject of a rant from the formerly nicotine-stained fingers of Mr. Dave Winer today. He’s right. Congratulations, ”Dave”, for staying the course. Hope you’re feeling better every day! Oh, and thanks for the tip on Minority Report.
My rant is about something that’s been going on for decades. The stock market closes and some twit announces which way it moved along with some trivial, overly-simplistic drivel about why it moved that way! The way these people report cause-and-effect relationships is beyond any form of logic I was ever taught.
Today’s example is:
PACIFIST TRIPE – JUDGMENT PROBLEMS IN THE FIRST TWO SENTENCES The comments are worth reading, though
Enough of this insanity. These plans for invading Iraq have gone far enough. In our country, which is a republic, the leaders need a mandate from the people. [kuro5hin.org]
THANKS, JOE With limited room left on Userland’s server, it’s time to try this!
Steve Pilgrim: ”Consider this. A Radio user has a weblog. He or she adds a new category. That category is for a completely different web site at a completely different domain name. The question has two parts. Can one of Joe’s templates be downloaded and used just for that category; and, can the user make posts to that web site from his copy of Radio merely by typing the post and selecting that category?”
As far as I know the answer to both parts is ”yes” though I’m not really certain about the second part. [jenett.radio]
Ralph Waldo Emerson. ”A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life; he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.” [Motivational Quotes of the Day]
Duckling Rescue Service. On the way to work on Wednesday I stopped to help rescue several ducklings who had fallen into a sewer grate, and got my shirt very dirty. The mother duck was walking on the curb, and the ducklings were… [Caveat Lector]
SOME EXCELLENT OUT-OF-THE-RAT-RACE THINKING I only wish this was a weblog so I could get updates via the news aggregator!
John Hagel launched his new site recently. He’s a smart guy and I’ve been enjoying the chance to work with him. When I first read his and Mark Singer’s article ”Unbundling the Corporation” a couple years ago, I thought to myself, ”gosh, I’d like to have big thoughts like that…” John’s currently working on business management issues related to web services and has been doing some good writing on the topic. [Brent Sleeper’s Web Journal]
I’M GETTING INThanks, Joe, for moving the effort along!
Thanks for helping spread the word Brian! I think jenett.radio.randomizer has great potential as a flow-builder if more of you Radio bloggers would join. If you’re reading, Dave or Adam, we’d love to have you join (the button is tiny) - that would really help a bunch of less-frequented Radio blogs in the community get a little more ongoing traffic… [jenett.radio]
5K Chess. Yes, it can be done and it has been done. Hear from the creative person behind the game: Douglas Bagnall on 5K Chess from WebReference Update. [meryl’s notes]
Nice to-the-point blogging piece from The Economist. ”Blogging has taken off thanks to the development of online tools, such as Blogger and UserLand, which make it simple and cheap to update personal web content instantly.” [Scripting News]
AN APPROACH TO MICROSOFT Dave Winer may have them scoped out better than any analyst I’ve read!
I should write a FAQ about arguing with Microsoft and how not to fall into their trap, as Mitch Wagner does here. Here’s the first question that would be in the FAQ. Why is it pointless to argue with Microsoft people? Answer: because they hold you to a higher moral standard than they themselves support. When discussing their transgressions, they argue that they have the right to do that. When that doesn’t work, they question your objectivity or qualifications, or resort to veiled ad hominems (a quick subject-change). It’s very disgusting. I used to fall for it all the time, arguing with them as if they were willing to be convinced, when they want nothing of the sort. They want to confuse you and tire you out until you give up. So I don’t argue with them anymore, I just form my opinion, state it, and don’t worry if I’m being terribly fair to them, because they clearly don’t worry about being fair to anyone else, including me (and you). [Scripting News]
But, when you get their product managers off in a personal conversation over beers, they admit ”it’s cause our corporate clients don’t want their employees to be off in newsgroups while they are at work.” Tons of things about Microsoft’s software have been put there (or kept out) by big corporate clients of Microsoft’s. To understand Microsoft’s behavior, you must look at the pressures being put on Microsoft’s board of directors. It no longer is about building a cool computer for end users or geeks like it was back in the 1980s. [Scobleizer Radio Weblog]
<PRE><strong>FOR THE RADIO USERLAND WISH LIST</strong>
I have the impression that a significant number of Radio sites came into existence in the first three months of this year. ”Dave” and the team at Userland know when they have seen spikes in the licensing of Radio. At the Scripting News web site Dave’s calendar has ”On This Day In” followed by links to the past 5 years.
Wouldn’t it be great if on the anniversary date of a weblog, those links ”magically” appeared beneath the calendar? I’m sure there’s a script or a macro or one of those sets of HTML code that could pull this off, but I’m clueless as to where to put it and how.
Consider this. A Radio user has a weblog. He or she adds a new category. That category is for a completely different web site at a completely different domain name. The question has two parts. Can one of Joe’s templates be downloaded and used just for that category; and, can the user make posts to that web site from his copy of Radio merely by typing the post and selecting that category?
Note to users of jenett.radio themes: A user of one my themes contacted me about an important point (thanks Dave!) – I did not include the call for the ”Titles and Links” macro in the ”item template” for any of the themes I’ve made available to the Radio community. I don’t use that optional macro in my own site’s item template because of the extra line of space it leaves above posts that have no title (just a personal preference). So – when I designed the ”simplicity” and ”console” themes, it was easy for me to overlook the fact that some users may prefer to use titles and links in their posts – my bad.
After hearing from Dave, I considered creating alternative versions of the themes that would be ready to use with the macro. However, because it’s an optional feature which affects the site’s design, and because multiple versions could create confusion, it may be better to simply keep it optional, leaving it up to the individual user to add the macro call to their template if they choose to use it. It’s really not that hard to do – that’s what I love about Radio.
RadioDocs is an excellent resource for users who need to learn more about editing templates and other preferences (thanks to Russ Lipton). In addition, the Radio UserLand site provides the following information on how to call the macro (and the related Google-It! macro) in your item template.
A PLACE I COULD WORK Wouldn’t it be great just to follow someone like this around as they taught you how to do one of these surveys?
The inestimable Alan Reiter heads for the seas: Alan is signing on to work with Bernie Dunham, the geek behind Geekcruises’s wireless access that I’ve written about with great glee. Alan’s a cell data expert, among other things, who has extended his interest and expertise into the Wi-Fi realm. Bernie is a recent company CIO who was dabbling in Wi-Fi cruising (literally: he’s surveyed the biggest boats in the world for Wi-Fi networks) when company politics turned him into a full-time wireless maven. [80211b News]
COWARDS ONE AND ALL They publicly condemn new taxes, but cave when their holiday arrives!
Tonight, Tennessee legislators passed the largest tax increase in the state’s history. This happened with Don Sundquist as Governor, a man elected as a Republican. His leadership has been anything but inspiring. Name 3 other Republican Governors in the last 10 years who have increased state taxes by over 900 million in a single, thoughtless act. When the going got tough, the State of Tennessee could not cut taxes and services. The state has been ”shut down” except for ”essential services” this week. I haven’t missed a single state-provided service.
A GREAT-LOOKING NEW SITECongratulations to Paolo and team
In the last few days I worked on evectors’ new English web site. Check it out. We didn’t do everything ourselves, on the site you will also discover that evectors has a new North American partner. It started just because we were reading each other weblogs, and after a few days we’re in business together. It’s exciting. You can get the full story here. Anyway, in the case anybody needed it, this is one more example of the power of small companies connected by great tools. [Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo’s Weblog]
heuh in ’da hot, humid summa time waitin’ for The South to rise again! This lunacy is beneath even the British. Will Hutton is beyond clueless to synthesize the topics he’s listed and draw cause-and-effect relationships between them. Texas isn’t thought of as The South. As trite as that is, that’s the only point I care to refute in this pile of horse manure. He’s promoting a book and saying anything that might sell it. Crisis in America my backside. What happens when some other corporate problem occurs with a company in Ohio or California. Are they then under the influence of the ”pernicious Southern conservatism and unadulterated greed?”
Southern Style Conservativism Responsible for Corporate Implosions?. In a recent article in the Sunday Guardian Observer, journalist Will Hutton makes the argument that conservative Southern politics have much to do with the current crisis in corporate ethics we’re having. Coincidentally, I just got done reading a large portion of the book ”White Collar Sweatshop” by Jill Andresky Fraser. This book is a depressing treastise on the state of corporate America’s policies towards it’s workers: stagnant wages, declining benefits, overwork, low morale and frequent massive layoffs are the result. [kuro5hin.org]
Neighborhood-wide Internet access on the (relatively) cheap. Canopy is a $30,000 Motorola 802.11a product that can cover six two-mile-radius regions in a city with high-speed Internet service. At that cost, it’s conceivable that a neighborhood coaltion of, say, 1,000 people might pitch in $30 each, connect the masts to Internet cables and put their region online. LinkDiscuss (Thanks, Howard!) [Boing Boing Blog]
D-W CSS Tutorial. Christopher Schmitt does a fantastic job writing the Tutorial: Web Page Reconstruction with CSS. He uses Digital Web’s own design to show how a site using tables can start clean [meryl’s notes]
Fossett Finishes Global Balloon Trip. After becoming the first person to fly solo around the world in a balloon, American adventurer Steve Fossett faces a new challenge – landing safely somewhere in Australia. [AP World News]
Wi-Fi Users: Chalk This Way. ’Warchalking,’ marking 802.11b-friendly territory with a double-curved symbol, is all the rage among the wireless set. It’s not just hot, it’s hobo chic! Paul Boutin reports from San Francisco. [Wired News]
Mac OS X release ahead of schedule. The widely anticipated update to Apple Computer’s operating system will appear earlier than expected, sources say—good news for the company in a tough year. [CNET News.com]
George Washington. ”Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.” [Motivational Quotes of the Day]
LEVEL 3 COMMUNICATIONS WANTS THIS BUSINESS They are committed to attracting the 300 largest bandwidth customers
to their end-to-end IP network. Yep, not a circuit switch in the entire 16,000 miles! The legacy phone companies must do an honest appraisal of the make-versus-buy economics and timing.
Reading this article at Business 2.0 about basic techniques for rising through the ranks at Google got me to check my various rankings, and hey, for the first time ever, I’m the number one Dave at Google. Neat. Theory about why. When I took my leave a couple of weeks ago, lots of people pointed to me by name, driving me past Dave at Bungi.Com, who was previously untouchable in the top spot. [Scripting News]
WHICH IS WORSE? A good NR essay with a mediocre commentary!
A Vice President who can’t spell ”potato” or a Vice President who claims to have invented the Internet? Which one is more likely to make honest assessments of this country’s entitlement programs?
ROB’S ONTO SOMETHING HERE! Dave could help us all learn a lot (more), as he already has!
Dave has re-styled DaveNet and has talked about doing the same to Scripting News. I was checking out some Scripting News archives and I gotta say I LOVE the style of SN circa 1999! It’s clean.
Dave what about going the CSS route and allowing folks to pick and choose the look of the site? That’s something I’d like to do here, but quite honestly don’t understand enough to pull it off. Diveintomark uses this approach as well as Zeldman. It’s a nice thing from a usability standpoint. [Rob Fahrni, at the core.]
JOE HAS DONE ITThe question is which notebook PC did he pick?
This changes everything. At home I just got the new laptop up and running with the new wireless access point. Was able to sit on the couch and surf the internet. It definitely has that ’this changes everything’ feel to it. [Bitworking]
Balloonist Fossett in Final Dash. This time around for Steve Fossett, there has been plenty of fuel, no rogue nations to avoid and enough spare oxygen to keep the American adventurer on track in his bid to become the first solo balloonist to circle the globe. [AP World News]
When a fondue pot will keep a victim from pressing charges against the perpetrator of a robbery, one gets a sense of the importance attached to all this weblogging! ”qbullet.smiley”
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, JUNE 30, 2002, 6:00 p.m. CDT (JUNE 30, 2002, 23:00 UTC)Steve Fossett and the Bud Light Spirit of Freedom have rounded third base and are making a run for home. That is, the last 12 hours have begun the final leg of Fossett’s solo bid to circumnavigate the globe by balloon. [Read more...]
just as Hamas has a very specific death to avenge. Things get trickier now.
Hamas Vows to Avenge Leader’s Death. Hamas extremists promised Monday to avenge Israel’s assassination of a senior West Bank bombmaker with an Islamic militant group who Israel says was responsible for the deaths of nearly 120 people. [AP World News]
Yesterday I said I wanted to get three things done. Here’s an update:
1. Computer: It’s now down to the Apple Powerbook, IBM or HP.
2. Wireless: Definitely adding a Linksys WAP11 to the network.
3. Camera: 3 Canons and Olympus are now in the hunt.
iPhoto is compelling. The problem with the Mac is that buying all new software drives the price well above a truly top-end Windows XP notebook. Comments are still welcome!
IT’S ALSO TOUGH FOR THOSE Providing consulting to the Forgotten 5000
Hurt by Slump, a Consulting Giant Looks Inward. The fact that McKinsey & Company, the bluest of the blue-chip management consulting firms, felt compelled to cut prices is a sign of just how tough the environment has become for consultants. By Jonathan D. Glater. [New York Times: Business]
Trying to Catch WorldCom’s Mirage. In some ways, the most far-reaching effects of the financial shenanigans at companies like WorldCom, Global Crossing and Qwest were the dislocations and costs they caused for their competitors. By Seth Schiesel. [New York Times: Business]
I agree with this scenario. Whether trying to ”buy Worldcom some time,” or trying to keep the stock price propped up while the $10-$15 million house was being built, the CFO began an accounting treatment of some expenses that differed from the past treatment of those same items. Regardless of the motive, the accounting was wrong and wasn’t disclosed or discovered by Arthur Anderson’s team.
A READER SENDS THIS WORLDCOM-RELATED OBSERVATION:
I worked for many years at a big five firm, I have sympathies both ways when it comes to these accounting messes, but with the WorldCom situation, I think the press is missing a few points.
First, the accounting delusions did not cause the company to collapse and 17,000 people to lose their jobs. No, a very bad business model that said if you keeping on growing by acquiring lousy companies, you can become one great big good company, failed (this is simply a variation of the old, we sell everything at a loss but make up for it in volume). All the bad accounting did was extend the time before these people HAD to be laid off. In other words, they were not screwed because they worked for a crooked CFO; they were screwed because they worked for a stupid company.
Second, the CFO was, almost for sure, not trying to defraud people in the sense of achieving any personal gain. Without any personal knowledge of this company, I can almost bet you, what he was thinking, was that if I just buy the company some time, things will correct themselves—and nobody will ever notice how I bridged this problem.
Australian Cops Catch 14 Immigrants. Police hunting illegal immigrants who escaped in a mass breakout from a remote Australian detention center caught 14 more of them, leaving 10 still on the run, a spokesman said Sunday. [AP World News]
What did you change?. A conversation between two people working on a Web project (no prizes for guessing which is the programmer). ”This Web page was perfectly OK and [Jonathon Delacour]
We sell and support business management software. Support calls take the form described in Jonathon’s post. In our case the diagnostic process is somewhat reversed. The user of the software is calling to report a problem. We’re faced with understanding what has changed in the ”switches & parameters” of the accounting software that could lead to the reported difficulty. Nine times out of ten, the question, ”what has changed?” is met with an immediate and emphatic ”nothing.” At that point, support becomes a delicate human interaction where ”repairing the customer” is as important as ”repairing the software.”
range from TV shows of no redeeming value to ”art” with no purpose but to shock. No matter how many times we cry out for freedom of speech and freedom to ”express ourselves,” some things in life are better left unseen. It seems there are people ready to stand up and fight for (literally) any idea today. Some simply are not worth fighting for. Filth is filth.
When something is produced with so much cultural and ethnic hatred, we have to look beyond the piece of work at the hearts of the people who produce and harbor that thing. We are outraged at the ”redneck” in America that is capable of extremist thought. We must also be outraged at the ”world’s rednecks” that exist for no purpose but to hate.
Palestinian Baby Picture Stirs Anger. The Israeli army distributed a photograph of a wide-eyed Palestinian baby dressed like a suicide bomber – complete with a Hamas headband and what appeared to be an explosives belt – stirring anger Friday among Israelis, who accused Palestinians of arming their children with hatred. [AP World News]
Within an Enchanted Forest Behind the Everyday World. Happiness is a performance of George Balanchine’s ”Midsummer Night’s Dream” as led with verve and poetry by Darci Kistler’s Titania and Peter Boal’s Oberon on Tuesday night at the New York State Theater. By Anna Kisselgoff. [New York Times: Arts]
Actors who worked on The Lord of the Rings report that New Zealand is the most beautiful place they’ve ever seen. If you had to travel there to prevent a visa violation, where would you go for a 2-day trip? What’s most striking to see?
British Actor Deported. Steven Berkoff, the British actor, who was scheduled to perform his one-man ”Shakespeare’s Villains” this week in Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids, Mich., was deported on Tuesday, apparently for a visa violation. [New York Times: Arts]
Recreating a Golden Age of Radio. Thouseands of items relating to the development of electricity and early radios plus hundreds of radios from the 1920’s through the 60’s are on display at the American Museum of Radio. By Suzanne Charl. [New York Times: Arts]
When you look at the collapse of the telecom business and the actual dollar volumes of market declines and losses, you begin to see a business that has been fundamentally flawed for a long time. If stories like this have even 10% truth (and they do), we’re witnessing a great purge that has been needed for far too long.
Behind each and every market decline is a group of ”home town” investors who feel as if they’ve been betrayed. Whether the business in question has simply dropped with the telecom market or been a party to shenanigans, telecom investors are in the same boat:
became obvious when we learned accounting firms were also providing consulting advice. Similar conflicts have been obvious between stock analysts and stock brokers. Until there are clear lines separating these two, no broker or analyst will get a fair hearing – no matter what he or she is suggesting!
That assumes we’re talking about someone who doesn’t have any other ax to grind. Here’s a guy who seems to be completely uncertain about his role!
outside the normally scheduled annual audit. We’ll also see a call for ”second opinions” in audits. The accounting attrocities are likely to be deep enough that some of the ”high flyers” of the ’90’s restate earnings to a degree that removes them from high flyer status. It will go something like, ”those weren’t profits; those were accounting errors.”
AN OPEN DOOR POLICY TO IMMIGRANTS, BUT You have to at least knock!
34 Asylum-Seekers Break Out of Camp. Thirty-four asylum-seekers escaped from Australia’s most notorious detention center when their supporters dragged down fences with a car, the government said Friday. [AP World News]
Cnet Says It Will Cut 10 Percent of Its Work Force. SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Cnet Networks Inc.(CNET.O), which operates a Web site offering news, shopping information and other technology items, said on Thursday it would cut 10 percent of its work force, and warned its second-quarter sales would be short of forecasts. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology]
I’M GOING TO BED EARLY, since I have to get up at the crack of dawn to fly to DC for the Blogosphere panel. [InstaPundit]
This panel at the National Press Club, sponsored by The Idler, A Web Periodical (http://www.the-idler.com), has invited prominent ”Bloggers” to answer these questions.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Instapundit.com
Mickey Kaus, Kausfiles.com
James Lileks, Lileks.com
Dennis Loy Johnson, Mobylives.com
Doug McLennan, Artsjournal.com
James Taranto, ”Best of the Web,” OpinionJournal.com
John Hiler, Microcontent News
Johsua Micah Marshall, TalkingPointsMemo.com
Discussant: Alice Goldfarb Marquis, The-Idler.com.
The National Press Club is located at 529 14th St. NW, 13th Floor – Washington, DC. Admission is free.
”In this workshop you’ll learn how to create, validate, syndicate, and view your own RSS news channel. The emphasis will be the practical application of RSS XML/RDF metadata for dynamically publishing….” [via Serious Instructional Technology]
Now this is an excellent resource! Put up by the Government Information Locator Service (GILS) folks in Utah, this one-page tutorial gives a brief overview of RSS, what it looks like, aggregators (they call them ”viewers”), how to locate feeds, how to create your own feeds, how to validate your RSS, and more. [The Shifted Librarian]
to be the gold standard when it comes to easily moving photos from camera to computer and manipulating the files in all manner of ways until you’re content. Does anyone know of a single Windows application that is roughly comparable to iPhoto? That will be part of the solution to these things:
Digital photography the Lomography way?. Though I’m far, far from being an ”artiste” of a photographer, I want to do neat things with my camera. I want to capture some moments, some feelings, try some odd things. It’s like hacking with light. I see the kinds of things done with the Lomo cameras, warm and… [0xDECAFBAD]
trouble holding some of these tiny cameras steady. A day will come when someone will begin to plot photo quality against camera size and weight. This won’t be a function of optics, but of handling! It will be interesting to see how this form factor from Sony is received.
The tiny Sony DSC-U10. Sony has today announced their smallest and lightest digital camera the DSC-U10. This tiny 1.3 megapixel digital camera weighs in at just 118 g (4.2 oz) fully loaded, has a fixed focal length lens, one inch… [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]
ANOTHER APPROACH TO APPLICATION INTEGRATION BETWEEN PARTNERS
In many sales channels those at the dealer level have struggled to achieve the economies from solid systems integration with their trading partners (distributors). Many times the dealer is left with unfavorable product pricing due to surcharges that accrue from using outdated systems. Those same dealers find it difficult to do the simple ROI on the savings they would achieve if they spend small amounts to update the technology. This comes from not knowing their true costs of doing business. Penny-wise and pound-foolish comes to mind; or, they know the price of everything and the value of nothing!
To be fair, these dealers have sometimes been ”victimized” by distributors who can’t or won’t make up their minds about the best technologies for application integration. They jump from some proprietary file transfers to EDI to proprietary on-line systems to the Internet forcing their customers – the dealers – to jump with them. No one has successfully and consistently solved this puzzle for the truly small business. Can Microsoft?
How do I find all of the various ”edits” that have been done to my #home template? There are comments and the XML Coffee Mug and links to posts by categories and a search engine and… Well, you get the picture! How do I map all of those features to a new theme?
Every Montage Tells Another Story. Ever since the dawn of photography, people have manipulated images. But digital media has transformed the art of montage into a brand-new genre. By Kendra Mayfield. [Wired News]
LOST BY WHOM? Answer: Liberal judges who believe they sit at the center of the universe
In 1984, several liberal members of the Supreme Court, including Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens and William Brennan, said references like ``In God We Trust,’’ which appears on United States currency and coins, were protected from the Establishment Clause because their religious significance had been lost through rote repetition. The dissenting judge in today’s ruling, Ferdinand F. Fernandez, 63, who was appointed to the bench in 1989 by President Bush’s father, expressed concerns that ruling could also be applied to other expressions of patriotism. ``We will soon find ourselves prohibited from using our album of patriotic songs in many public settings,’’ he wrote. ```God Bless America’ and `America the Beautiful’ will be gone for sure, and while the first and second stanzas of `The Star-Spangled Banner’ will still be permissible, we will be precluded from straying into the third.’’ [New York Times]
HOW TO AIR BIN LADEN TAPES: Reader Craig Demel has some advice:
Since the last couple tapes have been devoid of any references to
post-December events, bin Laden is probably dead, and what we’re
seeing is greatest-hits footage, in a transparent attempt to convince
us he’s not.
So my idea for news organizations trying to decide how or whether
to air new tapes which surface is, air them, then say, ”Oh, we’ve
also got a new videotape from the Three Stooges”, then show
Larry, Moe, and Curly slapping each other and yelping and growling.
Ah, a wise guy, eh? Why I oughta. . . [InstaPundit]
and the history at the time our founders debated this country’s ”belief system,” is essential to interpretting its key founding documents. The notion that ”all of this” can’t evaporate in the blink of an eye is the height of arrogance. What this country was founded to be and what many, if not most, of us were born into is citizenship in a country with very specific beliefs. Each one is left to decide whether they want to be a citizen of that country.
I guess people who don’t believe in the Great Turtle in the Sky are going to be outcast and forgotten. [Scobleizer Radio Weblog]
at Tora Bora, it certainly would boost morale and reinvigorate the USA’s drive to find Osama and some of his closest friends in a mountain hideout right about now.
Kunar Mountains May Be al-Qaida Base. About 100 U.S. soldiers, accompanied by 50 Afghan fighters, are scouring the rugged mountains in an area where a former Taliban official says Osama bin Laden maintained several hide-outs. [AP World News]
Gutenberg from Print to Digital. Nick will like this one. Project puts Gutenberg Bible in online form will give scholars the ability to browse the pages of the book that revolutionized printing. [meryl’s notes]
Day 14: Adding titles to links. What with weblogs being all about links, you would think more people would know about the <CODE>title attribute, but I rarely see it. For those who don’t know, all links can have a title, specified by the <CODE>title attribute of the <CODE><A>tag. This is in addition to whatever link text you specify. The title of a link generally shows up as a tooltip in visual browsers, but it can be presented in non-visual browsers as well. Not all links should have titles. If the link text is the name of an article, don’t add a title; the link text itself is descriptive enough. But if you read the link text by itself, out of context, and can’t figure out what it points to, add a title. [dive into mark]
One Thousand (1,000) different business opportunities are now listed. Weve reached a milestone here at Business-Opportunities.biz. We have the gamut from A-Z, small to large; some are free to start while others may require a million dollar investment. If you know of a legitimate business opportunity, which needs to be included on our list, please submit it for our consideration. Were growing to serve you. # [John Henry on Business]
NICE JOB, JOE Now if I could only figure out all of the changes I’ve made to my templates!
The simplicity.2 theme is now available for download. It’s based on the original simplicity.1 theme with improved user control over font size and a narrower format with increased interline spacing for better readability.
MAKING MONEY WITH A WEBLOG – PART V See Part IV here
If we trust the answers provided in surveys, some of these demographics will catch the attention of advertisers.
ANDREW SULLIVAN has his reader survey results so far online, continuously updated. Pretty interesting. As I suspected, blog readers have pretty impressive demographics. [InstaPundit]
Day 13: Using real links. The scourge of web design is the ”<CODE>javascript:” link, a pseudo-link that executes a piece of Javascript code when you click on it. The most common place this problem occurs in weblogs is in the link to display comments in a separate window… [dive into mark]
Many excuses will be cited. Many people will offer their opinions. Spin will swirl our minds. In the end pure hubris is the cause of disasters such as this.
I came to the conclusion that at some point our civilization will either value excellence in information technology, or will die. We’re building so many systems on the little ones and zeroes, but yet our universities turn out crappy developers with no ladder to climb, few real heroes to look up to, no bonafide life saving techie role models. [Scripting News]
Opinion Research reports that almost 40 percent of all adults find the idea of owning a business extremely interesting. A whopping 96 percent of the population between 25 and 44 years of age also feels this way. The first question facing a wanna-be entrepreneur is: ”What kind of business should I start?” # [John Henry on Business]
that could cut consultants, integrators and small network administrators out of the loop. The notion that I.T. design and implementation can be done by everybody is growing. Some suppliers seem to be saying, ”ever had an erector set or Tinker Toys? You can do this, too!”
Wired magazine, a scout for all that is cyberhip, marked the change with a story titled Blogging Goes Legit, Sort Of. My reaction? Whatever. Blogs reside at what these days is the busy intersection of technology, voyeurism and self-absorption. (Think Survivor, Fear Factor, Looking for Love: Bachelorettes in Alaska.) And in that way they are a fine measure of what we’ve become: people who think their warped relationships, car trouble and mental illnesses are of interest to a vast audience.
Cyberhip?
This column, which treats all blogs as tedious online diaries, was written by Mike Cassidy, who is very happy to tell his Silicon Valley readers that hes never been an early adopter. The column ends with an unfunny fake blog post that has nothing in common with the last 2,000 blog posts Ive read.
This type of column—the I turned my back on a not-very-new trend of specific interest to my readers, so now, instead of catching up, Im going to make fun of it piece—is a sub-category just dominated by monopolist daily newspapers. [Matt Welch’s Warblog]
MAKING MONEY WITH A WEBLOG – PART IV See also Part III
Andrew Sullivan is asking readers to take a survey so that he can better provide demographic information to a potential site sponsor. Sorry, Andrew doesn’t provide permalinks on his site. The post begins, ”And now…A Survey.” Sullivan’s site reinforces the notion that there are four ways to make money operating a weblog.
For a system called a copier, we call a service technician.
For a system called a toilet, we call a plumber.
For a system called a car, we call a mechanic.
For a system called a body, we call a doctor.
When we value our entertainers, we pay millions.
When we value our teachers, we pay thousands.
Why?
Many thanks to Dane Carlson for his help in revising this post. Previously the image was above the text. Dane sent me an email that suggested the following: Change from: To:
It worked. Now to spend some time understanding what it does and why it worked!
I got comments and email from Rob Fahrni and Joe Jenett. Either the ’hspace’ difference in Dane’s email made the difference or a
paragraph tag was causing problems. Just when I thought I had some of this down pat, it bites me again. Still diggin’.
Buy.com takes on Amazon on books. Buy.com is broadening its war with Amazon.com, promising to sell its books at 10 percent below Amazon’s prices, the company plans to announce on Tuesday. [CNET News.com]
Day 12: Using color safely. This tip is a general rule that applies to many areas of web design, but I will focus on a specific example that is common among weblogs: link text. [dive into mark]
In college HP was king of the hill when it came to well-designed products with a look and feel that made you certain they stood for quality. Their calculators and other instrumentation products continued that tradition for many years. Today an HP -12C financial calculator is still a marvel of effective engineering.
Yesterday’s announcement followed by this news shows that HP may not have been distracted by the Compaq merger and the new CEO.
HP to overhaul consumer printer line. Hewlett-Packard, which relies heavily on profits derived from its printer business, is expected to announce Tuesday that it is revamping its entire line of consumer printers. [CNET News.com]
Dan Bricklin points to a new report from Pew’s study of broadband usage: ”Once again, this group is giving us some real data to help us understand what real people do with the Internet, not imaginary people dreamed up by companies who only think of ”consumers” and ”viewers”. It is definitely worth reading this report in detail, and, of course, it’s available on the Web.” [lawrence’s notebook]
Do You Know Where His Keys Are?. One man’s attempt to learn how to use a Web server turned into a giant, obsessive Web project: He has documented and photographed the entire contents of his house for all the Web’s surfers to see. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News]
I stole the graphic that Rob has described. It just fit so well with this post. I followed the Radio Docs instructions about placing pictures. After getting the picture saved in the proper folder beneath the www folder, I started trying to insert the image in my post so that the text would be to the right of the picture. No luck. All my text is below the picture. If someone has broken the code on how to do this correctly with Radio, I’d sure love to know! Thanks.
VACATIONS AREN’T FOR RECOVERING FROM RECENT HARD WORK They’re for preparing for the hard work to come! Enjoy the respite!!
Whether bothered about the war, the economy, domestic events, political infighting or merely the routine of everyday life, the American people will snap out of the doldrums. We always have and we will continue to do so. When we do, we can help improve life for others globally.
MALAISE? A while back, Steven Chapman noted a certain lassitude around the Blogosphere. Now Andrew Sullivan is saying more or less the same thing, only with regard to society at large.
Well, there’s less happening on a day-to-day basis than there was in the fall, which translates into less adrenaline and more cortisol, I suppose. My guess is that things will pick up again soon enough. Instead of worrying about the current pace of events, I’d advise taking advantage of it. It’s not likely to last. [InstaPundit]
about how they arrive at business decisions. Sure, there’s ”do the right thing.” There’s also management by bestseller. There are all the new fads that guide some business people. I once worked for a ”new-ager” who I honestly believe got his business decisions from viewing the clouds. When you deal with someone who has given principles such as these some forethought, you can do business on a handshake!
Whether President Bush was telegraphing what Israel is about to do or whether he was sending a message to all the other extremist idiots, I think his selection was a master stroke. When the President of the globe’s most powerful nation starts quoting verses like this one, it sounds an awful lot like fair warning to me!
The choice here is stark and simple, the Bible says, ”I have set before you life and death, therefore choose life.” The time has arrived for everyone in this conflict to choose peace and hope and life. 06/24/2002 02:17 PM [Matt Welch’s Warblog]
$25 MILLION SAYS THIS DOESN’T REMAIN TRUE No one of repute can confirm it even now!
Al-Qaida: bin Laden Still Alive. Osama bin Laden and his No. 2 man are both alive and well and their al-Qaida network is ready to attack new U.S. targets, bin Laden’s spokesman said in audiotaped remarks aired Sunday. The message also claimed responsibility for a deadly April fire at a Jewish synagogue in Tunisia. [AP World News]
Microsoft plans sales force expansion. The software giant will broaden its sales force by adding 450 positions, its largest expansion in a decade, as it tries to better target specific industries. [CNET News.com]
ANTITRUST WITHOUT NAIVETE: My most recent NYT column looks at the importance of considering ”transaction cost economics” before assuming that unusual firm structures or contracts are anticompetitive and launching antitrust crusades against them. Since I explain what TCE is in the column, I won’t repeat myself here. Paul Joskow’s paper, which inspired the column, can be downloaded from his website. Because there was so much background to explain, I had to give Joskow’s article short shrift, and I recommend reading itparticularly if you have an interest in antitrust law. Unlike some of the math-filled articles I write about, it’s not technical, and you’ll get an interesting overview of how economics and antitrust policy have interacted over the past several decades. [Posted 6/24.] [Virginia Postrel’s blog]
is something resembling 21st century computing power. I’m guilty of trying to milk too much life from an old laptop. Lawrence Lee helped me identify its lack of speed and performance as a possible culprit in my recent news aggregator problem. So, maybe a new HP notebook is just the ticket. This is an incredibly broad announcement by HP – reminscent of the number of products that would make it into a single announcement 10 years ago.
This tool seems like a decent stop-gap measure while we’re waiting on all of our favorite weblogs to get RSS feeds.
Get Fresh. Three talented individuals from the DFW crowd have struck gold again and put together a great tool for tracking your weblog reading list based on freshness. [meryl’s notes]
BOY, this Los Angeles Times writer, Tim Rutten, doesn’t like blogs very much. He thinks we should be reading ”serious newspapers” instead. That wouldn’t include the Los Angeles Times, whose sloppy and biased Israel coverage has produced a boycott—and which, judging by its lame-ass registration requirement, doesn’t want anyone reading it (on the Web, at least) anyway. [InstaPundit]
One wonders what’s holding Israel back. The Arab world cannot hate Israel much more than they do right now. Obliteration of the Palestinians could happen. What restrains Israel? Where do they find patience?
WHAT WOULD YOU CHOOSE? Lives lived for different reasons
Imagine what choices you’d make and what you would have been doing if you had this hanging over you. What becomes important? What provides service to others?
JUNE 23: Tomorrow is my anniversary. Funny how it sneaks up on me…
Day draws near. Another one. Do what you can. [Andrew Sullivan]
ADRIFT IN THE RAT RACE Missing the really important stuff
Just One of the Boys. ”More women could be running companies, but . . . they look at what men are doing, and they think, What’s so great about that?” By Amy Barrett. [New York Times: Business]
Some of us want Radio coffee mugs – not on our weblogs, in our hands! Let me know if you’ve got an interest. I can’t ”steal” Userland’s logo or thunder, but if enough of us want our morning coffee in a Radio Userland coffee mug, I suspect it can be made to happen. So far, Rob is the only other person I’ve heard from! ”radioCoffeeMug”
Posted 7:45 PM by Eric Raymond World’s Smallest Political Quiz – My (Eric Raymond’s) results:
This should explain rather neatly why that guy over at Right Wing News couldn’t manage, for all of his grunting and straining,to force me into either a `right-wing’ or `left-wing’ box. You can take the quiz here. Thanks to VodkaPundit for reminding me of it. [Armed and Dangerous]
When I read stories like this one and follow it with the one below, I go into ”conspiracy mode.” Were they ”smart enough” to identify factions of our own population so disillusioned that they could be ”bought?” Did anyone check? Is this another example of seeing the picture only after each dot was connected? (Is anyone else sick of the ”connecting the dots” analogy?)
WASHINGTON Just weeks before Timothy McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement received several warnings that Islamic terrorists were seeking to strike on American soil and that a likely target was government buildings, documents show.
The information, though it was never linked to McVeigh, was stark enough that the Clinton administration urged stepped up security patrols and screening at federal buildings nationwide, including those in Oklahoma.
The government, however, didn’t fortify buildings with cement barriers like those hurriedly installed after McVeigh detonated his explosive-laden truck at the curb of the Murrah building on April 19, 1995, officials said.
Islamic extremists are determined to ”strike inside the U.S. against objects symbolizing the American government in the near future,” said one warning obtained by The Associated Press.
I don’t think this is getting as much attention as it deserves. I hope that someone is looking into it. [InstaPundit]
So – I’m feeling really good about the new SpamNet software. Why? In addition to its automatically blocking about 50 SPAM messages on the first day I used it, it also gave me the opportunity to report 2 obvious SPAMs I received that weren’t on the list yet. It feels great to know that 5,000+ other users won’t find those 2 annoying messages in their inbox as a result of my reporting them. Did I mention that the software was free? You pay for it by reporting SPAM in return for all the other users who are doing the same thing… [jenett.radio]
Why be a Webmaster? I started my first site, about fishing, on July 4th of last year. I put it up because I wasn’t a good fisherman and wanted to learn more about it.[WebmasterWorld]
for that same management team that thinks nine women together can have a baby in one month! Deming has pointed out, and Drucker reinforced, the cluelessness of certain managers. That clueless condition blocks their way from management to leadership.
As brilliant as we’ve become in matters technical, the world’s condition shows us how far we must go to live well on this globe with peace of mind. How quickly the unexpected can blindside us. From the World Trade Center to the four-way stop near your home to an asteroid that goes undetected, life can turn quickly.
It Takes a Village to Save a Site. Community tech site Kuro5hin was about to vaporize because of lack of funds, so its webmaster makes a plea for bucks. Users respond with alacrity, and the site will go on. By Paul Boutin. [Wired News]
Two by the Bolshoi, Endings Unfamiliar. The usual happy endings are missing in the new productions of ”Swan Lake” and ”La Bayadre” by Yuri Grigorovich that the Bolshoi Ballet performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington. By Anna Kisselgoff. [New York Times: Arts]
I think it should look like this on one side: ”radioCoffeeMug”
On the other side, it should have the blue Radio Userland logo.
It ought to be a thick, white mug like they use in the old-fashioned diners – built to last.
We should think of a ”cause” – not necessarily, but possibly charitable – and add a couple of bucks to the price of each mug to fund some special piece of development at Userland. (e.g. 50 new themes or some other semi-frivolous need or wish)
TO THE (RAPIDLY IMPROVING?) CEO OF USERLAND SOFTWARE, INC.
”Dave” – if you’re reading any of the weblogs again – we’re still keeping good thoughts for you and your loved ones. We trust you are getting better and feeling stronger as the days pass. Best wishes, regards, ”Spicy Noodles” and our prayers go out to you! ”qbullet.smiley” Oh, and thanks for this Radio tool. It has gotten fun again!
15 HOUR TIME DIFFERENCE Between Memphis, TN and Sydney, Australia
While Memphis is on Central Daylight Savings time, there is a 15-hour time difference between here and Sydney. When it’s 8pm here, it’s 11am the next day over there. Simply add three hours to Memphis time and change to or from am/pm.
15 time zones means that our daughter was already getting closer to home when she crossed the 12th time zone!
In the past couple of days, we’ve read about some excellent new features for weblogs. What I need to do is review and understand the overlap and the differences between the following:
Just a reminder. The Google-it macro for Radio (that lets readers search Google for the titles to your weblog posts) has been out for a couple months (just in case you missed it). Pretty much cut and paste simple. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
I downloaded and started using Cloudmark SpamNet (mentioned by Dane Carlson, Gregory Blake, InfoWorld, and The Register) and from what I can see, it’s works quite well. I disabled the Rules Wizard in Outlook 2000 and the new software (so far) appears to be blocking virtually all of the senders I had previously added to my Junk Senders list. The good thing is that more messages were blocked, which I would have normally had to stop and add to my list.[jenett.radio]
I’M RE-READING OLD BOOKS Because there are so many lousy new books!
If You Read One Post About Blogging This Week, Read This One: Im generally trying to avoid the subject here, for reasons of claustrophobia & time, but Jeff Jarvis spools some interesting and resonant thoughts about the impact of Web writing on book publishing. Specifically, on book consumption, and creation. [Matt Welch’s Warblog]
People are easily disillusioned. There are some who reach a state where they can’t find their passion any more. These people would do ANYTHING to find the something they can be passionate about! It’s sad, but unfortunately it’s also true.
