We're still fighting over the causes and remedies of the Great Depression -- 80 years later after the crash of '29.
I'll be pleasantly surprised if humanity is still able to debate the causes of the crash of '08 in 2088. In the happy event that any sentience is around for that discussion, I wonder if they'll consider systemic errors in measuring inflation to be significant contributors to a "complexity crash".
We're not there yet. A Google Scholar search on inflation rate" "cost of ownership" corrected doesn't return anything interesting as of 11/30/08. My May 2007 and June 2007 posts appear to have been rejected by the meme-space meta-mind (love the sound of that!).
That's ok, I can be persistent.
I'll try another example.
I last bought a SONY Trinitron CRT TV about ten years ago. It cost me about $350 at the time and has not cost me a moment's time post-purchase. It will probably work 20 years from now, though by then it will only work with illegal DRM-stripped media.
Today, by contrast, my neighbor asked my advice on his TV purchase. LCD or Plasma? Should he invest in software to do computer-based image calibration? Will the LCDs really last 60,000 hours, or will they need maintenance within 5 years? Will the embedded OS crash and how often? When current DRM barriers are hacked, will the TV become obsolete? Assuming my neighbor's hourly cost is $70/hour, how much will his TV service cost him over his lifespan?
Does anyone lucid imagine that the lifecycle total cost of ownership of his TV will be comparable to the TV I bought ten years ago? Will the increased enjoyment (dubious, since humans adopt rapidly to such changes) justify the massively increased cost of ownership?
Now, I suspect we're hitting rock bottom in terms of the cost of ownership. I believe the quality of Chinese exports (probably including food) is improving from a very low nadir, and I think (pray?) consumers are beginning to consider life cycle costs.
From the perspective of understanding the crash '08, however, it's the past decade that counts. During that time we've supposedly had an adjusted inflation rate of less than 3%. What if we were measuring the wrong numbers? What if the life-cycle adjusted cost-of-ownership inflation rate were really 3-8%? What would that say about what our monetary policy was doing? Could our historically low fed rates, based on the published inflation rates, have been ridiculously low compared to the adjusted rate? If the true inflation rate were 6-7%, what would that say about middle-income wage collapse? How would such an economy have reacted to a sudden contraction in credit?
Ok, I tried! I hope my Google Scholar search turns up more articles in a few months.
Update: Thinking about this, I wonder how long after the technology explosions of the early 20th century people began making intelligent purchases. There must have been a time when most people didn't really know what they were buying, when they couldn't have been making very wise choices ...
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Microsoft Live Mesh won't work
Microsoft's Ray Ozzie is very excited about LiveMesh ...
Live Mesh won't work unless everyone agrees to fully embrace a complete specification of Microsoft's data model for all the entities of interest.
This is the basis for the HL-7 RIM CDA specifications and the massive formal ontologies they use (ex. SNOMED CT). That's not to say that the CDA/Terminfo/SNOMED documents will work in the real world, but at least they don't pretend to magically reconcile disparate data models and they come with a hugely expensive domain-specific expert-maintained ontology.
Microsoft is nuts to attack this problem. That's not to say I know what to do with Microsoft, but they'd be better off returning the Live Mesh money to shareholders.
Ray Ozzie Wants to Push Microsoft Back Into Startup ModeOzzie needs to spend some time hanging out with "Health Level 7" (HL-7) veterans.
... Then comes a demonstration of Live Mesh, which will allow people to seamlessly synchronize all their information with as many people and places as they want, across as many devices (computer, phone, camera) as they want...
Live Mesh won't work unless everyone agrees to fully embrace a complete specification of Microsoft's data model for all the entities of interest.
This is the basis for the HL-7 RIM CDA specifications and the massive formal ontologies they use (ex. SNOMED CT). That's not to say that the CDA/Terminfo/SNOMED documents will work in the real world, but at least they don't pretend to magically reconcile disparate data models and they come with a hugely expensive domain-specific expert-maintained ontology.
Microsoft is nuts to attack this problem. That's not to say I know what to do with Microsoft, but they'd be better off returning the Live Mesh money to shareholders.
The NYT's Baghdad blog and their awful blog software
The NYT has a blog written from their Baghdad bureau. I finally noticed a link to it tucked away on a news page I rarely visit (I read by feed and by the top article list).
They've probably had it for years, but I can't tell because there's no obvious way to browse past posts. Judging by the comments, it has some very keen readers.
I've added the blog to my reader subscriptions. Unfortunately, as fine as this and several other NYT blogs are, they also show how weak the gray lady as she runs out of cash and prepares for sale.
These blogs should have links to a central index of NYT blogs. The comments need their own page. The blogs need an archive index, organized by month. They need a bit of marketing. Hell, why are there no Google ads? I thought the NYT needed revenue.
Great content, lousy presentation, no monetization. No wonder the NYT is running on fumes.
