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October 31, 2008
Why Does Google Think I am in Spain?
For the last few days whenever I and others at the office do a Google search, we get redirected to google.es. I noticed today that I'm seeing Google Ad Sense ads in Spanish as well. I don't think it's something on my configuration, machine, or profile because it only happens at the office and happens to others as well.
The office IP is 74.81.253.227 which Maxmind thinks is in Utah (because it is). But assuming that Google is making the decision based on GeoIP, they clearly don't.
Does anyone know whether Google is indeed making these decisions based on GeoIP and how you can correct their data once they get it wrong. Updating the "preferred language" and other preferences doesn't make any difference. You can force Google to go to the .com site, but it only lasts for a single session then you're right back to google.es and Spanish language ads.
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October 30, 2008
Startup Hierarchies and Going Lean
Here's a few good articles by Eric Ries I ran across today on startups.
In A Hierarchy of Pitches, Eric talks about aligning your pitch with what stage your company is in. This is helpful analysis and acknowledges that companies are at--and get funding at--a variety of levels in their maturity. Eric gives ideas about what investor questions are relevant at each level and what slide you have to focus on. If you're getting questions that seem misaligned with where you think you're at, then you should re-evaluate something.
In Lean Startups vs Lean Companies Eric defines what it means to be a lean startup in a very helpful way:
I suggest [startups] define waste as "every activity that does not contribute to learning about customers." (aka "how you get to product/market fit.") This is why I find the concept of the Ideas-Code-Data feedback loop so helpful. Any activity that actively promotes us getting through each iteration (including the learning phase) faster, is value-creating. Everything else (including a lot of traditional "agile" or "lean" tactics) is waste.
That's clarity around the key idea of what it takes to make a startup work.
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October 29, 2008
Open High School of Utah
I've mentioned a few times on Twitter that I'm on the board of
directors for the Open High
School of Utah and some people have asked to know more.
The Open High School of Utah is an online public charter high school based on open source course content. Not "open source" in the software sense, but "open source" in the sense that all the course content is openly licensed. We're taking applications for 9th grade in Fall 2009 right now. Utah students attend for free.
The open courseware model is one that's been working for some time at MIT, but as far as I know this is the first high school committed to a complete, accredited, 9-12 grade education on open source course content. It's not as easy as I assumed when the idea was first put to me. There are some gaps to close.
A key aspect of the model is that with open course content, the content can be modified based on data about what works and what doesn't. With licensed content (and there are several sources for that), you can't modify it because of copyright issues. And you certainly can't redistribute the updates.
This idea of iteratively improving the course through data is one of the research interests of Professor David Wiley, a fellow board member and the founder of the high school. He's a big proponent of open content and writes an open content blog.
This is a fun project. I'm learning a lot and there are very many people who are anxious to find ways to reinvent education. Openness and education go together. We need to get back to that model. Current, entrenched, incumbent business interests (text book publishers, school districts, and others) won't go there. But others can and I'm excited to be part of those explorations.
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October 28, 2008
I'm Voting for the Conservative Candidate--If I Can Find Him
I've watched the Presidential Election of 2008 unfold with anxiety. As a life-long Republican, I've never had any question about who I wanted to be the next President. Indeed, I've usually been completely committed to the Republican candidate before the primaries were even over.
Not so this year. No--this isn't an announcement that I've thrown in with Obama. Rather it's a confession that McCain and the Republican Party of Bush II have left me cold.
Reagan or Bush
Part of my problem is that more than a Republican, I am a conservative. I've been a conservative since fifth grade--the first Presidential election I remember. The Vietnam War was raging and I watched the nightly news aghast at the behavior of those only a little older than I was. My instincts have always been to trust historical norms--a classic (in the Burke sense) conservative position. Interestingly, I don't remember my parents ever uttering a political thought. I don't think they even knew who the other voted for.
Peggy Noonan made an interesting distinction in the pages of the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago between the Republican Party under Reagan and that same institution under Bush. No matter whether you agreed with Reagan or not, there was never any question that his decisions were grounded in his conservative philosophy.
With George W. Bush, by contrast, as hard as conservatives have tried to stick with and defend him over the past 8 years, it's clear (at least to me) that his decisions are largely based on the emotion of the moment or hubris--perhaps both. When I say hubris, I don't mean the kind of personal hubris to which all politicians are prone, but rather a kind of nationalistic hubris that colored every decision made.
Bush's decisions don't seem principled. I've tried to find the underlying philosophy what will knit together the last eight years. I can't divine it. Maybe you can. I certainly don't recognize him as a conservative. He has increased government size and oversight in ways that appall me.
