The Good-Bye Blog

Derek Miller, a Canadian technical writer, passed away Tuesday at the age of 41, after a battle with colorectal cancer.  I say this because he blogged about his life and fight in a way that few have. Miller started blogging in 1997, long before it was fashionable to do so.  His site has been on my favorites list for about four years. “The Last Post”, just before his death is one of honesty and love.  It is casual covering of the last twenty years, telling us what life for him was like.  And it is touching without being maudlin, much like his posts concerning his battle with cancer.  It is, what blogging is at its best: a way to reach out and touch people’s lives in a friendly way. 

Miller’s last post covers a lot of ground and gives the best reason of all for enjoying the moment while you are still here to do so:

It turns out that no one can imagine what’s really coming in our lives. We can plan, and do what we enjoy, but we can’t expect our plans to work out. Some of them might, while most probably won’t. Inventions and ideas will appear, and events will occur, that we could never foresee. That’s neither bad nor good, but it is real.

  His voice will be missed.

On Through The Night

I travel.  A lot.  I’m that level just below road warrior. Call it road kill.  Life has changed since the golden days of flying, when everyone dressed to the nines, real food was served on airline china and flight attendants were called stewardesses.  Yeah, those days are gone.  Flying has become a commodity for all the right and wrong reasons.  Today we are shuffled like cattle, squeezed into seats made for munchkins and made to deal with our fellow man on a forced basis.   Anyway, I just finished up a one-connect red-eye from hell.  And so, since I’m feeling somewhat cranky as a result, I wish to remind some of my fellow travelers about a couple of those little rules about traveling in the 21st century.  I do this especially since the travel “silly season” is upon us, where everyone out there who does not have a clue, purchases an overpriced seat to go to that overpriced dream place for a too short a period of time.

First, you know those rules the TSA has about liquids?  Yeah, they are an idiotic pain in the butt, and that’s putting it mildly.  But do us all a favor.  Tell it to your congressman.  Tell it to the President. Tell it to someone who can actually change things.  Do not tell the TSA agent. They do not care that the twenty-four ounce bottle of shampoo you have to carry on retails for seventy-five dollars and contains the placentas of genetically engineered blue-eyed fruit bats.  And neither do the rest of us waiting in line.  The rules, no matter how Kafkaesque they may seem are not going to change just because you think they magically do not apply to you.  Become an activist  - on your own time.

Next up, I know that the airlines are scumbags for charging for checked bags.  But really, do you have to pack up the plantation like the Beverly Hillbillies and try to stuff it into three oversized bags and then try to  pretend they are two carry-ons?  You are traveling on an airplane, not escaping the Bolsheviks.  Learn to pack lightly.  Here’s a useful tip.  Take everything you want to take for your trip and the night before you leave, cut that pile in half.  It actually works.

When you are on vacation, you buy stuff.  Do yourself a huge favor – See if the place you bought your stuff from will ship to your home.   Less things to try to keep track of.  And less things you have to pack on the way home.

The flight attendants are there to prevent me from strangling your progeny and stuffing their lifeless body into the overhead bins.  You can help too.  I do not care that your precious is an honor student; all I care about is that your precious keeps kicking the back of my seat.  Be aware that this is a tiny place we are stuck in for the next two to five hours.  I do not want to kill anyone.  So stop making it so tempting to do so.

And yes, sometimes a flight attendant can be a real b*tch.  They have to be when they put up with people like you.   There is a saying: “How best to act a King, when always treated like a King”.  The service industry has a habit of treating even the most petty tyrant with respect.  Try to do the same for the flight attendant.

The point to this is simple; we are fellow travelers in a confined space for a short period of time.  Travel is not about you; it is about the journey itself.  Be aware there are other people around you and act accordingly.  Smile to each other.  The food isn’t great, if there is any, the coffee lukewarm and the conversation minimal at times.  That is the way of the road.  Be a warrior, but be a gentle one.

I Will Not Be Ignored, Steve…

Q: Steve,

Could you please explain the necessity of the passive location-tracking tool embedded in my iPhone? It’s kind of unnerving knowing that my exact location is being recorded at all times. Maybe you could shed some light on this for me before I switch to a Droid. They don’t track me.

A: Oh yes they do. We don’t track anyone. The info circulating around is false.

The hew and cry that has circulated around the fact that the iPhone is indeed recording your approximate location has increased in the last few days, and during this time, Apple has kept relatively quiet.  So someone decided to ask Steve directly.  And as always, Steve’s brief answer asks more questions than it answers. 

Of course there has been the blowback that Android does it too. Yes, Android has been shown to also gather location information, but the database is limited to a much smaller list of entries and is regularly wiped by the system. But to use Steve’s own logic, Google is not tracking you either. 

So, no one is doing anything with that unencrypted by default database on my phone showing basically where I’ve been.