Update: I've discovered that if you click on the title of a NYT blog you get a pseudo-archival view with URLs that look like this: baghdadbureau.blogs.nytimes.com/page/19/. You can substitute for the page #, as I did here, to find the first post, which for this blog appears to have been 12/28/2007. It's followed by "who's who" post dated 2/27/2008 and revised 11/26/2008. The bureau's chief has had an interesting career ...
They've probably had it for years, but I can't tell because there's no obvious way to browse past posts. Judging by the comments, it has some very keen readers.
I've added the blog to my reader subscriptions. Unfortunately, as fine as this and several other NYT blogs are, they also show how weak the gray lady as she runs out of cash and prepares for sale.
These blogs should have links to a central index of NYT blogs. The comments need their own page. The blogs need an archive index, organized by month. They need a bit of marketing. Hell, why are there no Google ads? I thought the NYT needed revenue.
Great content, lousy presentation, no monetization. No wonder the NYT is running on fumes.
Update: I've discovered that if you click on the title of a NYT blog you get a pseudo-archival view with URLs that look like this: baghdadbureau.blogs.nytimes.com/page/19/. You can substitute for the page #, as I did here, to find the first post, which for this blog appears to have been 12/28/2007. It's followed by "who's who" post dated 2/27/2008 and revised 11/26/2008. The bureau's chief has had an interesting career ...
James Glanz is the Baghdad bureau chief for The New York Times. Originally working as an astrophysicist, Mr. Glanz joined The Times in 1999 as a science reporter. In 2004, he became a Baghdad correspondent for the newspaper, and he was appointed bureau chief in August 2007.I very much hope some Google bazillionaire buys the NYT as a gift to his bride or somesuch. It needs a wealthy overlord with some geek skills.
Friday, November 28, 2008
After the crash: The future of the publicly traded corporation
Years before the crash of '08 (complexity crash?) I'd wondered about the future of the Publicly Traded Corporation (PTC). For example, it takes about 10 years to grow a healthy specimen of complex software, but that's six years beyond the attention span of the average PTC.
Anyone watching the transformation of Microsoft from amoral pirate into yet another mediocre but successful corporation must note how all PTCs come to resemble on another. Everywhere we find lots of very bright and insanely industrious people producing, at the end of the day, mediocre products.
For a time Apple, almost alone among PTCs, seemed to have avoided the trap -- but perhaps a single exception only proves how strong the trap is. Personally, I think even Apple has succumbed. I use a lot of what they make, and I think their quality is deteriorating and, worse, they've lost their vision. In the end one maniacal genius leader was not enough; if we could see inside Apple I think we'd learn that they've lost a lot of irreplaceable talent in the past few years.
Of course these are not new concerns. Some were expressed in the book the Innovator's Dilemma; business professors have wondered about the structural problems of the PTC for many years. Now though, we also have the crash of 2008, and we're all noticing how Wall Street financial corporations changed their behaviors when they went from private partnerships to publicly traded corporations.
So here's a thesis, developed between Emily and me, so it has to be good.
The publicly traded corporation had a great run in the 20th century. Sure, it had flaws, but nothing's perfect. In a world of metal bashing and road building maybe those flaws didn't count for so much.
Times change. Things are more fluid now. It takes time to change a physical product line, but Google can terminate Lively in seconds. Most of all, a critical mass of people have figured out the weaknesses of the PTC. In retrospect, when corporations started paying the execs hundreds of times more than the worker bees, the end game was in sight.
So we can expect a lot of new regulation, but maybe what we really need to think about is the future of the publicly traded company. Do we need to look at a mixed model? How can we organize human work for the 21st century?
The PTC isn't going to vanish tomorrow. I think it will still be a dominant player twenty years from now. I do hope though, that by then we'll see much better alternatives emerging.
12/3/08: Possibly related - the decline of the large corporation. Now quite the same thing as I'm thinking, but a cousin.
Anyone watching the transformation of Microsoft from amoral pirate into yet another mediocre but successful corporation must note how all PTCs come to resemble on another. Everywhere we find lots of very bright and insanely industrious people producing, at the end of the day, mediocre products.
For a time Apple, almost alone among PTCs, seemed to have avoided the trap -- but perhaps a single exception only proves how strong the trap is. Personally, I think even Apple has succumbed. I use a lot of what they make, and I think their quality is deteriorating and, worse, they've lost their vision. In the end one maniacal genius leader was not enough; if we could see inside Apple I think we'd learn that they've lost a lot of irreplaceable talent in the past few years.
Of course these are not new concerns. Some were expressed in the book the Innovator's Dilemma; business professors have wondered about the structural problems of the PTC for many years. Now though, we also have the crash of 2008, and we're all noticing how Wall Street financial corporations changed their behaviors when they went from private partnerships to publicly traded corporations.
So here's a thesis, developed between Emily and me, so it has to be good.
The publicly traded corporation had a great run in the 20th century. Sure, it had flaws, but nothing's perfect. In a world of metal bashing and road building maybe those flaws didn't count for so much.