BusinessWeek weighs in, favoring 802.11a over Wi-Fi and 802.11g: some impeccable logic in why 802.11a is a better bet than 802.11g in the short-term and long-term. It doesn’t incorporate technical and financial data, however, which we should start seeing real-world analyses of as 802.11a is deployed. It’s great to say use 802.11a, but if you need a 2x or 3x denser installation for the same services, then it may be better to simply use RAID – redundant antennas with inexpensive devices. [80211b News]
another legalistic, rules-based group prescribing right and wrong for everyone else. When ”The Christian Right” finds itself aligned with any extreme faction of Islamic believers, it’s time for them to assess their motives, their teachings and the source of their beliefs. More importantly, what are they really attempting to achieve?
Day 9: Providing additional navigation aids. You may be familiar with the tag in relation to RSS auto-discovery. But did you know you can also use a similar syntax to point to your home page, and to previous and next pages in a series? For instance, on daily archive pages, you could point to the previous day’s posts, and the next day’s (if any). If you have individual pages for each entry, you could point to the previous and next entry.
Don’t fret, Radioheads; tomorrow’s tip will be just for you. [dive into mark]
I’ve always thought of myself as a conservative Republican. A few years ago, I began to feel that some career Republicans were just as responsible for intractible problems in this country as career Democrats. I began to read the Federalist Papers and the USA’s other founding documents. Maybe I’m becoming a Libertarian, but I’m not sure.
I’d rather be a critical thinker who is capable of arriving at considered decisions without checking their consistency with a popular political group!
Consistency. Libertarians are the only ideological activists I know of whose actions are consistent with their own principles. [The Trommetter Times]
MAKING MONEY WITH A WEBLOG – PART III See also Part I and Part II
Community Costs [Zeldman] An interesting read that makes intelligent points about tying one’s predicament to some larger picture, though it leaves out the fact that apparently, the users of Kuro5hin have been willing to cough up… [jenett.radio]
So far, I’ve identified the following revenue streams associated with weblogs:
Subscription or membership fees
Advertising revenue
Affiliate fees (e.g. Amazon, long distance service, etc.)
I’m subscribed to 103 news sources using Radio’s news aggregator. It’s a primary way for me to keep up with weblogs and sites that fit my interests. I had reported that I thought I was seeing intermittent performance. Specifically, sites are getting updated, but they don’t show up in my news aggregator.
Here are three sites I know for certain have updated in the last few days, but they never came through my news aggregator:
The coincidence here is that all of these are Movable Type sites. Does anyone have any clues about what could be happening? AP NEWS HEADLINES on the other hand come through my aggregator multiple times with each refresh!
MAKING MONEY WITH A WEBLOG – PART II Is there a business lurking under all this fun?
Yesterday, we saw The Drudge Report’s numbers. I asked some questions about making money with a weblog. Things like revenue streams, adverstising as a soul source of revenue and how much traffic one needs to have in order to shift a weblog from hobby to business are important considerations.
Day two wrapup, and a change of plans. Has it only been two days? It feels like a month. Well, we didn’t meet my overly ambitious goal for yesterday, but I didn’t really expect to. We did, however, have another impressive day, with another 290 new members joining, and nearly $10,000 more raised. I think that today we can easily reach the halfway mark, $35,000. That gives me at least six months (and I’m sure I can make it last longer), to get my ducks in a row, get the paperwork underway, and do the work of making K5 a non-profit. So I think that the goal today will be $35,000 and at that point, we are going to call this fundraiser over so we can go back to doing what we’re here to do. [kuro5hin.org]
Book Excerpt: Cascading Style Sheets, Pt. 2. The conclusion of our pair of excerpts from the glasshaus title ”Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation” introduces CSS itself; with a brief look at its origins, syntax, and benefits. [WebReference News]
Still miss dave alot. funny how there’s thousands of webloggers that know of him, yet no-one has posted what happened to him… go figure. Hope he’ll be posting all the details soon on SN! [Adam Curry: Adam Curry’s Weblog]
I wish she’d do a Radio theme or a set of custom templates.
WEBGODDESS STACY TABB has finally moved her blog to its own domain: www.blogatelle.com. Adjust your bookmarks accordingly. [InstaPundit]
But take a look at her husband’s post – my, oh my!
takes us into illogical realms. When thinking of any crime in this country and how it is perpetrated and by whom, we should not ignore trends and patterns. Should a policeman facing a person with a gun ignore it because he might be unfairly ’profiling’ that person as someone who intends to do harm?
Which side do we err on – the one that grants the benefit of the doubt to someone or the side that protects this nation even if some innocent people get questioned along the way? I’d rather have liberty than death and profiling may be the only way to prevent the latter! Unfortunately, there are those in this country who cannot except, ”Give me profiling or give me death!” How else are our citizens to be protected? Keep after it, Rob!
Apple is making a compelling argument for Windows users to switch to Apple. One question that doesn’t seem to be addressed anywhere is the issue of new licenses for all of the software I already own for Windows. Buying everything from Radio Userland to Office to Macromedia products, Project Managers and BBEdit all over again gets a little pricey. Am I missing something?
Windows XP and Mac OS X Compared: ”If you’re looking for fun computing that’s a breeze right out of the box, maybe that new iMac with OS X is a good choice. But if you want to do more and don’t mind a little more work, XP might be better.” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
Making Google part of every blog entry. David ”Sputnik” Sifry has built a cool-%$$ Google API tool for his blog. Every entry on his blog is accompanied by ten links to related stories automatically discovered with Google (these ten stories are refreshed every time he updates his blog, though he could also put it on a timer). The integration is slick-tight, thanks to Movable Type’s API, and David’s published the source for his hack so that other intrepid Movable Typers can implement it. LinkDiscuss (Thanks, David!) [Boing Boing Blog]
Webbys 2002 Winners. The Webby Awards has announced the winners and included their five word speeches (best awards rule). Lots of familiar Web sites won because they’re obviously head of the class and [meryl’s notes]
First In-Flight Interview with Steve Fossett-SYDNEY,AUSTRALIA, June 19,2002, 17:00:00 UTC – Steve Fossett was in an upbeat mood when he rendezvoused with a chase plane over the outback in Western Australia nearly six hours after his picture perfect launch from Northam earlier in the day. [Read more...]
Start-up wants your help to fight spam. Anti-spam company Cloudmark on Wednesday is taking the wraps off a new spam-fighting tool that aims to use the power of the people to weed out unsolicited commercial e-mail. [CNET News.com]
What are the dynamics of making money with a site such as this? Who is paying Matt Drudge? Can that lone banner at the top fund him? What are 5,000,000 viewings worth? How does that translate to unique individuals?
What threshold must a weblog achieve to support it’s writer/curator?
Level 3 Announces Agreement to Provide Optical Wavelength Services to America Online in Europe and across Atlantic
BROOMFIELD, Colo., June 19, 2002 Level 3 Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq:LVLT) today announced a multi-year agreement to supply optical wavelength services to America Online, Inc.
Some highlights:
Specifically, Level 3 is providing America Online with (3)Link Global Wavelength services in Europe on major routes connecting London to Paris, Paris to Frankfurt and Frankfurt to London with 2.5 gigabit service, as well as 10 gigabit service on Level 3’s transatlantic undersea cable between London and New York.
Level 3 turned up the Paris to Frankfurt connection using its proprietary On-Net Transport Activation Process (ONTAP) provisioning system. This proprietary system enables delivery of wavelength and private line services when customers request them, rather than in the weeks or months that it typically takes to deliver these transport services in the telecommunications industry. ONTAP allows customers to tie their network purchases directly to revenue opportunities, rather than basing their orders on speculative long-term projections. Level 3 has been recognized as an industry leader in transport service delivery. The industry analyst firm Frost & Sullivan presented Level 3 with its Market Engineering Award, calling ONTAP ”a major customer service differentiation” for the company.
Level 3 currently offers service in nine major European markets and is expanding to eight additional markets across Western Europe in 2002. The new markets are Geneva, Madrid, Milan, Stockholm and Zurich, and the German cities of Cologne, Karlsruhe and Stuttgart. Once the expansion is complete, Level 3 will be able to deliver services to 17 of the top markets on the continent.
Level 3 offers a range of communications services targeted toward the world’s top 300 bandwidth customers, including wavelengths, private line, dark fiber, managed modem and IP services.
It’s not my intent to write a ”what-I-ate-for-breakfast” weblog, and I’m a cat’s worst detractor. However, my daughters are wonderful. Take my word for it – they’re great! As great as I know they are, this weblog won’t dwell on it. From time to time, I’ll post what we think is a highlight, but we won’t dwell on how special I think they are – you get the picture!! Did I mention…well, they are!
Today’s highlight happened when our oldest reported in soon after arriving in Australia. After all the usual parental questions, she said, ”And when I got to my office, they had put a sweet note on my desk, a fresh vase of flowers and some Tim Tams.” She reported this so matter-of-factly.
On May 28, 2002 we had no clue what Tim Tams were. Through the wonders of blogging, Burningbird and Jonathon, I learned. Then, I wrote about them and told Katie about them. Her coworkers were impressed when she knew what Tim Tams were at first glance!
Now you know what kind of day I had - finding this silver lining in the midst of The Linkola Scandal was my highlight!
JESSE VENTURA won’t run for reelection. Actually, what he said was: ”I am not seeking reelection again.” Reader Dane Carlson wonders how he can not be seeking reelection ”again,” when he’s never sought reelection before. Picky, picky.
[InstaPundit]
So, what are the blogatomic weights of a Scripting News link, an InstaPundit link and a John Robb link respectively?
Here’s an update on Dave. He just gave me a call. He sounds great but hoarse. Very upbeat. He was overwhelmed by the wonderful outpouring of support for his recovery. I expect that he will be back online this weekend. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
Chicago’s Balloon Tycoon Lifts Off. American adventurer Steve Fossett launched his latest solo round-the-world balloon trip early Wednesday, his silver balloon rising over this western farming town after a long delay caused by surface winds. [AP World News]
For those who have asked about our daughter, she arrived safely in Sydney and caught her flight to Gold Coast, Queensland. Her 15-hour flight from LA had 360 passengers. She was welcomed by her hosts and hostesses and had morning tea near the beach. What a way to start an internship. We’re thankful!
THE NEW YORK TIMES reported on Sunday that greenhouse warming was causing Alaska to ”crack, burn and sag.’ Now Professor Gerd Wendler of the Alaska Climate Research Center (he’s a professor of geophysics at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, a lovely campus that I visited once) says that the Times’ claim of a seven-degree temperature rise is wildly exaggerated: here are the actual figures, which are much lower. What could account for this discrepancy? [InstaPundit]
left about two hours ago on the start of 25 hours in airports and airplanes. We miss her terribly already. She’ll be gone six months and Australia is a LONG way from here. She’ll be in good hands and she’ll be doing great work, but with her two sisters gone for the summer, this old house is awfully quiet right now!
delivered by one of our weblogs and teaching a mix of CSS & HTML editing be a useful thing? We could decide to edit one of the standard Radio templates or we could start from scratch to build a brand new theme. Either way, we’d get into the nitty-gritty of changing the way a Radio weblog appears to viewers. Along the way we could cover the pieces that relate to accessibility and making a site validate, etc.
Are there any on-line tutorials that walk one through the creation of a simple web site using CSS, HTML, etc.? I haven’t found them, if they’re out there!
CSS Panic. Owen Briggs of the Web Standards Project put together the CSS Panic Guide. To sum up, This is not a complete resource, this is a fast resource. These are the [meryl’s notes]
hear the rest of the story! On June 6 Dane said, ”This may be a good time to explain how I control six weblogs and four static websites with Radio.” I’m ready!
Mark Pilgrim set the stage for accessibility in web sites with Days 12345. Today, he begins to offer specific advice. This series could become incredibly useful. Stay tuned.
Day 6: Choosing a DOCTYPE. You start your sentences with a capital letter; start your HTML with a DOCTYPE. It’s just basic grammar. Who benefits? You benefit. Many of the tips in the rest of this series will require you to know what version of HTML you’re using, because the instructions will be slightly different. So figure it out now, or add one if you don’t have one. Further reading: A List Apart: Fixing Your Site With The Right DOCTYPE and MSDN: Quirks mode in IE 6. [dive into mark]
We wish for you a speedy recovery, the most skilled doctors on the west coast, bright nurses with a sense of humor and 802.11b in every room (assuming doctors permit it!). Get well soon. We want to hear from you!
Here is an update on my friend and boss Dave Winer. He is in the hospital and will remain there until next weekend. To those that are sending notes, he should be OK, but in the meantime send positive healing thoughts in his direction. He will be providing more details when he is able. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
Here’s a company that hasn’t been able to accurately pay its agents’ commissions since at least August of last year. Among all the misrepresentations and hyped possibilities, it is looking less likely that they will find someone to bail them out. Worse, a network that would make a good buy for someone might get shut down. This could become reminiscent of the KPNQwest debacle!
XO Communications Said to Plan Bankruptcy Filing. XO Communications, the telecommunications service provider, is expected to file for bankruptcy protection today and present a reorganization plan that will probably raise questions among its creditors. By Andrew Ross Sorkin. [New York Times: Business]
My news aggregator seems to work somewhat intermittently. I visit sites that have new information. Having just gone through my news aggregator, I’m certain those sites were not listed there.
Is there some configuration problem? Is there a limit to the file size for an aggregator scan? If I’m subscribed to too many sites (approximately 100), will that limit what I get in my news aggregator?
Great Recommendations if You Are Looking for a Job. ”I see lots of growth in Web services and entertainment. There are lots of companies transitioning to membership based models now, and that generates a lot of work to build those subscription systems and management tools.
I just hired four new developers at my company, so I will give you some pointers for actually getting in the door once you have found a company to interview for:”
Dorothy Parker. ”They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.” [Motivational Quotes of the Day]
If you haven’t read things by Dorothy Parker, take a look. Be careful as you read short biographies of her life. Those that report that her literary works and estate were left to the NAACP are not precisely accurate. She admired the work of Dr. Martin Luther King and left her literary works to him. He then bequeathed her work to the NAACP.
There are writers of weblogs who have a similar acid-tongued wit and cynicism embedded in their work. It’s clever. Does it hide a life of quiet desperation? An idependent film called ”Dorothy Parker and the Vicious Circle” starring Jennifer Jason Leigh was made in the mid-1990’s. You’ll see that desperation portrayed in the lives of Parker and her contemporaries.
Had the writer of this story bothered to analyze Level 3’s earliest presentations up to the present, some of the concerns he raises would have been answered. Clearly, Level 3 didn’t build a 20,000 mile next generation network just to distribute software.
Further, this writer stepped into the same trap that others have lost legs in. He wrongly assumes that dark fiber in the ground is somehow equivalent to ”excess network capacity.” Barring a world-wide depression of several years duration, there is simply no way to conclude that there is excess network capacity ready to carry traffic. Dark fiber is ”potential capacity” awaiting investment and construction to light it. Each year that passes the economics of lighting old generations of fiber become losing propositions. Fiber and the optoelectronics required to light it follow Moore’s Law rather than the practices traditionally followed by legacy phone companies.
The worst offense in the article is to site yet another network/teleco failure and extrapolate the same for any other player in the teleco industry. Someone once said, ”when you catch your competitor doing something stupid, get out of his way.”
Level 3’s strategy: Vision or folly?. The network operator’s new plan to acquire software distributors could be ahead of its time, or it could be a last-ditch effort to keep the company in business. [CNET News.com]
IBM FROM AN INVESTOR’S POINT OF VIEW For anyone who believes the market is always rational and efficient
Put aside the usual technology industry politics for a moment. Don’t think Linux vs. Windows. Don’t think server vs. mainframe. Don’t think big vs. small. Don’t think about IBM-The PC Company. Don’t think about the IBM of the 50’s through the 70’s (boom times) or the IBM of the late 80’s and early 90’s (is it going under?).
Think of the IBM of today – the largest provider of global technology products and services. In February the stock was at 120. Today it is around 75. The biggest news inside the company during that period was the departure of Louis Gerstner.
It would be ridiculous to discount a company like IBM by almost 38% in four months over the departure of one person. It would also be somewhat of a slap in Sam Palmisano’s face, too. Clearly, worldwide demand for technology has been impacted by the business cycle, the downside of the usual economic cycle and the uncertainty that world politics brings to any possible recovery.
Still, 38% in four months translates to IBM dropping in value by $76 billion! This isn’t Enron. This is IBM. It remains a company that is trusted by more members of the Global 2000 than any other provider of technology products. I’m not hyping IBM here. I’m simply pointing out that no matter how bad world conditions become, IBM stock on sale for $76 billion less than what it was at the beginning of the year might be quite a value. In August of 1993, when lots of people thought IBM might fail or be broken up, the stock traded down to $10 and change on a split-adjusted basis.
Had you bought at that time and held to today’s $75 range, you would have earned in excess of 25% per year on your investment – excluding dividends. That’s after the recent 38% drop in the stock. That’s after ”the market” decides IBM is worth $76 billion less than it was worth 4 months ago. Does IBM appear to be in worse shape than in 1993? Certainly not?
Does anyone really believe that Sun, HP, Dell and other global providers of technology products and know-how are going to destroy IBM? They didn’t in 1993 at IBM’s weakest point!
IBM shares gain after analysts back plans. SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Shares of International Business Machines Corp. (IBM.N) bucked the fall endured by many technology stocks on Thursday after analysts endorsed its plan to exit the hard disk drive business and how to account for that. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology]
Not everyone lives in San Francisco. Those who don’t aren’t concentrated in New York. Until the wireless companies provide a differentiated, compelling value in services and handsets to the masses, the wireless ”boom” will remain more like a ”bust.”
I don’t plan to surf the web on a phone keypad. In Memphis, I may not be able to truly surf the web on a handheld with reasonable economics for quite some time. Though many cell phones are dirt cheap, the latest phones (ostensibly ready) for the latest generation of wireless services cost quite a bit more. The monthly service is also above and beyond the calling plan.
With a desire to combine cell calls, paging, messaging and PDA functionality, the buyer of a phone is faced with the march of Moore’s Law. Ironically, consumers have become more accepting of its impact on their computers than they have on their cell phones. Further, more and more consumers are looking at their combined budget for cable or satellite television, home security fees, local phone lines, long distance, Internet access, web hosting and cell phone service.
Plenty of people are ready for the company that can provide as many of these services as possible, on a family-oriented plan that permits a single bill and a single throat-to-choke when something goes wrong.
Sprint Cuts Target for New Wireless Subscribers. OVERLAND PARK, (Reuters) – Long distance and wireless phone company Sprint Corp. (FON.N) on Thursday said subscriber growth in its wireless unit (PCS.N) would miss its target by up to 15 percent in part because of discounting by competitors. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology]
”PAV”
A Call to Drop Cell Phone Towers. Research firm SRI says it has a solution for the problem of dropped calls: Eliminate callers’ dependency on cell towers. By Elisa Batista. [Wired News]
has signed quite a few of the KPNQwest customers and used the company’s ON TAP provisioning capabilities to turn up new service quickly. KPN has also turned to Level 3 for new service on Level 3’s network.
KPN & Qwest were the original backers of KPNQwest. Neither company wanted to continue to invest in KPNQwest.
Edward R. Murrow. ”Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.” [Quotes of the Day]
Found: Solar System Like Our Own. Researchers discover, for the first time ever, a planetary system similar to our own. And it’s right next door, only 41 light years away. By Noah Shachtman. [Wired News]
LIKE A MACARTHUR FOUNDATION GRANT And you get a tutor!
With the Masters, in Their Element. Rolex S.A., the Swiss watchmaker, has created a novel mentoring program that will link up five up-and-coming artists with five world-class masters in their fields. By Celestine Bohlen. [New York Times: Arts]
This site provides an excellent resource for anyone considering digital photography and the selection of a digital camera. As someone still amazed at the kind of information that is available ”for free” on the Internet, I’m impressed with the level of detail here.
Follow that with a visit to Digital Photography Review.
in the overall race to be one of the top digital camera brands? What’s the ranking? Are the players to consider the same ones we think of in 35mm cameras?
American Tries Balloon Trip Again. American tycoon Steve Fossett, undeterred by five failures to circle the globe alone in a balloon, said Wednesday he will start try No. 6 on Saturday – better equipped and prepared. [AP World News]
This Colorado fire situation is really out of control. Here is a great source for information on it at CSU (much better than CNN). The Hayman fire (87,000 acres) is growing at a rate of 1/2 mile and hour on 2-7 mph winds. Those winds are expected to pick up to 7-16 mph with gusts to 25 mph tonight. Very scary. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
We had to be at the airport early Sunday morning. ”The fight” was Saturday night. I didn’t see it, but I heard the political spin before, during and after regarding how wonderful the fight was for the city. Watching and listening to people at the airport on Sunday, I had the impression that many were beating a hasty retreat! Will the city get another heavy weight championship fight? Will the people who came before return? Does anyone care?
and less leadership-by-committee, many of these arts organizations could begin to break even or run a slight surplus. The battle runs continuously between appeasing major donors by making them directors and trustees and having to listen to their notions about how to run the organization once they’re ”in.”
we forget or never know what the life of an American soldier is like. Wars are not yet fought without the tenacity of men and women on the ground in conditions few Americans ever simulate, much less experience.
Troops Battle Afghan Heat, Terrain. Sweeping into the Suleiman Khel valley near the Pakistan border at dawn, about 300 U.S. troops were told to expect heavy resistance from al-Qaida or Taliban fighters. Instead their battle was against rugged terrain, merciless heat and some nasty desert creatures. [AP World News]
until the tide goes out. Warren Buffett said this years ago in reference to debt levels at companies. However, it is equally appropriate when looking at corporate governance in a down cycle of corporate earnings. When the profits fall or go away completely, the executives should feel it as well!
I haven’t looked at these yet, but I know how important this work is in broadening the support for Radio. The documents Russ has posted at his own site have been tremendous resources for those getting started with Radio. Let’s hope Russ’s work with Userland lasts for a long time!
MONITORED TASK LISTS For organizations that place the customer first
Several new add-on’s to traditional business management systems focus on the tasks that must be done to satisfy the needs of customers and the business. These aren’t merely delegated lists. They are derived from the business data and rules that an organization sets up to serve customers. As a by-product of normal business processing, tasks can be created that, when completed, eliminate the risk of surprising a customer or a manager with bad news. Say you have a customer that has placed an order for overnight shipment. New tools permit the sending of acknowledgements and shipping data as the order passes through each depot or checkpoint for the shipper. Rather than forcing the customer to enter a tracking number and check the status of his/her order, the supply chain is providing real time data about the transaction as its status changes.
RADIO USERLAND’S NEWS AGGREGATOR for months, you’ll find this worthwhile reading. It only makes me wish that so many excellent weblogs had not disabled their RSS feeds. For those interested in writing, managing the content on a web site and learning from others, the news aggregator is nearly perfect!
A news aggregator is a piece of software that periodically reads a set of news sources, in one of several XML-based formats, finds the new bits, and displays them in reverse-chronological order on a single page. [Scripting News]
Companies open wallets to portal software. Corporate spending on software may be down, but one product is bucking the trend: portal software, which lets companies streamline access to business systems. [CNET News.com]
Aussie Gets Into Pickle With Spam. There once was a man from Perth, whose inbox was adding some girth. He complained and was sued and the next thing he knew, his life became absent of mirth. Kim Griggs reports from Wellington, New Zealand. [Wired News]
What blogging really is. In addition to its intrinsic fascination, Stavros’s essay on the nature of identity provoked an unexpected insight: blogging can’t be journalism because… blogging is football! [Jonathon Delacour]
No, Jonathon, blogging is Op-Ed. ”qbullet.sidesmiley”
Just kidding. This fascination that so many of the people I read regularly have with comparing technoblogs and punditblogs or BigPub and blogging or journalism and blogging or professionals and bloggers is a mystery. It’s as if people are crying out for legitimacy.
It seems to me that when you put a blogging tool in the hands of anyone, you have essentially handed them a blank stenographer’s notebook or an empty sketch pad. What they do with it determines what it becomes and how they are labeled – if we must label everyone and everything. Put a stenographer’s pad in the hands of a new graduate of journalism school and send them out to cover some local breaking news. What do you get? You may not know for several years!
I want to learn more about how these folk are dating their finds. It’s been a while since 7th grade science, and I need a refresher in how we know something is x million years old. What is the premise we’re starting with. At one point in this article they mention a plant that they know was alive y million years ago. How? I’m not skeptical; I just want to understand the methods!
I haven’t been reading Eric Raymond’s weblog. Today, I begin. With ten bullet points for his objections to liberals and ten bullets for his objections to conservatives, Eric has done the difficult work of thinking through what he believes – critically.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where too few people are prepared to do the difficult, logical and critical thinking that allows them to build their belief system. Charles Munger has referred to this as a ”latticework of mental models from a wide variety of disciplines.” Encountering any news item or current event, those with such a latticework have a basis for critical thinking and consistency with past decisions.
(I only wish sites such as this had RSS feeds for our news aggregators!)
Ballet Contest in Mississippi. Professional dancers from 25 nations will compete for medals, cash awards and scholarships in the seventh USA International Ballet Competition. [New York Times: Arts]
I find myself in disagreement with two people I’ve grown to respect a great deal. The first may not be so much disagreement as lack of understanding. ”Dave” continues to use the word journalism when talking about weblogs. I simply cannot see that the vast majority of weblogs are much more than Op-Ed pieces about subjects from cats to dogs to gardening to politics – oh yeah, and technology. I do believe that one can find some weblogs with writing that surpasses any periodical I read anywhere else. Using the news aggregator, you can get your consumption focused on the signal and not the noise. That’s great!
John has spent a great deal of time developing his theories about a new economy. Today, he talks about managing companies differently in a new economy. I didn’t quite see the new economy he describes, and therefore I don’t see the need to manage differently.
Drucker is still right on the money with work done decades ago. Buffett has spoken before of the tiny group of companies run by scoundrels, but he knows that a similar number or percentage of companies are at the other end of the spectrum.
These companies turn in outstanding performance year after year and are generally listed as the great places to work. Both extremes are tiny compared to the vast number of public and private businesses that exist under the bell of the curve!
I still like the software product you guys have developed!
Marketing 101: Your Very First Website in 5 Steps. This article will seem remedial to some of my readers. It’s assumes that you are a small business that is either new to the web or just plain new and walks you through the step by step process of developing a website. I wrote this for someone who is just getting started as a small business website and, since I am handling their hosting, I didn’t cover very much about hosting. I did cover lots of other basics including how to do a free U.S. trademark search. [The FuzzyBlog!]
Did This Man Just Rewrite Science?. Dr. Stephen Wolfram’s “A New Kind of Science” may be the scientific publishing event of the season, but whether it is a revolution in science as well must await the judgment of his peers. By Dennis Overbye. [New York Times: Science]
So I feel comfortable that if I say something isn’t clear on Radio, even if the folks who make it think it is clear, it is probably not going to be that clear to many, many users. What if you want to do more than that? Then it gets more complicated. Radio is a powerful tool, but even some of the stuff you might expect to be simple may not be not simple to the average person. A programmer would perhaps laugh at me for my discomfort and fear about really screwing things up while messing with the code. But the rest of the world would understand. Same for the permanent links you see at the left margin of this page—easy when you know how to do it, intimidating if you don’t. The directions for doing these things aren’t that helpful to the nonprogrammer. Step three in editing your homepage template, for example, is this: ”Make the change. (It’s HTML).” Great. Most of us don’t speak code. We see a bunch of mystifying letters and numbers and symbols and haven’t the first clue how to make any changes therein. I would recommend Radio to both the power blogger and the hobbyist. Ditto, Ed. [EdCone.com]
happy with what is going on? Lots of doctors think the only people in the whole chain who are happy are the health insurance executives with stock options!
The Farmer and the Cowblogger. Oh genius! My favorite name twin writes a great take off of The Farmer and the Cowman from Oklahoma! titled The Warblog and the Techblog. [meryl’s notes]
Is there any documentation for the features in Radio that lay out the placement of items on the final weblog? I’ve seen a list of macros, but I don’t know of anything in them that impacts lay-out. Is Radio documented somewhere?
Some say learn all you can about HTML. Others say learn CSS. Still others say learn Dreamweaver MX. What’s a blogger to do?
Book Excerpt: Cascading Style Sheets. This glasshaus title examines the use of CSS to control the display of Web pages. Our excerpts from chapter 1 begin with a brief look at the history of HTML; with special emphasis on the factors leading up to the need for CSS-based development. [WebReference News]
”A Rift Among Bloggers” by David Gallagher [NY Times – Technology] appears to be an attempt to find controversy where there was none. The best use of the article is to identify some weblogs you might not have been reading and start.
Regardless of the subject one is writing about in the weblog world (blogosphere?), it seems to me that posts invariably fall into one of these types:
in 1981. The industry we know today exists largely because of decisions that were made by IBM in those earliest years of the IBM personal computer. Could they do the same with Wi-Fi?
Acoustics Crash Course 1 – Room Modes. With the proliferation of home recording studios, many more people have questions about room acoustics than before. This article first in a series meant to be a starting point in your understanding of acoustics in rectangular rooms. [kuro5hin.org]
Thomas J. Watson. ”Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ’crackpot’ than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.” [Motivational Quotes of the Day]
Sorry, but the dictionary suggested ”wire-puller” for warblogger. That didn’t seem a good fit ”qbullet.smiley”. It suggested ”twig blight” for techblogger. ”qbullet.sidesmiley”
On different days and with different posts, this weblogger may be one or more of the above terms. How about you?
This I Believe. In the comments on my Belief-O-Matic post, Elie from One, Archie St. suggested that I also try the Political Compass test, whichas the site [Jonathon Delacour]
Friday: Blah Blah Blog. American Journalism Review weighs in on blogging like so many other media publications: monolithic political blogging. Focuses on pundit blogs. Doesn’t mention other categories. Doesn’t mention political high-profile blogs are less than 1/100th of 1 percent of all bloggers. Doesn’t mention the backlash that people are sick to death of the popular bloggers. Doesn’t look for comparison traffic. So Kausfiles gets 6,000 to 9,000 ”hits” per day (the reporter’s use of hits, hopefully incorrect, as hits don’t mean squat). My Wi-Fi blog gets about 2,000 requests a day; my personal blog gets well over 1,000. No mention of pacifi-bloggers, warbloggers, personal bloggers, cult of personality bloggers (Wil Wheaton), technical bloggers. Blah blah blah blah blah blog article. Blogs ain’t monolithic. When will journalists research this field instead of dragging out a few limited usual subjects? Old tired numbers, like Kaus’s $300-odd he’s made before being bought by Slate. Hey, I’ve made more than Kaus on my Wi-Fi blog between voluntary contributions and affiliate commissions from sales of equipment linked off the site … [GlennLog]
Charlotte Bronte. ”It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.” [Motivational Quotes of the Day]
HERE’S A BLOG DEVOTED TO (well, mostly) church website design. It even includes cruel reviews,, though they’re more, um, clean than… Websites That…, which I believe the same guy had a hand in. [InstaPundit]
COCKINESS IS NOT LIKELY GONE FOR GOOD Can you say hubris?
Webbed, Wired and Worried. ”I’ve been wondering how the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley were looking at the wired world they’ve been building and the assumptions they are building it upon. In a recent visit to Stanford University and Silicon Valley, I found at least some of their libertarian, technology-will-solve-everything cockiness was gone.” (By Thomas L. Friedman for The New York Times, 5/26/2002.) [Brent Sleeper’s Web Journal]
Wise-Women CSS Tutorial. Miraz Jordan has an easy to understand introduction to CSS tutorial on Getting Started with Cascading Style Sheets. Friends have said they don’t know how the heck CSS works and… [meryl’s notes]
A few wonderfully inflammatory and thought-provoking ideas from an interview with Jeff Schmidt, the author of Disciplined Minds:
”Graduate school is an intensive and protracted period of scrutiny during which the individual is pressured to conform under threat of expulsion. The tenuring process is another years-long process of scrutiny. Those who remain after the two long rounds of weeding and transformation are so intellectually and politically timid that they don’t need tenure. Thus the people who need the protection of tenure don’t have it, and those who have it don’t need it, because they have nothing provocative to say.”
”Our society features a single, thoroughly integrated system of education and employment. The education component is hierarchical and competitive because it is a sorting machine for employers, a gate-keeper for the corporations and academic institutions.”
”Learning doesn’t require credentialing, ranking, grading, high-stakes testing, groveling for letters of recommendation and so on. Good teachers don’t need—or want—the power to crush their students socially.” [Ken Rawlings]
EDITORS, EDITING & EDITORIAL DECISIONS AREN’T BAD Why I may have missed the point of yesterday’s DaveNet
Yesterday, Dave Winer posted a piece titled ”Is It Marketing or Journalism?” I read the piece with a great deal of interest because there are so many ways that this question has shown up in the mainstream media as well as in weblogs. A few examples:
The Daniel Pearl video
The Air Force Colonel who criticized the President
Examples could go on. After the DaveNet email had been out a few hours it was obvious that people were not using the article as a source of debating the same things I thought we needed to discuss. Those ”critical” of the piece were unhappy with Dave’s example. Maybe that very specific example was Dave’s lone point. I don’t think so, but maybe it was.
The bottom line for me came when Dave said this, ”This is the difference between a director of marketing and a professional journalist. The former accomodates the employer, and the latter must not.” It strikes me that part of this is about ”loyalty.” To whom are we loyal? Once you disagree with ”the play called in the huddle,” what do you do?
Editors (and journalists) make decisions all the time about how to say things, what to say, when to say them and when to keep quiet. Their integrity isn’t impuned each time they avoid the most outrageous or controversial choice. Avoid often enough and, yes, their integrity as journalists gets called into question.
I don’t think Gillmor was wrong to keep quiet about his employer’s decision. I think the Air Force Colonel bordered on treason with public criticism of the Commander In Chief. I think every news source had a decision to make about the Daniel Pearl video, and those who chose to leave it out didn’t harm their reporting of ”the story.” Those who left it out there rightfully deserve questions about their motives, their sense of responsiblity to the family, etc.
But, I may have missed the whole point! It’s good stuff, Dave.
QUESTIONS ABOUT CAUSE AND EFFECT What really makes a ”place” creative and why?
”Be creative or die” [Salon.com] is an interview with Richard Florida about his book called ”The Rise of the Creative Class.” Memphis scored dead last in his research into cities that have the right kind of creative buzz to attract long-term prosperity. The creative class web site is here. A study done to try and ”help” Memphis is here.
I think some of the cause and effect relationships in this data are still fuzzy, but in the spirit of Old Economy and New Economy thinking, there are some excellent findings. Those of you in Silicon Valley, Austin, Boston and other technology centers may not find that this is news. In fact, you may discover that you didn’t know other places could be quite so ”backward.”
through the weblogs and the news aggregator, I find myself wondering the following:
Is this simply another case of ”don’t believe everything you find on the Internet?”
Is this a story by someone with an ax to grind?
Was this so insignificant that the mainstream media decided not to pursue it?
Is some other dynamic at work?
Have I found a weblog run by a top-notch person with great skills?
Clearly, there are times when I’ve read a weblog story and used the mainstream media to verify or fact-check it. As I come to know the weblog writers’s styles and approaches, I find myself checking mainstream media stories against the weblogs.
I was engineering school at a time when electronic calculators were invented. I know it is hard for anyone to imagine today, but we literally ”checked” our first calculators with the sliderules ”we knew we could count on.” It seems silly now, but it was the only way we could gain confidence in the new tool! Checking weblog reporting is sometimes like this! Once we get to know our ”reporters” we’ll gain more confidence.
Talking with a British friend a few minutes ago, he told me of a recent story… The story appeared in Der Spiegel, and quite a few weblogs, but appears to have not been carried by US publications. Why? [Scripting News]
I think this is my weblog neighborhood. I’m not sure what good it is now that no one is using or talking about this stuff, but here it is late. I’m also unclear as to whether this is somehow being kept dynamically or maybe this dates back to the last ”gather.” Ok, it dates to the date of the gather. Apparently the Events that the instructions refer to is not the link on the right hand side, but instead it is one of the choices in the menu at the top of your local weblog page – up there where Prefs, etc. are located. Further, that Events link takes you to an EventsLog that only shows the weblogNeighborhood link immediately after a ”gather.” So, all of my searching there today isn’t going to do any good, because that link is gone. Were it there, apparently it would have been of the form radio.userland.com/usernum/misc/weblogNeighborhood.html or weblogname/misc/weblogNeighborhood.html.
All of these are mere details to those who are lawyers, librarians or developers. To those of us lacking the requisite number of brain cells, those details made the difference in success and failure.
The more I get into Radio Userland and the tools that come with this software package, the more I become curious about certain details. Today, it dawned on me that I didn’t know or recall what RSS stood for. I found this site.
As I’ve browsed the web recently, I’ve tried index.xml and rss.xml on the end of URL’s to see if the site I was visiting had the RSS feed. I’m not sure why some sites turn their’s off, but clearly they do because they are using tools that come with the RSS feed enabled by default.
I agree that a cabinet level post smacks of a political response to all of the sniping by the media and the second-guessing by many Democrats. That’s the wrong reason to do anything.
Most of the problems stem from government bureacracy running away with itself. We need to define our needs and put leaders in place to meet those needs. Do we need the FBI, CIA, NSA et al? Probably, in some form. Do we need more agencies like them. Definitely, not!
We need to tell them what we want done and see that the metrics are in place to monitor whether or not they are doing it!
Another Cabinet. Dubya is about to announce the creation of a new Cabinet level post for Homeland Security. Great, just what [The Trommetter Times]
Kangaroos don’t pass gas: ”Scientists in Australia are investigating whether kangaroos could help combat global warming. Australia’s sheep and cattle produce huge amounts of methane, an important greenhouse gas – but kangaroos do not. Researchers believe it might be possible to use bacteria found in the stomachs of kangaroos to reduce methane output from cows and sheep.” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
IN LIGHT OF MY JOURNALISM-AND-COWARDICE POST... readers may want to check out these real-life stories by Dave Winer. Journalists say that blogs can’t be trusted because there’s no oversight. Read, and see what oversight means. Bloggers have biases—but they’re usually right out in the open. And bloggers don’t pretend to be objective professionals. [InstaPundit]
It gets better:
Read this story about the Air Force Colonel who got suspended for criticizing his boss. Then, read one of the best DaveNet emails I’ve seen. Are there similarities here? Do things change when we’re talking about our nation vs. our employer?
What was the original historical context of ”freedom of speech”? Can an employee openly criticize his or her employer? Can an employee openly criticize his or her boss?
We live in a time when some are becoming more strident in their criticism of governments, some consider it patriotic to ”go along,” and others won’t say or write what they really think for fear of the government’s newly-exercised powers of investigation.
Whether a government, business or church are there any limits on criticism? Do insiders to one of these have greater or lesser responsibilities than reporters, journalists or outsiders? When is one a whistle-blower and when is one merely a concerned party?
The DaveNet is relevant to nearly all of our current national news stories – Catholic priests out of control, accounting scandals, government intelligence gathering and analysis and the prosecution of a war. Who is ”allowed” to speak out and how forcefully? Who should speak out?
Great stuff, ”Dave”, and thought-provoking!
$40? $100 for one lap around the block! What if I get everyone in the neighborhood to repave their driveways? No, I don’t want the mail, I just want a ride! I know that, but what if I get everyone in the neighborhood to sell their dogs? No, I don’t want your USPS regulation issued safety helmet, I just want to ride 5 mailboxes down the street and come back!”
Memphis was selected as another of the cities where the USPS will test Segways. Taking a Segway for a spin may come sooner than we thought.
Segways up for auction on eBay. Consumers are once again bidding big bucks for a Segway Human Transporter—but this time the auction is on eBay and it’s being conducted without participation from Segway. [CNET News.com]
What’s the process for selecting a digital camera? Walter Mossberg covers the CBDTPA here, but he’s also done a couple of articles on digital camera selections here and here. Good tips, but which brand?
Canon PowerShot A200. Canon has today announced the new two megapixel, fixed lens PowerShot A200. This compact, lightweight entry level digital camera is relatively high on features and yet will be low priced. The A200 is… [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]
The Bloggys. Surprised when you saw the Webbys? I bet you were even more surprised to see the Bloggys! Yes, it’s just like the Webbys, Oscars, Grammys, or any other awards thingy where you can vote for the best in different categories, except with blogs! And it’s monthly! [C:\PIRILLO.EXE]
This guy’s LINKS page doesn’t even provide a link to Radio Userland. How lame is that?