So, why is it there?

Of course all of this could easily be bypassed with some simple common sense.  Over the last ten to fifteen years, our privacy has morphed due to all the wonderful little gadgets out there that allow us to be the attention whores we have become.  Some of us, however, still cling to the notion that what I do, where I go and what I think is no one’s business but my own.  And there is a large number of us that really do not like the idea that people, companies, and governments are just getting bits and pieces of our lives without out immediate knowledge.  So I propose to all companies out there a simple solution.  You want to know how I am living my life?  You want to know everything about me, even the bits you really didn’t want to know? 

Pay me.

Money soothes a lot of psychic wounds.  You offer enough cash and people will allow you to set up cameras in their bathroom.   Call it “The Magic Christian” effect.  After all, Steve, you are making money off knowing more about me; all I am suggesting is a real time partnership.  You pimp me out to as many companies as you want, and I will live my life like a Kardashian.  You want to know more, pay me more.  I know, why buy the cow when you’re getting the milk for free, but time’s are changing, Steve.  The more people come to dislike the fact that this is being done without their knowledge, the more my little scenario will make good business sense. Why face a revolt, especially in times like these? 

The More You Know (And Shooting Star)

Time for the weekend wrap up.  And to start, let’s look at the law, shall we?  First the firm Righthaven appears to be in some hot water.  You see, Righthaven, that wonderful law firm that sues first and asks questions later, is a little perturbed over the judge’s ruling concerning their lawsuit over Brian D. Hill, an autistic blogger from North Carolina.  How perturbed?  Enough to defy the federal judge by refilling commentary the judge had stricken from the record.  Why would they do that?  To have the 58 other bogus lawsuits assigned to another judge.  If so, they better hope they do not get the federal judge in Las Vegas, who just unsealed the company’s heretofore confidential agreement with the Las Vegas Review-Journal in a related lawsuit against political blog Democratic Underground.  This is really the one everyone should watch, because if the Democratic Underground wins, it means that every other lawsuit Righthaven has brought in regards to the Las Vegas Review-Journal could be thrown out.  Grab some popcorn and stay tuned. 

---

Staying with the law, The Supreme Court will hear Microsoft call to change patent law in a way that could help both the Windows developer and many other technology firms fend off patent troll lawsuits. The move is partly a self-interested one for Microsoft, which is hoping to use the change as a way of escaping its loss to i4i in a patent lawsuit over XML in Word. Microsoft had been found violating i4i’s patenting and unsuccessfully challenged the verdict in front of the Supreme Court. However, this has the support of some of the largest companies in the industry, including Apple, Cisco, eBay, Facebook, Google, Intel, and Verizon. 

Opponents have mostly included 3M and pharmaceutical companies that are worried their patents, on which they base most of their business, will be overturned. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America group argued the incentive to develop new drugs would be "substantially reduced."  Patent trolls will be watching this.

---

And finally, a story of lawsuits would not be complete unless you had an outraged parent.  It seems like even after Apple included parental controls over in-app purchases on games for iPhones and iPads, some parents are saying that it isn’t enough.  Earlier this week, Garen Meguerian of Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit against Apple that says the company’s policy for in-app purchases doesn’t go far enough to prevent children from buying currency or points inside apps and games. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern California, requests class-action status and asks for unspecified damages and legal fees.

You see, Meguerian brought the suit after his nine year old daughter racked up a bill of $200 after buying virtual currency for the free games she had downloaded.  While Meguerian makes the point that even though Apple requires a password not only to in order to purchase anything within the app store, but also anything within an app, it is the same password.  To which all I can do is offer a pro-tip: You should become familiar with the product you just gave your child before you do so. This is Apple, not Fischer-Price.  Somewhere along the line, you need to be responsible. 

The More You Know (And Shooting Star)

Take a few days away and all the things that happen…

First, in the land of law, Ars Technica reports that a former lobbyist for the RIAA has become a federal judge, ruling on, of all things, three mass file-sharing lawsuits.  But we should expect nothing but a clear-cut ruling, based entirely on the law.  Because conflict of interests happens to other people.

However, if you feel the need to press the panic button, you can.  According to Reuters, some day soon, when pro-democracy campaigners have their cellphones confiscated by police, they’ll be able to hit the “panic button” — a special app that will both wipe out the phone’s address book and emit emergency alerts to other activists. 

In hacking news, mySQL was hacked over the weekend via a blind SQL injection. Hackers extracted usernames and password hashes from the site, which were subsequently posted to pastebin.com. Any easy to guess login credentials could be easily extracted from this data using rainbow tables to match dictionary passwords to their hash values.  This only points out that if it’s made by a person, a person can crack it.  Just remember that the next time someone tell you smugly that something cannot be hacked. 