Times change. Things are more fluid now. It takes time to change a physical product line, but Google can terminate Lively in seconds. Most of all, a critical mass of people have figured out the weaknesses of the PTC. In retrospect, when corporations started paying the execs hundreds of times more than the worker bees, the end game was in sight.
So we can expect a lot of new regulation, but maybe what we really need to think about is the future of the publicly traded company. Do we need to look at a mixed model? How can we organize human work for the 21st century?
The PTC isn't going to vanish tomorrow. I think it will still be a dominant player twenty years from now. I do hope though, that by then we'll see much better alternatives emerging.
12/3/08: Possibly related - the decline of the large corporation. Now quite the same thing as I'm thinking, but a cousin.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Lessons from when the terrorists won: The Ku Klux Klan
Yesterday's terrorist attacks in Mumbai have been expected for years. Expected in India, expected in America.
It's only been six years since a single deranged American veteran and a young accomplice terrorized the US capitol. Even Israel, a small state with the world's most extensive security network, has seen several comparable attacks.
Some of these have been stopped by police and intelligence work, but some will get through. Reducing the number that get through is a long process, not a war.
It requires intelligence and police action. It especially requires reducing fund raising. In retrospect 9/11 ended both the IRA and the Tamil Tigers by reducing the funding stream from the American diaspora.
Beyond reducing the flow of money anti-terrorist actions also need to reduce the flow of people. We now believe people join terrorist organizations for the same reasons they join political parties, bowling leagues, Moose lodges, any group-focused religious entity, the NRA and Greenpeace. They join for reasons of social solidarity and tribal identity. Part of the modern anti-terrorist strategy is to give men and women alternative movements to join.
That will be important to remember as the Obama administration turns its attention to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban are the problem.
The Taliban, which, pathetically, in English, rhymes with Ku Klux Klan.
I'm reminded of the Klan, as, after a pause of a few years, I return to the History of the United States audio tape series. There were two distinct incarnations of the Klan, and the thing most of us forget is that the first incarnation of America's "greatest" terrorist organization was victorious ...
The Klan 1.0 won a fantastic victory. One that certainly lasted until the Civil Rights struggle eighty years later, and if you count the GOP's "southern strategy" the legacy of the Klan 1.0's victory lasted until 2008. A victory lasting 126 years is staggering.
The 19th century Klan teaches us that terrorists can win, and win big. They also teach us that when it comes to terrorism, America has a rich and under-appreciated history.
Now, when we work against terrorists in Mumbai, Pakistan and Afghanistan, we need to think about how the Klan won, and how their modern incarnations can be controlled on a global front.
The good news is that we will soon have a rational, thinking government for the United States of America, and that we've learned a lot about terrorism.
Now we have to put that learning to the test.
It's only been six years since a single deranged American veteran and a young accomplice terrorized the US capitol. Even Israel, a small state with the world's most extensive security network, has seen several comparable attacks.
Some of these have been stopped by police and intelligence work, but some will get through. Reducing the number that get through is a long process, not a war.
It requires intelligence and police action. It especially requires reducing fund raising. In retrospect 9/11 ended both the IRA and the Tamil Tigers by reducing the funding stream from the American diaspora.
Beyond reducing the flow of money anti-terrorist actions also need to reduce the flow of people. We now believe people join terrorist organizations for the same reasons they join political parties, bowling leagues, Moose lodges, any group-focused religious entity, the NRA and Greenpeace. They join for reasons of social solidarity and tribal identity. Part of the modern anti-terrorist strategy is to give men and women alternative movements to join.
That will be important to remember as the Obama administration turns its attention to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban are the problem.
The Taliban, which, pathetically, in English, rhymes with Ku Klux Klan.
I'm reminded of the Klan, as, after a pause of a few years, I return to the History of the United States audio tape series. There were two distinct incarnations of the Klan, and the thing most of us forget is that the first incarnation of America's "greatest" terrorist organization was victorious ...
Ku Klux Klan -- Britannica Online EncyclopediaIf I remember the recording correctly, in Louisiana the Klan eliminated about 80-90% of black voters from the rolls during their successful reign of terror.
In the summer of 1867, the Klan was structured into the “Invisible Empire of the South” at a convention in Nashville, Tenn., attended by delegates from former Confederate states. ...Dressed in robes and sheets designed to frighten superstitious blacks and to prevent identification by the occupying federal troops, Klansmen whipped and killed freedmen and their white supporters in nighttime raids...
The 19th-century Klan reached its peak between 1868 and 1870. A potent force, it was largely responsible for the restoration of white rule in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia...
... In United States v. Harris in 1882, the Supreme Court declared the Ku Klux Act unconstitutional, but by that time the Klan had practically disappeared.
It disappeared because its original objective—the restoration of white supremacy throughout the South—had been largely achieved during the 1870s. The need for a secret antiblack organization diminished accordingly...