Maybe we can ”skew” the voting!
This is ”fight week” in Memphis. Quite coincidentally, an old friend I haven’t seen in six or seven years was doing some training about an hour and a half from here. We agreed we’d rendezvous between 6 and 7 tonight at one of the cities landmark restaurants. Because both of our schedules were iffy we agreed we’d bring something to read or work on, and whomever arrived first would wait patiently. I arrived first.
>From the parking garage to the restaurant I was accosted twice – once for money and once for money in exchange for directions. This area of town is not notorious for these types of encounters, but it is during ”fight week.” Then, when I stepped into the restaurant I was told I couldn’t get a table. Both parties needed to be present. I explained that I was planning to order an appetizer and drinks and would likely order more if my wait was long. No deal. Ok, then, I’d like a table for one. Sir, we can’t do that.
You could have fired a cannon in this place and not hit anyone at that hour. By the time we left at 8:30p.m., they still didn’t have a wait to get in. The food was expensive and a terrible disappointment. Our walk from the restaurant to a coffee shop nearby crossed the paths of three more panhandlers. Memphis during ”fight week” isn’t a pretty site!
This story reminds of the (brief) discussion a week or two ago about laptop/notebook computers for bloggers. I wrestling with iBook, TiBook, subnotebooks, desktop replacement laptops, etc. I really want a writer’s notebook PC. I just need to define what that is!
MAKE IT DEPENDABLE We’ll surf the web on it when the display gets better!
Wireless study: Low prices beats features. A survey of more than 2,000 people with wireless phones indicates that the way to win consumers’ hearts is through features like lower prices and better coverage. [CNET News.com]
As always, my questions are simple. I’ve been viewing source on lots of pages again recently. Two key questions come to my mind:
How can I figure out what went on between the template with all of its macros to the final HTML I see when I view source? There are some great-looking weblogs that have elements I’d like to imitate, but it’s tough to see how to get there working backwards toward a template from the final HTML.
When you view source on a page created with CSS, don’t you get to a dead-end because you can’t ”view CSS?” Isn’t that another files somewhere that you don’t have access to?
The comfort and familiarity of table-based layouts make them hard to give up. As you examine some of the promises of CSS in light of both current reality and the longer-term future, I hope I can make a case for encouraging those of you who are sitting on the fence, to come down on the side of CSS and well-structured (X)HTML. I think you’ll find the grass really is greener over here. [dive into mark]
HEALTH CRISIS OR HEALTH INSURANCE CRISIS Socialized medicine just can’t be the answer!
I’ve never thought of socialized medicine as being the answer to this country’s healthcare problems and health insurance crisis. Our premiums as a small group have been quoted at a 43% increase year over year beginning in July. This is for a group of healthy people. It’s also for a plan with a relatively high deductible and few ”frills.”
We prefer ”catastrophic coverage” to protect from a serious injury or some dire medical ailment. So far we’ve not really needed the ”cheap drug card” or the $15 doctor’s visit. However, 43% of just about any number amounts to an unhealthy premium increase. This article from the Cato Institute has been in my thinking for several years. I just don’t know how to get patients (shouldn’t they be called customers?), doctors, hospitals, drug companies, state governments and Congress to think about medicine in free market terms.
Pharmacolony. Nothing says America is messed up from the inside louder than hearing these words: ”The medication your doctor prescribed is… [Blurbomat]
With IE and Netscape as primary browsers in my thinking, I’ve had Mozilla and Opera as secondary. For someone viewing HTML work in various browsers prior to publishing, what does the market share/user count really look like between all of these software packages?
Fuel Cell Car Coasts Across U.S.. DaimlerChrysler’s Necar 5 goes from San Francisco to D.C. without a major failure. Nevertheless, fuel cells have a long way to go. John Gartner reports from Washington. [Wired News]
D-W Busts Out with CSS. From da boss, Nick Finck, Summer is in the air and so is word that a new issue of Digital Web Magazine is up with a new theme. This month’s… [meryl’s notes]
Until March 30, 2004 there was a link here to an article that appeared in Wired News. It was titled Glass Is the Gas for Architects, and it was written by Nan Chase. Based upon Nan’s comment below, the link has been removed. If you want to read something by her, you might want to search on Google. Otherwise, read something by a writer who really wants others to point to their work.
As a matter of clarification, be assured that her article was not copied here. There was simply an electronic link to it. Also be assured that no further links to Wired, Wired News or anything by Nan Chase will be added to this weblog at any point in the future.
Intuit to Buy Management Reports Inc.. MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP)—Personal finance and small business software maker Intuit Inc. continued its expansion into new specialties Tuesday by announcing plans to acquire Management Reports Inc. for $92 million in cash. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: Technology]
Taking the Long View. Perspective is priceless, and with six decades of experience, legendary investor Philip Fisher has plenty to offer. [The Motley Fool]
CAN’T FIND MY WEBLOG NEIGHBORHOOD Am I homeless or merely isolationist?
I can’t get my weblog neighborhood to work. I’ve been back through the instructions a couple of times, but nothing seems to fix it. However, it sounds as if some cool stuff is happening around this feature.
Iran’s Khamenei Accuses US of Murder. Iran’s supreme leader accused the United States on Tuesday of ”massacring” innocent Afghans during its war on terrorism, and said Iran was ready to fight if attacked. [AP World News]
MAINSTREAM MEDIA RANT They want the story to be about them
I can’t describe how weary I am of the mainstream media’s interrogation of the government about preventing 9/11. We can’t prevent it. It happened. From here we must move on. We’ve got to figure out what the police, military and intelligence structure needs to be for the world we now live in.
It isn’t news when someone reports that one agency of the government may have failed to communicate with another. I’ve seen the same thing happen in families, in churches, and in businesses. Government culture is a unique animal. If you doubt it, read this.
Changing any culture – corporate, government or otherwise – even a minute amount is difficult. Transforming a culture requires a strength of will, a patience and a resilience that few leaders ever acquire. To think that the loss of two of the world’s most prominent buildings and the lives within them will create a furtile ground for transformation of government is misguided. It will take a resolve that must outlast our case of National A.D.D.
What bothers me most is that we have most of the same problems we had on 9/11. Where’s Osama? What’s Al Quaida going to do next? How do we secure our nation and root out the terrorists? How can we analyze the vast amounts of intelligence data we gather?
Since 9/11 we’ve added to that list the pursuit of Muslim extremists in the Phillipines, Pakistan and India tossing around the N-word, violence in N. Ireland, all out warfare in the Mideast, a rudderless Catholic priesthood and who knows how many other ”battle fronts?” We simply don’t need to have our government officials undergoing hourly interrogation by the media.
I’m all for accountability, but media scrutiny doesn’t necessarily lead to accountability. We should thank God that this administration isn’t having to focus on all those ”fronts” while providing depositions and testimony before a grand jury. I liked it better when we were flying our flags, drawing together and committing to the war on terrorism. Eight months may be a long time for this nation to remain focused when the media decides what we should focus on!
TOO CLOSE TO THE ACTION? Sounds as if Jonathon’s caught up in it
Theological advice required. A question for AKMA and Victor (and anyone else with formal theological qualifications). Are there circumstances in which intense feelings of hatred and animosity towards [Jonathon Delacour]
ANOTHER SEARCH FEATURE Is there an ideal tool for this?
Yesterday I pointed to Dane’s use of the Fluid Dynamics Search Engine. Now I’m seeing something buried here called ht:dig.
Apologies. It looks like I’ve hit the limit on the number of pages PicoSearch will index (after having already maxxed out my Atomz account), so I will start bribing Andy B. right away to see if he can install ht:dig in the near future. Until then, the search engine for this site is, most unfortunately, down. [The Shifted Librarian]
is a long-time friend of Warren Buffett’s and has, for many years, done some editing of his annual letter to shareholders. When Fortune runs any article by Carol Loomis, it’s worth reading. She put her attention on Insurance After 9/11 and has done a remarkable job of giving a snapshot of the super-cat (super catastrophe) insurance and reinsurance business. Reading that article helps put this one in perspective.
Setback on Insurance for Trade Center Developer. A federal judge in Manhattan yesterday rejected a request by Larry A. Silverstein, the real estate developer who controlled the World Trade Center, to rule immediately on his insurance claim that the destruction of the twin towers amounted to two events, requiring a $7 billion payment. By Charles V. Bagli. [New York Times: Business]
SBC and Yahoo Launch Internet Service. DALLAS (AP)—Phone company SBC Communications Inc. and online giant Yahoo! Inc. have teamed up to launch an Internet service that they hope will challenge AOL and Microsoft for dominance of the dial-up market. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: Technology]
Hot Text: Web Writing That Works. Based on research into attention, attitude, cognition, interface, reading, and usability, this book tells you how to write for the Internet-FAQs, help, e-mail, marketing copy, press releases, news articles, electronic newsletters, Webzine articles, and your own resume. Get specific guidelines, before-and after- examples, case studies, resources, and personal advice from two real Web writers. Learn to write hot text! [O’Reilly Safari]
AMY WELBORN defends C.S. Lewis. My daughter and I read all the way through the Narnia books this year. I loved them when I was a kid, and they’re even better as an adult. Anybody who savages Lewis is an idiot, as far as I’m concerned. [InstaPundit]
Based upon a post I read yesterday, one must either be smart to ”do software” or ”do software” to be smart. I’m in the process of deciding which way I want to go! ”qbullet.smiley”
John Robb has hit the nail on the head. The great concern for me is whether or not we still have the ability to identify and agree on ”the most critical government functions.”
We may be in a situation where the disparity of government vs. private productivity will become so large that outsourcing all but the most critical government functions will be the only solution. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
FOUR OUTCOMES – ALL GRIZZLY Financial arrangements at cross purposes
The Memphis Grizzlies agreed to come to Memphis largely because of a new arena. This op-ed piece is written by a long-time friend and the former project manager for the effort. It is well-written and, with a few name and location changes, could probably fit any city in America that has faced the issues associated with public funding of major sports venues. Don points to four possible outcomes; none of them are ideal.
I’ve installed PicoSearch using Russ Lipton’s tutorial. I did this primarily beause, for now, my weblog resides on one of Userland Software’s servers. My domain name there is of the form ”radio.weblogs.com/usernum.”
It has always been my plan to move my weblog to a different host using a different domain name and with a new title. That should be quite an adventure, but I digress. When I make that switch, I’ve been planning to implement Google’s search feature.
Now I’m faced with understanding the PRO’s & CON’s of this new wrinkle that Dane has thrown our way.
HYPOCRITES HAVE A POINT ON BROADBAND by Dan Gillmor
”The technology industry’s half-baked libertarians are pushing for a federal commitment to promote a worthwhile cause, near-universal broadband data connections. They’re right, even if they’re doing it mostly for their own benefit.” [Dan Gillmor’s eJournal]
We may look up in 12 to 24 months and discover another cause of the so-called ”setbacks.” Market share may be shifting from the traditional teleco’s to next generation providers in such a way that the analysts of this industry don’t pick it up in their traditional reviews of the legacy companies. We’ll see.
Tired of strategic planning?. Many companies get little value from their annual strategic-planning process. An in-depth examination by McKinsey finds that it should be redesigned to support real-time strategy making and encourage ”creative accidents.” [CNET News.com]
Mark Pilgrim continues to lead the parade on the element, which he’s calling RSS Auto-Discovery, which seems like an appropriate handle. Glad we can get a cross-blogging-tool effort going. That’s more of a new thing than many people might realize, and far more important, imho, than any single feature. This is a tough time to be in business, and we have ambitious goals. It’s nice to get some help. Thanks. [Scripting News]
people have been stealing into this country in the dark of night, seeking asylum, becoming citizens and contributing to the growth of the finest experiment in democracy that civilization has ever known. Those labeled ”poor” in the United States have a standard of living that surpasses middle class in some places. You’d think Castro would catch on. Imagine what Cuba could become as a free market tourist destination!
Castro Rejects Bush Democracy Ideas. In a blistering speech before hundreds of thousands of people in a drenching rain Saturday, President Fidel Castro said the democracy President Bush wants to see in Cuba would be a corrupt and unfair system that ignores the poor. [AP World News]
Trust Mark Pilgrim to introduce a cool new feature like RSS auto discovery when I’m having a brief sojourn in Paradise, at Bob Burns’ beautiful house on a mountain top a hundred miles south of Sydney. If I get tired of eating delicious food, drinking Scharers’ Lager and excellent red wine, listening to one Rounder CD after another (currently playing: The Music of Ed Reavy), and looking at Ming’s paintings, I may get around to updating my Movable Type template. Otherwise it will have to await my return to Sydney. [Jonathon Delacour]
The reasons I enjoy playing (somebody might even call this working) with UserLand’s software is that it allows me to do all kind of tricks without being a programmer, and that this is a great community. Yup, I’m not a programmer, I could not write a 4 lines script, I have never learned and most probably I would not be good at it because I don’t have the kind of discipline that is necessary for this job.
I work with a lot of incredibly smart and skilled programmers and together we have created some very good stuff, imho. However, with Radio I could turn a static piece of graphics into a dynamic template for outline-driven presentations in minutes, just cutting and pasting a few macros. It’s true that I am a power user, but I see people doing this kind of nerdy stuff every day, it is a great way to empower people. But there also is people who don’t want to see this stuff. In the last few days I have helped a few friend to get on-line with their Radio weblogs. They can use a computer, but they have no clue about what an html tag is. This allowed me to see where there is still room for improvement. The main issue is with images and links: there is a lot of people out there who is just scared by code, they don’t want to use it. This is especially true for Mac users who don’t get the wysiwyg text editor in the browser, so we need a solution for these users. I guess that now I know what our new tool will be about. [Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo’s Weblog]
Amazon Memoir: The Oft-Told Story. Yes, it’s another dot-com memoir. Yes, it retells an old story. But Mike Daisey’s 21 Dog Years: Doing Time at Amazon.com is also a pretty good read. Review by Joanna Glasner. [Wired News]
More Than Two of the Pas de Deux. In one way or another, the pas de deux was at the heart of nearly all the dances presented by the New York City Ballet on Tuesday night at the New York State Theater. By Jennifer Dunning. [New York Times: Arts]
I’ll use it a lot! Thanks to everybody at Userland Software, Inc. who had a hand in it!
Cool. I just built a presentation about RadioPoint online presentations. Check it out. It took me 5 minutes to install the tool, make the presentation, and share it with you. Whew, after all the hours I used to spend building klunky PowerPoint slides, finding a place to store them on my desktop, archiving them, and sending them to people via e-mail. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
In the world of business management/accounting software for small to medium businesses (i.e. mid-market) few people realize just how rapidly consolidation is taking place. We’re soon to be left with a handful or two of companies from the Oracle, Siebel, Peoplesoft, SAP world down through the Microsoft (Great Plains, Solomon, Realworld, Navision), SouthWare and Best Software ranks. Below that we see true vertical market applications and the likes of Intuit. BEA Systems, Lawson, J.D. Edwards, Ross and others are in there somewhere, but the list is getting pretty thin.
and then reappear transformed! I’ve got the host, I’ve got the domain(s), I’ve got an existing weblog. Now, if only I can find a theme designer! Here’s hoping it turns out looking as good as Mr. Quick’s!
Level 3 Signs Contract to Provide Service to SURFnet Dutch ISP Purchases Internet Access and Wavelengths
Initial Services Turned up in Hours
Amsterdam, May 31, 2002; Level 3 Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq:LVLT) today announced that it has been awarded a contract to supply broadband communications services to SURFnet, the Dutch ISP.
Level 3 is now providing SURFnet with dedicated Internet access in Amsterdam and wavelengths services between Europe and North America.
Kees Neggers, managing director of SURFnet commented, ”We are very glad that we have been able to get a service provider that could deliver the complete package of services at such extremely short notice, such that SURFnet’s service to its clients is guaranteed and of top quality.”
SURFnet is the national computer network for higher education and research in The Netherlands. It connects the networks of universities, colleges, research centres, academic hospitals and scientific libraries to one another and to other networks in Europe and the rest of the world.
In response to numerous inquiries Level 3 has received from concerned companies, Level 3 has established a dedicated customer support organization to assist customers concerned with potential disruptions in service in Europe.
”Within hours of Level 3 and SURFnet signing the contract Internet access was turned up. The wavelength services are being provisioned in a matter of days,” said Brady Rafuse, president for Level 3 in Europe. ”It is a real tribute to our network, the quality of service that we are able to offer and to our people that we have been able to respond to customer requests so rapidly over the last few days.”
Level 3 currently offers service in nine major European markets and is expanding to eight additional markets across Western Europe in 2002. The new markets are Geneva, Madrid, Milan, Stockholm and Zurich, and the German cities of Cologne, Karlsruhe and Stuttgart. Once the expansion is complete, Level 3 will be able to deliver services to 17 of the top markets on the continent.
Level 3’s existing, two-ring network in Europe spans 3,600 route miles. It connects London, Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris and the German cities of Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Berlin and Munich. The company also operates multi-conduit metropolitan networks in all nine markets.
Level 3 offers a range of communications services targeted toward the world’s top 300 bandwidth customers, including wavelengths, private line, dark fiber, managed modem and IP services. Level 3’s current customers include companies such as America Online, BT, Cable & Wireless, COLT Telecom Group, France Telecom and Microsoft. About Level 3 Communications
Level 3 (Nasdaq:LVLT) is an international communications and information services company offering a wide selection of services including IP services, broadband transport, colocation services and the industry’s first Softswitch based services. Its Web address is www.Level3.com.
The company offers information services through its wholly-owned subsidiaries, (i)Structure and Corporate Software. (i)Structure is an Application Infrastructure Provider that provides managed IT infrastructure services and enables businesses to outsource IT operations. Its Web address is www.i-structure.com.
Corporate Software helps Fortune 500 companies acquire, implement, and manage software. Its Web address is www.corporatesoftware.com. Forward Looking Statement
Some of the statements made by Level 3 in this press release are forward-looking in nature. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements. Level 3 believes that its primary risk factors include, but are not limited to: changes in the overall economy relating to, among other things, the September 11 attacks and subsequent events, substantial capital requirements; development of effective internal processes and systems; the ability to attract and retain high quality employees; technology; the number and size of competitors in its markets; law and regulatory policy; and the mix of products and services offered in the company’s target markets. Additional information concerning these and other important factors can be found within Level 3’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Statements in this release should be evaluated in light of these important factors.
AT&T ready to raise $2bn through equity sale. AT&T is preparing to raise $2bn-$2.25bn through the sale of shares and other securities, representing one of the biggest sales of pure equity attempted by a US telecommunications company in the current industry downturn. By Richard Waters in New York. [New York Times: Business]
ANDREW SULLIVAN (whose permalinks are actually working now) weighs in on the Great Web Traffic Debate. Hey guys: all it takes is an open counter. And Mickey Kaus has responded to Sullivan’s ”burly beer-buddy” Jonah Goldberg’s remarks on the traffic that Slate gets via MSN and MSNBC: ”It’s called leveraging monopoly power, buddy! You got a problem with that?” You tell ’em, Mickey! [InstaPundit]
Updated Documents: Marketing 101, Consulting 101, Business 101
It’s been a busy 2 weeks since I last did an official update. Between the O’Reilly book, paying work, blog hacking, php coding, etc, I didn’t get a mailing out last week. Here is the updated table of contents for all the 101 content.
If you want to be alerted via email when I issue these (normally) weekly summaries, sign up at http://www.fuzzygroup.com/marketing101/. No, I don’t spam you but you probably know that already. Bias Disclaimer: There is a small pitch for my own services near the end of ”Selling Services as Products”. Feel free to ignore or not.
Dale Carnegie. ”You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” [Motivational Quotes of the Day]
and buying a stock should involve the same disciplines and methodology. Buying a stock ”seems” easy because we can now enter a ticker symbol and a share count for something we read about in the morning paper. Nearly 100% of the time that ’s the wrong thing to do and the wrong way to do it. I take John’s recent references to investing in public companies as ”casino” or ”speculative fiction” to mean there are plenty of places this is true. However, there are disciplines that can be followed when buying all or part of a business that not only reduce and measure the risk, but enhance the likelihood of reward. The universe of those following such disciplines is admittedly small, but their results can be staggering!
Here is a post on stock ownership from the perspective of a mouse. What do individuals buy when they buy stock? The books say that you buy rights to a share of future cash flows. When stocks looked more like bonds (when they distributed excess earnings as dividends to shareholders), this was a valid definition. What individual investors buy today is speculative fiction in regards to valuation, potential for acquisition, momentum, earnings surprises, etc. This is a volitile basis for ownership and leads to excess. The books are right in that over the short term dividends don’t matter, but longer term they matter a lot. Why? They force corporate management to avoid low yeild investments and opaque accounting. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
During the period mentioned Jack participated in many conference calls and analysts’ meetings at Level 3. No doubt he was ”covering” the rest of the pack at the same time. While I detest the notion that the government can solve corporate problems, there is an issue here that is either going to get solved between the investment bankers and the analysts or some rules-based entity is going to have to step in. The dot com bubble had far to many instances of analysts hyping a stock issue while his or her firm was backing the IPO. At that point it’s a fair question to ask which ”hat” he or she is wearing!
Albert Einstein. ”My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.” [Quotes of the Day]
in the distant past often escape my attention. More often I find that I simply haven’t got the know-how at the moment I’m exposed to a new feature. I’m glad to see posts such as this because it means several things are true. First, others are experiencing similar learning curves, and that’s a bit of a comfort. Second, with repetition will come another wave of users of a feature.
This morning I put together a piece that I titled Old Economy. When I wrote it I was in a mindset that was fascinated by the enormous prices being bid for Qwest’s yellow pages business. It didn’t dawn on me until prompted that what I wrote sounded a little like a rebuttal to John Robb’s excellent pieces New Economy and New Economy II. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t agree with everything in John’s essays, but what I wrote wasn’t intended as a response.
Until now. [Read the story...]
He’s a radio user. His weblog shows up in the rankings list, yet he’s hosted on another server under his own domain name. Nothing about his site resembles one of the ”canned” templates that comes with Radio. How do you ”map” all of Radio’s fantastic features to a completely different layout?
PC World: ”Technology’s unrelenting pace may frustrate those who always want to own the latest and greatest, but for everyone else it can mean better deals on older models. Nowhere is this more apparent than with digital cameras, whose prices are in a state of near free fall.” [lawrence’s notebook]
We’re gathering links and weblogs about Australia. Daughter #1 will be in The Gold Coast for about six months from June to December. If you’re a frequent traveler to Australia, a native, a native with a weblog or simply have a tip, leave us a comment. We’ll link back to you and try to develop a running dialog!
as the dot com bubble burst might give UO a chance with this effort. AOL looks like the overpriced brand for dial-up access and their broadband strategy is nearly invisible.
Fujifilm FinePix F401 Zoom. Fujifilm has today announced the FinePix F401 Zoom. This ultra-compact digital camera has a three times optical zoom lens and 2.1 megapixel Super CCD which produces a 3.9 megapixel final image size (2304 x… [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]
P. J. O’Rourke. ”With Epcot Center the Disney corporation has accomplished something I didn’t think possible in today’s world. They have created a land of make-believe that’s worse than regular life.” [Quotes of the Day]
The perfect writing tool for bloggers. I spent yesterday in Melbourne, co-presenting a couple of sessions on Web Content Management at a seminar organized by Firmware Design, the Australian distributor of Ektron’s CMS products.[Jonathon Delacour]
Here’s a sample paragraph from Jonathon’s post. It’s an eye opener for me. The text entry box in his weblog is probably defaulting to ”source” input so that he simply pastes the HTML there.
”Currently I write each post in StoryView, format it and add the links in Dreamweaver, validate it as XHTML in CSE HTML Validator, paste the HTML into Movable Type’s entry text field, preview the post, and finally publish it. When I used Radio, I followed pretty much the same procedure.”
No forgiveness. The Linkola scandal played out during my absence in Melbourne. In the comments on my original post: Jeneane Sessum admitted to trying to bribe me. [Jonathon Delacour]
Wifi: How to Read More Blogs. Yet again LinkSys has made me a happy customer. I keep hearing about Wifi from people and I’m jealous of Natrak who can blog from his deck so I took the plunge… A quick trip to my favorite mail order place, www.pcconnection.com, a wireless PCMCIA card and a WiFi hub and I’m now blogging from the kitchen table instead of my desk chair…Literally plug and play… It took longer to restart Windows than it did to get connectivitity. I just love LinkSys. I’ve never had a bad LinkSys experience. How many companies can you say that about? And, no, I don’t own stock (not even sure if they are public or not). [The FuzzyBlog!]
The Yellow Pages is a decidedly old economy way to make money. The difference in it and most ”new economy” businesses is it’s dependable revenue, cash and profit streams. Even in the on line database variations of the yellow pages, there is a clear business proposition with understandable value propositions to customers.
The problem I have with the term ”new economy” is that it smacks of something beyond free enterprise or capitalism. It makes no difference how ”electrified” our transactions become or how fast information passes from one constituency to the next, supply and demand will prevail (absent government intervention).
We may indeed see some new metrics with respect to the price elasticity of demand, but that’s not ”new economy.” As consumers – corporate, retail or otherwise – get information we may discover that a unit drop in price yields 2X or 3X more demand. Those metrics simply show what is possible as we approach the theoretical underpinnings of a free market economy. Certainly, they are enabled by technology, but it’s not apparent to me that we’ve entered any type of ”new economy.”
Thresholds have been surpassed in other fields, but the basic science remains intact. Breaking the sound barrier, driving 30 miles to the gallon and communicating wirelessly via cellular communications were breakthroughs that altered our economy and capabilities in meaningful ways. Some practical barriers in the field of economics have been breached giving rise to our pursuit of the theoretical limits, but isn’t it interesting that the yellow pages remains a business that carries a real value?
A Sampler Set to Tchaikovsky. American Ballet Theater reopened its box of choreographic pastries on Monday by once again offering its program of little goodies to music by Tchaikovsky. By Jack Anderson. [New York Times: Arts]
WorldCom attempts to clean up its image. The company is trying to dispel misperceptions about itself and to mend ties with the industry. ”We know that we have not always been easy to deal with,” its CEO says. [CNET News.com]
posted by jonpollard May 29 11:43 AM | 1 comments. A blasphemy trial out of the 17th century ”Let’s be clear. Criticising the precepts of modern Islam and the resultant actions of its adherents is not racist. Philosophically, it is the precise opposite of racism. It is an intellectual position arrived at through a consideration of ideas, rather than a cruel and irrational prejudice based upon the colour of someone’s skin.” Rod Liddle discusses the upcoming prosecution of French writer Michel Houellebecq for a comment he made about Islam in an interview. Some interesting points here about the wider context, in which Houellebecq has been attacked for the beliefs of the fictional characters he creates. [MetaFilter]
by Dane Carlson, I’ve sought his advice. ”Hey, Dane, what’s a good host for my weblog when I get ready to move it to a different server and its own domain name?”
Dane’s normally prompt reply came, ”Check out www.4ph.com.”
”Thanks!” Thus ended the discussion that hooked me up with ProHosters as well!
I’m way out on the edge of all that has been said about the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA). Can someone give me a link or two that will catch me up? I’m not nearly as interested in the propaganda as I am some unbiased description of what this really means. Are the letters at the Electronic Frontiers Foundation accurate? Is this as simple as a battle between content owners and technology providers?
Content owners believe that if any ability to ”copy” their work is allowed, then revenues suffer. Technology providers believe that any inhibition of ”copy” technology is government intrusion. Is that the ultimate debate? FULL DISCLOSURE: I truly am in the dark about a lot of this. I don’t mean to slant my portrayal of the issues. Let me know what to read!
The Accounting Game - Basic Accounting Fresh From the Lemonade Stand
by Darrell Mullis & Judith Orloff
Basic and intermediate accounting courses at a graduate school level cannot illuminate the books of a business as well as this small book does! Judith Orloff has conducted her seminar called The Accounting Game enough times to have well over 100,000 graduates.
If you own a business, run a business, head a division, department or subsidiary of a business or if you have ever thought about investing in a business – public or private – you should take a long weekend and go through this book. It will change what you are able to see in the financial reports you get! This advice is as sound for an MBA as it is for a high school drop-out. In fact, if you have a checkbook, you should go through this book!
The Internet service provider bullied by the FBI last week has put the Daniel Pearl video back online, saying it won’t be pressured about content that isn’t illegal. By Declan McCullagh. [Wired News]
The only fitting response: ”JFP”
A Broadband in Every Pot. Former vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman previews his National Broadband Strategy Act, an act that wouldn’t mandate much of anything. Farhad Manjoo reports from Alameda, California. [Wired News]
Vodafone Posts Huge Loss for Year. Once the unchallenged spearhead of the global wireless business, the Vodafone Group announced that it had a net loss of almost $24 billion in the year ended in March. By Alan Cowell. [New York Times: Business]
ExciteAtHome to Auction Off Remains. SAN FRANCISCO (AP)—Bankrupt ExciteAtHome will auction off the last pieces of its defunct high-speed Internet access service Wednesday, putting the finishing touches on a fire sale that has extracted about $60 million from a business valued at $28 billion three years ago. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: Technology]
built to ”show the bigwigs” smacks of an organization that isn’t quite committed yet! I’m not being critical of Meryl at all. I’ve just seen so many instances where work is being done in organizations that no customer is concerned about or would pay to have done. Those tasks often smack of bureacracy.
If the exec’s are committed to ’training,’ a spreadsheet showing the class schedule should be sufficient. Questions like, ”what is not getting done while folks are in training?” and ”why have we agreed that this training is needed?” might help.
Excel Blackhole. I’ve literally been buried in Excel trying to create tracking metrics for a training program. The problem is that there are too many variables to create a pivot table or… [meryl’s notes]
Did everybody but me know that in your Radio text entry box SHIFT+ENTER causes a single line space? Enormous thanks to Ian McKenzie for the tip.
It works!
Every time!!
Among the many things I want to learn to do with this weblog, HTML, scripting and whatever else people are using to build great personal web sites are photo albums. I posted some links to good work yesterday. However, few photo albums equal these! What are the ingredients and the steps for doing this?
Remember how many times you’ve seen someone – often a sports figure – get fed up with some reporter. The commentary after he blows his stack always goes something like, ”Joe should have known he can’t win an argument with a reporter; they get free airtime (or space or whatever the medium may be).”
Well, tonight this weblog is being used to describe how VoiceStream is about to lose a customer. I may not prevail, but I’ll have the last word! Thus far, everyone at VoiceStream I’ve spoken with, seems unconcerned about losing a customer. I won’t wear you down with every ugly detail, but this all began in 1997 when I decided to become a customer of a regional cell phone service called PowerTel. Until April of this year, we loved PowerTel; no contracts, great service, friendly people. In April, VoiceStream began to put their own name and methods in PowerTel, a company they acquired last year.
April 26th, VoiceStream should have drafted their normal monthly payment from American Express as they have done each and every month since 1997. It was like a blank check for them. They didn’t have to bill me. I didn’t have to write a check. Their payment was always at their beck and call. I got frequent traveler points.
For some reason VoiceStream’s computer couldn’t talk to American Express’s computer on April 26th. Ever since a May 9th phone conversation – there have now been three – VoiceStream has considered me a past due customer and today’s mail brought a letter threatening to cut off our cell phones. Without exception I have been treated as someone who didn’t take proper care of his account and his credit reputation!!
My AmX account was ok, current, valid expiration date, etc. Three times I authorized VoiceStream to draft the account again. This required giving them my account information again and again after they’ve been billing the same account for over five years! Two of those times I got confirmation numbers from VoiceStream employees. Once, during a conversation, the phone call just went dead. A week later I got a call from someone saying they couldn’t return my call because they DIDN’T HAVE MY PHONE NUMBER, and how did I want to handle my past due situation!I’m not smart enough to make any of this up! I’ll go to my grave discouraging anyone from using VoiceStream products or services unless that company precedes me! If they precede me, I’ll simply use them as one of the worst examples of service, systems, training and customer rapport in every presentation and consulting engagement I’m involved with!
My schedule for tomorrow is now getting rearranged so that I can go ”shop” the cellular phone providers. I wish I thought I was going to stumble into a place that was delighted to provide service for all of our phones and a credit card they can bill as needed. I’m not holding my breath!
THE DESKTOP WEBLOG: While I’m rolling on the notion of themes in Radio, let’s cover a couple of additional topics. First, there’s the matter of the desktop weblog and the text entry box. I’m fine with all of that with a tiny exception or two. I’d like to know what controls the font that I’m typing in right now, what font this shows up as when posted and the details of line spacing, etc.
If I press ’enter’ after typing a line of text, I’m automatically at a paragraph break. In other words, I’ve double (line) spaced down the page. Where is the control for this? When I conclude something and post it, there are a couple of lines after my post and a short line – left justified – containing the time, the permalink icon and my comments indicator and counter. Does the #itemtemplate control 100% of this? Is it telling this short line of information to left justify? Is the same template specifying the color, size and font for the time, comments, etc.? Where is the permalink icon specified?
If I wanted the first line I type in any post to be all caps in a specific font, can I make one of the templates force that? MY HOME PAGE: Now let’s consider my home page as rendered in the Transmitter theme. If I start in the upper left-hand corner and identify every component of the home page, how do I ”map” those into a new theme? For the moment ignore the large button graphic and notice that the title begins a certain distance from the left-hand edge of the screen. Where is that specified? What do I change to alter that? The title is also in a certain font at a certain size. Again, where does the Transmitter theme find the information to render the title that particular way?
Right below the title is this: Updated mm/dd/yyyy; hh:mm:ss A/PM. Where is this specified – both the look and the placement?
Further down the left-hand side is a list of navigator links. Does the pref called navigator links specify their font, size, etc.? Does that same pref specify that they are X distance from the left-hand side? Is the orange background that the navigator links are on specified in the navigator links or does that come from the home template or possibly the main template?
Can you move the location of the calendar over there on the right to somewhere else? If so, where is that controlled?
By now you understand that I want to be able to take every piece of my weblog as rendered in the Transmitter template and remap those pieces to a new theme. Placement on the page, colors, fonts, sizes, graphics – everything is fair game; but, where do you begin to build a new theme?
Anyone interested in helping me reverse-engineer a theme?
I know enough about Radio to be dangerous only to myself. I don’t know enough about Radio to be dangerous to anyone else. However, I’ve had an idea about what I want to do with this tool for quite some time. I haven’t had a clue how to get started in that direction.
This post is an attempt to launch my efforts in the proper direction. The summary statement goes like this, ”I think that what I’m trying to envision is a different theme for Radio.” Earth shaking isn’t it?
What I mean is that no matter how good I become at editing, altering and embellishing the #hometemplate.txt or the #itemtemplate.txt files of this weblog, I’m simply changing minor things about the Transmitter theme that comes with Radio. What came to me like a bright flash in the night is the fact that every icon, every font, every placement of anything on every page is a result of something that is ”programmed” or ”scripted” into the Transmitter theme.
Trying to piece-work all the changes that I want for my own site is probably a far greater task than simply starting with a blank HTML page and beginning to do the layout and design work for the look that I want to wind up with. In other words, it may be easier to lay out a weblog home page with one of the popular page design tools and then begin to understand where all of Radio’s templates, macros, directives and pieces should be placed.
If any of the readers of this site have ”broken the code” and identified a specific sequence of steps that yields a brand new Radio theme, please let me know!
Well, not literally, but everything that Warren Buffett has described about the businesses he most wants to own are present with the brand known as Dilbert. Scott Adams is cleverly positioning and furthering the brand.
Why Dilbert loves the Internet. Scott Adams, creator of the popular comic strip, spills his guts to News.com about his plans to become a Web mogul and conquer the business world—all from a nice cozy cubicle, of course. [CNET News.com]
I realized the other day that it wasn’t that long ago that I had no idea what a weblog was. Terms like blogging in all its forms were foreign. I had used the Internet and web sites a lot, but I didn’t really grasp the difference in a vanity site, a weblog and other web sites I might have visited. My first involvement with this medium began on January 13, 2002.
Lately, I’ve identified in my writing some horrible traits. Many of my references have become veiled to all but those who are ”deep” into the weblogging culture or the Radio (by Userland Software) culture or in other ways insiders to this whole arena of weblogs.
With this post, I’m committing to do a better job of clarifying my references, questions and comments so that weblogging takes on much more of a personal publishing look-and-feel. Those who are getting their first exposure to this on any given day should be able to pick it up fairly quickly.
Ed Cone’s guest column below was the inspiration for this thinking. He has written a guest column or essay for Davenet, which is a weblog edited by ”Dave” Winer, CEO of Userland Software.
in the technology business involve selecting ’the winner.’ For those who are early adopters, it isn’t always clear which device or technology will be ’the winner.’ This example isn’t merely one of Palm vs. Handspring. This involves cell phones, cell phone services, mobile email and on and on and on. Handspring’s got a better mousetrap. It’s one thing for our selections to be obsoleted by new features, new speed or new prices, but it’s another to see our choice going the way of the sliderule before we’ve got our address book completely entered.
Handspring Counts on Duo of Treos. In a move analysts say will determine the company’s survival, Handspring releases two new handheld devices. By Elisa Batista. [Wired News]
Scott is so right. Today’s small and medium businesses are so entrenched with whatever business management software they use that getting them to embrace the change to a better application is like sewing a button on a poached egg!
Marketing 101: How Do I Get People to Change Platforms, Parts 1 and 2. The single hardest marketing pitch in all of computing, both hardware and software, is this: Please Mr. Customer, Change Your Platform to My New Thing!
There is just nothing harder. This article will tackle this non-trivial (that’s semi sarcastic computer geek speak for ”wicked hard”) problem from a theoretical basis and then, in a follow up piece, with a real world example—Drupal. [The FuzzyBlog!]
People who write weblogs like to be pointed at or linked to by other webloggers. It’s a way to build traffic to a site and its a way to gain credibility in the weblogging world. This link points at Jonathon Delacour’s site. He and another prominent blogger have apparently had a minor dispute over the value of links. This apparently escalated to the point of possible bribes, etc.
Links for Tim Tams scandal. Any pleasure I may have felt at seeing that Burningbird linked to both my Moral Clarity and 100 Best Works of Fiction posts immediately evaporated [Jonathon Delacour]
For those in the deep South who don’t have a clue what’s going on here, Jonathon lives in Australia. Apparently, Australians consume vast quantities of Tim Tams each year. Here’s what I learned about a Tim Tam! All in good fun!
for the legacy providers of phone and data services. The fact is that all revenue streams will soon look more like data streams than voice streams for those who have made the distinction for so long. The question remains as to whether the legacy providers can make the transition from circuit-switched copper to end-to-end IP networks quickly enough.
SBC, Lucent team on Net telephony. The telecom twosome play up the technology as a way for companies to use voice over the Internet without having to make investments in new equipment. [CNET News.com]
I’ve grown pretty fond of Userland Software’s Radio product. I’d estimate that I understand 5-10% of what it can do! The simplest things bog me down, so I’m very slow in learning how to make the product do the things I want to do with it.
However, during the long weekend, I accomplished something with about 6 to 8 hours of work that might have taken a lot longer. Other users of Radio might benefit.
I wanted to add a list of links to my public home page that would allow my posts to be viewed by category. I use 20 categories right now. However, after adding the links to my home page, two things were wrong. First, those links weren’t showing up on the pages that showed posts by category. Second, none of the other changes to my #hometemplate & #itemtemplate were available on a ’category view page.’ For example, my comments weren’t available and the search feature for my weblog wasn’t available.
Using the Radio Discussion board, Matthew Ernest solved my problem. (I think Matthew works for Userland, but I’m not certain.) He pointed out that each category folder under the www folder has its own set of templates. I don’t know whether Radio defaults to this condition or whether something I did in all my trial-and-error work caused there to be templates in the category folders.
In any case, he suggested I remove all of the # files from each category folder – except for the #prefs.txt file. That file determines what gets posted in that category. Once those folders no longer had #hometemplate.txt and #itemtemplate.txt files in them, Radio began to look back up to the primary #hometemplate & #itemtemplate files. Now I have category links, comments and a search feature in all the views of my posts. Thanks Matthew!