Iraq
This gut-feel approach to policy, combined with cowboy-style hubris led us to the debacle that the Iraq War has become.
I have been a supporter of the war in Iraq. I never believed that it was about weapons of mass destruction. I understood it from the start to be a calculated risk to significantly disrupt the Middle East and change the dynamics of the region.
That reality, while still relevant, has faded behind the Bush administration's need to couch the war in terms that would gain support of the electorate in ways that even the opposing party couldn't ignore.
Did the Bush administration lie about the reasons for going to war? Yes, but so have other administrations. That isn't their unpardonable sin. The unpardonable sin was failing to prosecute the war and the subsequent occupation of Iraq in a way that achieved the necessary goals and didn't undermine America's interests.
Going it alone in a war without broad support is risky business. Yet the Bush administration didn't approach the war like it was risky. They failed to commit sufficient resources--against the advice of the professional soldiers--in spite of that fact that they were engaged in a contest that America could not afford to lose. That's hubris or stupidity. I don't think they're stupid.
The result of this, maybe more than any other thing, is that Republicans were forced to stand firm with an administration that was blowing in the philosophical wind. That damaged not just the Republican Party's brand, but I think caused the Party to lose sight of what it stands for and what it means to be conservative.
Parties of Convenience
Over the years, both the Republican and Democratic Parties have had to court independents to win. As that block has become larger both parties have become collections of special interests and increasingly defined by fear. To be sure, there have always been some unlikely alliances in politics, but I think it's gotten worse to the point that both parties have lost their philosophical underpinnings.
As a result, the Republican party has become identified with issues that, to me at least, have little to do with conservatism. Pro-life and being tough on illegal immigration are just a few I could mention. I'm strongly against abortion, but Republicans have controlled the Presidency and the Congress for much of the last thirty years and Roe v. Wade still stands. I'm increasingly skeptical that the best way to save the lives of the unborn is to overturn that decision. And even if you did, it would simply be a battle won in a war long from over.
The battle against illegal immigration is, of course, a valid security concern. But too often it spills over into anti-globalism and xenophobia. Conservatives are supposed to be pragmatic (as opposed to idealistic) in their approach to issues. The immigration issue has conservatives arguing idealistically and ignoring pragmatic issues. Fences aren't the answer to this problem.
But before we go down the rabbit hole of arguing these two issues, however, let me pull the argument back to my main point: the Republican party has lost it's philosophical way. Both of these issues are trotted out on the campaign over and over again to "energize the base." That is my point. The base of the Republican party is apparently religious fundamentalists and gun toting Minutemen. And all this time I thought it was conservatives. Apparently there aren't enough of us.
For me, the heart of conservatism rests on the concepts that small government is better than large government, local government is better than remote government, and private property and individual freedom are more important than social good.
American conservatism is much more libertarian than not and we've lost sight of the strong appeal that the desire to be left alone has for people. Rather than being defined as the party of less government intervention, Republicans have settled for being about some kinds of intervention and not others. The key difference between Republicans and Democrats today is what kind of intervention you favor.
I'm distressed by the rising anti-intellectualism in the Republican party. More and more arguments, if you can call them that, are made on the basis of ad hominem attacks on the "intelligence" of the opposition. The message is you can't trust people who think too much.
For me conservatism can be at home--even happy--with science and intellectuals. Science should be non-partisan and partisans would do well to treat it as the tool that it is, not the enemy. I find no disconsonance between rationality, science, and conservatism.
The Candidates
All of this is a long-winded explanation of my unease as the election approaches.
I have great respect for Barack Obama. I've read his books and find him to be a man of integrity and intellect. He is more like me in many ways than John McCain because of generational issues. John McCain is the 20th century. Barack Obama is the 21st century.
But that doesn't disguise the fact that Obama is the most anti-business, pro-government (and those two don't always go together) Presidential candidate in my memory. He has no business experience to speak of and--more to the point--his other experience is in organizations that are almost vehement in their anti-business rhetoric and activity. On top of that, his overall experience is very thin.
Obama's associations show that he's a very "big tent" kind of guy, but they can be troubling. I don't doubt his ability to hear things he disagrees with and filter those out. That's the sign of intelligence and I hope that every President would hear opinions of all stripes before making decisions. But Obama has been slow to denounce ideas that he must disagree with making me wonder whether he is a thought leader or follower.
Moreover, Obama is the Democrat's plaything. The Democratic Party is as much an unholy alliance of special interests as the Republicans and Obama has almost never said no to any of those special interests in his--admittedly brief--public life. Much has been made of the fact that McCain voted with President Bush 90% of the time, but Obama's record is an even more dismal 97% of the time. With that number, 90% looks downright rebellious.