The Klan 1.0 won a fantastic victory. One that certainly lasted until the Civil Rights struggle eighty years later, and if you count the GOP's "southern strategy" the legacy of the Klan 1.0's victory lasted until 2008. A victory lasting 126 years is staggering.
The 19th century Klan teaches us that terrorists can win, and win big. They also teach us that when it comes to terrorism, America has a rich and under-appreciated history.
Now, when we work against terrorists in Mumbai, Pakistan and Afghanistan, we need to think about how the Klan won, and how their modern incarnations can be controlled on a global front.
The good news is that we will soon have a rational, thinking government for the United States of America, and that we've learned a lot about terrorism.
Now we have to put that learning to the test.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
And now for something completely different
Typealizer (thanks FMH) has performed a Myers-Briggs personality test on my blog:
I wonder if it's some kind of random selection. Unsurprisingly my real Myers-Briggs profile is INTP/INTJ -- depending on my mood.
It's kind of sweet to be considered "play-ful" though.
TypealyzerUmm, right. That's me. Chipper, joking, a real ESTP people person.
ESTP - The Doers .... The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.
The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.
I wonder if it's some kind of random selection. Unsurprisingly my real Myers-Briggs profile is INTP/INTJ -- depending on my mood.
It's kind of sweet to be considered "play-ful" though.
Are we experiencing a complexity collapse in software and finance?
At the same time our economy is collapsing in mysterious ways I've been fighting a personal software war at work and at home on OS X and XP and the iPhone.
It's been one software bug atop another. I've seen emergent bugs from the interaction of different data models on an iPhone app and a Cloud data store, bugs in servers, bugs in clients, bugs in desktop apps, bugs in authentication, bugs related to digital rights management, bugs related to old fragile Outlook plug-in infrastructure, bugs from security fixes driven by relentless viral attacks, bugs one atop another in infinite combinations.
Swarms of bugs.
It's not as though these bugs are coming from amazing new functionality. In many cases my software environment is regressing -- losing functionality.
Bugs aren't new; but they aren't always this bad. I remember how bad things were with DOS 3.x and TSR apps and expanded/extended memory. This feels like a similar cycle -- on a grander scale.
And now we add to this computing chaos the Flight from the Cloud.
Which leads one to wonder what the collapse of our finances might have in common with the collapse of my computing environment. Do the six or so finacial collapse contributing factors have some underlying cause?
One common cause might be the problem of the sustainability of complex systems - in computing and in finance.
Thanks to my extended cybernetic memory, I see that I've made this software and society complexity connection before. What I can't find is any mention of a lecture I attended a very long time ago.
The lecture, which might have been at the old Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) conferences I once attended, was about Complexity. It might have been related to this 1983 book. What I recall were intriguing charts of the trade-offs between complexity and risk.
Maybe the near-collapse of my personal computing environment and my family's financial security share some common roots in the instability and incomprehensibility of rapidly evolving complex systems.
Update: via Krugman, Keynes during the early years of Great Depression I ...
Update 11/28/08: A similar theme in a nov 2007 post of mine.
Update 12/3/08: See also
Update 12/21/08: More people are picking up on the complexity, resiliency meme.
It's been one software bug atop another. I've seen emergent bugs from the interaction of different data models on an iPhone app and a Cloud data store, bugs in servers, bugs in clients, bugs in desktop apps, bugs in authentication, bugs related to digital rights management, bugs related to old fragile Outlook plug-in infrastructure, bugs from security fixes driven by relentless viral attacks, bugs one atop another in infinite combinations.
Swarms of bugs.
It's not as though these bugs are coming from amazing new functionality. In many cases my software environment is regressing -- losing functionality.
Bugs aren't new; but they aren't always this bad. I remember how bad things were with DOS 3.x and TSR apps and expanded/extended memory. This feels like a similar cycle -- on a grander scale.
And now we add to this computing chaos the Flight from the Cloud.
Which leads one to wonder what the collapse of our finances might have in common with the collapse of my computing environment. Do the six or so finacial collapse contributing factors have some underlying cause?
One common cause might be the problem of the sustainability of complex systems - in computing and in finance.
Thanks to my extended cybernetic memory, I see that I've made this software and society complexity connection before. What I can't find is any mention of a lecture I attended a very long time ago.
The lecture, which might have been at the old Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) conferences I once attended, was about Complexity. It might have been related to this 1983 book. What I recall were intriguing charts of the trade-offs between complexity and risk.
Maybe the near-collapse of my personal computing environment and my family's financial security share some common roots in the instability and incomprehensibility of rapidly evolving complex systems.
Update: via Krugman, Keynes during the early years of Great Depression I ...
... But to-day we have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand. The result is that our possibilities of wealth may run to waste for a time—perhaps for a long time...I didn't know people once spelled to-day with a hyphen, it's not like it was a new word in 1929. Nowadays hyphenated words rarely last more than a few years before they lose the hyphen. Faster times, greater understanding, still greater complexity.