Ken Dow: ”I’m happy to announce another series of Manila courses this July in Toronto, along with the first session of my new ’Weblogging with Radio Userland’ course.”
Complete course descriptions and online registration
are available from http://www.kendow.com/manilacourses.html.
Mastering Manila – July 15,16, $850 USD
A two day, hands-on course on designing and managing a Manila Web site.
Manila Server Administration – July 17, 18, $1050 USD
A two day, hands-on course on installing and administering a Manila
server.
Weblogging with Radio Userland – July 19, $225 USD
A one day, hands-on course on starting and working with a Radio
Userland weblog. [Scripting News]
The time seems right to start learning a bit more about the desktop application that comes with Userland’s Radio weblog tools. It seems far more is buried there than I’ve even begun to realize. Using Radio as a comprehensive content management system must depend to some degree on learning more about the desktop app. First step, learn how to learn without fouling up the works!
Dan Bricklin has this method. Photolog the MT Way. Note to self: Five Step Photolog. Saving for future reference. Excellent tutorial. [Link Robyn]... [meryl’s notes]
Mena and Ben Trott show what’s possible here.
It’s not yet 8:00a.m. here and it’s still very quiet. The family is still asleep. A relaxing day is ahead. With the recollection of what Dad’s service record was and the knowledge that we have (or may have) our troops involved in many places around the globe, Memorial Day seems more real and important this year. Maybe I’m getting old and sentimental. Maybe I’m staring at the empty nest syndrome which approaches.
Whatever the mood, emotion or motivation for the thoughts, it seems we live in an age when each peaceful day at home should be cherished more dearly. There are so many examples of how quickly that peace can be shattered. Whether natural or at the hands of man, the suddenness with which change comes throws people harshly against their foundations in faith, family and service to others. Rediscovering those foundation elements before we are slammed against them is what days like today are for. They’ll be greater comfort for us when we face the unexpected if we embrace them when things are fine!
Supersonic Speed, Bit Binary Bit. A supersonic jet developed in Japan will be test-flown this summer in Australia. What’s unusual is that researchers believe the computer design precludes the need for conventional pre-flight tests. Stewart Taggart reports from Woomera, South Australia. [Wired News]
about today’s powerful journalism in the New York Times. What I’m having a little difficulty with is the notion or inference that Memorial Day has become or is becoming a time to remember those victims of Oklahoma City’s bombing or 9-11-01 or other ”tragedies.” I’m still a believer in the notion that Memorial Day has been, is and should be about those members of this nation’s military who died defending our freedoms and beliefs.
on June 17th, this isn’t the kind of news I need. Opposite coast and unique motive provide some small comfort!
SUICIDE BOMBER IN PERTH, AUSTRALIA! James Morrow has the scoop on a guy who seems to be imitating Palestinians, though with a different agenda. [InstaPundit]
How to Keep Cargo Safe, and Rolling. When shipments of auto parts were held at the Canadian border for two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Detroit shuddered. In the end, the halt in cargo shipments at the nation’s borders and ports proved a brief hiccup. But it was a vivid reminder of just how dependent the modern economy had become on the efficient transportation of goods and parts that arrive just in time for assembly. By Steve Lohr. [New York Times: Business]
STRATEGYPAGE says that a Pakistani-Indian nuclear war will be hard to avoid.
Here’s a thought—I don’t know if it’s right or not. But it occurs to me that while the United States is busy doing its (probably inadequate) best to prevent a nuclear war there, it’s much of the rest of the world that has the most to lose.
The United States’ nuclear power is a huge military ace that it can’t really play, mostly for diplomatic reasons. But if there’s a nuclear war between two more-or-less Third World countries (Pakistan more, India less) will that lower the threshhold? If I were, say, an Iraqi, or a Saudi, or for that matter a French diplomat, this would worry me.
If I were Israel, on the other hand, I might see some value in the loosening of nuclear restraints. I wonder if anyone’s thinking about this sort of diplomatic repercussion? [InstaPundit]
... (or understanding the issues) I have to admit that at this moment I don’t know why these two countries are fighting. Concentrating on our war on terrorism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict uses a fair amount of my bandwidth.
As a country, what’s our role in all of this? Do we have a dog in this fight? It seems we always do. Or, is our concern the risk of nuclear escalation when Pakistan and India go at it?
This story is an example of a couple of things. First, it calls attention to the lack of media integrity in some past reporting. Second, the innumeracy of reporters and readers alike is so often exposed when they are alarmed by headlines or statistics that have no relative reference. Shark attacks were not ”up” in 2001, they were the same as 2000. (Coconut deaths also remained relatively ”flat.”)
Amazon Scam. A ”clever” author of a $3 Self Help PDF has developed a program to put his book in as a recommendation 12 times, on every single top seller at Amazon. As a result he is now the #3 best seller on Amazon. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry’s Weblog]
On moral clarity. William Bennett, Moral clarity isn’t simplistic (as published in The Dallas Morning News, May 12, 2002): Moral clarity has worked. It worked in Afghanistan, where [Jonathon Delacour]
are still rather unclear to me. I agree with Jenny about doing these various things to a weblog, but what I can’t understand is how you preserve all of this when you begin making graphics, color, layout and overall design changes. When I change the ”theme” of my weblog to one that is custom, how do I preserve all of these changes that have been made to these templates? How do I make certain that the small things find their ways to the proper page placements?
Aggregator-roll. Thanks to jenett for pointing me to Andy who pointed me to Jake’s Radio ’Blog, which ultimately ended up in me finally being able to re-publish a list of the sites to which I subscribe! There’s now a Radio macro for this that you can insert into any template. Since I subscribe to so many sites, I put it on its own page, so you can now view a list of Sites I Read in My Aggregator. I’ll be adding a permanent link to it on the right. I also plan to re-do my blogroll using Radio’s outliner at some point, too. [The Shifted Librarian]
For a clear explanation of what you’re about to read, go here! If you prefer to see the *.pdf file without explanation, try this. For one of the writers’ posts about ’Manual’ take a look at Blurbomat.
NOT CONTENT WITH ASSAULTING ME, Jonah Goldberg is dissing the entire Blogosphere! Actually not. It’s a perfectly fine column, and may well turn out to be right. [InstaPundit]
We’re not worthy. I am lucky enough to have a good job and am not seriously looking for another. But while poking around everybody’s favorite search engine today, I realized that I am not qualified for any of the job openings at Google. For some reason, I find this vaguely comforting. [dive into mark]
Carousel of Social Progress.. From the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Within These Walls is the beautifully designed online companion to the exhibit [dollarshort.org]
John Kenneth Galbraith. ”You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.” [Quotes of the Day]
Conference Weblogging Laptop. Oh, Dave is looking for a laptop for conferenceBlogging. The NEC Daylight has a screen that works in bright sunlight and has a battery that lasts eight hours. Pretty wicked. We have a new model coming out in June. [Scobleizer Radio Weblog]
In the next several weeks, I’m going to be doing some research into alternative energy sources. I once worked in this field, and I continue to find it intriguing. I’m not a ’green’ advocate, but I like good engineering. Good engineering and design always seems to have as one of its attributes an attention to the by-products of the engineered system.
I’m an engineer by training, though I’ve used my engineering degree as a model for problem-solving more so than in some specific field of engineering.
I hope to provide a bit of insight into various types of energy research and development. Included will be:
fuel cells
resource recovery and incineration technology
wind technologies
ethanol
modern battery technology
turbines and small generators
active and passive solar alternatives
...and others
In my recent trips to east Tennessee, I spent a bit of time in Oak Ridge. Yes, security is dramatically beefed up there. But, the mountains in the surrounding area are full of companies doing interesting things with alternative energy sources that will provide serious benefits.
Here’s where I draw the line. Short of a dire national emergency, I don’t advocate government subsidies, investment or development of alternative energy. I believe the needs and wants of people coupled with the price of traditional energy will drive development.
When a Duracell battery can run my laptop for as long as I need it to run on batteries, laptop manufacturers will switch. When ethanol can truly power a class of motors that we need, ethanol will become popular regardless of BigOil or BigCarCo lobbying.
So, this won’t be a place for griping and grousing about what the government did or didn’t do or what some BigCo did or didn’t do to stifle or promote a given form of alternative energy. Rather, this will be about the engineering and (potential) investment opportunities that might begin to come into their own in the coming years. THIS WILL NOT BE A PLACE TO HYPE COMPANIES FOR INVESTMENT!!!
Washington Post: Visions Of a Wild and Wireless Future. To get a few clues as to what may come, I went out this week to a little brick office park in Reston to talk with Kahn, co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocols, the language that is the foundation of the Internet. [Tomalak’s Realm]
Coffee kitsch. Spotting my first Gloria Jean’s coffee shop in the center of Sydney yesterday afternoon set me thinking about whether they could make a worse cup [Jonathon Delacour]
that no telecom company will ever install another circuit, upgrade its existing circuits in any way or need any additional capacity at any point in the future! No IP network will ever generate enough revenue to survive. No customer will ever want any service of any type from any telecom provider – wireless or otherwise – ever again. So, remember as you consider your investments that telecoms with revenues, profits and cash flow are just like every dot.com that failed!
where I’ve been the past four days. I’ve been to the mountains of eastern Tennessee to see my eldest daughter graduate from college (can you brag in your own weblog? – Yes!) with honors in a double major of Math and Music. We moved her home to Memphis for a few weeks on Monday. She’ll leave for Australia on June 17 to be gone six months!
Math in Daily Life: ”When you buy a car, follow a recipe, or decorate your home, you’re using math principles. People have been using these same principles for thousandseven millionsof years, across countries and continents. Whether you’re sailing a boat off the coast of Japan or building a house in Peru, you’re using math to get things done.” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
Then, on Tuesday, we drove from Memphis to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Our middle daugher will be there for the next three months working at a resort and conference center for church youth groups. We returned yesterday. That’s three consecutive days of about 450 miles each day. Road trips aren’t what they use to be!
Finally, daughter number three leaves on June 9th for Kansas City. She’s a professional ballet dancer, and will dance in Kansas City this summer.
I don’t like anything about the ’empty nest’ notion!
There appears to be a new version of Netscape available. Can Netscape win back any market share? I don’t know. It will have to be much better than anything I have to get me to move back. [Matt Brown’s Dreamweaver Blog]
The February, 2002 issue of Darwin magazine carried a cover story by Susannah Patton. The article was titled Putting the Pieces Together. Without the political stench that Daschle and Gephardt have unleashed this week, Ms. Patton wrote a clear and thorough piece about the incredible challenge of tying fragments of information together. She covers the technical challenge, but she also covers the cultural challenges of getting agencies to share when they have most often competed.
The fact that this was written well before this week’s nonsense makes it timely!
Exclusive parties, exclusive neighborhoods, exclusive country clubs have tended to be things that some people pursued with vigor in today’s rat race. However, exclusivity has a clear downside. The notion that our fellow man is not ”one of us,” sends the wrong message when we’re talking about caring for others. Whether large or small, legalistic Christian organizations simply aren’t needed. The last thing this world needs is another restrictive, exclusive church bent on enforcing its own interpretation of rules.
To Catholic leaders I say, ”get rid of anyone mistreating children and see that they are prosecuted fully.” To legalistic pastors I say, ”Find a way to embrace – not condemn.” This woman’s child doesn’t need your particular style of mistreatment either!
with a punch card for investments and you were entitled to only 20 punches in a lifetime? In other words only 20 investment decisions could be made in a lifetime!
WorldCom Gives Ebbers Big Severance. CLINTON, Miss. (AP)—Former WorldCom Inc. president Bernie Ebbers will receive $1.5 million a year for the rest of his life as part of a severance package with the telecommunications company. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: Technology]
Here’s a story about one set of terrorists. Can it be any clearer that we’re dealing with an enemy we don’t fully understand?
Can it be any clearer that the liberal media in the United States today is just as willing to declare the incumbent administration our enemy? Sometimes it’s over a matter like a terrorist attack through the lens of revisionist history. Other times it’s over the personal affairs of an official.
I liked life in the U.S. better when the media understood its role!
and some are getting a steal! Userland Software is providing one of the truly great bargains in the technology business by offering Radio at something shy of $40 per year. Lawrence Lee’s work over the past few days to help me understand and resolve a ’categories’ problem has been outstanding. Admittedly, we’re not talking about a problem with a life support system or somebody’s payroll software, but the dedication that Userland shows is unwavering.
I rarely launch the desktop application called Radio. Lawrence had to get me in there to do some things that helped resolve the problems. Even this novice can tell just how much power is ’under the hood.’ Thanks to everyone working with ”Dave”, John, et al.
things they think were warnings over 200 days after an event and begin to connect dots that are now clearly outlined in history, what is their motive? Plenty has been written about the CIA, FBI, NSA and other government agencies and the ways they are finding to ”mine their databases” for better information.
What do these reporters hope to find? Do they expect even the most jaded Democrat to believe that a Republican administration knew something that could have stopped 9-11? This whole line of inquiry is somewhat sickening.
Wolfram’s ”A New Kind of Science” is #1 on Amazon. Very impressive. Given that most of his work was done with Mathematica, I suspect that sales of that tool will go up sharply too. There is a good article in Wired on the book. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
Secrets of a High Volume Blogger! ”Blog Content is all Around You. Blogging is about text. And what is email? Text. What’s IM? Text. I’ve gotten a lot of blog entries out of both these places. Old writer’s trick from Robert Heinlein: Writing is all about filing the edges off a piece of content and then republishing it. (that’s not an exact quote but pretty dang close).” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
Google Answers Irony. Looked closely at Google Answers for the first time today. It’s a decent system and quickly gained my trust. Oh, I didn’t post any questions, but I studied the FAQ… [meryl’s notes]
your categories in advance cannot be over-emphasized. Those who read this regularly know that I’ve been fighting quite a battle with 4 renamed categories. At this moment my advice is avoid having to rename a category any way you can. It’s not something that has a high probability of success. Lawrence has been telling me some things to try. I’ve been meticulous in following his instructions. It’s beginning to look like I’ll simply forfeit all the posts in those 4 categories and begin again. That’s still not going to clear up what you see when you look at http://radio.weblogs.com/0100740/categories, but I guess the real question is, ”who does that?”
I just attempted 4 one-line posts that were tests:
Testing a post to ’leading it’ and ’home’ categories
Testing a post to ’career help’ and ’home’ categories
Testing a post to ’memphis’ and ’home’ categories
Testing a post to ’weblogs’ and ’home’ categories
None of these posted to their respective categories – I can’t view those – nor did they show up on the home page!
Any clues? Oops…this post flushed the other 4 through to the home page. Who knows where the other ”side” of the post went? I still can’t see those 4 categories!
Nikon Coolpix 3. I’m glad I waited to buy a Digital Camera. Looks like Nikon has a new one (Coolpix 3) coming out at the end of the month. I want a four or five megapixel camera with a bunch of features for less than $1000. Will Nikon deliver? [Scobleizer Radio Weblog]
>From the outside looking in it appears that there are not many Radio newbies around any more. People are figuring out what to do with the tool, how it works and how to alter it to their liking.
I base this on the absence of email or comments from those who have had similar struggles to mine. I have no idea how or what caused my category problem. I simply know that it suddenly became evident when I started trying to create links on my home page for viewing posts by category.
It’s also pretty apparent that the problem remains unsolved. Lawrence is working hard to help me, but we face challenges because I can’t communicate about Radio in a sophisticated way, and I also can’t read or see between the lines when he attempts to teach me.
Take a look at these two links and you’ll see part of the problem: http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/categories/ See how neatly her category folder list pops up. Those are her categories and they match the list on her home page.
Now look at: http://radio.weblogs.com/0100740/categories See those categories that say ”my…” I’ve renamed those in every way I know how. Notice also that some of the categories come up looking like folders while others look like something else.
I don’t understand what I’m seeing. If there’s a tutorial somewhere, please point me in that direction.
We do a lot of work for clients who ask us to help them improve something. Sometimes it’s a distribution issue or a warehouse problem or a collections matter or … Well, the list goes on. In virtually every case a mental model and understanding of the steps required to get from where our client is to where they want to be is the key step. Once they see it done, they think, ”how simple.” Yet, many people can’t or won’t pause long enough to think the plan through before launching it – me included!
There is much similarity between Deming’s plan-do-check-act(PDCA) cycle for improving a process and the development methodologies that software people use.
ABCs of Three Development Processes. StickyMinds.com: The ABCs of XP, RAD, and PSP looks at Rapid Application Development (RAD), Extreme Programming (XP), and the Personal Software Process (PSP), three development processes. The software development industry… [meryl’s notes]
Updated Documents: Marketing 101, Consulting 101, Business 101
It’s been a busy writing week. I’ve been writing a ton of articles based on the wonderful feedback that everyone has given me. It seems as if my writing has forked into 2 if not 3 paths so I’ve grouped stuff categorically. The new stuff has a new icon next to it. The groupings are Marketing 101, Consulting 101 and Business 101. All the articles are intended to be short, practical and based on real world experience. Some of them are drawn from conversations I have had with all of you since I started writing these. I’ve also listed, for easy reference, the older works since a lot of readers are just coming on board. NOTE: Some of these documents are here as part of my Blog, others on my web site. Over the next few weeks I’ll get this nicely organized and such but I don’t want to keep you from this content. A lot of it should be quite useful like the one on ”How Many Proposals Do I Need to Write” since a lot of new people are getting into the consulting business with the recent U.S. economic downturn.
If you want to sign up for the official announcement list for these articles then go to http://www.fuzzygroup.com/marketing101/.
through the back of my head! It all began when I realized that many of my posts were going into the wrong categories in spite of my correctly checking the checkboxes at the time of posting. Lawrence did a great job of telling me what to do to fix that problem. It took a long time, but it worked.
Then, I had 4 categories where the name next to the checkbox didn’t agree with the folder name in the www – categories folders. So here’s a description of what I did! I’ve got a hunch (and a hope, actually) that Lawrence will get to go to the spicy noodles dinner this evening, so I may be hosed until whenever. In fact, I may have done irreparable harm.
If you see a way out of this mess, I’d appreciate any advice!
SBC to Cut 5,000 Jobs. SBC Communications will slash another 5,000 jobs, or about 2.6 percent of its work force, in the second quarter because the slow economy continues to curb its revenue. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: Business]
A couple of ’secondary’ business news stories today could serve as indicators for the overall state of investment and economic progress. Let’s see what’s said about Nortel’s attempt to raise $2.5B. Then, let’s see if HP truly was successful at cutting costs in advance of the Compaq buy-out.
Liberty Bids on Cablecom. The Liberty Media Corporation, controlled by John C. Malone, has made an offer to buy Cablecom of Switzerland from struggling British cable operator NTL. By The New York Times. [New York Times: Technology]
Will phone calls get carried on cable or will television get carried on phone connectivity. Most of this relates to the ’first mile’ problem. However, among players that have the highest technology all the way to the curb, cable companies are becoming more capable. Will Bellsouth run fiber to the curb? Who’ll handle the long-haul?
have taken fewer hits than the rest, yet even those two haven’t gone unscathed. I cannot help but believe in some way that we’ll look back at current telecom valuations and we’ll find just as much to be amazed at as we’ve found in the absurd valuations during the dot com craze. These companies may morph, but in some form, many of them will survive, recover and ultimately flourish.
Question Marks at Cable and Wireless. With Cable and Wireless’s stock price floundering, investors are increasingly calling for a shake-up, including the shutdown of some units and the resignation of C.E.O. Graham Wallace. By Suzanne Kapner. [New York Times: Business]
Meanwhile, we have a new feature in the pipe for Radio and RCS that brings new ease of use and power to blogrolling. And get this, you’ll be able to use it even if you use one of our competitors’ products to edit your weblog. It’ll be worth the $40 if you take blogrolling seriously. [Scripting News]
I posted a book recommendation and checked the category boxes for ’BOOKS’ and ’HOME.’ All of today’s posts that follow the book recommendation show up when you go to http://radio.weblogs.com/0100740/categories/books/
Does anyone know why? Does anyone know of a fix for all these posts that somehow got into wrong categories? I’ve double-checked and the posts were never categorized the way they appear right now!
Thanks in advance!
Does this mean truckers might be willing to report each other. My recent experiences on this nation’s highways show that a tiny percentage of long-haul truckers are as dangerous as any menace on the road. I’m not suggesting all or even most truckers cause problems. I’m simply saying that an 18-wheeler at maximum allowable length and weight packs quite a punch. Driven by one who assumes he is owed the road such a truck becomes lethal. Does homeland security include safer highways?
I find it more than a little ironic that Nielsen’s Top Ten Guidelines for Homepage Usability is actually painful for me to read. Why? First, the headlines are so visually overwhelming that it’s difficult to focus my eyes on the body text. Second, the body text has no margins and thus there are so many words per line that it’s difficult for my eyes to follow along the paragraphs. Usability and design don’t have to be at cross purposes. [Ken Rawlings]
BOOK RECOMMENDATION Gutenberg: How One Man Remade the World with Words by John Man A world forever changed
In 1450, all of western Europes books were hand-copied and amounted to no more than are in a modern public library. By 1500, printed books numbered in the millions. Johann Gutenbergs invention of movable type ignited the explosion of art, literature, and scientific research that accelerated the Renaissance and led directly to the Modern Age. In Gutenberg, youll meet the genius who fostered this revolution, discover the surprising ambitions that drove him, and learn how a single, obscure artisan changed the course of history.
”His story is one of genius very nearly denied. A few records less, and we would not now be revering the Gutenberg Bible as his. All we would have would be the results: an idea that changed the world and a book that is amongst the most astonishing objects ever createda jewel of art and technology, one that emerged fully formed, of a perfection beyond anything required by its purpose. It is a reminder that the business Gutenberg started . . . contains elements of the sublimethat at the heart of the mountains of printed dross there is gold.” From the Introduction to Gutenberg
For some reason I printed this interview with Jeffrey Zeldman and didn’t read it at the time. I’m not certain who pointed to it or called my attention to it. I read it during lunch today and actually understood a lot of it. It is one of those pieces that reinvigorates my desire to learn web design.
Every now and then gadgetitis nags at me until I do something to put it back into remission. I’m waiting for a color PDA and phone combo. By the time it’s available, it’s likely to be available in a variety of form factors and operating environments.
Palm launches ads aimed at CIOs. The handheld maker launches an advertising campaign targeted at executives, chief information officers and other IT personnel, an attempt to lure more corporate clients. [CNET News.com]
Simon Fell’s Pocket XML-RPC is ”an open source XML-RPC client COM component for the Windows family based on James Clark’s excellent Expat XML parser and the HTTP transport from PocketSOAP.” [Scripting News]
Even Paul Allen hits investing headwinds. The billionaire technocrat wants to build companies that promote his vision of a ”wired world,” but the sour economy has pulled the plug on many of his investments. [CNET News.com]
Say you post something to your weblog using Radio. At the time of the post you make certain there is a checkmark in the ’home’ and the ’category 1’ boxes. Later, you decide the post should have been checked for ’home’ and ’category 2.’ So, you edit the post, uncheck ’category 1’ and check ’category 2.’ Will this properly place the post in the 2 categories and remove it from the improper category?
The week in review: The HP challenge. With a bloody merger battle behind it, Hewlett-Packard may hope that the worst is over. But it looks as if there will be fighting at the newly combined company again soon. [CNET News.com]
They were engulfed by Compaq. How long will it take before we’re asking, ”Where is Compaq?” It is often very difficult for investors to separate themselves from emotional attachments to the companies that make up their portfolios. However, to believe that Compaq is somehow going to remain a shining star inside HP is rather naive. To think that Compaq’s absorption into HP is somehow transforming HP into a dramatically different company is equally naive.
Undoubtedly there could be benefits that accrue from the combination. However, no management team has ever justified a deal by stating that they simply ”wanted it.” A story from Warren Buffett’s 1992 letter to shareholders fits:
We have a firm policy about issuing shares of Berkshire,
doing so only when we receive as much value as we give. Equal
value, however, has not been easy to obtain, since we have always
valued our shares highly. So be it: We wish to increase
Berkshire’s size only when doing that also increases the wealth
of its owners.
Those two objectives do not necessarily go hand-in-hand as an
amusing but value-destroying experience in our past illustrates.
On that occasion, we had a significant investment in a bank
whose management was hell-bent on expansion. (Aren’t they all?)
When our bank wooed a smaller bank, its owner demanded a stock
swap on a basis that valued the acquiree’s net worth and earning
power at over twice that of the acquirer’s. Our management –
visibly in heat – quickly capitulated. The owner of the acquiree
then insisted on one other condition: ”You must promise me,” he
said in effect, ”that once our merger is done and I have become a
major shareholder, you’ll never again make a deal this dumb.”
I think I’m learning something new, but I need your comments to be sure. I was going to add a selection of links to my home page that would allow viewing posts by category.
Here’s what I think is going on. First, the links need to be added to the MAIN template not the HOME template. That way, the links will be visible from all the pages on the site. Second, comments and search capabilities need to be added to the MAIN template and not just the HOME template. In fact, these features must be added both places.
Right?
Finally, does anyone know why some posts show up in categories that were not checked originally? I have HTML or RADIO posts showing up in my VALUE INVESTING category. Is there some way to ’re-index’ categories without going back and hand-editing each post? This may relate to the problem I’ve never solved where a category was renamed, but still has the original category name at the operating system level. For me they look like this:
myFriends
myInterests
leadingIt
careerHelp
Each of these was renamed. Yet, at the operating system level they have the names shown above. Worse still is the fact that several posts are showing up in category views where they don’t belong. When I go to the specific post and look at the category selections, they don’t show certain categories as checked. Yet, they appear in that view.
Can anybody offer any help?
How did Russ Lipton create a page of story titles that is sub-divided into logical groups? Is the normal story index page still there? Yes, the normal story index captures every story/essay/long document that you type. You can have a story that repeats the titles of other stories and separates them into categories as Russ did. If you look at his story index, you’ll see that ”The Good Stuff” is a story on that page. When you go to ”The Good Stuff,” you’ll see that he has simply rearranged and grouped some titles from his story index.
How do you know you’ve received comments? Do you have to scroll back through your own weblog? So far, I think the answer here is yes. You have to look at your own public weblog to find comments that have been left there.
Isn’t there a way to travel without a computer and still update/post to your weblog from any computer? Yes. Go to prefs and under the Internet and Server settings, go to Remote Access & Security. Check the boxes, enter a password and you’re set to access your Radio weblog for posting from a remote computer. (thanks to Ken Rawlings for pointing this out.)
Some people like to have a list of links on their home page that permits a reader to see only the posts for a given category. This post for example is being posted only to a category called ’Radio.’ It won’t appear on my home page.
The syntax for links to the Radio categories is http://radio.weblogs.com/0100740/categories/Radio/. This happens to be the syntax for my particular site. Your domain name may be different and your category names will be different.
isn’t enough for some. Since my college years and Evidence That Demands a Verdict, I’ve watched many people attempt to justify belief. If probabilities are needed, Swinburne provides them.
So God’s Really in the Details?. Last month, Richard Swinburne, a professor of philosophy at Oxford University, invoked probability theory to defend the belief that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. By Emily Eakin. [New York Times: Business]
During Apple’s shift to OSX Mathematica has been used to show the capabilities of the hardware and software combination in the most powerful Mac’s. It seems fitting that one post removed from my confusion over rendering HTML and graphics, I’d post the genius of Wolfram.
I’ve been studying HTML. One of the toughest things for me to grasp has been the relationship between a graphic image and the text that will be near it. For example, some weblogs have a template that surrounds each post with a border. It is still difficult for me to see the relationship between a graphic file that may somehow be ”tiled” down the page giving the ’effect’ of a border.
Placement of the various macros in the HTML source so that posts wind up looking the way I want them to is really challenging. Of course, I still wrestle with wrapping text around a picture in a post.
I doubt I ever see the day when I can grasp this sort of thing:
Missing the point. Scott Andrew: CSS is for separating structure, not content, from presentation. People who think CSS is unnecessary because ”I store my content in a database” are missing the point. That’s great, it lets you reuse your content, but that’s only half the story. Using CSS is the other half; it lets you reuse your markup. (That’s how my style switcher works—the markup stays the same, only the CSS changes. Ditto Joe. Ditto Mike.) [dive into mark]
New Architect – June. New Architect has released its June issue on ”Technology Innovation: Process or Plain Luck?” and the best part about it is Wisdom from the Industry. The magazine asked 16 bigwigs… [meryl’s notes]
I’ve got the preferences set so that each story comes up with a check mark. I look at a page of stories and uncheck those that I think I may want to post. Sometimes I hit ’delete’ and go on to the next page, unchecking another group of stories I may want to post. When I’ve been all the way through, I’m left with a list of stories I can post and comment on. Other days, I’ll ’post-as-I go.’
Currently, I’m subscribed to 71 sources. I’m constantly weeding out the bottom 10% based upon how infrequently I’ve used them or how infrequently they have updated. Of the 71 sources, 23 are mainstream news sources and 48 are other weblogs.
Take a look at Google’s masthead today. Good design is good design no matter where or how it’s used. I’ve got a name picked out and I’ve got a host picked out for this weblog. I wish I had the skills to develop 3 or 4 mastheads around the name, then, about every 2 to 4 weeks, put a new masthead up.
Here are some other examples of good design:
Answers to the questions in the post below this one!
Multi-Author K-Logs – This is another post to the K-Logs list (weblogs for knowledge management and collaboration). If you like this topic, you are welcome to join (over 400 members!!)
Today, UserLand introduced a new tool for leveraging RSS to produce a weblog with multiple contributors. If you are using Radio, you can download and install it from this page: http://radio.userland.com/multiAuthorWeblogTool
There are lots of situations where it is useful to build a K-Log that aggregates the syndicated news from multiple authors (see note below on what an RSS newsfeed is). This is also a great way to use K-Log categorization (see the note below on was a K-Log category is). [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
are part of a dilemma we’re in right now. We have a personal weblog. We’d like to set up a K-Log for our company. In fact, we’d like for the K-Log to become our company site. Can I run one copy of Radio on my PC and post to my own site as well as the company’s site?
such as GE and IBM seem to get into such gut-wrenching messes so soon after the departure of favored CEO’s? It makes you believe the seeds of their problems were evident under the old watch.
”Dave” asks: Is business the purpose of our civilization, or does civilization have some other purpose that business supports? Do our lives have any meaning beyond that which we produce for sale, and that which we purchase for consumption?
Who is really qualified to answer such questions for other than themselves?
G.K. Chesterton said, ”We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Victor Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Meaning to explain meaning when you become a number. His dehumanizing experience at Auschwitz gave him the answers.
Does the woman living in a cave in Afghanistan and sleeping in the dirt have the same life purpose as the woman who woke up in a 10,000 square foot home in the American suburbs, drove her SUV to drop her kids at private school, grabbed a $3.85 cup of coffee at the drive-thru window and rushed to her desk to work at ’getting more’ today? Is daily survival a different life purpose from daily achievement or daily accumulation? Should the person waking to a shopping list for a week’s worth of groceries have the same life meaning as the person who awoke hungry, but driven to find sustenance before dark?
Different people must answer Dave’s questions in different ways. Influences often drive how we answer the question. Sometimes the answer feels different on different days. The fact is a life of simply earning more, buying more or selling more can get pretty futile.
Surely, at the end of our days, there should be more than the toys, the comfort and the luxury that we’ve accumulated for ourselves and those we care about. I cannot compartmentalize my life in such a way that ’the getting’ is what I do on the job and life’s meaning is something that happens at a different place, with other people or at a different time.
Regardless of religious background or persuasion, people need a plan, a place and a purpose. More often than not those are found in some area of service. I find that the periods in my life where I have not been serving others are the most miserable periods I’ve faced.
If civilization is to be defined as ’life as we know it,’ then business, in all its forms, is a part of that. To say that our civilization has business as its purpose seems to fall short of ’life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ It also falls short of any greater meaning that those who see themselves as spiritual beings might seek.
I’m reminded of the wealthy Texas oil baron who died somewhat unexpectedly in his 60’s. Some weeks following the funeral, one sincere old friend asked his youthful widow, ”how much did he leave?” Her reply was quick, ”all of it.” You just don’t see any Wells Fargo trucks in funeral processions! There’s got to be something more!
this hadn’t been a story that smelled all that bad. Clearly, the loan to Ebbers was questionable. Clearly, Worldcom has suffered through the downturn in telecom demand. Now, evidence of the cross-breeding that leads to some fairly odd-looking creatures may be showing! Warren Buffett has said, ”you never know who’s swimming naked until the tide goes out.”
Ebbers Invested With WorldCom Board Member Who Approved Loan. Bernard J. Ebbers, the ousted WorldCom chief executive, reportedly made a big personal investment in a company associated with the board member who approved his controversial $366 million loan. By Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Richard Waters, Ft.com. [New York Times: Business]
In the last several days, as the news of Gartner’s study was released, you just knew that Oracle would come out and complain. I have no idea who has sold the most database software, which company’s software is used more or anything of the sort. I’m not sure Gartner knows. I’m not even sure IBM or Oracle can tell with a high degree of accuracy what they’ve sold. As Deming use to say, ”It depends on who wants to know.”
It so happens that my company sells and installs accounting and business management software. We’ve tried for almost a month to get a return call or a return email from an Oracle representative. This was after a national press release stating that Oracle wanted 100 new VAR’s to sell their NetLedger software.
If I had readership, I’d be shouting so that all could hear! As it is, it doesn’t matter enough to Oracle to call someone back who might be able to move some of their product, but they’ll go into an all hands Defcon4 to whine about a Gartner finding. Ain’t it grand?
What’s your angle? It’s 1950 and a suited reporter with a cloud of cigarette smoke hovering around his face has just leaned into a fellow reporter’s cloud to find out what his slant on a breaking story is going to be.
This scene must have been repeated 1001 times in the movies and television shows. Even recent entertainment has shown a modern version of the same scene.
The best of these scenes made it clear that the slant or angle had nothing to do with bias or predisposition. Instead, your slant was your hypothesis. The reporter’s method was somewhat like the scientific method. Facts were facts. Each one either supported the hypothesis or refuted it.
Journalists lose that title when they abandon the scientific method. When all the facts are gathered and they use only the ones that support their original hypothesis, well, that’s not journalism. That’s something much more like an op-ed piece. In fact, I’ve begun watching the mainstream media always checking to see whose opinion I’m reading or listening to.
There’s a difference in a journalist – one who uses a methodology similar to the scientific method and a writer who may simply be providing his or her opinion. Definitions are important. Slants and angles of today mean something different from those in the smoke-filled rooms of the distant past.
Here’s the scenario: your company has found a way to run its primary business management/accounting software via the web. You’ve found a host , you’ve moved the software and data, you’ve got the bandwidth and everyone is happy. No more internal servers, no more network to manage, just a bunch of PC’s connected to a fat pipe.
Your professionally managed host has sophisticated network management skills and you are confident in your decision to move everything off site. Then, one day you learn that someone has bought your host. The email indicates that you’ll experience no disruption of service, etc. Here’s the question: what if something happens to your host? What arrangements should you make for a daily, weekly, monthly copy of your data? Should you and the host agree that a tape is going to the lockbox every Friday night? What if the host is in another city? Do you want a tape delivered via FedEx each Monday morning? Can you catch up from a week-old tape?
Who do you trust and how much do you trust? The outsourced ASP model is an attractive concept. Do you trust it with the total financial and information base of your company?
IBM touts new backup services. Big Blue is set to announce the new service, which will allow companies to get their computer systems back up and running quickly in the case of a disaster. [CNET News.com]
What’s to stop someone from setting up the necessary scripts(?) in a weblog to sell tools from the site? What’s to prevent someone from charging a subscription fee to certain categories on their site? Couldn’t you have free categories and pay-per-view categories?
”People are writing really, really good tools like Jon Udell’s title stuff, Mark P’s stapler, Paolo’s design tools and more. Right now people are giving them away but what if they want to make money from them?” [The FuzzyStuff Weblog]
will it take for everyone to realize that HP OWNS Compaq? No matter what is said or done in the short run, HP prevailed. As big as the Compaq name has been for close to 20 years, it’s not likely to survive much longer.
WorldCom Seeks Big Loan. WorldCom is expected to borrow $2.65 billion from its banks as part of negotiations to rework the terms of its financings. By Riva D. Atlas and Barnaby J. Feder. [New York Times: Technology]
This was posted as a comment to Dave’s new Movable Type weblog. I can’t spell CSS, have the design skills of a sledge hammer and ”instantly helpful” is just way beyond belief! I do, however, love the look of so many of the Movable Type weblogs! Surely there is a way to pick up enough of this stuff to change the look of what you’re seeing right now!
from the new company will be branded as Compaq, right? Does this mean I won’t be able to buy a server with HP’s name on it? Does this mean the HP Vectra is going away? On the surface it would appear to make more sense to have Compaq and HP servers and business lines co-exist for a while. It would also seem to make sense that the consumer lines could merge. Is there that much brand loyalty to Presario or Pavillion?
There is an arrogance that seems to permeate some HR departments. They see themselves as protectors of their co-workers’ time or as enforcers of government or corporate policy. Seldom do these types of HR depts. come across as seriously interested in making a great hire for their company or providing a service to those on the outside looking in.
And You Wonder Why People that are Out of Work Get Frustrated – Here’s an email that just came to me a few moments ago. This is from a job I applied for 2 months ago! Can anyone out there that works in human resources tell me what’s going on? Why does it take 2 months to tell a job candidate that it might be another 30 days? I don’t get it. HR? Hello? Anyone got a clue? And here’s why this matters: I’ll never, ever think favorably of CenterSpan as a vendor. If this is how they treat people who want to work for them, how will they treat customers? [The FuzzyStuff Weblog]
Is Loyd a pig? Roland and Loyd where in Sacramento having lunch when they noticed a faint fruity smell emanating from the waitress. Loyd asked, ”What perfume are you wearing?” Offended, she bit his head off. ”Its not perfume! Its body wash!” Was Loyd a pig for just for asking? [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
Whenever you see an analysis such as this, be aware that the talent situation in your town and in your company may skew the numbers. Unfortunately, there are still markets where there are predominantly Windows gurus and others where Linux has a strong following. Finding the right support people with the right attitude about response and resolve time is the key to small companies being able to keep I.T. costs in a manageable range.
Linux Saves Money and the Numbers Prove It. Cybersource recently released a study comparing operating costs of businesses running Linux with those running MS products. Here the CEO explains how the study was designed and what it means. [Linux Journal]
is a relationship business. Typically VAR’s or resellers of some sort form deep relationships with client companies in their particular niche. Microsoft doesn’t have a history of building those deep, lasting relationships!
Without dwelling on this topic, I’m making plans (via a new category) to move my Radio questions and dilemmas out of a ’story’ called (Radio Static?) and onto the home page and into a specific category.
Dane’s post about providing a way for people to ”subscribe” to a site raised this question. Is this how we get Scripting News by email? I have a hunch the answer is ’no.’ Manilla or Frontier or some technology within those tools may be the way that email gets composed and mailed. Not a clue. Along with a search feature, and a set of links for categories, this seems like a pretty important feature.
Another question, what if you wanted to ’charge’ for access to all the categories; for example, a sports information site that has a home page and the categories cover various sports or topics or people, but you only wanted to allow those who had ’subscribed’ at $4.95 per month or $48 per year to get access. What’s the best way to do that and still use Radio as the content manager?
Bloglet: ”Add email subscriptions to your blog. Just put a subscription box on your site to gather readers, and every night they’ll receive an e-mail with your post (or a summary of your posts). Bloglet currently supports Blogger, Radio, Movable Type, Nucleus and Big Blog Tool.” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
less is more when it comes to capitalization. I don’t capitalize web or internet or power grid or other terms that may have a prominent place in technology and our culture. This is a really annoying question, but I need an answer or I’ll go out of my mind. [Scripting News]
When I grew up there was no such thing as political correctness. There were manners. There was being a gentleman. There was the football locker room, and there were ways to behave in polite company. There wasn’t normally a situation where your choice of words left one group offended and another group cheering. You either offended everybody or you made your point and had a civil debate with those who had opposing views.
Today we can be labeled for remarks that simply brush by the delicate sensitivities of someone else. Say the wrong thing and you’re an antifeminist. Say something the wrong way and you’re a racist. Say something another way and you’re a pig. Say anything that another disagrees with and you will be taken to task – not your point of view. Take a conservative stand and someone will say you are not compassionate. Take a compassionate stand and you’re labeled a flaming liberal.
