I’m Stumbler #1863639
Month: October 2006
JOBSEARCH: Leadership is STILL an elusive trait
http://execunet.blogspot.com/2006/10/
executive-leadership-whatever-that-may_31.html
***Begin Quote***
Inspiring (Washington, Lincoln, Truman, Kennedy) and some of them despising (Hitler, Stalin, Ebbers, Lay)
***End Quote***
Well, I’ll quibble about the exemplars, both positive and negative.
Let’s start with the areas of agreement:
Clearly Washington is great positive. Even though he wasn’t the greatest general, suffered from depression, lied to Congress (setting a precedent!), but was happy to be President but not King.
On the negative side, Stalin killed enough people to make Hitler look inept. Stalin had the new American Socialists to cheer lead for him hence he’s not viewed as the ogre he was. History has a way of eventually getting to the truth.
I’ll quibble with rest as “Leaders”.
To me, to earn the appellation “Leader”, one not only has to “lead”, but one has to be “authentic”. Note, I’m not saying they have to be “right”, but they can’t deliberately do “wrong”.
Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, like the current President. Truman dropped the bomb. Kennedy pretended to be a Catholic. Hitler was inefficient when compared to Stalin. Ebbers and Lay just were just common thieves.
Some “leaders” that I would revere are (in a rough order of magnitude) Gandhi, MLK, Pope John 23, Mother Theresa, Pope John Paul 2, Margaret Thatcher and Elinore Roosevelt.
I think that Leadership is inspirational. It gets you going. It’s motivational. It’s smart in being able to divine the correct path that takes the civilization to a better place. We have to be very careful who we designate as a Leader because it gives them tremendous power for good or for evil. I think that “leadership” is as rare as the proverbial hen’s teeth. Managers, pretending to be leaders, are a common as rodents.
No wonder everyone’s looking for it in so many venues.
LIBERTY: Vote absentee! It gums up the works and it’s harder to cheat.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/
article/0,9171,1552054,00.html
Can This Machine Be Trusted?
The U.S.’s new voting systems are only as good as the people who program and use them. Which is why next week could be interesting
By MICHAEL DUFFY
Posted Sunday, Oct. 29, 2006
***Begin Quote***
A woman walked into a polling place in Peoria, Ill. last week and proceeded to use one of the new electronic voting machines set up for early voting. She logged on, went through each contest and seemed to be making her choices. After reviewing each race, the machine checked to see if she was satisfied with her selections and wanted to move on. Each time, she pressed YES, and the machine progressed to the next race. When she was done, a waving American flag appeared on the screen, indicating that her votes had been cast and recorded.
But there was a problem. The woman had not made any choices at all. She had only browsed. Now when she told the election judges she was ready to do it again–but this time actually vote–they told her it was too late. Pressing the last button, they said, is like dropping your ballot in an old-fashioned ballot box. There’s no getting it back.
***End Quote***
NO!
As a techie nerd, I KNOW that these “machines” are a fraud. It’s not a question of where, when, or how.
It’s a strategic finding.
Anything with software is hackable. Anything hackable will be hacked.
Honest elections … … please!
Voting absentee is the patriot’s way of gumming up the works.
LIBERTY: If you don’t have right to _____, then you really have no rights at all!
http://www.mises.org/story/2363
Shortages, Bloody Shortages
By Mihai Sarbu
Posted on 10/31/2006
***Begin Quote***
There is a serious moral issue involved here, and it has to do with property rights. Because this piece of legislation infringes the most basic of all rights: self-ownership. The only reason you have any rights is because you have the freedom and responsibility to dispose of yourself, mind and body. Freedom of association (the basis of society), freedom of expression, and all the rest are meaningless unless they stem from self-ownership.
***End Quote***
Self-ownership is probably the First Right that needs to be recognized. No one “gives” it to us.
“All men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”
If you don’t have right to traffic (buy and sell) in blood, then you really have no rights at all. That’s exactly what the statists would love for you to believe.
TECHNOLOGY: NEVER ever let an ISP control your email address
http://weblog.infoworld.com/gripeline/archives/2006/10/
cox_clobbers_co.html
October 31, 2006
Cox Clobbers Competitor’s Customers
***Begin Quote***
Any company that will only give customers 30-days notice that long-time e-mail addresses are being eliminated sure seems like one that thinks it can do whatever it wants. “From here it looks like a pure convenience and/or profit motive for Cox, and the customer can just live with it,” the reader concluded. “Where else do we have to go?”
***End Quote***
One doesn’t have to be held hostage to the whims of the ISP.