Obama is more symbol than candidate and that is his great strength. Unfortunately, symbols don't govern. People do.
McCain has his own set of liabilities. He is, as I mentioned, a product of the 50's and spent very little time outside of Government. His experience is a plus only to the extent that his experience is relevant or right. His association with Keating at best shows him to be naive in the way that most politicians are about business.
I have no faith in McCain's ability to handle the economy. His grandstanding during the recent crisis show little judgment about what his role could or should be and, worse, his inability to make a difference was telling.
This may not be such a bad thing. Of one thing I'm sure: Bush and the Republicans did not cause this latest crisis and no amount of government intervention--short of breaking markets entirely--would have prevented it. Had Al Gore won the election in 2000 (no, he didn't) then he would be presiding over this problem and the Republicans would be reaping the benefit of voters fearful of their future.
In something that matters a great deal to me, technology policy, McCain is consistently out-of-touch. To some extent this speaks to the generational issue, but more than that, it represents a marked lack of understanding about how the world works. Technology isn't just a way to send letters without a stamp. Technology underpins the modern world in the same way that economics does and anyone who does not understand it is bound to make poor policy decisions.
McCain rather than shoring up his conservative base has, rather, been shoring up the base of convenient bedfellows we call the GOP. As a result his campaign has degenerated into a litany of populist ideology. Nothing speaks to this more than his choice of Populist-in-Chief Sarah Palin as the Vice-Presidential candidate. (To be fair, Obama is no better; his campaign has also been overtaken by populist rhetoric.)
Palin is decidedly Bushian, not Reaganesque. Moreover, the campaign has treated her badly by using her as an attack (bull)dog instead of a figure (symbol?) who could appeal on the basis of diversity and reform.
So you see my anxiety. Obama represents every policy I believe is wrong for America and yet is more like me in temperament and viewpoint. If I sat down for an afternoon with Obama, I'm sure we would have a very interesting conversation (for me at least).
On the other hand, McCain while seemingly more in line with my beliefs on individual policies, seems to be out of touch on key foundational issues that I see as critical to good governing and decision making. He also is not like me. He's not even like my Dad. I think if McCain and I sat down by the BBQ for an afternoon we'd both be bored stiff unless we talked about the Navy (I was in the Navy for 14 years).
With all that, who am I voting for? I'll let you guess. I'm not sure I know.
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This Recession Will Be Different for Tech
George Colony at Forrester argues that this recession will be different for technology companies. I'll let you read the arguments, but the gist is:
- Tech will be down, but not out.
- Transformation and innovation will lead recovery.
- Tech is everywhere.
- Customers live on tech.
- Tech issues are burning.
I think (hope?) he's right!
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October 27, 2008
CTO Breakfast on Thursday
The CTO Breakfast for October will be on Thursday Oct 30, at 8am in the Novell Cafeteria (Building H, Provo Campus). If you are interested in technology and especially it's use in building high-tech products, then you're invited--you don't have to be a CTO, just have aspirations!
Here are the scheduled dates for future breakfasts:
- Oct 30 (Thursday)
- Dec 5 (Friday) - Combined Nov and Dec breakfast
- Jan 30, 2009 (Friday)
There's a Google Calendar with dates for the CTO breakfast that you can subscribe to if you like.
If you'd like to be reminded by email, just sign up for the (low volume) mailing list here:
I look forward to seeing you on Thursday!
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Suing Over Reputation
This Ars Technica story tells of an ebay seller who is suing a buyer over negative feedback. Since eBay removed negative feedback for buyers, there's no other way for sellers to leverage what could be vindictive buyers. On the other side, that leverage sometimes leads to buyers being unwilling to leave feedback. Of course the threat of a lawsuit does that in spades. eBay has a reputation problem they need to solve or the whole thing could fall down. As the article concludes:
[S]ellers were a bit miffed at eBay's feedback changes, and organized a week-long strike that resulted in 13 percent fewer listings on eBay. But, for many people who make a living selling stuff online, eBay is essential to business, and many have begrudgingly returned. Although they can no longer leave negative feedback for buyers, things appear to be operating smoothly--more or less--on the auction site. Libel lawsuits take tit-for-tat feedback a bit too far, however. The sky isn't falling just yet, but if more sellers decided to go after their buyers in the same way Jones has, buyers will be seen running for the hills en masse. And then who will buy all of your handmade duckling sculptures?
From Tit-for-tat extreme: eBay seller sues over negative feedback
Referenced Mon Oct 27 2008 16:12:51 GMT-0600 (MDT)
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Reloading OS X Using AppFresh
Last week I went to the Apple store and looked at the new Macbook Pro (MBP). I liked the keyboard and think the one-piece construction makes the overall design really slick. I especially like the fact that you can change out the hard drive without unbolting the case. I'm always changing out hard drives on my MBPs and after a while the cases don't quite fit together like they should.