Update 11/28/08: A similar theme in a nov 2007 post of mine.
Update 12/3/08: See also
Dan's Data: Lemon-fresh power suppliesand the details that convince me this really is a complexity collapse.
... When sellers know how good their product is but buyers can't tell, you have the all-important asymmetric information" that makes a lemon market possible. (Akerlof's study of this phenomenon won him a share of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics.)Lemon-market rules applied to a lot of stock-market crashes. Look at the dot-com bubble, or the Enron collapse, or the crash of 1987, or the recent US subprime mortgage debacle - which is having cataclysmic effects on the US economy even as I write this....
Update 12/21/08: More people are picking up on the complexity, resiliency meme.
Update 4/4/10: I've been looking for twenty years for a book I heard about in the 1980s. It was about complexity collapse. Recently Clay Shirky wrote about it, the book was written by Joseph Tainter in 1988 -- The Collapse of Complex Societies. It's $36 on Amazon at the moment - probably print on demand. I think I attended a Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) meeting @ 1988-1990 when someone walked through the arguments in this book.
Why price cuts won't sell a Mac to me
Dear Apple,
I see that you would like to sell some Macs ...
The problem is, you aren't solving my problems. So I don't want your machines at any (plausible) price.
So if you want to sell me a Mac, or sell my family a 2nd iPhone, you need to make your basic personal information management software (calendaring, tasks, notes, etc) grow up. A lot.
You need to make the 2008 iPhone the equal of the 1998 Palm Vx.
You need to improve the quality of your products, so I don't lose 3 evenings of my life every time you do a major software update.
Maybe, after six software releases, you could enable Library import on iPhoto.
Maybe you could restore more of what you stripped out of iMovie.
Maybe you could get the bitter taste of Bento out of my mouth by providing a FileMaker useable interface to your system data repositories.
Maybe you could make your software faster, instead of selling machines by producing the world's least efficient code.
Maybe you could start listening to me. Your would-be paying customer -- if you had anything I could use.
Just saying.
I see that you would like to sell some Macs ...
Apple sale! All Macs must go! - Apple 2.0Maybe I can help. I would like to replace my G5 iMac.
... Apple (AAPL), which keeps the tightest reins on list prices in the business, seems to have loosened them significantly this holiday season. Authorized resellers who normally wouldn’t dare chop a nickel off Apple’s suggested retail are cutting prices, offering rebates and plastering the Web with gaudy ads....
The problem is, you aren't solving my problems. So I don't want your machines at any (plausible) price.
So if you want to sell me a Mac, or sell my family a 2nd iPhone, you need to make your basic personal information management software (calendaring, tasks, notes, etc) grow up. A lot.
You need to make the 2008 iPhone the equal of the 1998 Palm Vx.
You need to improve the quality of your products, so I don't lose 3 evenings of my life every time you do a major software update.
Maybe, after six software releases, you could enable Library import on iPhoto.
Maybe you could restore more of what you stripped out of iMovie.
Maybe you could get the bitter taste of Bento out of my mouth by providing a FileMaker useable interface to your system data repositories.
Maybe you could make your software faster, instead of selling machines by producing the world's least efficient code.
Maybe you could start listening to me. Your would-be paying customer -- if you had anything I could use.
Just saying.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Dapocalypse now. Grab your data and run. RUN.
This is not a drill.
Repeat, this is not a drill.
The sky is falling. Ragnarok of the nerds has come. Gabriel's horns a blowin. There's a hole in the hull. The banks a failin' and there ain't no FDIC. There's a time for all things, and this is the time to panic.
It's Dapocalypse Now -- and I was kind of joking when I wrote that three months ago.
Look on my works ye mighty, and note the increasingly impassioned wikipedia donation requests.
Here ye can read the scrolls of the dead. Dead like AOL's xdrive [FAQ] and photo service, Google Lively, Yahoo User Profiles, Yahoo webcam feeds, MSN Groups, and perhaps most impressively, Digital Railroad (emphases mine) ...
*cough*
Everyone needs to do a personal data risk inventory.
Clearly, anything with AOL is walking dead. Kiss your email archives good-bye.
Yahoo Flickr is unlikely to die with Yahoo!, but they'll use Flickr's data lock to hold on to customers until the very end. It won't be pretty.
Most other Yahoo data is toast.
A lot of MSN data will be gone.
So what are our family risks and how will we manage them?
Of course Google's too big to fail ... like Citigroup, for example.
Oh. Maybe that's not so reassuring. I guess I should get more regular about archiving my Google email.
Winter's here. Time to dust off those desktop apps. The great data-bank run of '09 has begun.
Update: I didn't have anything of interest on my xdrive account. I figured I'd delete the account, but that's no longer an option. I do recommend removing all data and account information from unwanted accounts, there's no guarantee that the data will truly be removed. Since I could not delete the account I changed my xdrive password to a random string that does not match any other of my passwords.
Repeat, this is not a drill.