Finally, we lost a true visionary over the weekend.  Paul Baran passed away at the age of  84.  Baran conceived the Internet’s architecture at the height of the Cold War. Forty years later, he says the Net’s biggest threat wasn’t the USSR – it was the phone company.  So right then, so right now.

Twitter, Facebook Providing Emergency Services – Again

Twitter and Facebook. The two sites have been there for people in Iran, Egypt, Haiti, Chile and now Japan. The two social networks are being used extensively in Japan, as cell phone networks are jammed due to the fifth largest earthquake ever recorded and subsequent Tsunami.

Carriers were limiting voice calls on congested networks, with NTT DoCoMo restricting up to 80 percent of voice calls, especially in Tokyo and in northeast Japan. Service throughout the rest of the country remains patchy at best. Twitter, Facebook, and Japanese social-media site Mixi were helping fill the communication gap though, as online networks held firm. However, Internet service was on-again, off-again in Tokyo. There are reports of people lining up at the few public pay phones, which are programmed to take priority over networks during and after an earthquake. 

But this points out how any country can be overwhelmed by an emergency. In the DC area on 9/11/2001, the cell system overloaded and collapsed under the sheer volume of calls. However, some people found the following workarounds:

• calls to dedicated “#” or “*” numbers went through unhindered.
• most cell to landline calls were being made to local numbers, so long distance lines were open. People called friends in other states who then relayed the information to loved ones in the area.
• cell to cell calls just would not go through. However, they would drop into voice mail. So people also communicated that way.

Connections are being restored, but it will be some time before the complete picture of the disaster can be assessed and we can lear lessons for the next time. Until then, than you Twitter and facebook.  You have proved your usefullness once again.

It’s Called “Search” For A Reason

I have a question.  I have been trying to research this question for the last two hours with little or no headway, and I blame Google.  And Bing.  And every other search engine out there, because search engines no longer do what they are supposed to do, at least in my mind. I mean, I have a question, I go to Google, Bing, etc…, I type in my parameters and a list of sites come up that should have relevant information to what I am searching for.

Silly me. You see, I thought that sarch was supposed to bring me the answers I need.  It used to, but not anymore.  Now it tells me to go to sites that someone else wants me to go to, whether that site is appropriate for my needs or not. 

You see, I was told by my doctor that I should be taking a magnesium supplement, and that I should buy magnesum bis-glycinate, as it is a version of magnesium that is easily absorbed and does not upset the stomach. 

Easy, you would think.  Go to a vitamin store and pick up a bottle.  Only there is a slight problem.  The place where I usually shop does not carry it.  The manufacturer my store works with was having problems with their magnesium supply.  There are plenty of other types of magnesium supplements on the shelf, but none of them are of the bis-glycinate variety.  OK, I tell myself.  I’ll just head home, and check it out and see what I can find on-line, where I can buy it, and problem solved.  The internet saves the day again.

Two hours later, I have set aside my search and decided to write about this, because it is a better alternative to relieving my frustration than setting my laptop on fire.   

I check Google and type “Magnesium bis-glycinate”.  The first page of sites are for the manufacturer that is having supply problems, and therefore useless.  It also does not help that this company appear to be the only manufacturer of magnesium bis-glycinate.  But, there is a listing for a magnesium glycinate.  So now I have a new question: What is the difference between magnesium bis-glycinate and magnesium glycinate?  Because if there is no difference, there are stores nearby where I can go and buy and not have to worry about shipping or waiting. 

I know what is coming though.  That question is going to send me to the farm.  As in Content Farm.  No matter how you slice it, you know you’re going there.  And because it is a subtle difference between the two key phrases, this is going to be a death march through the worst the internet has to offer.  With advertisements everywhere telling me where I can buy anything but magnesium bis-glycinate. 

Two hours laster, and I now know more about magnesium than I ever cared to know.  I know that muscles depend on it and that it appears to help people with Tourette’s syndrome in relieving the physical tics accompanying the condition.  I now know that epsom salt baths work, because the magnesium is absorbed into the body by the skin, allowing muscles to relax.  That magnesium supplements can cause diarreah.  I know all these things, except the difference, if any, between magnesium glycinate and bis-glycinate.  My own understanding of basic chemistry tells me that the difference is probably that instead of bonding with a single glycine amino acid, the bis-glycinate formula has magnesium bonding to two glycines instead.  But the question remains: Is this difference critical?  Will my doctor look down her nose and over her glasses and say with a sigh, “You realize there is a difference between them, don’t you?”

I know at this juncture that calling my doctor is what I have to do in order to get the answer to what I think is a very simple question.  But the point is that if search engines focused more upon question results than SEO content, life could be easier for users. In their defense, Google has been working on the SEO/content farm problem. 

Sometimes though, a simple answer is really the best result of all.

If You Can’t Say Something Good About Someone, Come Sit Next To Me.