But what I really noticed was that it was fast. But my MBP should be almost as fast. I determined that I was suffering from OS rot and that a complete fresh reload was in order. I noticed that @jessestay and @qwade were doing the same thing this weekend.
I like to not reload the applications from my old disk since I usually end up with a lot I don't use. But that means a week of finding an app I need and don't have loaded yet and them hunting down the disks or downloading it. Not this time. I discovered AppFresh.
AppFresh is an application updater like the built in Software Updater, but for all your apps. Before I wiped my MBP clean, I installed AppFresh. But AppFresh's secret weapon is i use this, a handy Web site that let's you mark applications as something you use.
After I'd wiped the disk and reloaded the OS, I did the following:
- Load the User info from my Time Machine backup
- Load XCode tools
- Perform a standard OS X software update
- Start AppFresh and use the "Used but not installed" function to find all the applications I use and install them.
That's it. I quickly found and loaded all the apps I use regularly. AppFresh needs help with the download or installation process. For example sometimes, the dowload or update site needs manual intervention or the download happens, but the install needs to be run manually. Even so AppFresh makes the entire thing nearly painless. Highly recommended.
And finally, a note about Time Machine: I always use CarbonCopy Cloner to make a clone of the original disk for use later after the reload. In the past, I've reloaded User data from that disk. This time I used my Time Machine backup since it's on a RAID 0 disk with a Frewire 800 interface. It worked fine and was very fast.
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One Week to Defrag!
This year, I haven't had much money to travel because when you're starting a business you do only that which needs to be done. Consequently, I haven't been going to many conferences. The big exception to that is Defrag. I enjoyed it a lot last year and decided I wanted to go back. And besides, I found a ticket to Denver for $91.16 on Delta--how could I refuse?
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October 25, 2008
Uninstalling Adobe Air on OS X
I was reloading my Macbook Pro tonight and something when wrong with the installation of Adobe Air. When I tried to use it, it failed. I tried to reinstall the application, but that didn't work because the installer says "This version of Adobe Air is already installed." But, of course it was corrupted. There was no uninstaller in the /Applications director like there should have been because the application wasn't really installed.
Turns out you can run the installer from the command line with the -uninstall switch and it uninstalls nicely. Do this:
cd /Volumes/Adobe AIR/Adobe AIR Installer.app/Contents/MacOS sudo ./Adobe\ AIR\ Installer -uninstall
And the rerun the installation. Air now works.
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October 24, 2008
Moviecle: Download Movies to Your USB Thumbdrive
I was in Boston's Logan airport this afternoon getting ready to fly home when I say this kiosk called a "Moviecle." The short description is it's a kiosk where you download movies to a USB thumbdrive. They have a collection of free content--travel guides--for now and hope to sell movies in the future.
The London travel guides I downloaded were from TravelOn, in WMV format, and had no DRM. I don't know whether that will be the case for movies or not. Somehow I suspect not. The touch screen interface was easy to use.
If I were buying, I'd apparently have to "initialize" my USB drive with some token that I get by going online before I stick the drive into the kiosk. They don't have that running yet, so I wasn't able to tell if you do that once and then you get charged each time you download a movie, or if you have to do that for every movie. The former, I suspect.
This seems like a slick idea. I've never liked the idea of renting movies at the airport since I have to get the disk back somehow. Just downloading it is the answer to that and removes some friction from the transaction.
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October 22, 2008
America's CTO
There's been a lot of discussion about who America's CTO should be if Obama is elected. He's promised to appoint one. Someone asked me what I thought on Twitter and 140 characters just wasn't enough for a thought out response to a complicated question.
First we should be clear on the differences between a CIO and a CTO. Were talking about a CTO job here and that's a different beast than the CIO. At this level, I'd expect th CTO to be mostly about policy. That's a good thing. Technology is a big part of the economy, but more importantly it's an important part of the US infrastructure world and the basis for almost everything we do. Having a coherent policy around technology would be a huge win.
For this to work, of course, this has to be more than a token appointment to fulfill a campaign promise. The CTO would have to have the President's ear. Washington insiders will know right away whether this is the case or not and will ignore anyone without the President's support.
I've seen the names of tech CEO's suggested. I don't think they'd work. Government is a different beast and people used to pulling the levers often flounder when put in government positions. If he weren't a Republican, Michael Leavitt would be a good choice. He understands tech and he gets how to use political power effectively. The most important power this position would have would be "convening authority." The power to call meetings. You need someone who can turn that into real work done. It's not easy.