The sky is falling. Ragnarok of the nerds has come. Gabriel's horns a blowin. There's a hole in the hull. The banks a failin' and there ain't no FDIC. There's a time for all things, and this is the time to panic.
It's Dapocalypse Now -- and I was kind of joking when I wrote that three months ago.
Look on my works ye mighty, and note the increasingly impassioned wikipedia donation requests.
Here ye can read the scrolls of the dead. Dead like AOL's xdrive [FAQ] and photo service, Google Lively, Yahoo User Profiles, Yahoo webcam feeds, MSN Groups, and perhaps most impressively, Digital Railroad (emphases mine) ...
I trust you get the picture.Startup firms rely on their investors' continued interest, and boards are often dominated by venture capitalists and others who might choose to pull the plug for their own reasons, as they have no specific relationship with a company's downstream clientele.
Digital Railroad, a stock photography site that let professional photographers manage their own inventory and sales, had said it was shedding costs in mid-October, but posted a note on 28-October-2008 that the plug would be pulled within 24 hours.... Digital Railroad believes the files will remain intact on servers that are no longer active, and if assets are purchased, photographers may be able to get more data back in the future.
What Digital Railroad's photographers lost is not their images; I can't imagine any pro not having many backups of whatever they uploaded. Rather, the time invested in coding their images to the company's specifications--the metadata. Some photographers reported having spent hundreds of hours on this task....
*cough*
Everyone needs to do a personal data risk inventory.
Clearly, anything with AOL is walking dead. Kiss your email archives good-bye.
Yahoo Flickr is unlikely to die with Yahoo!, but they'll use Flickr's data lock to hold on to customers until the very end. It won't be pretty.
Most other Yahoo data is toast.
A lot of MSN data will be gone.
So what are our family risks and how will we manage them?
- SmugMug: I've been worried about them for years. I don't put new images there, but we have a lot of archives that I pay cash to maintain. I wouldn't lose the images of course, they're in iPhoto. I would lose the album organizations and image choices. I need to study if there's any metadata I can extract, perhaps using a personal spider.
- Toodledo: Holds my iPhone Notes and Tasks. I pay for this service too. I've run into issues with Appigo/Toodledo integration but now I'll start archiving my table data every other day. In theory one can subscribe to a Toodledo .ics file from iCal, but when I do that the due dates are empty. If the subscription worked that would be quite reassuring and would make me happier staying with Toodledo. (iCal doesn't have categories incidentally, it really is a miserable application.)
- Evernote: Probably will survive, I don't store any critical data there. Certainly a risk.
- Google: See below.
Of course Google's too big to fail ... like Citigroup, for example.
Oh. Maybe that's not so reassuring. I guess I should get more regular about archiving my Google email.
Winter's here. Time to dust off those desktop apps. The great data-bank run of '09 has begun.
Update: I didn't have anything of interest on my xdrive account. I figured I'd delete the account, but that's no longer an option. I do recommend removing all data and account information from unwanted accounts, there's no guarantee that the data will truly be removed. Since I could not delete the account I changed my xdrive password to a random string that does not match any other of my passwords.
A quantum state eternally evolving in an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space
It's time for your morning exercise ...
I've asked Sean to tell us what the other good ones are.
The wikiepdia entry on Heraclitus might be of assistance.
FQXi Community: Articles, Forums, Blogs, NewsSean Carroll of Cosmic Variance fame has entered an essay contest on the nature of time.
.... The arrow of time finds a plausible explanation in a 'Heraclitean universe,' described by a quantum state eternally evolving in an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space....
I've asked Sean to tell us what the other good ones are.
The wikiepdia entry on Heraclitus might be of assistance.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Now is not the time for anti-materialist Solstice celebrations
I have heard rumor that Celebrators of the Solstice are advocating spiritual observation rather than greed and materialism.
I fear our times of worry are fertile ground for such sentiment.
Alas, we're like the heroin addict about to receive open heart surgery. This is not the time to kick the habit. This is the time for a metered dose of morphine, until the critical point has passed.
Then there will a time for withdrawal and balance, though, alas, by then such sentiments will seem dull and unappealing.
Happily, there is a middle ground.
Those who have income and employment should buy liberally -- but give the goods away.
So get that HDTV, but then donate it.
Alas, I need a real economist to tell me if donating cash would work as well. Since cash is fungible donations may be a less effective economic stimulant (ok, so the opiate analogy breaks down) than toasters, coffee makers, and televisions.
Incidentally, in 86 days, on Feb 17 2009, analog tv is supposed to end.
There's a reason why that date was chosen -- after an election. The transition will not be a happy one for a nation in early stages of the Great Recession. On the other hand, it will force a significant jump in television and/or converter purchases.
So maybe we really should be buying digital broadcast ready televisions this Solstice -- for donation.
I fear our times of worry are fertile ground for such sentiment.
Alas, we're like the heroin addict about to receive open heart surgery. This is not the time to kick the habit. This is the time for a metered dose of morphine, until the critical point has passed.