”Dave” jump-started my blood pressure this morning. He pointed to an article about guys becoming wimps because of a host of reasons. To the list cited there, I’m adding such things as political correctness, affirmative action and society’s lie that somehow testosterone is bad!
I’d rather be a man. Yeah, a man in the sense of Jimmy Stewart in Shenandoah or John Wayne in McClintock. Thank God the morons who seek only political correctness weren’t around when those movies were made. Go back and look at the men of yesteryear. They were as politically incorrect as the most boorish of today. The difference is no one was there pointing it out. Are we better off because so many are self-appointed keepers of politically correct speech?
There’s still right and wrong in this world. There’s still good and bad. There’s still polite and impolite. The lines aren’t so gray, and these things don’t exist on some sliding scale that we can choose based upon our mood at the moment! Women and men were better off when the lines between their different approaches to life weren’t so gray! Men were men and women were women. Each respected the other for the particular skills, strengths, thinking and viewpoints that they brought along with them.
Pull a group of women together to accomplish anything today and suggest that the group might need a couple of men involved and you’ll be drawn and quartered. Pull some men together and suggest that a woman’s point of view might be worthwhile and you’ll see guys go into locker room or frat house mode. What’s happened?
We’ve lost sight of the fact that women and men are normally enhanced by the other. Political correctness doesn’t allow room for that kind of thinking. I’m willing to admit I’ve got blind spots, and that doesn’t make me a wimp. Some of today’s women are not as willing to admit their blind spots.
Well, as a nice guy who isn’t a wimp and values the love and respect of seven important women, here it is: All you political correctness police get over yourselves and quit trying to remake every person you encounter!! [I reserve the right to edit or post addenda to this rant later this week as the mood strikes me!]
Addendum #1: Some of the most talented executives I’ve worked with in my career have been women. They were women who behaved, looked, thought and reacted to business situations like women. They were not women attempting to be men. Can you say, ”they were women acting like women,” without being labeled a pig or sexist or politically incorrect? We’ll see. Remember the (chick) flick called Sleepless in Seattle. Tom Hanks and the other guy were sitting at the table with the other guy’s (movie) wife. She was blubbering through her own description of An Affair to Remember. The guys watched her in total amazement. Then, using the same teary style, they began to describe how a scene from The Dirty Dozen moved them in the same way – ”and Jim Brown was (sniff, sniff) tossing those grenades down the chimney…” It was great. Do that in any work place in America today and you might get called on it for ’creating a workplace environment that is hostile to women.’ Great – nothing for the old self-esteem like a hostile woman offended by a hostile workplace with a hostile lawyer at her side! So do we shrink from that as wimps would, or do we stand for some measure of common sense? Addendum #2: Aren’t you glad the guys described in the article weren’t called upon to take Guadalcanal? Aren’t you glad that some people can still make decisions without taking a poll to determine each decision’s popularity? Aren’t you glad the founders of this country argued, debated, discussed, fought and fumed over our founding documents, but finally signed a document that set up the basis for freedom in a representative democracy? Aren’t you glad there are still leaders in this country and in its companies who can make informed decisions, lead effectively and press on without worrying about the whiners, wimps, thumbsuckers and handwringers? Or, does decisiveness scare you? Does someone with concrete ideas seem cocky to you? Are you afraid of someone who is willing to state an opinion and stand by it? Does the person who takes a stand seem close-minded or inflexible to you? Addendum #3:This one just flat hit a nerve with me!Look at this list of Mr. Nice Guy attributes:
insecure
wimpy
passive
avoiding conflict
emotionally needful
overly self-effacing
dependent
depressed
ineffectual
emotionally repressed
manipulative
sexually dissatisfied
resentful
angry
passive-aggressive
cowed by a woman who’ll say, ”puleeze”
There was a time that a man could ’defend’ his own honor or the honor of the woman he loved without getting labeled ’violent.’ To throw a punch wasn’t a sign of some deep-seated violent tendencies. That was before a subset of the American male population saw affirmative action in gender, nationality and race become a dominant philosophy in the workplace, because it was politically correct. That was before we did some deep mental and emotional evaluation of the motives of someone who would burn the American flag. That was before we felt there had to be an opposing view on each and every action or viewpoint. Thank God we had people willing to make the tough decisions of life without being overwhelmed by criticism. I hope we still have them. I trust that we do.
Be assured that the next several quarters for HP are going to show a whole series of ’one-time’ or ’non-recurring’ charges associated with the litigation of the merger vote, the cost of closing the deal, the loss of revenue or business focus during the distraction, the cost of layoff’s, the cost of shutting down certain product lines for one or the other…and the list goes on. Unfortunately, the track record of some involved in this deal isn’t likely to make the big bath really happen. We’re more likely to see 3 quarters of hosings – not one big bath!
The week in review: HP clears the way. One of the most costly and contentious tech mergers in recent memory clears its last hurdle this week, paving the way for HP to complete its $19 billion deal with Compaq Computer. [CNET News.com]
This is something I would love to see. A small town newspaper builds a site with Radio. It provides Radio to all of the community leaders in town, such as the local fire department, the police, the schools, the community organizations, the local sports teams, the zoning board, etc. All told it provides 50 licenses, templates, and a location to post ($2k). It then links to these organizations via its home site and aggregates RSS style news. It accepts more community weblogs from others that buy the software on their own and begin to publish (my town’s girls soccer team has a Radio weblog, through no work done by me).
It then sells Radio, plus a place on their main site, to local businesses. $250 a year. The local travel agents, the real-estate agents, the landscaping businesses, etc all post new info on specials, tips on what your next purchase or activity should be, etc. There would easily be, in most 20k person towns 100 small companies that would do this = $25 k. All the paper would need to do to get these people publishing is give them the link to download the software.
Now, most of this could be done without an RCS server and simply through FTP, a static host (available at most ISPs for low $$), and linking. Simple. An RCS and some manipulation of RSS newsfeeds would add another level of sophistication and community building.
Think of the benefits! All the news you could ever want on a town in one place = fresh, decentralized, and useful. Produced by the people who make it. Excellent. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
Thanks to everybody at Userland who pulled double and triple duty to square away the problems. As much as I (personally) appreciate the disk space, I think the CASE STUDY of the problem and the nature of the final resolution could be even more valuable to anyone involved in leading information technology projects or consulting others in the area of systems management.
If problems can’t be completely prevented, what lessons can we take away from this experience (unfortunately at Userland’s expense)? Can running a server be outsourced with less likelihood of a similar problem? Why or why not?
BellSouth aims at businesses with DSL. The company plans to offer new broadband Internet services, joining the pack of Net service providers that are trying to win higher-paying business customers. [CNET News.com]
In addition to the reasons that are discussed below, traditional telecom plans will drift for the following reasons:
They are regulated bureacracies steeped in years of central planning
Financial protectionism has rewarded depreciation schedules of 40 years on technology investments that are obsolete in less than 5 years
Flawed reasoning that has them trying to protect the old technology that produces their revenue while also attempting to (arrogantly) build rather than buy new technology networks that are already available from companies not encumbered by the ”copper” problem
Another matter of arrogance is calling my connection to the public network ”the last mile” – I’m the paying customer and am on ”the FIRST mile.” Bob Frankston nailed this point in Beyond Telecom.
The Economist: The Telecom bloodbath gets worse. Why? A couple of reasons:
A mismatch between inexpensive optical bandwidth at the core of the Internet and expensive last-mile bandwidth provided by copper wire and co-axial cable.
A lack of available fee-based content caused by the media industry.
A distribution system that relies on expensive centralized sites.
In order to correct this, a couple things need to happen:
Last mile bandwidth needs to move to fiber in order to place it on the same 1 year doubling rate experienced by providers of core bandwidth. The best way to force the regional bells and cable companies to move quickly to last mile fiber is to introduce competition into the local loop. Clearly, the CLEC model didn’t work (the regional bells actively worked to undermine their ability to ride their networks). The only hope is a high capacity fixed-point wireless provider that can enable hundreds of Mbs of connectivity for a reasonable cost. This would require that the US provide one or two companies with a sanctioned monopoly on the spectrum required (in contrast to selling it at an auction). This new competitor could have a nation-wide system up and going in a couple of years. The fear here is that this new competitor will chew up this available bandwidth by replicating current cable offerings.
A move to fixed price all-you-can-eat media services. This new system would quickly trounce TV/cable as the best means to get professionally produced content. The result would be a radical improvement in revenues for media companies and an increasing demand for fatter pipes to get it onto the hard-drives of consumer PCs faster.
A new distribution architecture. A bright spot is the impending roll-out of smart desktop software (personal broadcast networks—a combination of P2P, desktop-webapps, and webservices) that will use plentiful desktop storage and programmed downloads (24×7 utilization of the current thin pipe) to provide high-quality, media-rich consumer experiences. When the pipe does open up, these low-cost systems will allow fill the available capacity as quickly as it becomes available without a corresponding increase in costs. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
Tonight, as I was going through my news aggregator, I stumbled into some filth from a site that I had previously subscribed to because of other topics. The filth I got was so bad that it will make me question anything else I get from that individual on any subject.
I’ve posted this before: The Constitutions First Amendment allows the media to print or say almost anything. Journalisms First Principle should require that the media be scrupulous in deciding what that will be. It’s from Warren Buffett’s 2000 letter to shareholders.
New found personal publishing freedoms ought to be subject to this same principle!
is tomorrow. I’m at a software conference in Atlanta. Where would I rather be? You got it. Warren Buffett has called the weekend Woodstock for Capitalists. From the early 80’s to today the meeting has changed dramatically. However, from 9:30 to 3:00 tomorrow, the place to be is Omaha!
BROOMFIELD, Colo., May 2, 2002 – Level 3 Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq:LVLT) announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Software Spectrum, Inc. (Nasdaq:SSPE), a global provider, marketer and reseller of business software with revenue of approximately $1.3 billion and EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) of $24 million for the twelve months ending January 31, 2002. The aggregate purchase price is approximately $122 million, adjusted for option proceeds and Software Spectrum’s current cash position.
for all the many weblogs that exist today. Wouldn’t it be great to do a search on a subject and get only the weblogs that have X% of the posts on that subject?
As covered in Microcontent News, Nick Denton, co-founder and former CEO of Moreover (not to mention venerable British blogger) has announced his new venture, which is going to address, in his words, the ”need to make weblogs more accessible: to turn them from a cult phenomenon into mainstream media, without corrupting the form.” Of course, it’ll only be an 80% company. [EVHEAD]
Why is it that every technology winds up saturated with competitors? I guess everyone’s got a ”better idea.”
Helen Keller. ”Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings.” [Motivational Quotes of the Day]
Tennessee Doctors Group Sues Insurers. The Tennessee Medical Association sued the state’s four biggest health insurers on Thursday, alleging their managed care practices threaten patients’ health. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: Health]
Sorry this comes so late. I’ve been in Huntsville and Atlanta today. Blogging via dial-up. I hope this one makes it through. You have my thanks for the educational process that blogging has launched for me. The quote above seems somehow fitting given Userland’s trials and tribulations on this birthday!
the tool of choice among the many weblogs I’ve read in the past 48 hours. Scott Johnson doesn’t think so, but he does a great job of explaining why FrontPage is his choice – warts and all!
It certainly seems that quite a few people are using Dreamweaver to develop the ”look” of their weblogs and then ”pasting” that work into the templates that make up their weblog application. Maybe I’ve got this wrong, but it seems that if one developed something in Dreamweaver, at some point you’d have to cut-copy-paste into Radio. I don’t have a clue whether or not Movable Type is similar, but I suspect there are templates for that app as well.
Dreamweaver MX and Validity. Rachel Andrew has written tutorials on Dreamweaver MX and valid (X)HTMLand Dreamweaver MX and external CSS for positioning. She has published Best Practices with CSS in Dreamweaver MX. I downloaded… [meryl’s notes]
At more clients than I can count, employees discuss the endless changes to the priorities or the absence of priorities at all. Janice Fraser takes a look at the phenomenon in the field of web design. The tools and methods she recommends work in every area of a company. This is good stuff!
Janice Fraser: ”Nearly every company I’ve worked with since becoming a web professional six years ago has lacked an efficient way to decide which things to do first.” [EVHEAD]
Our company has been doing a lot of this lately. We’ve found a terrific set of resources and business processes for direct mail, email follow-ups and measuring our marketing results. Nothing’s instant and nothing’s guaranteed, but there are some tried-and-true principles to follow!
Marketing Software When You Are a Small Company: ”Let’s start with a definition. Marketing is the creation of demand for a product or service. Sales is the execution of strategies that fulfill demand. For example, you send out a bulk email about your product to a targeted list. That’s marketing—you are creating demand. When fifty replies come back that need to be individually answered, that’s sales. When you follow up on those fifty replies three weeks later to see if you can answer additional questions then you have a good sales program.” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
What Blogging Archetype Are You Most Like? ”Every blogger is different. >From personal diaries to funny links to incisive political commentary and everything in between, bloggers are an amazing bunch. Yet, as in any community, some have emerged as leaders – trusted authorities whose voice (and reciprocal links) demand respect…” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
If you can get behind the numbers and peel away the 20-40 year depreciation schedules for outdated equipment, the flakey ”swaps” that inflate revenue and the slow-thinking management styles that pervade legacy telecos, a value can be found. The need for communications isn’t going away. There may always be a debate about copper, wireless, fiber, coax, cable TV, teleco, satellite, etc., but somewhere in all of the debate is a monthly number that consumers and businesses will pay for their communication needs. Once those numbers are estimated, some additional estimates of intrinsic value exist. No one is certain where the bottom is in either the slump in demand or the free fall of market caps, but value exists down here somewhere. It certainly appears that value is closer today than it has ever been! Can these companies go to $0.10 a share? Sure, but by that time they’ll be sharing such doldrums with an awful lot of other industries.
”The only viable reinsurer…for truly large-scale terrorism is the U.S. Government.”
This sentence is from a November 9, 2001 letter to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. The quote is Warren Buffett’s. The letter, like so much of what Warren Buffett writes, is enormously helpful in understanding the insurance and reinsurance industries. Apparently, there’s hope for some action!
Senate Takes Up Terrorism Insurance. Lawmakers have reached a consensus on the need to revive federal legislation that would put most of the burden of paying for a major terrorist attack on the government. By Joseph B. Treaster. [New York Times: Business]
First, I want to see the Web finish turning into the writing environment of first resort. Back in the mid-80s there was a book called The Mac is Not a Typewriter. I don’t remember what the point was, but I do know that I want to see the Web turn into the next typewriter: a writing and publishing system for everybody the final fulfillment of the press freedom sanctioned by the First Amendment. To me that’s what weblogs do, big time.
Second, I want to see the Web restored to its original design as a symetrical system. I’d like speeds both up and down to be equal. I’d like Port 80 to go unblocked. Cable and ADSL (which constitutes most DSL) systems are set up today with the expectation that most people would rather consume than produce. In fact they actively discourage production. Yet most of us would probably rather put our photo albums and home movies on our own home servers instead of some BigCo or ISP server, if the choice was available. Decentralized weblogs, by appealing to relatively resourceful and motivated early adopters, will do more to drive a symetrcial web than anything else on the horizon right now.
It seems to me that Userland is pushing toward both those goals with Radio, and has been for a long time. In fact, as I understand it, Radio was designed originally as a completely decentralized system. But because very few potential customers were running on their own IP addresses out of their own homes and offices, the market was too small. So they desinged it to allow upstreaming for HTTP service out of an ISP a solution that’s as decentralized as it practically can be.
Again, I don’t know enough about the others to say how decentralized they are. [Doc Searls Weblog]
I’ve just experienced the same thing as Jason. In my particular case, it’s slightly different. My weblog which is unread by the masses remained unread whether I was posting or not!
Note to self (so that I’ll remember this feeling when it’s gone): I’m finding it harder and harder to get back into the Web when I’m away from it for long periods of time. It’s not that I was on vacation, stomping about in the beautiful Alaskan wilderness. I thought it was that at first, but it’s not. It’s something else, but I don’t know what exactly. I’m sure I’ll forget all about it in a few hours when the digital crack starts taking hold. [Kottke.org]
is so often cited in these teleco disasters, but we’ve not found a single (mainstream/BigPub) writer who is willing to get specific about which services are suffering from weak demand. Is long distance service? Is local service? Are entry-level broadband ISP services weak? Is the long-haul carrier business weak? What about end-to-end IP networks? Hosting? Data traffic?
Most of these writers leave the impression that all forms of the communications industry are down and out. Some would have you believe that the communications industry is going away.
If not some form of our existing communications industry, then what?
with a different attitude and set of objectives for learning and using a weblog and the software application behind it. More on this in the next couple of weeks.
Today is Walter Hewlett’s last day as a director of Hewlett-Packard, and he won’t be around to say goodbye. In fact, when HP shareholders meet this afternoon to elect a new eight-member board, no Hewlett or Packard will be on the ballot—the first time the founding families have been excluded from the governance of the company since it was founded in 1938. [SiliconValley.com]
802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide. As a network administrator, architect, or security professional, you need to understand the capabilities, limitations, and risks associated with integrating wireless LAN technology into your current infrastructure. This practical guide provides all the information necessary to analyze and deploy wireless networks with confidence. It’s the only source that offers a full spectrum view of 802.11, from the minute details of the specification, to deployment, monitoring, and troubleshooting. [O’Reilly Safari]
Let’s say one’s opinion matters to the editor and publisher of a popular newspaper or magazine; you have some influence. Let’s also say that we believe that newspaper or magazine would be well-served to make their news feeds available via RSS.XML.
What’s the proper layman’s (non-programmer) language to use with a business person to explain what might be required on his end? How much time is his I.T. staff going to spend working on the problem? What resources must they have at their disposal? What showstoppers might exist in their past decisions that would make the move overly challenging or costly?
Yesterday I linked to this. It told of the demise of www.dooce.com, the weblog of a talented designer and writer. I don’t necessarily care for some of the subject matter or the foul language I read there. But, the expertise, ability and talent overflowed in the work!
I’ve watched the comments posted here. Near the bottom of the comments someone posted using the name and email address of another extremely talented designer. Finally, out of respect, the person that had been ’impersonated’ entered a civil comment/retraction.
I’m not sure what I (really) believe about punishment for malicious hacking, violating security, web impersonations, etc., but I’m reasonably sure that penalties can’t get too severe for idiots who do absolutely ridiculous pranks with information systems that exist for 1001 reasons other than their amusement!
For two days I’ve plowed through every good design of a weblog I can find looking for ideas and techniques. Mark Pilgrim was right when he valued content over form. But, I can’t help myself. Some of the designs of these sites simply invite readership. Sure, I’m only going to read a grand total of 2 posts about somebody’s cat, but without the great design, I’d read far less than that! This whole HTML thing is impressive when you see it done right. Now I’m hoping that all of it isn’t so tied to someone’s artistic flair that design-challenged morons like me can never produce good-looking work.
Top 10 Web Design Lists. TaskZ maintains a Top 10 List Archives and its newest addition is the Top 10 Information Architecture and Interface Design Sites. List is pretty accurate, in my opinion. [Link LucDesk]... [meryl’s notes]
is the set of fears and worries that well up in all of us when rumors of suicide bombers at the mall or chemical explosions in Manhattan or fires in hotels happen and we can’t immediately determine whether or not our lifestyles are threatened or an accident has happened.
Hand-Held Computer Believes That It Belongs on a Desktop. Each generation of hand-held computers gets a little better at sustaining its users between visits to their PC’s. But a model by the OQO Corporation, which is based in San Francisco, has ambitions to replace its desktop counterpart. By Chris Gaither. [New York Times: Technology]
I’m ready for the device that is truly portable – not luggable – and is as feature rich as my desktop system without the annoyance of connecting a mouse, a network cable, a power cord, etc. Ten years ago, doing those things was ok for the new-found freedom. Today, I want to take off without worrying about forgetting something!
Tech Support on Wheels. House calls may not be a thing of the past after all, not with the growing brigade of PC doctors available to repair home computers on the spot. By Lisa Guernsey. [New York Times: Technology]
Isn’t HP in court right now with questions about whether or not ”projections” might have been a tad inflated to get ”the deal” done?
AOL Has Huge Loss; Shares Rise. AOL Time Warner reports higher-than-expected sales, but takes a breathtaking $54 billion charge to cover stock losses. Meanwhile, executives pledge to rev up flagging online ad sales. By Joanna Glasner. [Wired News]
I’m never sure what good protocol (as in behavior) is with some of this web and internet stuff. Quite by accident, I’ve stumbled into the fact that Joe Gregorio who operates the BitWorking web site put together a zip file of his CSS Radio theme. He even referenced me by name, but I didn’t realize it until just now. First of all, thanks, Joe. I’m appreciative.
Second, what am I not doing each day (as I attempt to learn Radio) that would have tipped me off? Is it that I’m supposed to be checking my ”referrers” page? Is there something else?
I’m a Christian, Zacarias Moussaoui is a Muslim. He hates me for what I am, what I believe, and where I live. He’s getting ready to go to trial for conspiring in the September 11 terror attacks. Read the article. While I don’t agree with Mr. Moussaoui I think you have to give him credit for at least believing in something, and being willing to die for it. He’s calling us to task. All I can say is be prepared. [Rob Fahrni]
Bored and unfocused I clicked on a bookmark I had set for www.weblogs.com. I prowled a few of the weblogs at the top of the list. I found Blogger sites, Movable Type Sites, Manila, Radio, etc. Then I read the FAQ for Weblogs.com.
This isn’t just a Userland thing – this is huge. There are untold thousands of weblogs! Designs are all over the ballpark – some frugal, some great, some a little too Flashy. What a time sink this could become!
Yep, original post was at 12:13p.m. It is now 2:45! Why do my posts show up on weblogs.com multiple times – once for home and once for each category that a post goes into? Have I got something configured wrong?
Parents go to extraordinary lengths to bring meaning, life, lessons and joy to kids. Here’s a story well worth your time – it’s just a single incident in the life of one little boy:
Jon is examining a lesson I learned a while ago: format sets you free…. Free to be creative. Free to focus on the thoughts. Free form design, layout, essay structure, etc takes away from true creativity: the art of communicating thoughts. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
dooce.com: ”As of today, 22 April, 2002, I will no longer be updating this website, dooce.com. [EVHEAD]
In all of my web prowling, I’ve searched for someone who might be willing to do a set of Radio templates for me for a fee. While the brash writing style isn’t one I’d necessarily relate to, this web site has shown some of the finest design talent I’ve seen on the web. If this is truly ’the end,’ I consider it a loss.
Take a look at this tribute as well! These are two extremely gifted designers.
Clarification on themes. Steve Pilgrim (no relation) asks: ”Am I correct in saying Mark Pilgrim has 11 MovableType themes?” No. I have 1 MovableType theme and a few lines of Javascript that dynamically swaps the CSS. The HTML never changes. This means I don’t need to publish 11 copies of my site just to get 11 themes; I publish 1 copy, and let you decide how you want to read it. Joe Gregorio has a similar CSS-based style switcher on his Radio site. There are one or two caveats to be aware of, but it’s quite doable: he’s doing it. Ask him for details. [diveintomark]
This may put me on the road to creating a theme for my site. Mark’s links are a huge help. Thanks!
61% of 20.0MB is free. After just 3 months. It appears to me that this means I need a hosting arrangement with at least 150MB-200MB of space to cover my ”posting average” for the next five years!! Seriously, it’s time to find a host and get on with it. I just wish Russ would tell me all I ever need to know about editing Radio templates! I want a new look at the same time that I change to a new domain name.
Level 3 increased revenue by 18.4% in sequential quarters
Times are tough for telecos – both old and new. While Williams Communications was announcing that it filed for bankruptcy this morning, Level 3 was announcing a solid performance in the face of incredibly difficult conditions. Here’s a quote from Jim Crowe, the company’s CEO:
””We are pleased to have completed our acquisition of Corporate Software during the first quarter,” said Crowe. ”This transaction affords a number of distinct advantages to Level 3. This acquisition will enable (i)Structure to attain scale and to leverage Corporate Software’s customer base, worldwide presence and IT professional relationships as (i)Structure expands its portfolio of services. As communications technology continues to improve at unprecedented rates, we see an opportunity to change the way software is purchased and utilized. This evolution should be a longer-term benefit for both our communications and information services businesses.”
And another:
”Our existing liquidity position, our ongoing cost management effort and our belief that we will turn Operating Cash Flow positive during the fourth quarter 2002, give us confidence in the strength of our financial position,” said Crowe. ”We have taken steps during the first quarter to further strengthen our financial position, and we continue to believe we are fully funded to free cash flow breakeven with an adequate cushion, in accordance with our business plan. We remain well positioned with our target customer base and believe we will continue to increase our market share of their transport, IP, colocation and dial-up access business needs.”
Last night I thanked Dave Winer for pointing to me (and my questions) from Scripting News.
This morning, a number of you have come through with comments or emails. Here are the details:
On my question about Audio, MP3 and audiophile (high-end) systems, Alwin Hawkins pointed me to a US Robotics device for wirelessly sending MP3 files from a PC or server to an audio system.
Then, I got a comment and an email from Dave Luebbert. He took the time to start my education in MP3’s and high end audio systems. Take a look at his comment here. More importantly, take a look at SongTrellis. A great Manilla site.
Mark Pilgrim has 11 Movable Type themes? These themes could be downloaded by a user of MT and used, but these are not themes suited to Radio as I understand it. Here’s what I’m reading from:
Trusting that ”thanks” is not bad form in weblogging, ...
I’ll say thanks to ”Dave” for the Scripting News link. I appreciate it.
I’m also interested in where the music business is headed, although for slightly different reasons. Smarter folk than I will figure out the business issues and the technology issues that reward creative people for developing great art, music, books, plays, movies, etc.
I’m interested in the pace of change and the types of changes that will allow my selections of music to play through a serious stereo system. iPods, Walkmen and assorted PC speaker systems aren’t what I have in mind. I want to use a fairly high-end audio system without taking every MP3 to a CD burner. We should be able to feed a stereo system from a server.
I’ve been prowling the weblog world today. As I’ve mentioned before, I find a lot of consistency in the design and look-and-feel of Blogger sites, Movable Type sites and Radio sites. I’m sure a lot of this has to do with available themes/templates.
I’m also noticing that few Movable Type sites have xml icons or ’rss syndication links.’ Can anyone explain this? Does Movable Type offer any type of aggregator for reading weblogs or keeping up with news sources? These questions are NOT about Movable Type so much as they are about being able to keep up with/subscribe to a cross-section of weblogs.
This could get interesting sooner rather than later. At 11:00a.m. ET tomorrow, Level 3 Communications, Inc. will hold its conference call to cover 1Q2002. Shareholders expect to get the company’s press release prior to the conference call. Revenue is on everyone’s minds. We’ll see whether or not a small company like Level 3 is able to pick up market share.
In the distant past I was an audiophile. If reading about the latest tweaks, gear and notions about what sounds good counts, I’m still an audiophile. I’ve never used the internet to look for audiophile sites or to look at the popular magazine sites – stereophile, the absolute sound, etc.
My interest today is in building a nice sounding system around MP3 files and a server that could behave like a jukebox. The server as a member of a component stereo system is fairly new. Anyone doing this? Any clues, tips or weblogs out there?
Study Guide. I have added a little text to the Study Guide, explaining the purpose. Still more work to do there. Also, Jeremy Bowers has posted another directory of resources – check it out! I will be working with his material as well. [Ruminations News]
Inside Dreamweaver Ultradev 4. Inside Dreamweaver UltraDev 4 teaches you how to build a fully-functional Web site from the ground up. Each chapter provides a tutorial saved at critical junctures so you can focus on particular features. Walk through the step-by-step exercises and use the project files, sample database, and graphics from the accompanying Web site. [O’Reilly Safari]
After some discussion on the Radio UserLand discussion group yesterday, I have started a new category in the directory called Study Guide. This subdirectory contains the current listings for the following categories: Developer Information, Frequently Asked Questions, Getting Started with Radio UserLand, Tips, and Tutorials. I am going to take a shot at organizing this and other material that I find to provide an easier-to-use guide to learning Radio UserLand, based on the current web-based documentation available. Any suggestions for content or organization are welcome. [Andy Sylvester’s Radio Weblog]
... chemical, industrial, nuclear, agricultural, aerospace – these were the engineering majors of yester-year. Now many other fields title the experts with ”engineer.”
Deep Linking Returns to Surface. The Danish Newspaper Publishers’ Association is trying to stop a news service from linking to stories within its website in a case some fear may alter the natural course of the Web. By Michelle Delio. [Wired] [Loebrich.org]
”This is why we – an ardent Republican and an ardent Democrat – are announcing…
a new bipartisan coalition, Common Good (www.ourcommongood.com), to advocate a basic overhaul of our legal system.”
This is quoted from an Op-Ed piece titled We’re Reaping What We Sue in the April 17, 2002 Wall Street Journal. The editorial was jointly written by George McGovern and Alan K. Simpson – both former senators. I’m always a little leery of any of these organizations which are formed some years after politicians retire from public office. However, no cause could need as much attention as the overhaul they speak of. Whether criminal or civil, Federal or state or local, the legal system in this country which finds lawyers lining up to help people sue anyone at anytime for anything without regard to merit. Here’s another quote:
”Many disputes in social settings involve value judgments, not ’proof.’ All that’s needed to bring a lawsuit is a theory. in hindsight, it is often easy to think of something different that could have been done. Resourceful lawyers soon learned they coud bring lawsuits for almost anything, and in almost any amount. The idea of ’rights’ was turned upside down, from being a shield against abuse to being a sword for personal gain.”
that journalists and analysts are using to bury the telecom industry, these same writers will one day return to write about the shortages that exist for dependable, fast bandwidth that is available everywhere.
Broadband is a term that has been overused to refer to the move from 56K modems to cable or DSL. Realities will begin to set in late this year or early next year. Those realities will expose 1.5Mbps as being insufficient bandwidth for much of what we will want to do with PC’s, PDA’s, etc.
It may be fair to lob shots at the teleco’s. It may also be fair to talk about a glut of fiber. However, all bandwidth isn’t created equal! Fiber is only one piece of a very large puzzle that must be tightly fit together to create truly fast and dependable next generation networks that are capable of delivering broadband bandwidth. Only a few players are positioned to capitalize on the coming shortage of this type of bandwidth.
Telecom May Have Bargains, After All. It seems a good time to survey the slag heap that is the telecom stock sector. Surely, some jewels lie buried there, cast off in recent months by dispirited investors. By Gretchen Morgenson. [New York Times: Business] NTT of Japan Plans to Cut 17,000 Jobs. Nippon Telegraph and Telephone said that it would restore its profitability over the next three years, in part by cutting 17,000 jobs. By Ken Belson. [New York Times: Business] WorldCom Cuts 2002 Guidance. WorldCom lowered its full year 2002 earnings and revenue guidance for the second time, citing lower demand from business customers amid an industrywide slump. By Reuters.
I haven’t seen this, but I’d like to. There are few lessons in leadership that are more profound than those seen when a nation’s leader is facing the possible extinction of his country.
Churchill, the Hero and the Husband. A new HBO film seeks to explain how Winston Churchill pulled himself up from political oblivion to become a towering figure and a model for today. By Sarah Lyall. [New York Times: Arts]
...and I’m confident they do in the world dominated by technology-oriented Radio bloggers, then I’ve got a whole set of terminology to nail down. It goes something like this:
Outliner or outline (an application/feature that exists within the Radio application and the outlines are the ”data” created by using the outliner)
Instant outline (by following a specific set of instructions, I can allow subscriptions to ONE of my outlines; I’m a little fuzzy on this)
Google outline browser (don’t yet have a clue about this one!)
Then, there’s the whole concept of K-LOGS. I believe John Robb coined this term. Today, there is more about the concept at his web site.
All of this, for me at least, has to do with learning enough about Radio and its advocates to be able to see which gadgets are merely gadgets, which tricks are for programmers and developers and which features are truly features with function and benefit for end users and groups of end users.
So far, I’m as impressed with the prospects of using Radio as a content management system for updating a set of Radio categories as I am with Radio’s utility as a personal journalism/publishing platform. Outlines, Google Boxes and a whole lot of other stuff isn’t likely to turn executives, professionals and other non-developers into consistent Radio users. This isn’t bad – it just is!
Now, if you suggest that the objective at some level is to turn Userland into a household name, make Radio a ”killer app” and provide everyman with a personal publishing system, then you might want to reconsider the time-sink associated with some of the gadgets. Otherwise, Radio will go right along impressing a certain subset of developers, a subset of technology professionals and selected (patient) individuals from many other walks of life.
He posted a comment today at 5:08pm to answer the question I raised below. Alwin’s email came in at 1:08pm. I just appreciate the fact that they both provided answers.
I’m not sure where to get this next bit of Radio education, so if you read this and know, please give me a hint. Here’s a simple way to ask all that appears below:
See the question, ”Want to syndicate my weblog? Now available in RSS!”
What can I do with that? What is available with that icon? Clicking on it simply gives me a page of XML.
Reading Jenny Levine’s link to Ken Rawlings, the impression is left that any site with the white-on-orange XML icon can be added to the news aggregator. I thought only the XML coffee cup icon could give you that capability. Now, it seems that these two icons are merely conveniences or features, and the actual underlying technology can somehow be manipulated (hacked?) to create subscriptions. Is there a tutorial, document, discussion, weblog, post, help screen or any of the other 4000 methods for communicating that explains this?
Then, if you’ve read this far, help me understand what Bruce Loebrich is doing. If his hack is designed to organize Google news into ”categorized” listings in the news aggregator, isn’t this something that all the techies are going to adopt, and suddenly everyone’s going to be posting the same news from Google? I’m back into the deep water!
The answer is as simple as ”right-click” the little white and orange xml icon, select copy shortcut and paste the shortcut into your news subscriptions. Thanks once again to Alwin Hawkins for taking the time to give me a pointer!
I have many of Petroski’s books in my library. If you have any interest at all in design, engineering or the processes by which ideas become ”things,” you should read his books. I’ll read this one during the next week.
Once identified as a site with an XML icon, what are the specific steps one can follow to add that site to the news aggregator. I know what to do if they’ve got an XML Coffee Cup icon.
Dan Bricklin at the Boston Marathon: ”As each runner crosses the starting line, lots of check points, and finally the finish line, their time is logged. Nextel let each runner specify up to six email addresses (up from two last year) to which to send an email immediately after each crossing giving the time and estimated arrival at the finish.” Neat. [EVHEAD]
Movable Type users have the same weblog troubles that I do!
Scriptygoddess. Another useful weblog devoted to a specific topic – scriptygoddess has how-tos, MovableType hacks, bookmarks, projects, suggested reading, and other tricks. Hmm… that’s an idea. Bookmark weblogs devoted to topics… [meryl’s notes]
What Are Webloggers Reading?. Another cool resource from onfocus.com: Weblog BookWatch, which searches weblogs passing through weblogs.com looking for links to books at Amazon.com and lists the most frequently mentioned books. [Link nfo]... [meryl’s notes]
Peggy Noonan’s writing is among the best I read. Her work today regarding the Catholic crisis and the pope is, as usual, outstanding. Here’s an excerpt:
He could start with Cardinal Bernard Law, whose actions have at least broken the spirit of the law. That would send a message to those in the church who need to hear it, that covering up, going along, and paying off victims is over. That careerism is over, and Christianity is back. [Wall Street Journal]
MovableType Blog. MovableBlog is a blog dedicated to all things MT. I know it ain’t easy to have a blog devoted to one topic, but it makes things easier to aggregate all… [meryl’s notes]
Long ago in place far away, before Andersen Consulting became Accenture, I got embroiled in a nightmarish project involving Andersen’s folk and a client with a dispute. Hubris, pure hubris! The end.
Since the inception of curry.com and for that matter it’s predecessors MeTaVerse.com and mtv.com, I’ve never really cared much about the style or look of my weblog. In fact, I’ve probably missed out on many offers of help just because I’m too deep into the writing or distribution or development. Or maybe ’cause I’m flying the chopper, but the point is I need help and finally realize it. I’m suffering from bad templatage! My weblog gets pretty decent traffic(Usernum 1014), I’d like to barter a credit link for a new template design. Must work with ”Radio Userland” [Adam Curry: Adam Curry’s Weblog]
I still think there is a market for and an appropriate business model for a library of several hundred to a 1000 themes/templates that could be prepared by a lot of gifted designers and sold to the benefit of the owners of the site as well as the designers themselves. Apparently, designers aren’t big on doing ”speculative” template design with only the possibility of future returns. I know that with Radio at shy of $40, the value of this entire tool to me is such that I’d pay much more for Radio AND pay for a top-notch theme as well.
If one of the old-timers in this blogging field with some credibility can rally the designers, the business will pay! I’m confident of it. If each designer wants $5K for a theme up front, then the business proposition sinks like an overpriced rock!
Might as well end the day with this – Jake: ”Ole and Lena were excited to get a new cellular phone..” [Scripting News]
Tomorrow: I’m going to learn how to wrap the text of a post properly around a graphic. Russ has something on this and Howard Hansen posted a comment about it as well. I know it’s simple stuff, but this HTML stuff is still not immediately obvious to me. I think the difficulty stems from never having had to use a text processor prior to WYSIWYG word processors. Or, stupidity and density could be factors.
Working solely by email, he talked me through something I didn’t even know existed. I edited a macro. At least that’s what I think I did. See the opml coffee cup over in the left border of my site? I had to edit a macro to be able to use this coffee cup in lieu of the one that was the default.
I had no idea that I had access to macros. When the instructions said, ”Add a call to <%radio.outliner.macros.coffeeMug ()%>, as shown in this screen shot.’ I thought that was all I could do. I’m not sure why there’s a border around it, nor am I sure why the graphic that’s part of the big blue button at the top is very slightly distorted, but I’m learning! That’s what I’m wanting.
Thanks Alwin – many thanks! Hey, he’s got another site?
Where does he come up with this stuff? Better yet…how does a page like that get created? Me thinks there’s more to it than the html I’ve been staring at!
There’s a difference in transforming journalism and providing a new medium for journalism. Providing a medium which permits more people to become journalists doesn’t necessarily transform the craft which is journalism.
It’s the World Wide Blog. The personal homepages in the long-ago days of yore have evolved into sophisticated weblogs that, some say, will transform the world of journalism. By Andrew Sullivan of Wired magazine. [Wired News]
If I have a different coffee cup that I think will look better on my weblog, how do I change it? Right now it appears that the macro that points to the coffee cup is pointing to an image at this spot
Blame Howard Greenstein. He feels Radio documentation needs to pull together some of the different links and sites for finding RSS feeds.
Naturally, as I began this, I realized beginners also need the step-by-step for How To Enter or Confirm A Weblog Subscription. More to come soon to satisfy Howard.
(Yeah, not to mention a tutorial on the Google Box, a topic on Radio relative link management now that I have finished talking to Jake, implementing and then writing about a PicoSearch box for my weblog, documenting tempate fiddling using my Jenett theme as a framework … and finishing up the newbie Install Guide. Meanwhile, I’m rereading Matt’s Frontier book. Playing golf too.) [Russ Lipton Documents Radio]
I wish I understood all that was implied in these two posts. This is great stuff, but I’m about 6 light years behind in this race. It’s a lot like listening to and watching a couple of doctors discuss some intricate problem with all the knowing nods and eyebrow raises that come with insider knowledge!
Informacion de Venezuela did over 20k (page reads) yesterday! the weblog community will be at big pub levels soon. Time for microcontent advertisers to take notice! $0.10 a pageview for highly focused advertising would be nice. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
Anyone got any clues as to how/why a 4-day old weblog manages to get this many hits in a foreign language? When I look at my own hits, I find that all of my attempts to edit my weblog and check comments, etc. are the major (and sometimes lone) contributors to my hit count.
Warren Buffett wrote this article for the Washington Post last week. It may give you a clearer understanding of stock options, the shareholder’s viewpoint, the employee’s viewpoint and the accounting debate. Here’s a teaser:
The argument, it should be emphasized, was not about the use of options. Companies could then, as now, compensate employees in any manner they wished. They could use cash, cars, trips to Hawaii or options as rewards—whatever they felt would be most effective in motivating employees. But those other forms of compensation had to be recorded as an expense, whereas options—which were, and still are, awarded in wildly disproportionate amounts to the top dogs—simply weren’t counted.