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October 20, 2008
Making Screencasts in OS X
I've been creating screencasts to show what Kynetx does for VCs and business development. Using screencasts is a quick, easy way to do a demo that doesn't fail and is self contained. I can email the link to a screencast to someone and they get a good idea what I want them to know.
I've been using SnapZPro to record browser sessions and then using iMovie to create the actual movie. SnapZPro works great, but I'm not as impressed with iMovie. Maybe it's just me, but I find it inflexible and hard to use. If you've got suggestions on better programs, I'd love to hear them. I'm interested in
- Cheap -- we're a startup, after all.
- Ability to easiliy lay in audio after the fact. I like to script and record the browser interaction and then add the explanation.
- Good title slide capability. This is one place iMovie left me cold. I wanted to add what amounted to slides, and the internal capabilities were scare. I had to create slides, export them, and then use those pictures.
- Easy to understand and use--I'm not a video editor.
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October 18, 2008
Start Your Business Now
Paul Graham has a new essay on Why to start a startup in a bad economy. Actually, he doesn't necessarily think starting in bad times is better than good times, just that there's nothing special about good times when it comes to starting high-tech businesses. He says that the state of the economy is a rounding error compared to the effects the founders have.
The economic situation is apparently so grim that some experts fear we may be in for a stretch as bad as the mid seventies.
When Microsoft and Apple were founded.
As those examples suggest, a recession may not be such a bad time to start a startup. I'm not claiming it's a particularly good time either. The truth is more boring: the state of the economy doesn't matter much either way.
If we've learned one thing from funding so many startups, it's that they succeed or fail based on the qualities of the founders. The economy has some effect, certainly, but as a predictor of success it's rounding error compared to the founders.
From Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy
Referenced Sat Oct 18 2008 07:02:32 GMT-0600 (MDT)
I enjoyed reading it since I'm in the middle of starting a business now. I would disagree with Paul only in that I think bad times are better for starting businesses in some ways. Here's one: it's easier to find good talent.
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October 17, 2008
A Cautionary Tale for Old School Media Companies
Jeff Jarvis notes that TV Guide recently sold for $1 (not per copy--for the whole thing) and says: "Beware media and news companies that try to preserve their past: This could be you."
This echos Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma. Very few companies can successfully ignore or even kill the old business to build the new one. Reading further into this story, the online piece wasn't included in the sale--Macrovision retained that part. They apparently did kill the magazine to save the future: online.
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Better Linking Between the iPhone and Laptops
Wouldn't it be nice if Apple would take the screen sharing technology that runs iChat and make it available for the iPhone? I'm sitting in a meeting and it would be nice to use a window on my MacBook Pro as the display for my iPhone. In fact, better linking between the iPhone and Apple computers in general would be nice. I miss things like Sailing Clicker since I moved to the iPhone. The iTunes Remote application is a good start, but it's just that--a start.
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October 16, 2008
Sam Ruby on jQuery
Despite an aversion to frameworks, Sam Ruby is trying out jQuery and generally seems to like what he sees. He says "The net effect of all of this is that you can 'write less and do more', as promised."
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Mossberg on the G1 Phone
Walt Mossberg, the technology reviewer for the Wall Street Journal has a review of the G1, sometimes known as the gPhone. The G1 is Google's competitor to the iPhone. He says:
I have been testing the G1 extensively, in multiple cities and in multiple scenarios. In general, I like it and consider it a worthy competitor to the iPhone. Both devices run on fast 3G phone networks and include Wi-Fi. Both have smart-touch interfaces and robust Web browsers. Both have the ability to easily download third-party apps, or programs.
But the two devices have different strengths and weaknesses, and are likely to attract different types of users.
If you've been lusting after the iPhone's functionality, but didn't like its virtual keyboard or its user interface or its U.S. carrier, AT&T, the G1 may be just the ticket for you. But it does have some significant downsides.
By far, the G1's biggest differentiator is that it has a physical keyboard, which is revealed by sliding open the screen. The keyboard proved only fair in my tests, with keys that are too flat and that can be hard to see in bright light, and with a bulge in the body on the right side that you have to reach over to type. But, for the many people who can't stomach typing on glass, the G1 keyboard will be a welcome sight. It's complemented by a BlackBerry-like trackball for navigation.
From Google Answers the iPhone | Walt Mossberg
Referenced Thu Oct 16 2008 09:51:29 GMT-0600 (MDT)
I'm very excited to see the G1 come out. Competition for the iPhone can only make it and similar products better.