Then there will a time for withdrawal and balance, though, alas, by then such sentiments will seem dull and unappealing.
Happily, there is a middle ground.
Those who have income and employment should buy liberally -- but give the goods away.
So get that HDTV, but then donate it.
Alas, I need a real economist to tell me if donating cash would work as well. Since cash is fungible donations may be a less effective economic stimulant (ok, so the opiate analogy breaks down) than toasters, coffee makers, and televisions.
Incidentally, in 86 days, on Feb 17 2009, analog tv is supposed to end.
There's a reason why that date was chosen -- after an election. The transition will not be a happy one for a nation in early stages of the Great Recession. On the other hand, it will force a significant jump in television and/or converter purchases.
So maybe we really should be buying digital broadcast ready televisions this Solstice -- for donation.
The best next generation?
My generation gave the world Bill Clinton and George Bush.
The first was, and is, a brilliant man with deep flaws. The second is flawed to the bone.
Obama is effectively post-boomer. It couldn't happen soon enough. It's time for us boomers to quietly shuffle off onto our icebergs.
That's good news, but maybe there's even better news ahead (emphases mine) ...
They'll see the arctic melt, they'll live with rising sea levels, they'll see the end of oil, they'll see human genetic modification and post-modern eugenics, they'll see America become a normal nation (we hope), they'll live in a world of ubiquitous machine translation of English, Chinese, Sanskrit, Spanish and a dozen other languages, they'll see the salvation of Africa (or else).
I sure hope they don't see artificial sentience, but they could.
It's all yours GenE. I'll help however I can, but probably the most I can achieve is to neutralize the more harmful members of my generation.
Enlightenment 2.0 is up to you.
The first was, and is, a brilliant man with deep flaws. The second is flawed to the bone.
Obama is effectively post-boomer. It couldn't happen soon enough. It's time for us boomers to quietly shuffle off onto our icebergs.
That's good news, but maybe there's even better news ahead (emphases mine) ...
Candace Gingrich: A Letter to My Brother Newt GingrichTo borrow a very tired phrase, Generation Equality has skin in the game. If civilization endures they have a reasonable shot at a 100 year lifespan.
... Welcome to the 21st century, big bro. I can understand why you're so afraid of the energy that has been unleashed after gay and lesbian couples had their rights stripped away from them by a hateful campaign. I can see why you're sounding the alarm against the activists who use all the latest tech tools to build these rallies from the ground up in cities across the country.
This unstoppable progress has at its core a group we at HRC call Generation Equality. They are the most supportive of full LGBT equality than any American generation ever -- and when it comes to the politics of division, well, they don't roll that way. 18-24 year olds voted overwhelmingly against Prop 8 and overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. And the numbers of young progressive voters will only continue to grow. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning, about 23 million 18-29 year olds voted on Nov. 4, 2008 -- the most young voters ever to cast a ballot in a presidential election. That's an increase of 3 million more voters compared to 2004.
These are the same people who helped elect Barack Obama and sent a decisive message to your party. These young people are the future and their energy will continue to drive our country forward....
They'll see the arctic melt, they'll live with rising sea levels, they'll see the end of oil, they'll see human genetic modification and post-modern eugenics, they'll see America become a normal nation (we hope), they'll live in a world of ubiquitous machine translation of English, Chinese, Sanskrit, Spanish and a dozen other languages, they'll see the salvation of Africa (or else).
I sure hope they don't see artificial sentience, but they could.
It's all yours GenE. I'll help however I can, but probably the most I can achieve is to neutralize the more harmful members of my generation.
Enlightenment 2.0 is up to you.
Closing Guantanamo - the stupidity
Here's where the stupidity factor comes into discussions of closing Guantanamo ...
Yes. Some of these men will be "dangerous". All men are.
Yes some dangerous men will be freed. If they weren't dangerous before they were stuck in an American prison for 8 years they'd be dangerous now.
Yes. Some of them will try to kill Americans. Wouldn't you?
Yes. Some of them will plot attacks? Wouldn't you?
What do we expect - gratitude?
We did a stupid thing. There's a price to pay for stupid decisions.
If they were prisoners of war, and the war was over, they'd be released. Even if they were possibly "dangerous".
The "war on terror" is, like the "war on evil", not a war. It's an eternal process.
We can either kill them all now, keep them forever (roughly equivalent to killing them all), or close Guantanamo and send them back to do whatever they choose to do.
The latter is the least evil act.
Stupidity has its consequences. Next time, America, don't elect someone like George Bush.
Editorial - The Price of Our Good Name - NYTimes.comArgghhh. The stupidity rayzzz ... they burnzzz...
...Does this mean that truly dangerous men will be set free, to go back to plotting more attacks against America? No...
Yes. Some of these men will be "dangerous". All men are.
Yes some dangerous men will be freed. If they weren't dangerous before they were stuck in an American prison for 8 years they'd be dangerous now.