The more I think I understand, the less I really do. First, about categories. I’m under the impression that there are 3 places I could go and change the name of a category:
Whatever this screen is called – my weblog editor. There’s a place below where I’m typing that allows me to set up new categories and edit old ones. I can change a category name there.
Using Windows Explorer and navigating into the www folder, I can change the folder name for a category.
In the Radio application there are things called “keys.” I think there is a place in there that allows me to change the name of a category.
My question: is there any combination of these changes that will result in the category names I want with all prior posts revised to appear under that category name?
Clarification by example:A category is named myFriends. I want to change the name of the category to ‘Ginny’ and post things that I think Ginny would be interested in there. If the category called weblogs already tags posts that I think Ginny would like, can I change the category name in some way so that all those posts are now in the category called ‘Ginny’ AND if she navigates to the category using a URL address like http://radio.weblogs.com/usernum/categories/ginny. Right now, I know how to change the category name, but she would still have to navigate to http://radio.weblogs.com/usernum/categories/myFriends.
Titles – I guess I need to revisit this to understand why Jon would go to the effort he’s describing here:Rewriting titles to optimize information flow. Recently I spent about an hour reviewing and upgrading the titles of my postings here. Many of the items predated the titling feature, which was added on March 11. I know this because that’s when I wrote Titled items added to Radio! Shortcut hyperlinking of phrases like that makes old content come alive, and is one way I was repaid for my trouble. Another was an immediate doubling of my storyList page which has, for me, replaced the calendar as a compact chronology of items. [Jon’s Radio]
Google IT – I need to revisit this as well. What’s the significance?
Long before this company was acquired and ultimately sold by Sterling Commerce, I visited a couple of companies that were using the flagship product called RemoteWare. Never before had I seen a piece of technology as well thought out for its application. This dates back to the early or mid 90’s. Now private again and under the leadership of Joan Herbig, XcelleNet appears to have a very bright future.
I’ve enjoyed the New York Times partnership with Userland. Now I’m ready for more. Where’s The Wall Street Journal? Neil Budde seems like the type of guy who would jump at the chance. How about Forbes?
I always say, keep a diary and someday it’ll keep you. —Mae West
When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did – well, that’s Memoirs. —Will Rogers
Sue Herera of CNBC and Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, owner of CNBC had a fine chat this afternoon. The chat provided a forum in which GE could refute the points made in yesterday’s New York Times article.
This came on the heels of today’s announcement by GE. The stock closed below $32 a share and has lost around 20% in the past couple of weeks.
Saturday, I posted A Page of Google Boxes. Originally, I wanted these to appear in an arrangement that was 3 or 4 wide on the page and a ’page-down’ would yield another 3 or 4. How do I stop this from stringing these boxes down the page and how do I adjust the type size, font and width of each Google box? Thanks, web design/HTML gurus.
If you want to know how to make a Google Box with only 5 items, take a look at the comments for this post.
Andy Sylvester has been ”gone” for a while. Saturday marked his return. I’m counting on his work and Russ’s work to get me beyond this mental block I have in knowing where and what to edit to change the look of my weblog to a custom look. If I simply go get one of the other themes, I’m still locked into a canned theme.
I don’t know how to create a template from scratch that makes certain all the pieces of a Radio weblog appear and appear where I want them. It’s looking more and more like my checkbook and a good designer (like A, B or C) are going to get together! The designers I link to are merely examples; none of them have been approached, but I like their design work.
Have you ever wondered what we’d do next if somehow by ”magic” everything we’re working on suddenly worked exactly as we imagined it should? If every portable device provided just the functionality we want; if just the right world conditions materialized; if all was well, what would you learn or work on next? If chasing the almighty dollar wasn’t a motive; if keeping up with whomever was no longer important; if doing something that was personally rewarding or benefitted another was all that mattered, what would you do?
Will Rogers. ”Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.” [Quotes of the Day]
A Fiber Pioneer Restructures. Flag Telecom, one of the firms that helped spark the fiber-optic building boom of the late 1990s, files for bankruptcy protection after missing debt payments. By Joanna Glasner. [Wired News]
If you haven’t read Neal Stephenson’s article about ”the longest wire on Earth,” you should. Though it dates back to December of 1996, it is timely still because of the cost and time required to lay a transoceanic cable. This article is over 50 pages long, but it remains one of the most educational pieces that Wired has ever published. If you have any interest whatsoever in how we move data around the globe, this is worth your time.
Reading it is one of those rare weekly pleasures. I’m finding that my weblog and news aggregator are no substitute for the serendipity of opening a section of the times and letting the pictures, ads and headlines lead me around in a nearly random manner. It’s the little things I guess!
To Conquer Burnout, Think Smaller. In the recently rocky economy, burnout among managers has been rising – so much so that many have quit jobs without the slightest clue as to what they will do next. By Melinda Ligos. [New York Times: Business]
Pushing the Pay Envelope Too Far. Just when you think you’ve seen it all in executive avarice, a new greedmeister, Peter A. Boneparth, president of the Jones Apparel Company, struts across the stage. By Gretchen Morgenson. [New York Times: Business]
These are the kinds of boneheaded moves that will cause Lou Simpson at Berkshire Hathaway to sell! Clearly, he’s already planning to vote against the proposals.
Today is the 90-day anniversary of my initial download of Radio. January 13, 2002 I made my first post. All-in-all, I’d have to give my first quarter performance a C+. I’ve learned a fair amount about Radio, but I’m dismally inept with HTML and formatting that makes everything look the way I want it to. You can see that in how wide the Google Box is compared to the calendar over there on the right, or in the fact that I don’t yet have a ”custom look” to this weblog. Still diggin’.
Flag Telecom Files for Bankruptcy. PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Flag Telecom Holdings Ltd. (FTHL.O) (FTHLq.L) on Friday said it filed for bankruptcy protection, becoming the latest high-speed network operator to buckle under mounting debt amid the industry’s glut of network capacity and slumping demand. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology]
I wanted these to appear side by side in a 3 or 4-up arrangement on the page. I still don’t know enough HTML to make it work that way or else the Google Box macro contains code that arranges the series of boxes down the page. I don’t know and am not sure where to find out.
I’m hoping Russ’s template info will help!
En route to showing you in a few days how to mess a bit with templates to make your Google Box, Creating A Link To Your Home Page. Readers of your stories will thank you.
Understanding What Is A Macro (just a brief definition for now, folks) and how to Copy and Paste URLs to your template will serve you well in this brave, new world. You already know how to back up important Radio files - so you can restore your template if murphy says hello at the worst possible moment. [Russ Lipton Documents Radio]
Several people have suggested I visit Webmonkey as a source for instruction and information about HTML, web design and the like. Now Dave points to them. I guess I need to find out more.
Dane’s either got a slow day or he’s dreaming about Winnemucca life!
How to Clean Anything: ”compiled by industry professionals… quality information on household cleaning methods. Data arranged by house exterior, interior, pets, auto, recreation, and stains. Also included is a glossary of cleaning terms and articles about topics submitted by readers.” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]
Why shouldn’t we use our (Google) Boxes for the sheer whimsy of it? I feel a tutorial coming on …. if I can do this in ten minutes, so can you. [Russ Lipton Documents Radio]
This is where I’m missing the big picture. While the steps I took to create a Google Box were easy and straight forward – I followed Dave’s instructions to the letter – I’m not sure how to apply it for every day use. Do I go back through the steps in the instructions and redo them for a new topic every time I want to change?
I hope Russ answers some of these kinds of questions!
Oh, yeah…anybody know how to make the Google Box narrower or with smaller type? Dave has done it at The Scripting News site. How do I change the attributes of the box?
John does an excellent job of building the business case for web services. For years, I’ve been involved in complex application integration projects involving the disparate distribution systems of dealers and distributors. ”Importing” an invoice into the dealer’s software from the distributor’s software when a purchase order was filled and shipped to the dealer was complex and cumbersome.
If I understand what is really happening when an application called Radio ”talks” to an application called Google, then I have to agree with John that Userland is truly on the cutting edge of what the internet can become. This is great stuff:
Desktop webservices and composite applications. One of the most exciting aspects of desktop webservices is that I can build pages on my desktop that automatically aggregate data from across the web and from webservice enabled corporate applications. This is effectively a personal portal that could include search (Google) of the Web/LAN/desktop, financial info from a place like Yahoo finance, corporate sales data, corporate financial data, corporate inventory data, news (RSS), and even data from peer web services (data entered or auto-aggregated by co-workers in a structured format—contact lists, bookmarks, calendar entries, spreadsheets, etc.). Better yet, I have complete control over the presentation of that data. With a little programming effort, I can incorporate business rules (with tools that can be automated for me) that do things for me based on that data. I could also attach a post button to all the data I collect so its easy for me to share it with co-workers via my weblog. It puts me in control. This is the ultimate composite application. A borg that consumes all others. I don’t want to learn or interact with hundreds of different websites or application specific clients. I want it all on my desktop, running in my browser, where I can modify, manipulate, and publish it. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
Last night’s reading included the latest Wired Magazine.
This is the one with the Long Bets article and the picture of ”Dave”. I need to read the article more carefully and learn more about the projects that Jason points to here:
I went to see Kevin Kelly and Stewart Brandspeak at the Commonwealth Club last night. They talked about their new endeavor, the Long Bets Foundation, which provides a ”public arena for enjoyably competitive predictions, of interest to society, with philanthropic money at stake”. Accountability and continuity are the keys here, two things largely missing from society these days, especially when you look online. Overall, I’m a big fan of the Long Now projects that Kelly and Brand are involved with (like the 10,000 Year Clock, the Rosetta Project, and the All Species Foundation). Getting people thinking about these long term projects might help stimulate new thinking and perspectives about some long term projects we’re already involved with (raising a family, building cities, living a lifetime, building societies). [Kottke.org]
Jenny made it work. She said follow Dave’s instructions. So, I’m off to try something I know nothing about!
But, I’m always finding something else (simple) that stumps me. Look at the way she was able to make the text and graphic mesh together in this post. My graphics always take up several entire lines of text and the next sentence is waaaaaay down there! What’s the secret in this that I’m missing? Why isn’t any of this stuff obvious to me?
how the little shrimpy Marine gets trapped on the witness stand. He begins to look around uncomfortably and says, ”Hal, what does that mean, Hal? What does that mean?”
I’m looking around for Russ or Dane or somebody to tell me what the Google thing really means to those of us who can’t spell HTML, yet!
I’m not clued in enough to really understand why I should be so excited, but I’ve trusted them this far – so…yeah this is great! What’s this? Amy’s into it as well!
Too many corporate reports come off sounding like, ”We would have made our numbers except that…” OR ”Excluding the CEO’s compensation, we were profitable.” Isn’t it great to see someone step up to this whole pro forma nonsense?
Yahoo Gives Pro Forma the Boot. The bellwether Internet firm says it will stop reporting earnings in pro forma, a controversial accounting method popular in the technology sector. By Joanna Glasner. [Wired News]
The other laughable condition is the one in which a company has a new non-recurring item each quarter. Pretty soon you get the feeling that non-recurring items occur with regularity at many of these places.
To set up shortcuts, I want to go back and find stuff I’ve already posted. I hope we can uncover one of these soon!
If anyone knows of a free or low-cost way to add search within a Radio weblog, let me know. Atomz was suggested but the freebie won’t do to cover the intended content reach of this site, though it might work for a while. The paid version, at $15K…[Russ Lipton Documents Radio]
Russ, has ”Dave” given us the answer? Great wish list, too!
Don’t you wish we could ”designate” our tax dollars the way we designate for a church or charity?
Buy a New Car or Build a Village?. DevelopmentSpace focuses entirely on projects that require thousands of dollars, not millions, like an Australian campaign to combat gasoline-fume sniffing or an eye hospital expansion in Nepal. By Brian Kennedy. [New York Times: Technology]
Let’s see, I’d like for the first $5000 to go to… The Times article above makes me think of how many things we really could get done if people could specify. Clearly, the smaller not-for-profit/charitable organizations seem to accomplish mammoth amounts of good work with very little. Those to whom much has been given seem to always wind up with a public outcry on their hands.
I’m mixing charitable giving and work with thoughts about what a country should be doing with tax dollars. With taxation so disproportionately distributed in this country, what departments would remain?
I don’t doubt that the principles of accounting have been pretty badly stretched, if not broken in two, at a few companies. I’m also convinced that ”managed earnings” are a distortion of solid accounting practice. But, does anyone really think the SEC can make it all better?
Set a navigator link at my own site and visit the link from time to time.
Is there a more effective way to do this stuff? Are there clever features that people are using that I’ve overlooked? Is this where the RSSDistiller comes into play if Amy’s not syndicated on NewsIsFree and Syndic8? How do you quickly take in 50-100 sites a day? Can you?
Why don’t people return calls or send thank you notes any more?
Meryl can’t get takers for free PR. More and more we’re seeing people who simply won’t return a call or an email. We’ve had clients and prospects that we’ve communicated with for months suddenly drop out of sight. No ”yes” or ”no” – just no willingness to communicate. Isn’t that a somewhat cowardly way to deliver ”bad” news? Job applicants seldom send thank you notes any more. Why is that? Is everyone really that busy? How much civility can we lose before…oh…you get the picture.
In keeping with his original intent to document Radio for ”users,” Russ Lipton continues to provide useful essays about key features of Radio. Read his writing daily!
How To Create Shortcuts. Of course you can. Besides, not only does Radio automatically generate Shortcuts for you but Userland has placed another 600 or so (hey, who’s counting?) at your disposal. [Russ Lipton Documents Radio]
How long will it take for someone to counter this with ”too much fatty fish causes…?” More Support for Eating Fatty Fish. Eating fatty fish like salmon and mackerel, already recommended to lower the risk of death from heart disease, received strong new support from three studies. By Denise Grady. [New York Times: Health]
Qwest Rewards Nacchio Despite Struggles [Wall Street Journal]
I’m a free enterprise capitalist all the way. Free markets rule! But, at some point a board of directors is going to have to step up to the fact that some of their rewards systems not only don’t deliver the desired results and actions, they ultimately undermine shareholder value.
I had sushi with Adam Green tonight. We had a long talk about what the next big thing is going to be. What comes after the Web? The conclusion: PCs, Web Services, and lots of great apps. It’s subversive. It turns the Internet into an operating system. It flys under the radar of the bigs (which means that there is plenty of room for independent developers to have fun and make money) and it has a low price of admission: $39.95. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
How does one get ”positioned” to play a part in this? Is there a money-making opportunity here for someone not employed at Userland and not involved in programming? Guess not, but I still like the sound of it all.
I’m behind in getting much of Craig Cantoni’s writing to this web site. However, he has just completed a new essay that deserves your attention, particularly if you are wrestling with any of the weblog vs. BigPub journalism questions. Provocative or strident?
If that one doesn’t do it for you, take a look at A Tax Quiz In Honor of April 15.
What Is Content Management? For us end-users. Do we know how many management features are wrapped into Radio without our realizing it? [Russ Lipton Documents Radio]
I, for one, don’t have a clue! I know some stuff is in there, but even with the help of the Discussion board, I haven’t understood how to change the name of a category – much less how to do all the cool stuff. It’s terribly discouraging.
At Microsoft, three’s a crowd. Microsoft COO Rick Belluzzo reflects on working with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer and what it’s like to compete in the software company’s famously competitive corporate culture. [CNET News.com]
Pic a Mile. Matt Frondorf drove from the Statue of Liberty to the Golden Gate bridge and clicked his camera every mile on the 3,304 mile trip. See the story: Taken On The… [meryl’s notes]
RssDistiller: ”Extract rss feeds from most regular web pages.” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson] Probably not! At least not after my weekend of wrestling with RemoteEdit for Radio Userland. Wait a minute – late breaking help!
Paolo gives his RSS distiller for Radio a stretch: screen shot. Nice. My experience is that any scraping of a website (I did it for Boston.com) requires a little work analyzing the source and finding the appropriate points in the page’s HTML to nab the headline. A couple more iterations usually gets you the news feeds you need. [from John Robb]
HP launches projector line. The computing giant announces that it is entering the digital projector market, where its competition will include acquisition target Compaq Computer. [CNET News.com]
One of the great experiences of my life was my first experience with an HP calculator. I started engineering school in the slide rule era. Half way through, HP, Bomar & TI announced electronic calculators. HP’s was far more (expensive) advanced than the others. You can catch a feel for the electronic past here. Another slide rule site is here.
It would be wonderful to see HP return to a consciousness of product design and usability that existed in those years – in all their products.
Iraq announced a halt to oil exports for 30 days or until Israel withdraws from Palestinian territories. [Wall Street Journal]
The U.S. remains dependent upon foreign oil. We are driving gas guzzling vehicles at a level unsurpassed by historical consumption. The Middle East is as volatile as any time in recent memory.
IBM has warned of lower revenue and earnings. Unemployment has surprised many economists in the last couple of weeks.
The investment/dot com bubble that carried us through the late 1990’s has created an impression that castles can be built to the sky. The facts say that the U.S. markets have historical averages of 10-12% per year. Grab your calculator and take a look at what kind of returns are required to return to a 10% historical average after 8 years of 20% returns. Quick answer: 8 years at 0% or 4 years at a loss of 10% each year.
Get ready…we’re only 7 months removed from 9-11-01. Stay positive and optimistic, but plan with facts – not fervor!
I’ve been doing what Meryl is talking about – not with web design – with business processes. Similar techniques, different names and mostly similar goals. The big difference is in the measurement side of all of this. We use control charts and the like to determine process capabilities and capacities as a normal part of our work. Additionally, we apply statistical process control to the ongoing management of processes.
Maybe applying those same skills to web design will give me some insights into why I can’t get this stuff to work. Identifying Core Processes. Stop rolling your eyes at the mention of processes. Processes make up my day job and I know they’re a pain. I’ve heard every excuse in the book. Even I… [meryl’s notes]
This effort failed completely. All I’ve learned is that you can trust a backup of the www folder.
Tired, frustrated and out-a-here. So many hours – no results.
Wouldn’t it be useful to post multiple items from the news aggregator into a single weblog post? Like the following 2 quotes – they don’t need to be separate posts. Wouldn’t it also be great to be able to ”sequence” your news aggregator so that you were seeing the most important of your news sources first, etc.?
Thomas Jefferson. ”The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” [Quotes of the Day]
Look at this page and notice the drop shadow around the edge. Then, look at Scripting News. You can see a similar effect at Dane’s site - without the shadow. Meryl’s is similar as is Mena’s.
Something tells me the shadow is not doable using CSS. No one said that – I just don’t see any of the CSS sites with drop shadows. Don’t know why – don’t really care – it’s just my ”incurably inquisitive” state that makes me want to know!
Anyhow, here’s the crux of the matter. Beginning sometime tomorrow (without upstreaming) I’m going to try to use Paolo’s Remote Edit Tool and create a new look (theme?) for this weblog by Monday. I can barely spell HTML though I’ve been diggin’ deep. We’ll see if I can figure out how to do this stuff. On one hand, I dread the agony of defeat if my meager HTML knowledge fails me. On the other, I’m looking forward to accomplishing this. All tips (i.e. suggestions) appreciated.
That’s from Proverbs. This is from The New York Times – ”Cashmere, Rolexes and a Spiritual Rush. Like many an academic before him, Mr. Twitchell has gazed upon the materialistic excesses of contemporary American society and decided that he needs to give the matter further study. In ”Living It Up: Our Love Affair With Luxury,” this author (whose earlier works include ”Lead Us Into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism” and ”For Shame: The Loss of Common Decency in American Culture”) postulates…” [New York Times – Books]
Qwest Shareholders Question Leadership. DENVER (AP)—Concerns about Qwest Communications International’s accounting methods and business practices is causing shareholders and analysts to question whether the company needs a change in leadership. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: Technology]
David Isenberg’s SMART letter #69 is worth your time. David’s letters & articles these past several years have been excellent lenses through which to view the changes from a ”teleco/bell-dominated” network to a next generation IP network. He has some interesting things to say about G.Gilder, though David is quite clear about his ties to Gilder. Gilder lost a bit with me when he sent a $100,000 invoice to Level 3 after asking Jim Crowe to speak at a Telecosm gathering.
If you missed this, it’s worth taking a look at. It gives you an idea of what we’re up against and why quick answers simply aren’t in the cards. [Associated Press]
”You can’t really put figures on this,” one executive told The Register, ”but we think we have 78 per cent of the libertarian news blogs, 91 per cent of the ClueTrain Manifesto fan sites, and 59 per cent of all blogging female arts graduates, many of whom are Virgos,” he said. [The Register]
FedEx Corp. has committed to pay $2.5 million a year to the city and county for the remaining years of a 25-year naming-rights deal should the Memphis Grizzlies leave town. [The Commercial Appeal] Federal Express is headquartered in Memphis.
Did you see where Lego has developed a ”set” to help businesses and consultants visualize, plan and test business functions and processes? It’s called Serious Play. I think I saw this one in the March 18th Fortune.
W. Edwards Deming said, ”In the opinion of many people in industry, there is nothing more important for the transaction of business than the use of operational definitions. It could also be said that nothing is more neglected.” Operational definitions allow everyone to come to the same conclusion about a specification, instruction, measurement or regulation.
He went further with his own explanation of ”operational definitions” leaving no doubt about how to arrive at terminology that participants in a business system could use to communicate.
Russ has a good start with today’s post. I still find myself pausing when I attempt to describe my desktop Radio application, my public web site, my local web site and the desktop where I enter my posts. What should we call each of these things – or, more likely, where are these things defined – a place I’m sure I overlooked!?!
How do you make the category names shown below the posting window in Radio agree with the category folder names at the operating system level? (i.e. www folder)
Why does the news aggregator continue to repeat stories after multiple deletes?
”curly”
To that list I’m adding:
How do you provide visitors with a link for ”same day – prior year(s)?”
How do you allow visitors to the site to see posts by category?
I’m going to add all of these to the Radio Static? document and begin (again) to gather those answers. Thanks to everyone who is helping!
The shake-out continues. At Level 3 Communications this was understood many months ago. In fact Level 3 predicted much of what is happening in this February 2, 1999 presentation. Clearly, they have suffered along with the telecom industry, but suffering is different from folding! Metromedia Fiber Slides Toward a Bankruptcy Filing. Metromedia Fiber Network replaced its top executives and said that it had violated several loan agreements, moving to the brink of bankruptcy. By Barnaby J. Feder. [New York Times: Technology] S.E.C. May Act on Qwest Earnings Data. Qwest Communications said that it might be charged by securities regulators because it failed to provide earnings data in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. By Bloomberg News. [New York Times: Technology] Qwest expects to take a charge of $20 billion to $30 billion this year to reflect a fall in the value of assets it acquired, citing changes in accounting for goodwill. [Wall Street Journal]
WILLIAMS REPORTS $3.1 BILLION LOSS The Williams Communications Group, the telephone and data network operator that has considered filing for bankruptcy protection, revised its fourth-quarter loss to $3.1 billion after writing down the value of assets by $2.9 billion. The loss was $6.24 a share, compared with a loss of $55.7 million, or 13 cents, a year earlier, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Williams Communications, based in Tulsa, Okla., is renegotiating its bank debt and said it would use a 30-day grace period before paying $91 million of interest due on redeemable notes. The company took on $5.2 billion in debt to build a fiber optic network. (Bloomberg News)
If I ever hit my stride with this web site design stuff, you’ll see a switch to some content that I believe is relevant to far too many employees today – namely, where is the meaning in what I do all day every day? Many people truly do hang their dreams in their cars as they park at their workplaces each morning. They retrieve those dreams upon returning to the car late in the day – exhausted – too tired at night to do anything but continue dreaming. Life and work don’t have to be this way, but apparently the phenomenon is worldwide. Take a minute and read this review:
What is the best way to add a search capability to my weblog?
I have 16 categories set up. Why don’t I have properly named folders for 15 of them(excluding ’home’) on my local PC? I still see ’myFriends’ – ’leadingIt’ – ’myInterests’ and ’careerHelp.’ I should be seeing some other names. Can I rename them at the operating system level? [Dane took a stab at answering this one some weeks ago, but I’m not sure I ”got it.”]
Why does my news aggregator repeat certain stories long after they’ve been deleted multiple times each day?
They’re back! We were there during the ”glory years.” In fact, one of those years, MicroAge was #1 for the year on the NASDAQ. Well, they are trying a comeback. I like what I know of their new strategy. This one will be worth watching in the coming 12 to 24 months!
Forbes is doing something that may become a big hit. ”This column will be a gathering place for unconventional ideas for products and services . . . Help us write future columns. Please send us your own Why Not ideas, and tell us what’s right or wrong with the proposals we have above. Go to www.forbes.com/whynot.
Why doesn’t some type of joint strategy between these two make some sense? NO – not like IBM swallowing Lotus and Lotus disappearing. What I have in mind leverages the obvious strengths to create a bona fide alternative to Wintel PC’s:
APPLE:
great industrial design
new-found Unix operating system in OSX
small enough to do some entrepreneurial things
cool-factor is high
IBM:
financial strength
new-found focus on Linux
provides PowerPC chips to Apple now
has the power to lead a Unix/Linux to the desktop initiative
The broadband industry’s lobbyists are hammering politicians for subsidies to the broadband buildout. Consumers are saying, ”show me the content; what will I get for my $40 to $50 per month?” Anyone running a Windows PC knows the answer. To keep that copy of Windows running and to keep your antivirus software up to date, broadband has become almost essential. I suggest we get Microsoft to prepay the telecoms for the bandwidth required to keep a ”PC in every bedroom” running!
Eclipse Aviation is in the news again. Stewart Alsop has written about the company in the April 1, 2002 issue of Fortune. Rich Karlgaard has also covered the story for Forbes’ April 15, 2002 issue. This is process-thinking at its best. ”The way we’ve always done it” doesn’t have to be the way we do it in the future. If you haven’t read James Fallows’ book called Free Flight, that’s where you’ll get the details. Eclipse may truly be onto something. For those of you who remember the ”early days” at Lotus, Symantec, Microsoft and others, the people behind Eclipse are Vern Raburn and Dottie Hall. They were involved in early marketing efforts at each of these places (and others). Put this one on your radar screens. First flight? This summer.
When I asked about themes for Radio I expected a much greater set of opinions. What I’ve discovered must boil down to one or both of two things:
very, very few people actually read my weblog
everyone is comfortable developing a theme of their own or using one that already exists
I had imagined that a website that had a library of 100-300 downloadable themes might be worth $25 to $50 for a year’s subscription. It seems that nothing could be further from the truth. Also, those capable of developing good-looking themes for Radio tell me that the fees charged by developers to create 100-300 Radio themes would be quite a lot. I guess I misjudged the willingness of out-of-work designers to engage in this sort of prospective/speculative venture.
Jonathon heads down a path few dare to tread. The primary reason lies in the labels we are so quick to assign. Write something about females and one or both sides of the issue will label you. Write something about race and similar, but harsher labels emerge. Write something about government and you are discussed – not for the subject matter in your writing, but for the label that best fits a person who would write what you wrote.
In Memphis, one cannot stand on the opposite side of an issue without race getting introduced. If you oppose the use of taxes to cover the costs of bringing a heavyweight fight to a city facility, you are labeled a ”racist.” Not only do the labels fly, but people use them with no diligent consideration of their true meanings.
Jonathon Delacour goes where few men have gone before, and I support him. Gender politics so far has been a mostly one-sided conversation. It’s great to see men not being silent. [Scripting News]
It’s a news aggregator, it’s an outliner, it’s an HTML editor, it’s a content manager, it’s a personal publishing tool. Pretty soon it will be $450 and will come in Standard, Professional and Developer versions. Sound familiar?
Some thoughts on Instant Outlining [Adam Curry: Adam Curry’s Weblog]
I haven’t read much about this instant outlining stuff while traveling. I need to catch up.
Enron’s Swap With Qwest Is Questioned. Enron and Qwest struck a deal last fall to swap fiber optic network capacity and services at exaggerated prices in an effort to improve each company’s financial picture. By David Barboza and Barnaby J. Feder. [New York Times: Business]
Arthur C. Clarke. ”It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.” [Quotes of the Day]
What are we really doing with all of our innovations? What are the underlying motives? What’s the value of personal publishing as a replacement for the mainstream media? How will we know we were successful in the effort? Who gains what?
It’s about 10:15p.m. Eastern Time. I drove from the southwest corner of Tennessee to the northeast corner today. Road trips are still fun!
After thinking that yesterday was a light day in the blogging world, today is clearly one of those days to dig in. Lots of great stuff.
Hotel dial-up is quite a come down from 2Mbps speeds. Radio is performing well. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to make a drive across the country and never lose a high bandwidth wireless connection?
I’ve looked at lots of weblogs and lots of HTML resources. Doing so, I see a considerable number of talented web designers who are looking for work. I have two questions:
What would you be willing to pay monthly or by one-time subscription to have access to a selection of 100-300 different themes for Radio?
What would you be willing to pay to have a unique theme designed just for your weblog?
I think I was 2 laps down, but just got lapped again. I think this is great news, but I’m not positive. If this literally means that I can somehow see my templates in one of these other applications, edit them and put them back where they belong in Radio, then that is a good thing. I thought this was why I was needing to learn HTML.
”...I become more and more convinced that the most powerful economic trend of our time is the increase of the demand side’s power to also supply.” [Doc Searls]
In everything, this is true. From the media to design to free trade of any goods and services, this is it. The key then becomes for each person and organization to understand how to manage the exchange of value between the demand and supply sides.
Hollywood is a profoundly conservative town, and I don’t see last night changing that fact one little bit. [Rebecca’s Pocket]
”...all dressed up, but they’s just mules in horses harnesses.” [Mammie from Gone With the Wind]
I posed a question over the weekend about using Radio as what John Robb calls K-Logs. This post from Meryl brings me back to the notion that Radio could become an incredible knowledgebase product for small businesses. Around here, we define small as $5 to $50 million in sales or 10 to 100 people. The cost effectiveness of applying Radio and RCS to the collaboration needs of that kind of company seem incredible. How soon can we do it – how fast can I learn?
Freelance / Small Business Web Development. Many talented individuals are taking the freelance or small business leap into Web design. Webreference pointed to an article that shows the steps for a freelance project. From there, I… [meryl’s notes]
Connecting another dot in this picture, John reports that Dan Gillmor is doing a personal weblog, and Dan explains that it will be about customer service. I’ve worked for many years in the field of quality, customer service and business process design. In spite of endless investments in technology, many companies continue to deliver miserable customer service as a rule; and, others who pride themselves on great customer service have hideous lapses.
The other dot I’m connecting to all of this is Russ Lipton’s Speak in Your Own Voice. Clearly, I’ve got interests other than Radio. Much of my own weblog since January 13, 2002 (when I first started) has been about my experiences as I’ve attempted to learn Radio. I want to use Radio to write, but I also want to use Radio to help people and companies improve their lots in life. Some of those horrendous customer service stories might be prevented! Some owners and executives might get their eyes opened. Part of the challenge relates to corporate cultures that have developed around the personalities of founder/owners. Other aspects of solving the problems deal with things like, ”you can’t manage what you can’t measure, ” or ”what gets measured gets done.”
Lately, I’ve been really massaging the categories I have set up in Radio. I think it will become very useful to be able to separate posts between quality/customer service topics and information technology/weblog topics. So far, I’ve got 16 categories. They cover a broad spectrum of my interests. They represent my voice!
In the financial community today, there is much talk about fiber glut, bandwidth glut and some other equally ill-defined and poorly understood terms. Imagine when each of these weblogs – as well as BigMediaCo’s – contains links to full motion video. Demand for bandwidth may well have been deferred by the burst of the dot.com bubble, but to think it is permanently diminished is to overlook a host of future needs.
There’s a science associated with designing business processes. There’s a similar science associated with re-engineering business processes. And, there’s an old question that bounces around the groups of people who do this sort of work: ”How can you re-engineer something that wasn’t engineered in the first place?” What an incredibly complex job it will be to blend these two cultures which have such radically different roots.
Regardless of the topic, weblogs attempt to communicate to quite a cross-section of the world’s readers. As you by now realize, I quote Warren Buffett a lot. As I struggled to understand some difficult (at least for me) Radio topics, I was reminded of a writing assignment Warren Buffett accepted some years ago. In August of 1998 the Securitites and Exchange Commission issued a document called A Plain English Handbook – How to create clear SEC disclosure documents. Warren Buffett was asked to write a Preface to that document.
Here’s a portion of what he said: ”Write with a specific person in mind. When writing Berkshire Hathaway’s annual report, I pretend that I’m talking to my sisters. I have no trouble picturing them: Though highly intelligent, they are not experts in accounting or finance. They will understand plain English, but jargon may puzzle them. My goal is simply to give them the information I would wish them to supply me if our positions were reversed. To succeed, I don’t need to be Shakespeare; I must, though, have a sincere desire to inform. No siblings to write to? Borrow mine: Just begin with Dear Doris and Bertie.”
If you want to read more, the SEC’s document can be found here.
Telecom, Tangled in Its Own Web. While all eyes remain on Enron, a tragedy of identical plot but with far more damaging implications is the story of the Telecommunications industry. By Gretchen Morgenson. [New York Times: Technology]
It is a shame that this writer wasn’t able to go into a bit more depth about the differences in the companies she mentioned here. To put a single sentence in the context of the article leaves a vast amount of information to the guesswork and suppositions (suspicions) of readers.
Oops…there’s more!
Wait a minute. Do I have this straight? RCS is free and Radio is $40 a head. If there’s a 15 person financial services firm. They represent 8 different insurance/financial products firms. They want software for keeping everyone in the firm who needs to know up to date about specific products. Let’s say 5 of the people only view a web site. The other 10 post updates. Does that mean for 10 x $40 plus some advisory/support time, this firm could build a collaborative software infrastructure on their existing LAN and track the 8 firms they represent as ”categories” in Radio?
If I’m even close to accurate about this, why isn’t Radio & RCS the hottest news in collaboration since the word was first used??? Have I just stepped into the K-Log realm?
Wait a minute. Do I have this straight? RCS is free and Radio is $40 a head. If there’s a 15 person financial services firm. They represent 8 different insurance/financial products firms. They want software for keeping everyone in the firm who needs to know up to date about specific products. Let’s say 5 of the people only view a web site. The other 10 post updates. Does that mean for 10 x $40 plus some advisory/support time, this firm could build a collaborative software infrastructure on their existing LAN and track the 8 firms they represent as ”categories” in Radio?
If I’m even close to accurate about this, why isn’t Radio & RCS the hottest news in collaboration since the word was first used??? Have I just stepped into the K-Log realm?
Today has been great! Barring an unforeseen blast, spring is coming. All three daughers are doing great. It sounds as if my wife and I are headed to Australia. After 69 days of thinking about HTML, weblogs, themes, templates, macros, scripting, posts, XML, RSS, aggregators and prefs, the lights came on today – or, at least the next part of the journey is illuminated!
I can write what I want here or on the wall of a public bathroom or on a scratchpad. I may or may not get ”published.” I may or may not have something to say about ”the news” that isn’t covered by BigPubCo. All of that remains to be seen.
Better than half the reasons I started this weblog are about learning the web, design, servers, posting, ”web services/apps,” software development and the like. Due to a combination of emails, posts and comments today, the lights on this next pathway are bright. Radio is an incredible tool. The folk who are interested in it are doing some profound work if you ask me.
Now the challenge comes in putting it all to work – profitably. My courage is up and I’m going to start experimenting again. This will be fun indeed! A wireless laptop, a digital camera and a tool for ”reporting.” I should write a book about what these 69 days…wait, that’s my weblog!!!
Here I am plodding along, concentrating – probably waaayyyy to serious about this stuff – and Dave drops in Frank and Fritz, after the fact. He also added the punchline to his earlier post – it’s Radio! Well, I wish I knew Dave from other than his writing. It’d be great to catch the significance/humor of Frank & Fritz in the context of Dave’s post. Maybe everyone but me ”gets it.”
But, one line that I thought a lot about (during yard work today) went like this earlier:
”what’s so wrong about a font tag if it’s easily comprehended” or something like that – he edited it out.
That hits at the essence of my current state of knowledge. I know what a font tag is. But, my questions revolve around ”a font tag as opposed to what?” I feel like I’m so close, but just missing some of the real meaty debate. It’s like ”what’s so wrong with 7 turnovers if he scored 38 points and had 9 assists.” I know enough to catch the meaning in that.
I hope I’m not Fritz, but I’m not entirely sure I want to be Frank, either!
Dave is more patient with me than I am. I think I’m okay being the designated HTML newbie! I want to graduate to the next designation sometime soon. I’m beginning to understand what I call the pure HTML stuff. (Thanks Dane, Dave, Russ and Jenny.) What has not completely gelled (yet) is how macros fit inside templates and how templates work together to render a page. When I ”view source” (something my browser has started allowing only intermittently – why?) I’m seeing the ”after effects” of a theme’s templates and the macros of Radio doing their work. At least those are my conclusions. That ”flow” of information to yield the rendered page in HTML that the world sees is what I don’t yet grasp! Hurry, Russ!!! <kidding, sorta>
The rest may be distraction with ”toys!” Two examples come to mind. Jason Kottke has done some nice design work on his site (in my opinion). Look over on the right where he has a list called ”Not Recommended At All.” See the ”more links” link at the bottom. Click it. How did that get done? Yeah, javascript, but who-what-when-where-how? Is this ”gadget” useful or important. Or, are these displays of what designers can do in hopes of getting new projects?
Same set of questions with Lance Arthur’s glassdog site. Go there, scroll down the page and watch the left hand menu of links slide into place. Gimmick or is there some piece of knowledge and skill behind the scenes that has real utility, rather than simply a high coolness factor? And what about all these *.shtml pages? I can only imagine what I might once have thought ”shtml” stood for. (I might have even called someone that much earlier in my life!)
Am I into the truly advanced stuff and beyond the HTML newbie stage? Maybe. And, judging from the sites I’m seeing, any notions I have about making money in HTML/web design are fatally flawed. So, where can all of this lead? Is weblogging to be an interesting hobby for me? Is it merely a tool for self-publishing my writing? Is there a business somewhere in this stuff? Where to focus the attention is what tries my patience.
I love it, but at some point, I’m going to have to designate this fascination as hobby or work! Wouldn’t it be great if it could be both?
Thanks for the link, Dave. I do love this stuff!
Bertrand Russell. ”The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.” [Quotes of the Day]
CSS Daily Challenge Report. In January, Chris Casciano announced a challenge of creating a new CSS each day during the month of February as a response to his article, Your CSS Bores Me. He… [meryl’s notes]
Is this feature merely a ”toy” - i.e. letting readers select the color and style that appears on your weblog?
Here’s another example of that.
Now, speculation - in which the focus is not on what an asset will produce but rather on what the next fellow will pay for it - is neither illegal, immoral nor un-American. But it is not a game in which Charlie and I wish to play. We bring nothing to the party, so why should we expect to take anything home?
The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know that overstaying the festivities - that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future - will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. Theres a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands. [from the 2000 letter to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway]
Anyone interested in understanding the ”bubble,” and of what historical proportions it was, should take a look at the 1999 letter as well as the one from 2000. Warren Buffett said this in this year’s letter:
Here’s one for those who enjoy an odd coincidence: The Great Bubble ended on March 10, 2000 (though we didn’t realize that fact until some months later). On that day, the NASDAQ (recently 1,731) hit its all-time high of 5,132. That same day, Berkshire shares traded at $40,800, their lowest price since mid-1997. [from the 2001 letter to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway]
Today those same shares are worth $71,700 each.
Another bit of Warren Buffett’s wisdom
One final note that seems so timely given the events and discussions on so many weblogs this week:
The Constitution’s First Amendment allows the media to print or say almost anything. Journalism’s First Principle should require that the media be scrupulous in deciding what that will be. [from the 2000 letter to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway]
Trust me, these letters are wonderful for anyone running a business or attempting to understand how other businesses are being run.
For an editor for hand-coders that seems to do a pretty good job of teaching HTML along the way, try Notetab Light (100% freeware). I’ve learned some pretty useful basics working with it.
Now I’ve got to go back several weeks, find the debates about style sheets and try to understand (in the light new knowledge about what a style sheet is) why there was such a debate. It isn’t clear to me what the pro’s and con’s are. (and it wasn’t then, ’cause I didn’t have a clue there were things called tables & style sheets in web design!)