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October 15, 2008
Stack Overflow and Cowbells
I just put up Episode 26 of Stack Overflow on IT Conversations. I've really enjoyed listening to Joel and Jeff over the last few months. And the Stack Overflow site is simply the best place to get answers to programming questions. From the show description:
Joel and Jeff answer five listener questions, mostly about social software design. Warning: this podcast features cowbell. Really.From IT Conversations | StackOverflow | Episode 26 (Free Podcast)
Referenced Wed Oct 15 2008 18:31:15 GMT-0600 (MDT)
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Twitter Reach and Grade
I saw two different programs today that attempt to measure or report on your Twitter influence: twInfluence and Twitter Grader. Of the two, twInfluence seems the most comprehensive, but I'm not sure what either of them mean. If I were in the top 100 on either though I'd be bragging about it. Just because.
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Silver Lining
Fareed Zakaria has a nice little article at Newsweek on the silver lining to this whole economic crisis. He says:
If there is a lesson to be taken from this crisis, it's a simple and old rule of economics: there is no free lunch. If you want something, you have to pay for it. Debt is not a bad thing. Used responsibly, it is at the heart of modern capitalism. But hiding mountains of debt in complex instruments is a way to disguise costs, an invitation to irresponsible behavior.
At some point, the magical accounting had to stop. At some point, consumers had to stop using their homes as banks and spending money that they didn't have. At some point, the government had to confront its indebtedness. The United States---and other overleveraged societies---have now gotten the wake-up call from hell. If we can respond and change our behavior markedly, this might actually be a blessing in disguise. (Though, as Winston Churchill said when he lost the election of 1945, "at the moment it appears rather effectively disguised.")
In the short term, all the solutions to the current crisis require that governments take on more debts and larger obligations. This is inevitable and necessary. But that doesn't mean we should, as some noted economists advocate, stimulate the economy with more tax cuts. That would be only one more way to keep the party going artificially---like asking a drunk to go to AA next year, but in the meantime to have even more whisky. A far better stimulus would be to announce and expedite major infrastructure and energy projects, which are investments, not consumption, and therefore have a much different effect on the country's fiscal fortunes. (They are not listed separately in the federal budget, but that's just bad accounting.)
In the medium and long term, we have to get back to basics. Households, for instance, should save more. Governments should put incentives in place that make such savings more likely. The U.S. government offers enormous incentives to consume (the deduction of mortgage interest being the best example), and it works. We have the biggest houses in the world, the thinnest flat-screen TVs and the most cars. If we were to tax consumption and encourage savings, that would also work. Regulations on credit-card debt should be revised to ensure that people understand the risks and costs of these instruments. Moving in this direction would be good for families and for the government as well.
From Zakaria: A More Disciplined America | Newsweek Business | Newsweek.com
Referenced Wed Oct 15 2008 15:49:58 GMT-0600 (MDT)
This resonates with me as a conservative. It's ironic that Republicanism has come to mean just the opposite over the last 8 years.
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Buckley Voting for Obama
This is old news by now, but it's new to me. Christopher Buckley, son of William F., has declared his intention to vote for Obama over McCain. Says he concerning McCain:
John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, "We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us." This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget "by the end of my first term." Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking? All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain---who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust.From Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting for Obama - The Daily Beast
Referenced Wed Oct 15 2008 08:32:13 GMT-0600 (MDT)
Concerning Obama he says something I've expressed to several people:
But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren't going to get us out of this pit we've dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.From Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting for Obama - The Daily Beast
Referenced Wed Oct 15 2008 08:33:15 GMT-0600 (MDT)
I've read both of Obama's books. I believe he's smart and decent. I've hoped, like Buckley, that if elected Obama will be smart enough to avoid the pitfalls of Democratic party thinking.
This is, of course, dangerous ground. Hoping that someone will be smart enough not to follow the policies of the Democratic party into hell is a poor bet. Especially since Obama has shown little independence from them over the course of his time in the Senate or during his campaign. Still, given the polls today, it's likely that hoping for sanity is our best bet--poor or not.
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October 14, 2008
Early Voting in Utah
If you're interested in avoiding the lines at your polling place, consider early voting. Most states have provisions for early voting. Utah has information about early voting online, although sadly the actual list of locations is a PDF document. Early voting in Utah happens between October 21st and 31st. Most of the locations have limited hours, so be sure to check that. You'll need to bring a picture ID (whereas you don't for voting at your normal polling place).
I was a little disappointed in Utah's online voting information. When you go to the "Leave Your Print" site, there's no indication it's information from Utah. In a related idea, they are using the domain name leaveyourprint.com rather than vote.utah.gov, which would clearly indicate that this is an official site of the State of Utah. Nothing wrong with that kind of branding. It's catchy. But the site ought to be clear that it's an official site of the State.