Yes. Some of them will try to kill Americans. Wouldn't you?
Yes. Some of them will plot attacks? Wouldn't you?
What do we expect - gratitude?
We did a stupid thing. There's a price to pay for stupid decisions.
If they were prisoners of war, and the war was over, they'd be released. Even if they were possibly "dangerous".
The "war on terror" is, like the "war on evil", not a war. It's an eternal process.
We can either kill them all now, keep them forever (roughly equivalent to killing them all), or close Guantanamo and send them back to do whatever they choose to do.
The latter is the least evil act.
Stupidity has its consequences. Next time, America, don't elect someone like George Bush.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Obama YouTube - Minnesota can expect some bridges
We're the state who's bridge fell down a couple of years ago. Looks like we can expect some accelerated bridge maintenance ...
Our 35W bridge didn't fall for lack of maintenance of course. It had an egregious design flaw. Still, there are a lot of roads, bridges, bicycle trails, walking trails, school grounds, state parks, national parks and other public spaces and facilities that could do with a refresh.
Looks like we'll get that.
Incidentally, these YouTube addresses are amazing to me. I can actually watch my leader speak and not feel nauseous and horrified. It's like balm on an old wound.
Obama Vows Swift Action on Vast Economic Stimulus PlanNo joke about the vacuum. Gail Collins made a semi-serious plea for Cheney and Bush to resign, so Pelosi could turn things over to Obama.
...Mr. Obama’s address, a video of which was made available on YouTube, was the keynote of an effort to calm tumultuous financial markets roiled by an apparent leadership vacuum in Washington before he takes office in two months...
Our 35W bridge didn't fall for lack of maintenance of course. It had an egregious design flaw. Still, there are a lot of roads, bridges, bicycle trails, walking trails, school grounds, state parks, national parks and other public spaces and facilities that could do with a refresh.
Looks like we'll get that.
Incidentally, these YouTube addresses are amazing to me. I can actually watch my leader speak and not feel nauseous and horrified. It's like balm on an old wound.
The museum of American slavery and national emancipation day
Yeah, it's because we're in the post-civil war era. And because my morning exercise history class is discussing emancipation.
Slavery is on my mind.
America was founded on two enormous crimes. One, the extermination of the aboriginal Americans, was partly accidental. Millions died of disease before the creation of internment camps and before the massive ethnic cleansing campaigns began.
Another founding crime, slavery, was a choice.
We Americans, of all ethnicities and birth places, are the inheritors of these crimes. Just as modern Germans, born since 1945, are the reluctant inheritors of the unfathomably vast crime of the Holocaust.
Germans, not entirely happily, have studied and learned from their crimes. The Holocaust museums make a difference. I visited one in Jerusalem over twenty five years ago. It left an impression.
So why, I wondered, does America not have a Slavery museum and a Genocide museum? Why isn't there a national emancipation day? Why is it that only American historians now remember that January 1 used to be celebrated as emancipation day?
The first of these questions isn't hard to answer. The United States National Slavery Museum has been slowly moving to birth for quite a while. Very slowly; the web site is "copyright 2006" and the "Events" entry has a single undated item. The last issues of their newsletter is Spring/Summer 2008. I can't tell from the web site how far they are from opening in Fredericksburg Virginia.
Which brings us to an opportunity.
We're going to be doing some very serious spending on public works over the next year.
Maybe the museum can pick up some donations at the inauguration, and maybe Virginia will soon get some funding for a very memorable museum.
The Museum of the American Genocide? Yes, that too will come.
Wisdom always hurts.
Slavery is on my mind.
America was founded on two enormous crimes. One, the extermination of the aboriginal Americans, was partly accidental. Millions died of disease before the creation of internment camps and before the massive ethnic cleansing campaigns began.
Another founding crime, slavery, was a choice.
We Americans, of all ethnicities and birth places, are the inheritors of these crimes. Just as modern Germans, born since 1945, are the reluctant inheritors of the unfathomably vast crime of the Holocaust.
Germans, not entirely happily, have studied and learned from their crimes. The Holocaust museums make a difference. I visited one in Jerusalem over twenty five years ago. It left an impression.
So why, I wondered, does America not have a Slavery museum and a Genocide museum? Why isn't there a national emancipation day? Why is it that only American historians now remember that January 1 used to be celebrated as emancipation day?
The first of these questions isn't hard to answer. The United States National Slavery Museum has been slowly moving to birth for quite a while. Very slowly; the web site is "copyright 2006" and the "Events" entry has a single undated item. The last issues of their newsletter is Spring/Summer 2008. I can't tell from the web site how far they are from opening in Fredericksburg Virginia.
Which brings us to an opportunity.
We're going to be doing some very serious spending on public works over the next year.
Maybe the museum can pick up some donations at the inauguration, and maybe Virginia will soon get some funding for a very memorable museum.
The Museum of the American Genocide? Yes, that too will come.
Wisdom always hurts.
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