This is a reminder to review the discussion/documentation about moving Radio to a new PC. A Port Beckons: Moving to a New PC. Moving programs and files from an old computer to a new one can be a thankless chore. But there are tools to make the job easier. By Larry Magid. [New York Times: Technology]
I want a new digital camera to go with it. Prices are coming down on a fairly rich feature set and with specs above 3 megapixels. How soon will we see cameras with Foveon’s new chip in them at street prices of $400 to $800?
I’m linking to the Scripting News post below as a reminder to myself to go back and study what it means. There are several lists in Radio that I’m watching, but not entirely clear about. Russ may be covering these topics in one of his posts today. [Yep, I checked!]
A new feature on Weblogs.Com shows the top 100 pages pointed to by weblogs that pinged in the last three hours. It’s rebuilt every hour, Murphy-willing. [Scripting News]
Hey, this may be clearing up a bit. Some of these are identical with different places or ways to get to them.
Some of us are new to weblogs, web design, HTML, etc. Russ Lipton is helping with his documentation for Radio. Jenny Levine has Radio Docs 101. I’ve even put together a list of questions I’m trying to answer.
I can’t completely connect the dots, but I think we’re headed toward knowledge of how to put the proper HTML into templates pages on Radio to create a unique look for our weblogs. If that’s the case, we’re then faced with what HTML to put where to achieve certain looks, effects, etc.
In no way do I want to steer people to ”the other camp,” if such a thing exists, but you might find some of this anyway. For whatever reason, I have the impression that lots of Movable Type sites are CSS-based (I could be very wrong). If that is desirable, and I’m not sure it is, you can go here to see sites that MT says are among their best. That is, in the sense that they use features of MT to achieve certain effects.
If I’m committing a faux pas by pointing to ”the competition,” someone please correct me. That is NOT my intent. I’m still trying to learn.
This quote, if true, means I’ve got to be nearing the expert status in the very narrow field of reading(not doing mind you) web design instructions and documents.
Niels Bohr. ”An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” [Quotes of the Day]
Actually, I’m attempting to learn several things at once. It’s pretty clear that you must know how to edit templates in Radio if you are to change the look of your weblog. This results in either: 1) alterations to an existing ”theme” or 2) creation of a new theme. I suppose you could also start modifying the templates and wind up with something that you don’t publish as a new theme.
In addition to learning templates, I’m trying to learn HTML. So far, no problem with the concepts and tagging text. As I stare at a blank page or a page of text that needs to be for HTML, placing the correct tags in the proper places to achieve the look is still a struggle.
Finally, there is something going on about CSS vs. tables and the more I read, the less I understand about the whole issue. Take a look at this post at Meryl’s site. If you follow the links, you’ll find some pretty interesting designs. Getting from there to a Radio weblog is still quite a leap.
I’d like to avoid the wrong side of this debate, but I can’t tell which is the right side of it. I think I understand (correctly?) that the standards bodies are advocating some ”pure” form of HTML and CSS provides that. I know less than enough to be dangerous here.
Thanks Russ for your continued documentation of Radio.
testing…been trying to post something…anything since early this morning…still no luck
In spite of the time shown on this post, it is now 5:20pm CST and I’ve been working on Radio ALL day trying to get something to post. I have no idea what the problem has been. First, it wouldn’t update Radio.root. Then, it wouldn’t upstream/post.
It still seems to me that one of the most frustrating things in life is to have a plan to do something only to find the tool you plan to use is broken!
Congratulations, again, Dave & Userland. When the celebration ends, what’s the process for getting the next 10 partners – then, the next 50?
Who will be next…
Someone recently said that a business needs to think of security like an onion – in layers. There should be waves of protection that range from physical barriers to entry to technical barriers to entry to logical barriers to entry.
My consulting engagements are typically with companies of 100 employees or less. Often these businesses don’t have an I.T. department. The closest they come to having a sysop is analogous to the ”key operator” that handled copier problems.
These businesses are getting mixed signals about security. Stories like this one make it clear that market leaders aren’t necessarily the places to turn when something as important as security is at stake.
(Disclaimer: This post is intended as a way to give back to many who have helped me as I’ve attempted to learn weblogs, site design, etc. Many weblogs I have read indicate that the author is out of work or searching. Here is one resource I’ve used in the past and will be using again shortly!)
If you are considering a career move, are out of work or think it’s time to do something on your own, let me suggest www.48days.com. Dan Miller runs this business. You can subscribe to Dan’s free weekly email newsletter with the certainty that you will not get spammed. Each week his newsletter provides thought-provoking topics and encouragement that many people have found to be welcome additions to their job search.
Dan’s business is in the Nashville, TN area. I’m in Memphis, TN. We don’t have a Craig’s List or a lot of ”pink slip parties” in this part of the world. We do have an abiding faith and, while you won’t be beat over the head with it, you’ll find Dan’s perspective on where faith fits during the stressful times of a job search. I’ve never met Dan, but I’ve used his products and services and have helped many others with their searches. As I enter a career dilemma, Dan’s resources will be in my own toolkit.
While attempting to learn how to develop and manage a weblog, I’m learning all manner of other skills. First, there’s the whole HTML, themes, templates, macros issue. Then, I stumble into www.37signals.com . Clearly, I can’t create a site the wrong way, much less understand how to make the corrections that this organization suggests. So much to learn.
Learning HTML, scripting and web design!!! [yes…where do I start???]
Russ Lipton: ”Anyway, I’m thinking I will dig up a few links to useful scripting, HTML and web design tutorials on the Web (hint: how about some help from you-all out there on stuff that is current and literate)?”
In all of my prowling of weblogs, websites and the like, I don’t think there is anyone better-suited to providing or at least indexing some resources. Please take a look at the link above and add a comment that helps Russ compile a good list. He claims to be 50, but it is pretty obvious he’s one of those 18-year old 24×7 coders; he needs your help and so do I. If he’s 18, that makes me 16.
Maybe this is also something that can find its way into Andy’s Resource Directory when he gets back on the 28th.
Congratulations in advance to Dave & Userland Software!
We may not figure the big new partnership out in advance, but we’ve come to expect rather profound stuff from Dave and the guys at Userland. It sounds like the New York Times to me! This statement alone makes it worth the suspense:
It’s for people who like poetry, books, movies, art, education, food, fashion, health, travel and technology.
It’s a breath mint – it’s a candy mint – it’s a developer’s tool – it’s a user’s tool! It’s all good!!
RSS Feeds seem like a vital tool to those of us who are ”merely” operating a weblog or personal web site. If the primary reason my site exists is to comment on other sites, the news and occasionally interject an original thought, it would seem my RSS feed subscriptions are pretty important.
Beyond the list of 100 most popular that exists somewhere in Radio Userland, where does one go to find RSS feeds? If I go to (e.g.) Fast Company magazine, do they offer RSS news feeds? How does one know?
On another subject, if you enter a title on a post and think better about it later, can you delete only the title, or must you delete the entire post?
A. Looks like you have to delete the post and re-enter it without the title.
It is 10:30a.m. CST. I just finished going through my news aggregator for the first time this morning. I’m posting nothing. I deleted everything. This points to 3 conclusions:
Nothing was worth printing from mainstream sources. Most of it was old news.
The weblogs I subscribe to are so widely subscribed that nothing I would post would be particularly unique or useful. All the blogs have the other blogs posts.
I need some new RSS feeds.
One question, though. If I were going to title this particular post differently and assign a link, what would be logical? What would be the title and link if I understood how Userland intended for us to use those features? How would Google-IT apply?
Themes, templates, macros?
(Disclaimer: Nothing I’m saying here should in any way detract from the incredible progress that Dave Winer and the team at Userland Software are making with RCS, XML, web services and the tools for developers. The context of these thoughts is one of a satisfied, but struggling end user who has selected Radio as a way to develop and manage content at a single web site. I’m not suggesting for even a second that Dave or others divert their attention from the ultimate direction of Radio to give us ”style.”)
Writers get it done in a variety of ways. Underwood typewriters can still be serviced in New York. Pens, inks and calligraphy have preserved an old art form. HTML editors, word processors and scratch pads still serve some.
Regardless of content, many writers prefer a unique book design or magazine layout to showcase their work. Weblogs are no different. We’d all like to have a template or theme that is unique to our site. Russ said this today, ”I hear regular complaints from folks who don’t feel their Radio sites look nice but don’t have the skills to do anything about it themselves.”
I may not be able to design as well as Mena, but I’d love to learn how to take a shot at it. I’m not into scripting and I haven’t been into hand-coding HTML, but I’d love to learn. Radio is my classroom. What I’m looking for are enough pointers to understand (ONCE I’VE BACKED UP MY WWW FOLDER) how to alter the look of my weblog. Do I need to handcode something and paste it into the main template? Do I need to lay it out with FrontPage and paste it into the homepage template? Do I need to find the *.gif file that is my permalink icon and replace it with another *.gif file of my choosing? If so, where? Is CSS vs. tables a big issue for me? Should it be an issue for me? Thanks in advance, Russ, for the 30,000 foot flyby. I’ve got my binoculars out in hopes of seeing some detail!
Longer reports don’t necessarily mean that a management team has decided to be more forthcoming with information. Rules and regulations requiring disclosure aren’t likely to change the attitudes of an entrenched management that views shareholders as the ignorant enemy. Annual Reports: More Pages, But Better?. While companies flaunt their new openness in their annual reports, it is not clear that this year’s disclosure is much better than the last. [New York Times: Business]
Dave comes through in a big way. These 2 posts – here and there – really do an excellent job of explaining what’s going on behind the scenes, but also, what’s in it for the user. Thanks. It helps. As a user (and developer-wannabe) of Radio, I’ve been thinking a lot about the news aggregator. I need to edit my subscriptions. I need to find some new sources that all of the bloggerati aren’t already quoting en masse. Sounds as if Dave & the team are going to help us.
Just as pamphlets were used to ”spread the word” during days of revolution, weblogs are the ham radio, replacement for Dan Rather’s opinions and interactive news source all-in-one. Applied to particular fields, they become technical support resources, customer service tools and 1001 other collaborative vehicles. All of the ”why’s” of weblogging are right; so are all the ”what’s.” The capability that allows anyone to put their thoughts into the hands of the world is a powerful capability indeed. Now we need to be sure that there is a way to find those thoughts once posted! How can a person’s ”voice” be heard among the millions? [Frustration subsiding]
The rendering of my posts has changed yet again. No apparent reason. Certainly, no explanation. DIY. Sure, I do it myself (DIM). What else can anyone do? Those in the know about this stuff are too busy to respond to emails. From now on the question is going to be YBH – Yes, but how? Either this junk can be explained or it can’t. Leaving hackers to figure it out is going to create a very satisfied customer set made up of 1000 hackers who ”get it.” Those interested in a dependable tool that can be used to develop and manage a good-looking weblog will ultimately go elsewhere. Foxtales, mudflaps and curbfeelers may be great, but dependability and predictability are worth something as well. This thing starts up in a new world every day. Pedals reversed (i.e. fonts changed), ignition switch in a different spot (i.e. templates altered) and no owner’s manual (i.e. no owner’s manual). Yeah, I’m frustrated again. I’m just hopeful that all who are playing with the timing belt, drive train and compression ratio (i.e. RCS, MetaWeglog API and XML tools) are finding a reliable, predictable and enjoyable computing experience! : )
For the most part today, I’ve blown off any focus on this tool called Radio. Blog gravity is sure to drag me down the charts.
I went ”over to the other side” and looked at some incredible sites – a large number of which were done with Movable Type. Just as Russ Lipton sees a place for City Desk as well as Radio, the designers at Movable Type are top notch. One of them, Mena Trott, just won the weblog award at SXSW. Admittedly, these folks aren’t writing things like this:
RFC: MetaWeblog API. ”It’s time to broaden the XML-RPC pipe that tools use to connect to Radio, and in doing so offer an evolution to the art of scripting weblog tools.”
But, I’m not struggling to understand their posts either. I guess it is all a matter of what we choose to write about, and to whom we’re attempting to appeal.
Having been away from this site most of the day, I’m typing something that again is appearing in Times. I’ve changed nothing today. We’ll see how this renders, but I’m beginning to think that things can be changed behind the scenes without an effort on my part. Maybe that’s what upstreaming, parts and update Radio.root really mean!
My third attempt this morning at making the news aggregator post something here. Everything I wanted to post is now gone from the news aggregator. Wonderful way to start a day – frustrated by the tools first thing. Oh yeah, I forgot, user error and RTFM. Maybe I’ve simply selected a tool for programmers and not one that’s ready for the public at large. Or, maybe the public at large is deemed to be a band of idiots because we’re not programmers. Who cares?
Steven Wright. ”It doesn’t make a difference what temperature a room is, it’s always room temperature.” [Quotes of the Day]
by Ben Graham is an excellent way to understand his particular style of value investing. This article will give you the Motley Fool’s spin on who he was, what he did and how he thought.
I attempted to follow the instructions for putting a checkbox on my home page that allows links to open in new windows. I used these instructions. Now:
The checkbox doesn’t work
My posts are in a completely new font
Any clues?
PARTIAL ANSWER: I couldn’t find the offending code from my experiment with the checkbox. So, I backed up the www folder and ”played” with themes. Sure enough, I lost my comments, but I did not lose my navigator links. By changing themes and finally going back to this theme, I somehow corrected the font problem that got created this morning. My next step is going to be to print the code from this home page template and compare it line for line with the one I backed up. This may be what Dave calls bootstrapping. Absent documentation for how these templates and macros hand things to each other, this appears to be the only way to learn! Nevermind the checkbox for now. UPDATE: I just added the comment macro back to the item template. Lo and behold, I got all my comments back! How does this really work? Trust me when I say that I don’t even understand what I just said about macros and templates. I’m simply trying to cut, copy and paste where people or instructions tell me to do so. I’d love to understand the ”flow” from this local weblog where I’m typing right now through the templates through the macros to the rendered site you see when you call this up in your browser. How does a web page from Radio get ”the look” that it has from a theme? Is a theme a set of ”specifications” inside templates? In other words, what color is the background, the border, what font is used, how are things spaced, how wide is the posting area, etc.? Anyhow…looks like I’m back together.
Level 3 Completes Acquisition of Corporate Software
Acquisition Positions Level 3 for Convergence of Communications and Information Technology Industries
BROOMFIELD, Colo., March 14, 2002 - Level 3 Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq:LVLT) today announced that it has closed the acquisition of CorpSoft, Inc., a major distributor, marketer and reseller of business software, which conducts its business under the name Corporate Software.
Level 3 paid $89 million in cash to acquire Corporate Software. [Level 3 Communications, Inc.]
Dave Winer wisely suggested that I take a look at Dogma 2000. His advice was sound because I was obsessing over learning Radio 8 and ways to make my site more inviting to read. I’ve made much more progress since I began just posting and doing some of the basics.
However, I can’t help myself. If one were interested in having a ”custom theme” done, who would you turn to? Clearly, this has to do with everything from preserving all of the functionality of Radio to smart design principles involving fonts, colors, layout, etc. Any suggestions?
Our nation remains at risk. Can we see the need for sweeping and dramatic change? Isn’t this what we get when we allow two parties populated by career politicians to chase special interests for nearly a century? When will we wake up? What will we decide to do?
I just edited my Radio Static? document. The changes were minor, but I’ve added some links that I think are important in gaining an understanding of how to make Radio do the things we want it to do. Andy Sylvester is going to help with some of the answers as are others. A lot of my remaining list is style & look related. Moving things around, selecting a different set of colors or icons, making areas narrower or wider, etc.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I need a tutorial or something resembling a recipe for cooking to accomplish much of what I want to do in Radio. ”Go edit your such-and-such template” will get users like me in far more trouble than a recipe that says: 1) back up your www folder to a safe location 2) go to your desktop web site 3) go to Prefs 4) find the … You get the idea.
For those of us that aren’t savvy about scripts, macros, finding and pasting into the proper areas of these templates, etc., we need something more. [My impatience is showing.] Russ Lipton ”gets it.” His instruction is great. Others do, too. I simply need for them to hurry. I’m ready to get at the answers in my list of questions and my earlier to do list.
Dan Bricklin’s influence on my web interests has been paramount. From the earliest search for a tool to use to do a simple web site, I found Dave Winer, scripting.com and Radio. From these people and sites I’ve learned of many more. I’m interested in some of them because they teach me about weblogs and Radio in particular. I’m interested in others because they write about something I’m interested in. Dave’s given you his take. Sam’s given you his take. Here’s mine:
to learn the hands-on stuff associated with web sites, HTML, web services, XML and the future of computing
to have a place to post my thoughts for family, friends and others
to have a way to influence change – this will come with readership, but Dan Bricklin’s essay about pampleteers sums it up
to see if there is money to be made in writing, weblogging or providing assistance to others who need tools for collaboration
to journalize my interests – see the About link or you might want to read this
Now, if only I can learn how to:
develop my own theme/look without undoing all the work I’ve done so far
figure out if moving to a new domain(FTP) is going to alter the links to my stories
put links for my RSS feeds subscriptions on my site
put links for my posts by category
create a search capability
provide the checkbox for the ”open links in a new window” feature
Yesterday I told a chicken to cross the road. It said, ”what for?” [Steven Wright]
For those of you interested in revolutionary thinking about local, state and national government, I’m going to begin posting articles from Craig Cantoni. You’ll find them here along with information about Craig. It will take some time to get these posted, but keep checking back. They are worth the read. Craig’s thinking on these matters is as clear as it gets.
I confess that I’m falling behind in my understanding of many recent enhancements to Radio. I’m still not quite certain that I understand the importance of the Google-IT feature. I’m also fuzzy about this Titles & Links thing. Then, today, we get Automatically Generated Links.
I’m counting on tools like these or their follow-on’s to bring me back up to speed.
I went to a restaurant that serves ”breakfast at any time”. So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance. [Steven Wright]
Sorry, I just got back from a Microsoft seminar!
...how does ”academic honesty” differ from honesty? The Consequence of Plagiarism – Overseer Doris Kearns Goodwin should step down for breach of academic honesty. [The Harvard Crimson]
This news aggregator isn’t entirely clear to me. First, why does the Wall Street Journal insist on making 100% of the entry in the aggregator a link? That’s not the way I want to post.
Second, why did my news aggregator just show me news items all the way back to 10:00a.m. this morning? I’ve browsed it since then and deleted things I wasn’t posting. In some cases I had several repeated news items for other webloggers; e.g. Scripting News and Doc Searls. Where’s the best place to read about this and understand how it works and how my supposed hourly updates are really working?
If a train leaves Silicon Valley headed East at 100mph and 12 hours later another train leaves Memphis traveling 50mph, how long before the Memphis train is blown off the tracks? That’s how I feel right now about the Radio Community Server and my progress with Radio.(I’m the Memphis train if the metaphor is too fuzzy.)
I’m coming up to speed. The ride is GREAT fun – I’ve not been involved in this sort of hands-on stuff in a lot of years. But, I haven’t even begun to try to understand the current & potential meaning and benefits of RCS. However, with people like Russ Lipton on the job, I’m counting on knowing some of this stuff when I need to know it.
When Dave writes something like Metablogging, I find myself wondering what he’s just read that prompted his thoughts. Was it something I wrote or posted? (”your so vain, you probably think this post is about you, don’t you…”) Was it something he’s been pondering for a while? Anyhow, he’s right. I’m still using my own site for questions and experimentation with weblogs. But, I’m also trying to ease into some of my other interests. Thanks to all who tolerate one and offer help with the other!
Ideally, I’d have a weblog for development and a weblog for production – just like in software development! Instead, the world is seeing this one warts and all.
CEO’s see it one way. Employees see it another. Shareholders see it yet another. Why is it that we are creating companies in which there is such a disparity between all of these people who should have a shared interest? The reason is that we have CEO’s who seek to be treated differently from all other shareholders. Stock Options Are Faulted by Buffett. Warren E. Buffett, using the forum that the Berkshire Hathaway annual report provides, has renewed his attack against the widespread use of stock options. [New York Times: Business]
T. J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor sees it this way. [from the Wall Street Journal]
Charlie and I are disgusted by the situation, so common in the last few years, in which shareholders have suffered billions in losses while the CEOs, promoters, and other higher-ups who fathered these disasters have walked away with extraordinary wealth. Indeed, many of these people were urging investors to buy shares while concurrently dumping their own, sometimes using methods that hid their actions. To their shame, these business leaders view shareholders as patsies, not partners. [from the 2001 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report]
Lest anyone thinks I’m somehow hyping Berkshire Hathaway as an investment – quite the contrary. I’m suggesting there is some excellent guidance about managing a business in the principles used to run this particular company! How many companies have you invested in which offer an Owner’s Manual?
Here’s one more example of how far the dot com’s have to go to make their businesses legit! Pro forma earnings and other ”techniques” used to mask the fact that the company simply didn’t earn any money are going to be rooted out and removed from any company that truly wants to be understood. GE went a long way toward answering past questions about certain of its businesses. This is truly good news.
Another of my 1956 Ground Rules remains applicable: ”I cannot promise results to partners.” But Charlie and I can promise that your economic result from Berkshire will parallel ours during the period of your ownership: We will not take cash compensation, restricted stock or option grants that would make our results superior to yours.
Here’s another great quote: Though Enron has become the symbol for shareholder abuse, there is no shortage of egregious conduct elsewhere in corporate America. One story I’ve heard illustrates the all-too-common attitude of managers toward owners: A gorgeous woman slinks up to a CEO at a party and through moist lips purrs, ”I’ll do anything – anything – you want. Just tell me what you would like.” With no hesitation, he replies, ”Reprice my options.”
Look over to the left. See the link that says Radio Static? Do me a favor and click on it and see if you get a 404 error. If so, please leave me a comment. There may be a better way to test this, but I’m not sure what it would be. Thanks. (fixed – Thanks Alwin & Dane!)
I revisited The Shifted Librarian’s links to her RSS feeds. (Wow, I sound like I know what I’m doing!) This time they worked. Each one I visited took me directly to the site. When I tried before, I got a full page of HTML markup or XML. That’s when I questioned the whole notion. Now I’m sold! Time to edit my subscriptions and learn how to ”paste script.”
T. S. Eliot. ”Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.” [Quotes of the Day]
Championship week. NCAA selections. Spring is around the corner. New work may be headed my way. Does it get any better than this?
Beginning sometime tomorrow and moving through the weekend, I plan to identify some new weblogs to read along with those I read so often today. I need a little broader selection of people, topics, ideas, looks and messages.
By the way, what are the top 10 sources or tools for weblogs? There’s the Radio/Manilla/Frontier group. Isn’t there a movabletype group? blogger.com? Are there others that have large groups using a ”proprietary” tool or hosting their blogs with a particular host? How big is this whole phenomenon?
What promotes weblog readership? Obviously, having something to say that others want to read. So far today, I’m staring at a most-read list that has a range of 1260 hits down to 100th place at 26 hits. The vast majority of these are about technology, programming, weblogs and the like.
Are other communities of bloggers focused on other subject matter? Is there anything to learn from the fact that the top 100 Radio/Manilla/Frontier webloggers generate a ”hit list” that totals roughly 12,000 or so since midnight last night thru 4:30p.m. CST? Is there anything to learn from the fact that this is getting hits and hasn’t changed since February 22nd?
To really make the impact we want to make, what should our numbers become? Does every weblog on the Top 100 for a day need to reach 5,000 people? 1,000? 50,000?
When my weblog began to evolve into something other than ”desperately seeking Radio help,” readership dwindled quickly. In all fairness, it also didn’t hurt that in those first desperate weeks of trying to learn Radio, Dave Winer linked to me a few times. Thanks again for that. VITALIS IS ON THE WAY OUT???? Who knew?
Out of sight out of mind. Not only was Adam Curry right about blog-gravity; I believe the force of blog-gravity gets stronger each day that you don’t blog! I can’t even move the needle in the meter this morning!
When I click on one of the links to Jenny’s RSS subscriptions, I see a page full of HTML (I think). I’m trying to get my head around this notion. Do I want a public link on my home page for every news source I subscribe to? What do I want that link to do for a reader? How does this encourage or discourage the finding of ”fresh” news and sources? I’m probably missing the point of this feature. But, the coffee cups are cute.
I missed too much by going en communicado these past two days. I need a new laptop. Which products are candidates? IBM, Toshiba, Sony, Compaq, Dell? Does anyone have a tip?
Spec’s:
Small & light & easy to handle at security checkpoints
Internet Bubbles, Corporate Governance & Full Disclosure
Events converge in my thinking. Warren Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders and the Berkshire Hathaway annual report will be out Saturday morning. During airport waits and plane rides I read John Bogle’s article/speech. Bogle is founder & former chairman of The Vanguard Group of mutual funds.
The internet bubble, Enron, Global Crossing and a host of lesser train wrecks make it clear to me that Buffett’s questions for directors and auditors are right on the money. If you have money to manage or if you’re a victim of one or more of these past ”investments,” I encourage you to take note.
Good evening. I’ve just returned from an interesting set of meetings regarding the state of the accounting/business management software industry. BigCo issues are every bit as pronounced in this field as in others. We’ll have more to say about this over the coming few days.
When I click on the link to go to my news aggregator, I don’t get there. I’m redirected to someone else’s site. Out of disdain for how they’ve chosen to use their skills OR the (remote)possibility that they aren’t the ultimate culprit, I’m not posting the name or the site here. We’ll see how this unfolds.
I was able to clear the problem by unsubscribing to the offending site.
If you’re new to Radio, try this. In your browser’s URL address line, type the address for your public weblog followed by /categories. I’m Radio user number 0100740, so the address I type is http://radio.weblogs.com/0100740/categories. Now here’s what’s interesting. The list I see bares a slight resemblance to the actual list of categories I’m using, but there’s a lot of difference. I’m using 12 categories and there are only 9 listed. Also, I’m not using 4 of the ones that ARE listed.
This is tip of the iceberg stuff for me. On one level it’s cool. On another level I don’t have a clue. Something else to learn. Maybe my information maven can explain! OR…Dane’s back. Why am I seeing different category descriptions on my desktop weblog when compared to my public weblog? Thanks in advance.
Question 14 on my list of questions just got answered. John Robb did an excellent job of explaining something that I’m sure others already knew existed, but for me RSS news feeds are new! The basics help a lot. Thanks.
My approach to learning Radio has been disjointed to say the least; a few islands of a-ha in a sea of huh?. The fact is that I’ve loved it in spite of a week or two of total exasperation.
So, I subscribed to my own weblog. I just reviewed what the news aggregator probably sent to anyone else that subscribed to my weblog. This was another a-ha. I’ll be more careful, now.
...that show the way! In all my struggles with understanding the ”power” of categories, I hadn’t picked up on very much until I read this. When Dave said, ”excellent use of categories,” and I went to the site, I began to realize that a single copy of Radio can be used to maintain a unique web site for each of several family members. I’m sure it has been said many times and in many ways, but the lights just came on! Wow, the potential is pretty amazing, but it took this simple example to flip the switch.
I admit that I’m not entirely clear on this RSS news feeds thing, subscribing to them, identifying them and then, in some orderly manner, going through them to decide what to post and what not to post. In fact, I’m not even sure if I’m supposed to be reading them from my news aggregator, then using the ”back” button in my browser to return to the news aggregator to then post them…Well…you get the idea. Dave said this: Just one person subscribed to either of those sources pushes it to the top of the list, esp the first source, which blows a hailstorm of new links through the aggregator page. It’s surprising that anyone actually reads the Weblogs.Com changes list that way! To each his own. I may be that one person and not even know it or how to fix it!!!
Several people inquired about my interest in Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett and value investing. My interest is one of stockholder, money manager and business executive. Someone once said that a careful reading of Warren Buffett’s letters to shareholders from 1977 to the present is equivalent to two years in many postgraduate business schools. I share that belief. Clearly, two or three accounting courses wouldn’t hurt, but once the fundamentals of accounting are understood, Buffett’s letters teach as well as any coursework I’ve been exposed to. The annual letter and report for 2001 will be posted on the web on Saturday morning, March 9, 2002. In light of Berkshire Hathaway’s standing as one of the leading insurance and reinsurance organizations in the world, Buffett’s discussion of the impact from September 11, 2001 on the insurance industry should provide a truly worthwhile education!
In my news aggregator this morning this quote came right after another weblogger’s news feed that made me pretty angry. I’m glad I read this before I fired off a comment about the other.
Robert Frost. ”Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper.” [Quotes of the Day]
I’m back in the market for a web host. I’d like for them to host 5 to 7 domains and provide the usual 100MB to 500MB of disk space, 10-30 email accounts and some reasonable amount of data transfer per month. All for the low-low sum of $15 to $30 per month.
Any suggestions?
Dane Carlson’s web site hasn’t been up for 12-18 hours now. I sure hope it’s not a problem with the webhost he recommended to me!!!
I’ve been working on navigator links to make this site more useful to me, and ultimately to others. Care has to be taken to differentiate the purpose of links on this site and bookmarks or favorites in one’s browser! It’s important to keep a site meaningful to more than its owner!
What actually changes when I change themes? I’m using transmitter. If I switch now, what do I ”lose?” Do I lose the navigator links I’ve set up? Do I lose the categories I’ve set up? Do I lose comments or comment counters? How can I make the area over on the left a bit wider? Where do I go to add some links down the right side underneath the calendar? Cool stuff to think about, but I’m still gliding as Dave suggested and I’m taking baby steps as Jenny suggested. The frustration level over styling a weblog is WAY down because of their emails!
s I catch up on some reading. Two related, but unconnected, news items have caught my attention. First, is the apology by Billy Graham for remarks made 30 years ago at the White House. Second, is Peggy Noonan’s pinion piece in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. (I hope you won’t need a subscription to see it.) Why are these related? It seems to me that both items show people attempting to explain the context of past remarks. It is very difficult to be as precise as the participants in conversations and relationships and events when you are ”reporting” what happened, obviously after the fact.
This interview with Jim Warner provides a glimpse of what can happen when we don’t follow Shane McChesney’s advice. I blog because I want to learn the medium and because I think my clients may one day need the know-how that we’re (slowly) gathering. But, I also blog because it is therapeutic. I’ve participated in some rather spectacular ups-and-downs of technology companies and of the I.T. industry since 1976. That’s 26 years! Even with a deep faith, there are times I’ve been shaken to the foundation.
My biggest worry when I see people who have the symptoms described in these articles is that the remedies prescribed by pop-culture thinking may not deliver them from their turmoil. If you knew that none of us are going to get out of this alive, what would you change right now?
Questions like that make questions about styling a weblog seem a tiny bit trivial!
Radio Userland Lists?
I’m puzzled about the different lists that we can get with Radio. Referers, Ranking by PageReads, weblogs.com, and now Updates. Sometimes they are listed by the domain name that is pointing to your site. Other lists (Updates & weblogs.com) show the name of the weblog. Jenny Levine makes the list of Ranking by PageReads, but The Shifted Librarian makes the list at weblogs.com.
What’s the underlying logic doing that causes this difference?
I’m not entirely certain what Rob is up to with his transformations of a third kind, but I certainly am glad to know a bonafide Visio expert. We’ve long wanted to walk into a business, set a laptop down and have Visio (or some similar tool) ”scan/sniff” the network, capture the architecture and present it back in a Visio network diagram. For those who serve as the ”outsourced I.T. department” in so many 5 to 50 PC companies, this tool would be fantastic. Rob, is it doable?
Questions about Radio that are currently unanswered (or I haven’t understood the answers) are here. I’ll add or link to answers as I uncover them and understand them.
I’m focused on this RSS news feeds thing today. Sometimes it seems we are all subscribing to the same things, linking to a topic and commenting. Then, we link to each other’s link. It’s all good, but I’d like to find a more comprehensive list of RSS news feeds that I could draw from. How? Where?
How often are people going to their news aggregator page and deleting, reading, posting? If it updates every hour (is that right?), people could be on their weblogs ALL day. Nah…that’s not what’s happening; it’s something else.
then I went here.Look at the variety of stories and thoughts and topics that we get!
All these years (since 1997) I’ve been using the web to read the Wall Street Journal or download some printer driver or find out the price of some widget. I still read the hard copy Journal, printers still need drivers and I still shop lots of places without checking on the web. But…how did I miss all the incredibly valuable stuff that is in these weblogs? Have I been so focused on supporting Microsoft products that I missed out on what the open source advocates are doing? Is that the cause? Well, I’m glad I’ve found it now.
The next big challenge? How to effectively and efficiently read/process it every day or every week? Is that what the news aggregator can do for me? Is that what www.scripting.com does for me?
Whatever, it’s fun and a cool way to learn about this Internet thing I’ve been using without really appreciating fully.
At the risk of stifling innovation…
Tonight I’m thinking once more about the progress I have and haven’t made with my weblog. Just as I was gaining momentum, I got busy with a couple of other projects that demanded near total attention.
Trying to catch up tonight, it struck me that I’m headed for three places:
Why those 3 places? Well, Dave forgive me, I’m still incredibly interested in how this tool called Radio really works and just what kinds of things I can do with it. Those places are the ones I know about that are helping the most. If there are others who are doing similar things, I’d love to know about those as well.
I know I supposed to ”just write,” but Radio has opened a new world for me, and I want to see what other people are able to do with it and what may be possible in a variety of situations where I could apply it. It’s also forcing me to learn something about what a web page is, what HTML is and how all this slick stuff is put together.
Anyhow, those three sites have been the sites that are documenting many of the questions I have had. Are they duplicating each other? To a degree, but there’s real value in seeing the way each of them approaches certain things. By the way, no way would I leave Dane Carlson out of the list of people getting a hearty thank you for helping. The difference with Dane has been that he and I have corresponded without documenting it all in our weblogs.
During the day tomorrow and during the weekend, I’m going to list some questions I continue to have in a document I’ll call Radio Static. Russ, Jenny and Andy may elect to divide and concquer, ignore completely or they may each tackle all or some of the questions. It should be fun and it should be helpful.
Bottom line: T H A N K S! ! !
Bandwidth
If you look at the process for getting bandwidth to a home, small or medium business and in some cases a BigCo, you discover that not only is the process of ”provisioning” that bandwidth horribly flawed, but the dependability of the service is all-too-often miserable. Almost 8 hours of work were disrupted yesterday due to the local cable company’s problems.
Amen! And Amen again. Warren Buffett once said something to the effect that if investing were as simple as looking at the past, the wealthiest people in the world would be librarians. For the patience she has shown, and the depth of her own website, Jenny deserves a look-see! Her site makes me want to learn more about library science and the librarians’ views about information management.
Fairly late last night Jenny Levine gave me some help and encouragement in my struggle to create a nice looking, well-organized weblog/personal web site. A breakthrough or two resulted!
Then, Dave Winer hit me between the eyes. His advice is ”glide a while.” He’s absolutely correct. I found Scripting News because I bought a book about TrellixWeb (now CuteSiteBuilder) to start learning about web design. Prowling around looking for more info about Trellix, I stumbled into Dan Bricklin’s weblog. There he mentioned Dave Winer. I subscribed and began reading Scripting News.
That led to my purchase of Radio. Since January 13th, I’ve treated this like some kind of sprint to a finish line. I was getting tired, frustrated and discouraged. Dave’s note reminded me that I didn’t get Radio because I wanted more frustration. I got Radio because I truly believe it and/or its offspring are the future of the web. It is the way to communicate – with customers, with employees, with suppliers and with interested parties.
I’m going to learn how to post a story or article on a separate page of this Radio web site. Once I know how to do that, I’m going to use that document to talk about designing my weblog. It will be similar to the documents Russ Lipton and Jenny have done. But, it won’t clutter the work I want to do here each day. To those of you who have endured my diatribes about how to make certain things happen in Radio, thanks for your patience. Some of those diatribes will continue to go on, but I hope they’ll be on a separate page.
Dave offered this, ”Tell us about yourself, what do you do, where do you live, what are you interested in.” We should all do more of that!!
I’m a husband and Dad to three daughters. I want to talk about what’s important in making society better for them and their offspring in the decades to come.
I’m a citizen. I want to talk about our government, what our founders intended and where we are relative to that vision.
I’m an engineer and business person. I want to talk about technology, software and the sorry state of employee involvement in lots of organizations; and, techniques for improving those conditions. I want to talk about quality and customer service – how to improve a business and its performance.
I’m an investor. I want to talk about value investing, Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. I want to tell you more about Level 3 Communications and the future of bandwidth demand in the United States and abroad.
I’m a reader. I want to let you know about books in several fields that belong in your personal library.
I’m a person of faith. I don’t want to impose my views on you!
It’s 10p.m. Do you know where my comments are? I’m still trying! Finally, comments, but the counter looks stupid this way. I’m trying to remove it. OK…can’t remove it, maybe I can reformat it.
Changing themes cleared up the error when my browser attempted to load my own site. Who knows what that problem might have been? But, I’ve still got links down the left from somewhere and my categories aren’t visible. I’ve set up 11 categories. How do you provide others with the ability to see your posts by category?
If Radio is ever going to be used by ”the masses,” it just seems to me that some of this stuff is going to have to become a bit more intuitive OR we’re going to be forced to tell everyone what the Minimum Knowledge Requirements are in addition to the Minimum System Requirements.
Now I’ve got a small yellow triangle in the lower left border of my browser window that says, ”Done, but with errors on page.” What is that? This just started after I laid off from posting for a few days.
I must have close to 240 hours of effort expended doing trial and error work. Am I the slowest rat in this race? Is there some other weblogging tool that is better suited to someone with my (lack of) skills?
I’ve got only $40 in Radio. I’ve got close to $800 in a suite of Macromedia software tools, and almost $400 in books. I’d gladly spend another $500 to figure this stuff out if I thought it was only a matter of money. But…
It’s not. The need is for clear, specific instruction about how and where to make the kinds of changes that Radio is calling for to produce certain results.
We need these documents and more like them to do the stuff I wrote about earlier. I think several people have the know-how and the desire to get us there. Now it is probably a matter of time and patience.
For those of you who have highly customized Radio weblogs, you have my congratulations, admiration and respect. As was said in O’Brother Where Art Thou so eloquently, ”You are the one most capable of abstract thought!”
Just as I suspected, no comments feature and no comments counter. The same thing happened when I followed the instructions for doing the web services examples.
There’s no doubt that weblogging is all the (positive) things that have been said here. For more than the 100 people that get listed in the page-read rankings to personalize a weblog, something will have to change! I think the thing that must change is the mechanism by which know-how gets transferred to those of us who haven’t been editing HTML and designing web sites these past 5 to 7 years.
OK…my pride is bruised, but my need remains!
By the time I posted here again, I expected to have a completely different weblog. It’s clear that I’m not going to get this done without some help from somewhere. During my absence (abstinence) from posting, I’ve been through 900(est.) combinations & permutations (backing up and restoring every step of the way). No results worth sharing with anyone.
I hate to be guilty of majoring on form over substance, but being a control freak, I feel like this ought to have the attributes I list below. How do I do this?
I’ve got a domain name registered & a host identified. I need to get an agreement in place with the host and get the domain moved over there.
I need to set up somewhere in Radio to tell it to upstream to the new domain/server(?).
Some sort of RSS feed has to be redirected so that I remain a part of the Radio community. Where and how?
Are my comments enabled? I’ll check the next time I publish.
Do I have a comments counter? I’ll check that as well.
I want to change the permalink icon. I may want to move it to the beginning of each post I make.
I want to create a link to a page of articles I’ve written. I’ve also got other things I want as separate pages. How/where?
I want to create logical groupings of links together on one side of my weblog.
I need that little email envelope icon so people can email me about this weblog. Where and how?
Apparently, I need some sort of XML coffee mug icon that allows people to quickly subscribe to this weblog. (In case I ever get to say anything other than HELP!) How?
I want to use CATEGORIES for my posts and have a list of my categories on the public weblog so that posts by category can be viewed.
I want to change the name & subtitle of this weblog. I’ll check that when I publish this.
I want to remove the gap that exists between the end of my posts and the time.
I want a completely different look/design/theme for this weblog. So far all of the tips I’ve gotten basically boil down to, ”go over to your home page template and edit the HTML to look like you want it to.” (Right after my DIY brain surgery!)
I’d like for the daily heading for each day’s posts to be styled differently, possibly with a different icon.
I need to add the feature that permits linking via a new window.
I must have visited several hundred sites looking at templates, themes, CSS designs, other weblogs, etc. I know this stuff can be done, but I can’t figure out where and how these people are doing it. I’ve attempted to copy information out of templates into Dreamweaver so that I could WYSIWYG this stuff. However, nothing I’ve copied renders correctly when I ”preview” it. This has something to do with macros that are behind the scenes of Radio (I think).