Also, I love the "find your polling place" application. A few nits: The privacy policy is about voter registration records rather than the information I'm putting in the site (that's covered informally in the introductory text). Also, the polling place screen gives and address. Why not link out to a map?
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Twitter Vote Report: Spread the Word
Britt Blaser sent me a link to Twitter Vote Report, a system for sharing stories and issue about voting across the country. Using it is simple, simply tweet with the hashtag #votereport and give:
- The time of day (9:20 am, 1:12 pm)
- The zip code you just voted in (e.g. 10591, 10012)
- The issue: Wait (e.g. a waiting time of over ½ hour) Reg. (e.g. a problem with your registration) Machine (e.g. voting machines are broken or jamming)
I love this idea. Simple applications of technology for making our democracy work better.
Twitter vote support still needs some help with making things work, so visit the site and see how you can contribute. But mostly--spread the word!
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October 13, 2008
Build an Internet Explorer Plugin for Me, Please
I'm looking for someone to build a simple plugin for Internet Explorer. We use the plugin for testing Kynetx. I already have a Firefox version, but need to test against IE as well. If you've got expertise and would like to know more, contact me.
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October 10, 2008
Tunneling SSH Through Screensharing in OS X
I overhead an exchange between two friends that I thought was interesting. One needed help from the other and asked him to SSH into a machine. The place where the second friend works blocks outgoing port 22, the port SSH lives on. Don't ask me why. The solution? Friend one does a screenshare to friend two who uses the shared machine to SSH. First time I've seen screensharing being used to tunnel SSH.
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October 9, 2008
Using Puppet and CPAN
The code that makes Kynetx work is a couple of custom Apache modules written in Perl. So, configuring machines via puppet, naturally requires ensuring that a set of Perl modules are loaded.
For a long time, I was using a private bundle, but I found that was unreliable. For the most part it worked fine, but then sometimes I'd get an error that Perl couldn't find the bundle, even though it was clearly in the path.
I didn't want to spend a lot of time debugging it because I figured it was a dead end. Eventually, I've got to be able to control more of what happens. So, I decided to define a custom Puppet type that used CPAN directly to load Perl modules. Here's what I came up with:
define cpan_load() {
exec{"cpan_load_${name}":
command => "perl -MCPAN -e
'\$ENV{PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT}=1;
CPAN::Shell->install(\"${name}\")'",
onlyif =>
"test `perl -M${name} -e 'print 1' 2>/dev/null || \
echo 0` == '0'",
require => [Package["perl-CPAN"],
File["/root/.cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm"]],
}
}
The hardest part to get right was the onlyif clause. The purpose of this clause is to ensure that the command is idempotent--that is that it only runs if it needs to. The truth is that CPAN itself is idempotent, so I could have skipped it, but I saved 80 seconds of processing time for a "do nothing" run of puppet by installing it.
I got something more too. CPAN will report things are installed when they aren't really. I don't know how it gets in this state, but it does. My onlyif clause only reports a module is present if a perl program can load it.
This still isn't perfect since when the load fails and you rerun the puppet file, you see it trying to install them over and over and it's not going to happen. Then manual intervention is required. I'd rather have the system back out and fix the error but that's beyond me right now.
I think the answer may be to move to Tasks, but I'm not sure. If you know better ways of managing Perl module installs with Puppet, please let me know.
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October 7, 2008
Top Ten IT Conversations Shows for September 2008
Here are the top ten shows on IT Conversations (by download) for September 2008.
- Episode 19 - StackOverflow (Rating: 2.67)
Joel and Jeff discuss scaling and social effects in Stack Overflow, how to handle growth and the launch in a controlled way, and answer listener questions about backups, database design, and maintenance programming.
- Episode 18 - StackOverflow (Rating: 2.60)
In the eighteenth episode of Stack Overflow, we finally meet Michael Pryor, the co-founder of Fog Creek Software -- and discuss the progress of the Stack Overflow beta in some depth.
- Episode Seventeen - StackOverflow (Rating: 2.00)
In this special "developer edition" podcast, Jeff and the Stack Overflow development team discuss the development processes and decisions that go into building a public community web site for programmers.
- Manolis Kelaidis - bLink: Connecting the Analog and Digital Worlds (Rating: 4.67)
Wouldn't it be amazing if you could hold a "book" in your hands which had hyperlinks? Why would that be amazing, you ask? Well, what if the hyperlink triggered a process that makes a nearby computer, for example, play an MP3 of animal sounds that match the story? In this keynote presentation from the 2007 O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference, Manolis Kelaidis introduces blueBook, his prototype that merges the analog and digital worlds of books.