Last week, Facebook launched Facebook Commenting, which means that on many websites, if you have a comment to say about an article, you need to be signed into Facebook to do so.  This means that everyone in your social circle can read what you have to say about matters.

Comments about this have been, well, somewhat muted.  To some, the stripping away of anonymity in comments is a horrible thing.  To others, it has been as if someone opened up a can of “Troll-Be-Gone” and disinfected the comments. While I do not like using Facebook for comments because it is really whoring out FB by forcing people to sign up if they really feel positive/negative about something, this can be seen as a good thing.

Of course, having all your friends and family see what a jackass you really are when you go off on your Apple fan-boi shoot-from-the-hip comment drive-by can put a damper on your fun (EPIC FAIL!!!).  But really, didn’t they all ready know this?  Come on, if you troll comment logs, you probably troll in real life.  It’s just that no one has sat you down and told you so.

Now, some people, like Steve Cheney at Posterous claim that this decreases your “Authenticity”. Quite the contrary.  It forces you to own up to your words.  It makes you think before you hit the ‘send’ key.  At least it does for some of us.  If you have to hide behind an anonymous façade in order to make snarky comments with no real redeeming value to the rest of the thread, then frankly, you don’t deserve to make comments at all.  And if you are one of those people who do not care who knows what you are saying, then you are probably more authentic than most.  It takes a certain amount of personal bravery to “go there”.  Because going there means defending your position, regardless of how many people you may offend, Grandma included.  Being authentic does not mean showing different faces to different people.  If means showing the same face to everyone all the time.

I have a seat next to me if you need to sit and ponder that.

Charlie and the Twitter Factory

In case you didn’t know, Charlie Sheen joined Twitter a couple of days ago, and had over a million followers within 24 hours, the fastest so far.  He’s right up there with Conan and Kanye West for going zero to one million in twenty four hours.  Pretty heady stuff.

But the real story is that Charlie, unlike you, me and grandma, could be making money off his tweet stream. Not a million per tweet, but money that the rest of us would see as a pretty comfy side gig.  You see, Charlie Sheen is a member of the Ad.ly network, According to their own description,

“Ad.ly runs celebrity endorsements in social media. We help brands connect with consumers via the most influential celebrities, athletes and artists on Facebook, Twitter and more.

Ad.ly is pioneering the celebrity endorsement market in digital media, tapping the $50 billion global spend on endorsements as well as the $35 billion global spend in digital advertising.

In just 15 months, we have run 20,000 endorsements for 150 top brands.”

While Sheen hasn’t started hawking mirrors and razor blades via Ad.ly yet, if he did, he could pick up between $1000-$20000 per endorsement.  More celebrity endorsements are in tweet streams, currently making up about 30 percent of current ads.  Nice work if you can get it.  In the mean time, Sheen has been tweeting out images of brands, giving free advertising to Pepsi’s Naked Juice and Direct TV. I’m not sure if either company really wants Sheen to be endorsing their products, but these days, even bad publicity is good publicity.

So what does a guy do in this case?  When his tweets are of this variety…

“Just got asked to do the Nancy Grace show… I’d rather go on a long trip with Chuck Lorre in a ‘75 Pacer…”

All I can say is, “Bring it”.

I’m Not Dead Yet

This weekend, the New York Times posted an obituary of sorts for blogging, claiming that the kids are using Twitter and Facebook to express themselves on-line, so blogging is dying, dead or somewhere on a cart.  Because, you know, if blogging is losing its allure to the younger generation, well, it’s just dead, dah-ling. 

Of course the esteemed newspaper neglected one important fact – “the kids” don’t read the New York Times either, but there is the Times, day after day, still printing words on dead trees like some group of journalistic zombies.  After all, even my generation stopped buying newspapers years ago. I guess there is dead and then there is dead. 

But blogging is dead, according to those in the know.  Because 12-17 year olds like to tweet and use Facebook.   Um, guys, have you ever seen a twelve to seventeen year old when faced with writing a paper on something?  Anything?  Four hundred words is like climbing Everest.  Anything more than that and forget it.  Let me tweet about what a pain my teacher is.  I can do that in fifty characters, tops then go back to listening to Justin Bieber.

No, NYT, blogging is not dead.  Tell that to Word Press and the six million new blogs this past year.  But apparently that is irrelevant.  Bottom line – some things cannot be said in 140 characters.  Twitter is for making snide comments.  Blogging?  That’s where you can find some great sarcasm.  Besides, most of the tweets that I have seen all seem to point back…to blogs. 

So NYT, yet again, your overhyped headline is not correct. People will blog, long after you have proclaimed it is no longer hip because kids cannot sit down and read more than five words at a time.  And I know that as long as I’m still around, I will rock the keyboard whenever I feel like it.

Because I’m not dead yet.