An Important Watermark!
OK…the hints are taken. Courtesy of Dave’s pointer to Doc’s pointer to Jacob’s blog about blogging, this will be my last blog about blogging! From the 13th of January to last night, I’ve wrestled (rather publicly) with some fundamentals that others who use Radio know cold. Jenny Levine’s fantastic site and some adoptive care from her to this newbie have got me on the path to designing the kind of site I envisioned when I first downloaded Radio.
I may fumble when it comes time to make the changes I want to make, but I’m hoping that the ”work offline” switch and the ”post vs. publish” controls will allow me to experiment without forcing others to watch me stumble around.
As always the thanks go out to Dave Winer and the team at Userland Software for creating a tool that entices nonprogrammers/web novices/Everyman into a new realm. Continued thanks go to Dane Carlson for help he’s provided, and I’m certain will provide again. I’m not sure how long it may take for me to re-emerge, but I think I’ve got the blueprint and toolkit in place. When the day comes, this weblog will go public with a new message and a new title, subtitle, look/theme, host and its own domain name. What else needs to change?
For those of you who have endured as we rookies have invaded your weblogging turf, I thank you for the patience you’ve had and the motivation you’ve given by showing us the kinds of things that are possible. I, for one, will attempt to create content worthy of the medium. Until then…thanks, have fun and stay tuned!
Jenny Levine is MY INFO MAVEN!!!! She has sent me an email answering my questions. Were it not so late here this evening, I’d be editing my brains out.
Instead, I’ll have to wait until tomorrow. But, be assured that The Shifted Librarian will forever be on my daily reading list!!!
Thank you, thank you, t h a n k y o u !
Is Radio the only tool people are using to create weblogs/websites like www.theshiftedlibrarian.com? Is everyone who produces a site such as this one completely fluent in HTML hand-coding?
How does that site manage to offer a comments feature for every post?
What steps did she go through to get the links down the left and her posts organized by category down the right? What are the steps in the editing process to get things that clearly organized?
How does she do the checkbox for opening links in new windows?
Because the site is named as it is, does that tell me that she is hosted somewhere other than at Userland?
Is there a more effective/efficient way to edit one of Radio’s canned templates than to copy the source to a WYSIWYG editor, make the changes, view the source and copy it back into the proper spot in Radio’s prefs pages? If so, what method are most people using?
Thanks in advance to whomever has the time to provide the answers!
Dave Winer is absolutely right. The Shifted Librarian is an excellent example of what can be done with Radio. Now, I want to know HOW!!
Was Radio the only tool used to do this? Since the site is at the domain www.theshiftedlibrarian.com, does that mean someone else besides Userland is hosting this site? How did she edit the template? Is that a matter of finding the template, copying it out to an editor, editing it, then pasting it back into Radio? Can the column of links on the left and right of her site be edited and maintained from within Radio? I’ve been trying to understand the HOW of all of this since the 13th of January. Also, those neat little comments she’s calling for with each post. How’s that done? What am I missing? If all of this comes so easy to the secretary and the librarian, why am I making it so hard? If you can’t answer my questions specifically, tell me HOW to go about getting those answers.
A return to the executive suite may not be such a bad thing after all.
Still no luck figuring out what needs to go where to change the look of a Radio weblog. I also can’t do the web services examples without getting the same error message over and over, and I don’t have clue what the error message is telling me to do.
I plan to use a domain name, create a web site that can be edited with some wysiwyg tool and use it to write articles instead of weblog posts. All of this other stuff seems to me to be the future, but I can’t figure it out. I guess I’m suddenly finding myself in that crowd that is ”too old.” Frustrating beyond belief.
Tuesday, I blathered about building some sort of Playing the Radio for Dummies site. Well, the truth is it already exists and is getting better daily. Take a look at Andy Sylvester’s Radio Userland Resource Directory. Congratulations, Andy on a super piece of work.
I’m crawling back under my rock to learn how to edit a template now!
Don’t you just love people who really understand accountability? This headed IDG.NET’s Top Stories newsletter this morning: ”We would like to apologize for re-sending the previous edition of Top Stories. Due to technical difficulties, our system published an outdated edition. Please enjoy this current issue. Thank you—The IDG.net Editors”
Our system reheated yesterday’s coffee this morning!
Let the tables vs. CSS games begin.
Lessons from History
Some of you have followed my travails as I’ve tried to come up to speed with Radio, web site creation, HTML, etc. I’m not up to speed. It’s been 30 days since I got Radio.
However, this week’s information will serve as an afterburner for me. I provide it to you if you’re still wrestling with Radio and unsure about how to proceed. It boils down to one man’s opinion about how to accelerate from a standing start with Radio, HTML, web site building and the like.
The breakthrough came (for me) when I figured out how to learn this stuff. No – I haven’t learned it yet, but I think I know how to learn it now. Here’s my recipe, with a whole lot of help from Dane Carlson, Dave Winer and John Robb, and I hope it helps you:
Read the Help items found on the Radio menu at the top of the desktop copy of Radio (remember, you have a desktop copy and a cloud or public copy)
Next, read the Prefs, but don’t change anything you don’t fully understand
Somehow, get yourself adopted. The best way to do this is locate a web log you really like and point to it in one of your posts; then, email the person with specific questions. Usually, you’ll find a helpful soul there!
Start posting and linking to other posts. Practice!! As you work read all of the . They hide good stuff. (Don’t worry about ”the look” just yet. Use themes to change everything at once, at least until you get a bit better understanding of themes, templates, etc.)
Start using the News Aggregator. Use the help screens as needed.
When you get ready to move beyond just posting inside one of the ”canned themes” that Radio provides, you’re in a world of HTML. Sorry, but I’ve learned that we’ve got to learn it. That’s what templates are and they require hand-coding or, at least, copying and pasting of HTML code. Here’s a good place to go to get started. There are some good books out there as well. If you need more information about books for this stuff, email me.
Now, the next two bullets – this one and the next one – are breakthroughs. Read this Q & A, then this amplification.
Learn from history. This links you to today’s Scripting News which contains a phenomenal wealth of information about issues that we’re all facing with HTML, including tables, CSS (that’s cascading style sheets) and other issues that are not so vital today, but will be vital tomorrow. Reading this now will prevent most of us (the group I call newbies) from boxing ourselves in.
Finally, I’m not yet ready to edit the look of my site; nor am I up to speed on the really slick ways to use categories. That will come and when it does, I’ll add to this post. Developing web services, posting to other web sites, building my own theme and some other stuff is still fuzzy, too. We’ll get there.
How about this? What if I figure out how to build a weblog that contains permalinks to a Newbie’s Radio Tutorial (we could call it Radio Playing for Dummies)? Is there a need? Clearly, it would move from where the Help & Prefs leave off to things like I’ve been facing as I attempt to build a decent site.
I have other ideas about things I want to write about, think about and discuss, but most of that is dependent upon my becoming proficient with Radio as a tool – and, not just to post a message! Style issues, channel issues, newsfeeds, categories, integrating a weblog into a web site and vice versa are things that we all need to know how to do. So, until that stuff is understood, the serious content will just have to wait. I’d rather try to help a certain subset of Radio Users as a personal learning exercise.
I wouldn’t know a CSS from an RSS from an XML-RPC right this instant, but I’m willing to learn and determine where each of these topics fits into the 4 phases of development I discussed this morning. Any thoughts out there? (I’ve got a hunch there are others who are willing to help!?!)
Here’s an aha! (A mind bomb(?), at least for me!) Dane Carlson has figured out a way to find (with Google) sites that offer RSS feeds. As I understand it these are the sites that Radio users can add to their news aggregator. I’ll be experimenting with this.
Another important goal for me is to make the Web Services examples work!
Email regarding yesterday’s Newbie Questions and Dave’s & John’s answers was overwhelmingly positive. I’m a little surprised. It seems that the community of users who want to do some of the things I want to do with Radio is quite a bit larger than I realized.
It appears to me that Radio users may fall into at least three groups as users – or perhaps users pass through three phases in their use of Radio. Some may stop in the phase they need or want and move no further. The fact is that the lines between each of these phases are blurred.
A rough summary of what I heard is:
BASIC USER: Downloaded Radio, made it work, love it for posting
ADVANCED USER: I want to enhance the look of my site and really exploit Categories, News Feeds and the like
WEB DEVELOPER: I’m redesigning my site to use CSS; I wish I had done this to begin with; there’s a lot more I haven’t figured out, yet.
PROGRAMMER: Radio is moving me into XML, Web Services, SOAP and other cool stuff
All the messages were encouraging. Most people made it clear that there’s no problem stopping or pausing in any of these phases, other than possibly the last. That’s where enormous change is happening.
I’ll continue to share my questions, the answers and some trial-and-error methods I’ve gone through as I get things nailed down. A hearty thanks to everyone for their positive remarks!
”I trust the software and I trust Jake.” When Dave says something like this, it makes me want to know who Jake is and whether or not he’s got a weblog! If you missed the comment, it was Dave’s answer to my question #4 this morning. The more I learn, the more I want to know.
If you haven’t seen Bryan Bell’s web site, you’re missing out on what is possible with a Radio weblog. Look at the themes and customer sites that Bryan designed!
Between Dave Winer’s & John Robb’s posts today, I feel like I’ve struck the deep gold vein of Radio. What a huge help their answers and comments have been. Many thanks to Dane Carlson for patiently bringing me along. This is good stuff.
Dane & Dave (almost sounds like 2 Olympic decathlon…oh, that was Dan) have been a huge help! Dane adopted me under Sylvain Carle’s excellent adopt-a-newbie idea! She made quite a breakthrought with that one. Today’s Q&A was a direct result of these guys & gals making Radio users a priority. In the long run Radio will be more successful due to that approach and attitude than due to any feature that any of us dream up!
I’m motivated again!
In the spirit of mutual admiration, Radio is providing an enormous opportunity to learn new stuff. Remember, it’s new to those of us who haven’t been doing anything but browsing the web! Now that I’m trying to actually do some stuff on the web (without using FrontPage) I’m having to acquire new skills. It’s the vocabulary that often stumps me. Deming called it operational definitions – making sure that everybody sees things through a similar lens. Arrival time must mean the same thing to the airline, the media, the passenger and the government agency reporting the stats for anything ”actionable” to happen. Anyhow, I’m going to get past these startup problems (I downloaded Radio on 1-13-02), learn the definitions and begin making some more meaningful posts!
Newbie Questions *
After wrestling with HTML fundamentals all weekend and trying to understand the connection between weblogs and web sites, I find that I’ve still got a bunch of questions. There must be something that I haven’t found yet that answers questions such as these; or, maybe Radio is much more intuitive and I just don’t ”get it.” What prerequistes have I missed that are required courses for Radio 8?
What’s really happening when I ”update radio root”? Is this what I see when I go to the news aggregator and find some listings of bug fixes? In other words, does ”3 parts downloaded” mean 3 bugs fixed?
Who uses the desktop application that came with Radio 8.0? I come to this posting page in IE6 to post and to review what is going on. What am I missing by not using the desktop app?
Can I ”subscribe” to any web site using the news aggregator or do only sites that have the orange XML feature work?
What do themes actually change? In the folders, templates, etc., which ones should I copy in order to be able to return to the default setting of a fresh download/install of Radio?
What is meant by dropping things into the wwwfolder? What is really happening if I do that? What are some examples of this?
How is a permalink actually established? Why do some people have titles over each post with a permalink next to them? You can see this here.
Where can I get a better understanding of what categories really do for me?
What are events?
What value do referer rankings have?
What are the rules and methods associated with making a weblog a person’s web site? Can I use Radio to create pages of other content? Can I make the Radio weblog a part of another web site without losing any of Radio’s capabilities? Does userland host a Radio web site if it goes by a completely separate domain name? (e.g. Would I have to arrange for a host for somesite.com?)
What templates (I hope this is the correct term) are used to change the ”Look” of my weblog? Clearly, a theme changes a lot. But what if I find the right theme, then want to tweak certain things about it – like where the date/time/permalink symbol appear after a post? Or, how the links down the right hand side of the default theme are grouped and displayed?
(* How long after the initial download of Radio can someone remain a newbie? How much thrashing must they do and for how long before they are labeled ”moron?”)
Crawling before I walk, I’ve been trying to learn HTML. In doing so I’ve had to learn about editors – WYSIWIG & otherwise. I’ve kind of stumbled into NoteTab Light, a free editor with some excellent HTML macro features. Then, out of curiosity I began playing with CuteSITE Builder from Globalscape.
For most of what I read and see in the weblogs around here, CuteSITE Builder goes too far in hiding the HTML from you. However, it is an excellent tool if you simply need to put together a quick site. Formerly, it was Dan Bricklin’s Trellix Web product.
Still learning, but the crowd is sprinting into web services and I’m still crawling through HTML tags and how to turn my weblog into a decent-looking personal web site. Some leads may simply be insurmountable, but I’m still on the course and still pumping. Maybe there is time to catch up.
Are the little lobster claws next to the dates on my weblog leftovers from my experiment with the Woodlands theme?
If I choose VIEW SOURCE when looking at any of these weblogs, am I going to see pure HTML where the page has been ”rendered” using XML from Radio? OR, is some of what I’ll see when I view the source still XML? If indeed, the page I look at in my browser shows up as totally HTML when I view the source, then a light may have just come on (or gone off) in my brain!!!
This might be the best I can do today. I haven’t used this site, but it was sent to me by a friend who found it worthwhile. I can only imagine what may happen to some of your web logs!
The frustration level is coming down, but it isn’t so low that I’m willing to try another pass at the web services examples. I still have not made those work, but worse, I don’t understand what the error messages are telling me.
On the HTML front, I’m trying to learn enough to get comfortable modifying some of these templates, which I think results in a new theme for Radio weblogs, but I’m not sure. Anyhow, the goals have been revised amid a shortfall in energy, determination and patience. Maybe some of them can happen by next week’s end!
Wow. Dan’s new Weblog looks like a newsfeed (as seen in Radio) of his stories.[John Robb’s Radio Weblog] How was this web site built? Was Radio used? Is Radio one component of a larger web site? Even the simple stuff amounts to mind bombs for me. The amazing stuff is beginning to seem totally unreachable!!
I had been wondering about this. Recent frustrations with Windows make me want to return to the Mac fold. It may happen sooner rather than later! PowerBook vs. the new iBook [MacCentral]
Level 3 Communications. ”Either they have a rabbit in the hat or they don’t, and they aren’t telling us.” [The Motley Fool] Level 3 may simply be ahead of the inevitable rebound. Web services, voice over IP and countless other needs for bandwidth will ultimately reward the sophisticated networks that have shunned the legacy teleco ways. [Disclaimer: I’m long Level 3 and have been since 1998.]
Total frustration. Trying to learn IP routing and weblogging/HTML at the same time. It is getting tiresome to look so foolish with everything I touch.
It’s beginning to feel like time to do what I’ve done for 20+ years. Hire the experts to do what I want done. Maybe people my age shouldn’t be trying to learn how to make a weblog look good, perform well and do sophisticated underlying things. Oh well.
I’ve got to learn HTML to do all I want to do here. Actually, I’ve got to learn a lot more than that. Somebody email me with a suggestion for the best editor to start learning to do HTML/XML work. Is there an editor in Radio? I’ve never used the desktop application. What does it do? I need for the text area of the Default Theme in Radio to be narrower. Take a look at some popular sites and the text area seems to be about this wide…[in the original entry there was an attempt to show a width here]
Currently, I think I post about 90-95 characters wide when I use the Default Theme in Radio. Take a look at this site and you’ll see a more readable layout!
I’ve been told Homesite (Allaire), NoteTab (a notepad replacement), CuteHTML (Globalscape) and Notepad. I’m running Windows, so let me know your thoughts.
What this is really about is building a toolkit. Radio is fantastic. I get the impression that the Geek Wizards (a term of admiration) have an additional set of skills and tools that really make their web sites do their tricks. I may be wrong. I don’t foresee being a java, javascript, Python, Perl or C# programmer. I do want to learn web services, XML, HTML and the techniques that make many of these weblogs so amazing. What goes in the toolkit and what goes in the brain? In other words, how do I keep learning?
It snowed here last night!
Today, I want to accomplish 2 things.
I want to solve this question about grouping my links like they are grouped on Dane Carlson’s site. Does this require that I set up a web site that is ”fed” by Radio as opposed to being a Radio site? In other words, to accomplish all of the html editing that needs to be done, must I be ”outside” Radio’s templates and preferences? I’m not sure, but I hope to use a snow day to find out.
I’m considering setting up a domain, setting up a site and using Radio as my primary vehicle for updating/editing that site. Can this be done? Is this what Dane Carlson and Adam Curry and a whole host of others do? Is Radio their editing tool? OR, are they managing content with Radio and using some other tool(s) to provide the look & feel for their sites?
I really want to get my head around these notions today.
After thinking about this (PalmSource—Palm to preview beta version of OS 5 [MacCentral]) in light of Scot Hacker’s great post, I’ve arrived at a conclusion. Apple ought to buy Palm, find all the BeOS people inside there and develop the iNewt! Open source, Unix/Linux in the palm of your hand. Better yet, make it an iPod/iNewt/iCall device all in one.
Just when I was getting a few more fundamentals down, I read this! To quote Blazing Saddles, ”What in the wide, wide world of sports does this mean?” What lesson am I on and what lesson is Sjoerd Visscher on?
Something tells me I’m falling behind! There may be another level or two that I didn’t cover!
HP-Compaq merger vote set for mid-March [IDG InfoWorld] Will this deal really go through? It’s still unclear what it means for those who have distributed and sold the products of these two companies for many years.
Palm OS 5.0 Preview [Slashdot] These news links may be a little bit like the first time we could write with different fonts. They can get overused pretty fast. It seems to me that this has to do with what the interests, categories and over-arching theme of a weblog is intended to be. I’m still experimenting.
Wow. The new categories feature upgrade for Radio is great. Now I can select a theme and a language for each specific category I create. Coool. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
Uh oh – a discovery! There’s a page called News Aggregator that allows me to do some point and click stuff and add news into my weblog! This seems to add permalinks to these posts as well. Now I understand why I need to be visiting my News subscriptions regularly.
The whole world “gets” this, and I can’t seem to cut and paste correctly even when following Dave’s instructions to the letter. This is the second morning in a row I’ve tried this and it still doesn’t work.
Not a clue what I’m cutting and pasting, so no way to know how to fix it. It’s frustrating, but maybe I’m an extreme neophyte and not a newbie!
Tomorrow will be a good day for a fresh start with some simple features of Radio. Ever since Sylvain Carle suggested adopting newbies, I’ve been getting super tips, advice and help. I like my adoptive Radio parent!
I’m going to tap into that help and make certain that I know what news feeds and channels do as well as categories. Then, I’m going to divide a bunch of links that I want to have on my site into logical groups and find out how to put a heading at the top of each group. You can see an example of what I’m talking about here.
Finally, time permitting, I’m going to nail down the business of themes. If I get all these links built over on the right hand side and then change themes, will I lose the work I’ve done? Before the end of the week, I want to use another domain name and and have my site hosted either at Userland or at some other host. If I’m using some other domain name, am I by default selecting some other web host? We’ll find that out, too.
Wow! I fumbled on the web services example, but I still got a link (and a nice email) from Dave Winer. A class act if you ask me. As a beginner I’m catching a glimpse of just how important these tools and this technology can be on several different levels. First, the notion that Everyman can now be a web publisher is an important step. Second, the underlying technologies that allow Everyman to get into some deeper water with developing and programming are important.
Taken together, we’re looking at how the Internet and The Web will evolve into the truly revolutionary tools we all thought they’d be during The Bubble. The Bubble was form – this stuff is substance!
The error message below was a result of my attempt to follow the Web Services example. When I saw what had happened, I thought I had edited it out of my web log. Guess not! Anyhow, I’m leaving it in for all to see. But, it is my error, I’m sure.
I hope when Dave pointed to me he wasn’t ROTFL! Hanging in there!! HOW TO LEARN THIS STUFF <params = {”Dave”}; xml.rpc (”127.0.0.1”, 5335, ”radio.helloWorld”, @params)>
Dave is absolutely right – though I wish there could be a different way. Most of what I’ve learned so far came about exactly like this… I told him ”Stare at it in incomprehension. Click on all the links. Get confused. Come back later and do it again. Repeat until aha.”
For many this is the first programming they’ll ever do. There’s no way to make that first leap easy. But once you get it, you never forget, and it goes to some very interesting and rewarding places.
Updated to Radio 8.0.3 just now. What are the ”parts” that Radio sends down to me? It isn’t a question for now, but for later. I love this stuff, and I don’t have a clue (yet)!!!
Let me be perfectly clear about my prior rant(s). Radio 8.0 didn’t get in my way; ignorance did. I agree with every comment that states how easy it is for a novice to begin a weblog with Radio. That’s true.
What isn’t quite as obvious is how one goes slightly beyond the basic weblog you see here into the realm of a personal web site with lots of attention-grabbing content.
It is also a bit unclear as to where all the links come from that you see at a place like this. I think he sits down to a Radio Weblog text box just like the one I’m typing into. Further, I believe he types his own comments and builds the links into what he is typing. Apparently, he jots down the URL for the places he wants you to go and then sets those up using Radio’s link icon at the top of this box. I’m guessing now and my guesses are based purely on my own efforts to discover these features.
My network is now up and running. Only one machine left to be rebuilt. Email is back. Surely, this week will permit time on Radio. I want to learn it.
Models for my site are these - Carlson & Curry - with liberal doses of other weblogs you’ll find at these sites! By the end of this week, I want a theme/style/look for my site and that will allow me to begin building content into it. I’m told that I can’t change the look of the site without losing all the links that I may list down one side of it. So, first things first – let’s find a look!
That raises yet another Radio fundamentals question. How are all these people who ”got it” so quickly with Radio able to remember the specific URL’s for the links they are putting into their weblog writing? Are they jotting links down on a scratchpad before composing something in their weblog?
If I wanted to link to www.scripting.com right here, but didn’t know the URL, how would I get it without losing what I’d typed above? The only way I know is to open another IE window, browse to where I want to be, note the link and come back here and type it in. Two recent attempts to do just that cost me what I had previously typed into this ”editing box.” What is this box called? It would help if I knew the terminology associated with all of this.
Finally, when I typed the link above, it appeared automatically. That’s completely different from trying to turn these two words, Scripting News, into a link. So far to go and so little time.
OK…it happened again. I was typing something into this box, I opened another IE window in order to go somewhere to get a link that I could then attach to something I was typing here. When I went to the other site, I lost what I was typing here.
The junk I had typed was about my current frustration with not having a network for over a week, having an on-site Windows 2000 Server expert for 2 hours yesterday and now I don’t have email.
I wanted to link to Dan Carlson’s site as I thanked him for adopting me under the adopt a newbie plan suggested by someone esle. I can’t go browsing for who that was because I lose this typing.
What a way to start a Sunday morning! Isn’t technology wonderful? Where are my wooden pencils and yellow legal pads?
I was working on a post for tonight and a link I clicked on in my bookmarks, caused me to lose everything I had written. Live and learn. More tomorrow. Frustration.
What’s the best way for a rookie to learn? I’m following the team around. I’m carrying their luggage. I’ve sung the old college fight song. I’m even willing to fetch their desserts at the team meal. But, won’t one of the veterans tell me which one of these is the real playbook?
I’m bound and determine to become a part of this community. I just hope I can figure out all the rules before I commit some horrendous faux pas!
Progress at last. Feeble as it may appear, there are now two new links on my web log. Dane Carlson gets my thanks for the advice he provided via email! Take a look at his site. It will help the newbies. In addition to being a newbie, I’m ill-equipped to understand much of what is said on the Discussion board, in the help screens and at the Yahoo list. That must make me an incompetent rookie. However, I like Radio 8.0.2 and want to learn more!! Thanks again Dave et al!!!
I’m going to have to learn HTML. It is obvious that I need to be able to look at a line of tagged text and understand whether it is HTML or XML. I can’t do that today. However, I’m willing to chase down the differences. Is everyone but me walking around with all those tags and syntax rules in their heads???
Should I be using a WYSIWIG editor? Then, show the source and copy it into the Radio prefs? Still lots to learn!
How do I link back to one of my own posts?
Why do so many Radio sites have a place to enter your email address? If I do that will I be getting their updates by email? Or, are those simply allowing me into discussions that are happening at those sites? More to learn than I can keep up with!!!
It’s fun though. Had I started programming early in my career, I might know some of this stuff. We make our choices and our choices turn around and make us!!!
Clear-headed now. Not empty-headed, clear-headed. Yesterday’s fight to move Radio is history. Today is a new day. Here’s what I want to learn:
How do I change the look of my weblog?
How do I make my weblog work at some other domain? Do I loose features? I guess I don’t understand how all of this works!!! Where do I learn it?
How do I add links down the side of my weblog?
How does this news aggregator thing work? Does it allow me to pull news into the weblog that everyone else sees or only into the weblog I see when I’m editing?
How much html do I need to learn to do the things that Radio “makes so easy?”
Oh yeah, and what are these categories? How do I add or edit categories and what happens when one of those boxes is checked?
Finally, I’ve got to get to a point where I understand the instructions these bloggers are provding when I ask for help. Feeds, scripts, rendering, upstream, channels, pointers, cloud, etc. may be keys to understanding.
Looks as though I’ll have to buy Radio again. Congrats to Userland! I want them to thrive. When I made the decision to permanently license Radio, I wanted to preserve the work I had already done. But, I also wanted to move Radio off my laptop onto a fast desktop computer in my office. I’ve put in almost 5 hours on this today and I still don’t understand what is going on.
My trial of Radio has worked flawlessly on my laptop since my initial download. I don’t know how to DO anything with it, but it works. However, all attempts to move it onto my desktop have met a wall. All the computers in my office are behind Ositis WinProxy, which is our firewall. I didn’t tell Radio it was behind a firewall – it just worked. Now, I’m still on my laptop; I haven’t told Radio about the firewall, and I’m blogging just fine.
I cannot get past the start up screen on the desktop.
Thought this would be the weekend I learned to do some good stuff. But, I’ve spent all day working on Radio’s configuration settings and attempting to abide by the rules as I move it over to the desktop PC. Not a chance. This has been like working all day on the lawnmower when all you really wanted to do is cut the grass and take a Saturday off!!!!
O’Reilly needs to hand Dave a whopping advance to write another in The Missing Manual series. If not, pick another animal and let’s get Radio in a Nutshell!
Radio 8.0 is simply too important to be out there without a book! Sure, it’s easy to blog within minutes, but if you want to do the cool stuff (and you’re a rookie at doing cool stuff) the book would help.
No sooner did I post my last drivel than I stumble onto this site. How’d he do this stuff? I want to build something like this. He’s got a different ”theme” or ”look” to his site than those that are ”canned” into Radio, but it is still obvious that this is a Radio site.
What do I need to know that I don’t know now??? What a question. Are the secrets in HTML editing? Am I stylistically challenged and can’t see the forest for the trees?
How do I make Dane Carlson’s site one of the links over here on the right side? Somewhere there’s a doc or help screen I’ve overlooked that unlocks some of this.
But, you know what – just the learning I’ve done so far is worth the price of admission. I’m buying now!!! Thanks Dave Winer and the team at Userland. I’m forever in your debt!
The time has come to get over some of the style issues I’ve been concerned about and start understanding the substantive matters. Radio 8.0 has drawn a new audience. I get the impression that prior to 8.0 there were quite a number of XML/open source/visionary/programmer/web journalists using Radio. Once 8.0 hit the street, people like me began to jump in with both feet. I’m an executive. Sure, I’ve got an engineering background, have always worked in technical fields, but I’m no programmer. Yet, I ”get it” when it comes to XML-RPC. But, getting it and understanding how to do it are entirely different.
I want a couple of very simple examples – complete with the recipe for making XML-RPC do its magic. Maybe those examples are buried in Radio 8.0. XML may be making this weblog possible and I’m not aware of it.
Years ago – when Radio Shack introduced the TRS-80 – I bought a book about BASIC. Chapters 1 & 2 simply introduced some statements and commands. Chapter 3 began my lessons in programming math problems using the distance, rate & time equation. The need never arose for me to apply my understanding of BASIC, but I’ve used the knowledge I gained a thousand times in the last 20 years. I need some straight forward eamples to understand XML-RPC and some of the other stuff that gets mentioned here. I’m anxious to learn, but seem to be making false starts on the road to getting understanding!
So much for good intentions. I didn’t get to sit at the computer much at all this weekend. One question at this point. Why can’t I use the themes I find here?
I’d like to have something else that further distinguishes my weblog from the many others that exist. How do I do that? I’ve still got to figure out how to get links down one side of the page and other links beneath the calendar on the other side.
So much for being a rookie. I haven’t even carried anyone’s bags to the bus, yet! Playing time is in the distant future!
By tonight the fog should be lifting because this network installation will be in mop-up mode. Now I’m thinking about a weekend project. I (think) I want to put Radio on a new iMac with OS X and figure out how to develop a web site around the weblog concept. The blog is the site!
When I visit Scripting News, I get this feeling that there is so much more to this tool that I haven’t seen – much less learned. The links down the left-hand side take me to sites that clearly have the ”look” of a Radio weblog, but they’ve been custom tailored to have the look of a full-blown web site as well. I want to learn this. Here’s an example at Adam Curry’s site. How’d he do that? Are tools missing from the toolbox that is used to do this stuff? Are Frontier and Manilla required tools for the job?
I’m going to figure this stuff out and get answers. This could lead to an entirely new set of skills and a different or expanded career. That’s how pumped I am!
As I suspected ”Can’t complete the operation because Windows reported an error: ”The specified path is invalid.” is what I got when I attempted to launch Radio after the update to 8.0.1.
I’ll troubleshoot this tonight. See below…no troubleshooting needed. Stupidity treatments are under way. This works just like Dave and the gang at Userland intended. If those of us who are rookie users would simply follow directions carefully, everything works as advertised.
I’ll continue to document my progress here – though, it’s probably not winning me any friends in the blogging community. I’ll contribute something more worthwhile after I learn this app!
I need more time to learn this. As always I get my hands on a tool such as this at exactly the same moment that I’m working from can-to-can’t (that’s all day and into the night for those of you up North). This network installation should be finished in the next couple of days.
Radio 8.0.1 was installed this morning by following the installation instructions literally. We’ll see later if the simple copy of metapad to the Radio Userland program folder really turns my copy of Radio into 8.0.1. Something tells me I’ve overlooked something. Ooops – I was massively stupid. I got the wrong zip file off my Windows desktop. I’m in such a hurry I copied two files into Radio Userland that didn’t belong there. Fixed it and all is well!!!!
Since my last post I’ve not had time to study Radio much! But, lest a day goes by without a post, I’m posting. The Scripting News site was full of great information tonight. I need more time to dig in and study. Never thought of myself as a script writer, a coder or programmer, but some of this stuff is so COOL that it makes me want to dig in.
I want to make my site look a bit different. Is that a need for a different theme? Do I need to do some real html stuff to distinguish my site? What I really want is a site that is totally done in Radio 8.0, has a great title, uses a domain name of my choosing and links to a bunch of other cool weblogs. How do I get there – soon?
Many thanks to Dave Winer and others who have made this experience possible!!! Now that Dan Bricklin is headed this way, Radio Userland becomes more intriguing by the day!
Well…I’ve learned some stuff, but I’m pretty sure the list of questions is now up to 2000+. First, I lost my first post. I was typing here, wanted to do a link and I clicked on a link over to the right to get the URL for the page I wanted to link to. Bad mistake. I lost the text I had typed.
Also, I found out that the two small radio buttons immediately beneath this window allow me to toggle between WYSIWYG and html source views.
What I can’t seem to figure out is numerous. First, the desktop icon that Radio put on my desktop launches IE and opens this page ready for me to post something. Right clicking on the Radio icon in my system tray offers a choice to Open Radio. That launches an application. Right now I haven’t figured out the relationship between what I’m doing here and that application.
Further, I stumbled into some web pages that seem to allow me to manipulate preferences for my copy of Radio. Not a clue what that was all about.
However, this has not yet become frustrating. Each uncovered feature and question urges me on.
How can I turn this weblog into a collection of sites/weblogs I read a lot? How can I make this weblog into my list of IE favorites so that I can get to anything, anywhere without toting a computer?
How can I begin to get answers to these questions from other bloggers? How can I link to them and them to me?
Fifteen minutes have passed since I downloaded Radio. I’ve posted three times. The World is reading about my effort to learn how to do this in reverse chronological order. Does that make sense? Hey, where’s the spellchecker for this work?
I just spotted the ”Ranking by Page-Reads” link over here on the right side of this view that I’m in. Apparently it is going to tell me about the 100 most popular, i.e. most read, Radio weblogs. How do you get into that list? Clearly, not by writing the drivel I’ve got going right now.
OK…here goes…more later!
Wow…I clicked on Home over on the right side and went to the home page that I believe the World is seeing. Then, I wasn’t sure how to get back here where I could start typing more weblog!
Finally, I began tampering with the Radio icon that is in my system tray. It seems that choosing Home from that pop-up menu got me back to here. Is that the most efficient way? Is that the only way? The Open Radio choice on that menu gave me more to look forward to. But, what is update radio.root? When I choose open www folder what does that view allow me to do?
OK…I typed some stuff. Then, I posted it. Now I see what I typed with a checkbox next to it. What am I really looking at? Is this the way everyone else will see my weblog site? There are so many things here that I like, but I’m not sure how to change them or edit them. How much of what I’m doing cannot be undone when I really learn what I’m doing? Can the title be different? Can the footer that contains the copyright notice? How do I manage the links down the right side of the page?
I’ve just downloaded the trial version of Radio 8.0. Where’s the primer that gets me into the other features? I love this stuff.
I’ve just downloaded the trial version of Radio 8.0. My goal is to learn how this tool compares to other web site development tools such as FrontPage and Globalscape’s CuteSiteBuilder.
There must be 1000 questions on my mind right now. I think they have to do with peeling back the layers of Radio to uncover other features that I’ll want in the future. How do I create a different title? What is I have a domain name and want to use Radio to maintain a site at that domain?
What’s this about a newsreader feature? Have I even asked that question the proper way? When Dave Winer adds something to his weblog, what must I have set in my copy of Radio to automatically know about it?
How can I begin ”connecting” with all of these people who are using weblogs to write great stuff? Today could mark the first day of the rest of my life, if Radio proves to be a tool that allows me to participate in weblogging and self-documents the other weblogs and sites that I want visitors to my site to be aware of. Whew – that was a mouthful!
Filed under:
Foxtails, mudflaps and curb feelers for your life!
“No, you cannot enter state or city-sponsored retirement at age 50.”
Today is the day of Ronald Reagan’s funeral. It’s been declared a federal holiday. This morning there was a funeral service at the National Cathedral in Washington. Following that service will be a burial service in California.
Stephen Covey suggested seven habits. One of them was to ”begin with the end in mind.” The end in this case is a properly rendered index.php page from 
However, some people overlooked the obvious. The same reasoning applies to the purchase of single share or 100 shares or 30,000 shares of a public company. If you’re unwilling to own all of it at the price you’re paying for one share, you’re not getting a great deal on the shares you are buying.
...try, try again!
If I accept 
If we continue to second-guess and undermine those who serve our nation, we are not going to have a nation to serve.
Take a look at this list of seemingly unrelated topics:
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There’s a set of nominations for the best weblogs in various categories 
How long would it take to search Mississippi? Iraq covers an area equal to roughly 3.5 Mississippi’s.
You get used to it, the clerk said. I didnt know if she meant the song or the knifings in the breakroom. [
Low = Green
Guarded = Blue
Elevated = Yellow
High = Orange
Severe = Red” border=”0” />
Not my intent!
As of noon yesterday a project I’ve been deeply involved with shifted from being one about cost variations to ”hurry, we must know what we’ve run out of by Monday!”
Long hours of 
As I reported 
After some 
For starters, I want to see a pie chart. I want that pie chart divided into slices based upon all the money sent to the Federal government in all forms. I want to see operating budgets for the President and the White House, the Vice President, the 
The pie chart should show ALL the money. There should be no other money with any other label such as ”off-budget” or similar chicanery. From there every dime spent should be questioned. Some departments should be 
If you never do anything in the first place, you can pretty much remain anonymous. If you accomplish a little something, you’ll get your fifteen minutes of fame.
For all those that are late in getting this information, I just learned that 
I think some people must believe that the freedom to speak out about anything should also extend to 
Last May I caught up with some of the reruns of The West Wing. 
First, if you’re uncertain about where you stand on the theory of evolution vs. creation, you might want to consider these books:
On the subject of something some call ”
No words that I know how to write can possibly express how proud I am of you. Time together has simply passed much too quickly. Now that you’re at the opposite end of the state, I miss you more than ever.
God’s blessing has been bountiful in having you as my daughter. Your joy, your excitement and the love you have for life is completely contagious. I still wish for a heaping helping of that kind of enthusiasm every morning.
The written word simply cannot express the enormous wishes, hopes and dreams that I have for you. Each day I pray for your safety, your happiness and for your ministry to others.
Rest assured that each time I think I’ve reached or seen my proudest moment, you surprise me once more. My prayers continue to seek God’s watchcare and blessings in all that you do.
what is meant by CRM in the context of this type of 
When the announcement was made that the folks at About.com had begun using Movable Type for all of their sites, and there were RSS feeds, I immediately added some RSS feed subscriptions to SharpReader. I regret it.
Maybe another shoe is going to drop in this saga. Were it the playoffs, I’d say that UserLand is finding the momentum (ol’ Mo) has shifted to the 
Last night my middle daughter got engaged. It will be at least a year before her wedding, but it’s an event unlike any other I’ve experienced as a parent. The mixed emotions are overwhelming, and that’s acknowledging that I’m crazy about the guy. They’ll be great together and they are truly seeking God’s best every step of the way.
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Few will ever measure up to the standard he established as 
Two old and previously missed announcements crossed my RSS reader today:
One of the most difficult obstacles to overcome when trying to help organizations improve is the notion – often from top to bottom – that answers are easy, quick-to-implement and instantly discovered. Nothing could be further from the truth. Some things take time!
The June, 2003 issue of FSB magazine (that’s Fortune’s Small Business magazine) has an interesting 
I rode the ferry tonight.
No matter the mood, there’s music to match it. Nothing can quite so quickly take one’s spirit and emotion to new heights as quickly as great music.
You’ve come so far. From a short, chubby-legged 4-year old to ”
You heard it at age 5. Few ever know the joy of such a fit between desire, ability and opportunity.
In too many ways and with too many people, there is a sense that one is somehow better than another. They may be better because of their job. They may be better because of their car. They may be better because of their over-bearing nature. Whatever delusion they have and use, they’ve determined that they are better than you and me.
It’s your birthday. It’s hard to imagine that we’ve known each other for 21 years. I wish you and your granddaddy in Memphis had known each other better. Instead, we only have very few pictures of a big-eyed, quiet little girl sitting in his lap looking around. You were only seven and a half months old when he died.
Now you’re a senior in college. I couldn’t be prouder of you. You’ve got such a sweet spirit, an incredible sense of humor and God’s light shines through you in all that you do.
Dads wish daughters wouldn’t grow up. In fact, Dads may never turn loose of the little girls that first made their impressions. Was it when she first smiled at him? Was it when she first laid her head on his shoulder and cried? Was it the last time he saw her cry? Whatever the situation, daughters remain daddy’s little girls for life.
No matter how far you go; no matter how much the joy; no matter how deep the sorrow, you’ll continue to be Daddy’s little girl. Twenty-one or not, Daddy will always be at your side. One of the great joys this Dad has experienced is seeing you and your two wonderful sisters grow up as best friends, siblings and allies in everything.
The President 
So many people don’t understand 
Now that the French have shown their true colors, we need an alternative to the famous Rhodia Pads. Any suggestions? Anybody know if there’s anything remotely comparable?
Last August I bought an HP Pavilion laptop that has never worked properly. Oh, it runs fine. If you turn it off it requires about 20 cycles of the power off-power on button before it will boot to a stable Windows XP desktop. So, it needs to go to HP for some attention.
Lego enthusiasts have implemented three of Escher’s optical illusion paintings (including ”Ascending and Descending,” pictured here), using Lego! 
HERE’S A VERY COOL 
Encode any arbitrary string as a UPC with the barcode generator. 
Sweet diagram showing the connections and capacity of the data-lines between Asian nations. 
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