- Joel Spolsky - The Three Ingredients Of Great Products (Rating: 4.40)
Joel Spolsky is a highly revered software pundit, an eminent author, the host of one of the most widely read blogs, the co-founder of New York based FogCreek Software, and a witty and intelligent person to listen to. He believes that the three key ingredients that make great software are: making users happy, obsessing over aesthetics, and observing culture code. In elaborating these ideas with plenty of examples, he doesn't spare his wonderful sense of humor.
- Jimmy Wales - Open or Closed? The Future of Search (Rating: 3.17)
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge." That is the goal of Wikipedia's creator, Jimmy Wales. He has set his sights on Google and the other corporate Search Engines with his new project "Wikia," a personal search engine-builder.
- Episode Sixteen - StackOverflow (Rating: 4.50)
Joel and Jeff discuss the perils of programmer design, the purpose of a private beta, the importance of quality chairs for programmers, and the mysterious cone of uncertainty on software projects.
- Pete Blackshaw - Consumer Megaphones (Rating: 4.00)
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Pete Blackshaw, author of "Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends," about consumer megaphones -- the folks who get extremely displeased and upset with products or services.
- Cliff Schmidt - The Talking Book Device (Rating: 4.25)
People learning to read will soon be able to use a handheld device to practice their reading skills when trained teachers and the Internet are not available. Using inexpensive hardware, Literacy Bridge plans to provide Talking Book audio players/recorders in developing nations starting this fall, with a goal of selling them for $10 per device or less. Listen to Cliff Schmidt describe the Talking Book and the benefits it will bring to people in far-flung locations.
- Episode Fifteen - StackOverflow (Rating: 3.00)
It's the special listener question show! Joel and Jeff answer questions from the audience on making the transition from developer to manager, how to Get Things Done, the hidden value of in-person code reviews, and more.
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October 3, 2008
Javascript Thunks
I love how Javascript libraries like JQuery require people to use thunks all over the place:
$(document).ready(function() {
$("#orderedlist li:last").hover(function() {
$(this).addClass("green");
},function(){
$(this).removeClass("green");
});
});
The functions without parameters are called thunks and their purpose is to delay the evaluation of the code in argument positions, circumventing standard applicative order evaluation. Here's hoping that future languages--even future versions of Javascript--take this need into account and add real linguistic features for delayed evaluation. Oh wait--Lisp already does and it's only 50 years old.
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Prototype Framework is a Javascript Extension, Not Just a Library
I recently ran into a problem with Prototype (the Javascript framework) that exposes a big difference between the design philosophy of Prototype and other frameworks like JQuery.
Consider this code:
var aryOmnDiv = [
'header_tracking',
'left_nav_tracking',
'footer',
'homepagecategories',
'subcats',
'bread_crumb',
'subcat_wrapper',
'prod_group_wrapper']; //container divs
for(var outside_i in aryOmnDiv) {
var divname = aryOmnDiv[outside_i];
var div = $(divname);
if(div) {
var anchors = div.getElementsByTagName('a');
}
}
Running this with Prototype installed produces and error that says "getElementsByTagName is not defined." The culprit is that the code is using a for...in loop as a shortcut for looping through the array. The official ECMAScript standard says (§12.6.4) that the for...in construct exists to enumerate the properties of the object appearing on the right side of the in keyword. It's only an accident that it also worked for looping through arrays because stock arrays have a sparse property set in Javascript.
The problem is that Prototype changes that adding dozens of new properties (functions mostly) to the Array object. This means that the loop above gets past the Array indices and keeps on going, setting outside_i to each of the Array properties in turn. Of course, those aren't valid array indices and so the code eventually errors out.
As explained on the Prototype site, this can easily be fixed by changing this line:
for(var outside_i in aryOmnDiv) {
to this line:
for (var outside_i = 0; outside_i < aryOmnDiv.length; ++outside_i) {
Alternately, you could make use of the nifty new iterators that Prototype adds to Array like each.
I think I remember reading about this on the Prototype site before but it didn't mean much to me until I ran into it and spent some time looking at it.
This problem points out a fundamental difference in the design philosophy of Prototype and other frameworks like JQuery. Prototype extends base objects (like we've see with Array) whereas JQuery doesn't. Put another way, almost all of the new functionality in JQuery is neatly sandboxed in the JQuery namespace whereas with Prototype that's impossible.
The extensions that Prototype makes to Arrays are nice. I've used them and like the coding style, but be aware that this isn't a neatly packaged library that plays nicely with other Javascript you might already have. It's a change to Javascript itself yielding a new thing. Very cool that Javascript allows that, but be careful not to shoot yourself in the foot.