My current favorite WSP (Web Site Provider) “1and1” offers. A “beginner” package with a domain name; 5 GB web space; 500 e-mail accounts; and 250 GB traffic for 3$/month.
{{Use my referral code and they even give me a kickback! http://www.1and1.com/?k_id=9113251 out your 3 bucks. Wonder how much it is? Three cents?}}
That beginner package is better than what most ISPs give you for “free”. It’s certainly better than what I used when I first got started.
I tell jobseekers (aka baby turkeys) that they never want to have their “stuff” held hostage to:
-
their current employer (an absolute no no!);
-
any free service (like gmail);
-
any site with a poor “image” (like AOL or @pinkpussycat.com);
-
“their” Internet Service Provider that they are currently using; or
-
any Web Service Provider (even 1and1).
If you “own” your domain name, like I do, “reinke.cc”, (who really cares what country it nominally belongs to), then you are ALWAYS in control.
SO, in the case of the poor fellow ranting to Ed Foster about “losing his email address”, it would have been trivial to say go into 1and1 and re-aim your email from, in his case, from CableAmerica to Cox.
AND, that assumes you’d want to use their lousy email anyway. Most WSPs offer better.
If he followed the advice and bought say “poorfellow.za”, then he could have used a personally branded email address like poor.fellow@poorfellow.za. All the people, who had his personally branded branded email address (i.e., poor.fellow@poorfellow.za) would still have it, And never had to know about the underlying change from poor.fellow@CABLEAMERICA.com to poor.fellow@COX.com! Nothing would be necessary.
I used to mess around with redirectors like bigfoot and others until I just but the bullet and went “bigtime”. I think I paid 25$ for a three year take on the reinke.cc domain and 10$ for 1and1 to aim it where I want it to go. Now, it’s even cheaper and I see a rush to the bottom of the price curve between GoDaddy, Yahoo, and other WSPs.
I feel comfortable with 1AND1 because they are deadly cheap, they advertise in Network World and industry trade rag, and they’ve done well for my consolidation project. (I moved seven websites with various WSPs, each placed with the “best” at the time, to them and saved some pocket change. And, my sanity. No more remembering which WSP had “creative driving techniques” web site. That was a joke!)
I have put commercial enterprises on their facilities back when I was consulting and have never heard a gripe.
In summary, I don’t have sympathy for this fellow, (well I do; maybe he did realize it.), but it COULD happen to you. Do something NOW to avoid it.
Besides having your own domain is snazzy kool!
TECHNOLOGY: GOOGLE gobbles JOTSPOT (one of my techie target that I tested)
JotSpot is now part of Google
We’re writing to let you know that Google has acquired JotSpot. We believe this is great news for our users. More importantly, we want to reassure you that you’ll continue to have uninterrupted access to your account. Both Google and JotSpot are committed to supporting our customers, and we understand that users have invested a lot in our products. In the near-term, we’re focused on migrating JotSpot to Google’s systems and datacenters. We’ll work hard to make that move as seamless as possible so that customers won’t be inconvenienced.
Why is Google acquiring JotSpot?
Google shares JotSpot’s vision for helping people collaborate, share and work together online. JotSpot’s team and technology are a strong fit with existing Google products like Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Google Groups.
What does this mean for JotSpot customers?
We believe that joining Google will accelerate our team’s vision of offering users the best collaboration platform on the web. Google shares that vision and presents us with the world’s best environment for delivering on it. We’ll be taking advantage of Google’s world-class systems infrastructure and operations expertise to ensure that access to your JotSpot is fast and reliable. We can’t share any of our plans publicly just yet, but we can tell you that we’re incredibly excited about the possibilities. We can’t think of a better company to have been acquired by.
Will paying customers still be charged?
We will no longer be billing customers for the use of the service. Although you will still have use of the product at your current pricing plan, we won’t charge you anymore when your current billing cycle expires.
What about security and privacy?
Your data is yours — that doesn’t change at Google. We will continue to work to ensure the privacy and security of your data. Furthermore, Google is as committed to privacy and security as we are. Since the user information you provided to JotSpot will soon be transferred to Google as part of their acquisition of JotSpot, we want to provide you with the opportunity to retrieve your user information and cease usage of the JotSpot service before the transition. If you do not wish to continue using JotSpot, send an email to privacy@jot.com in the next sixty days and we will reply with instructions for retrieving your user information.
Answers to more frequently asked questions are available at http://www.jot.com/. If you have any other questions, please email support@jot.com.
In closing, we wanted to offer our sincere gratitude to you — our customers — for believing in us and helping us achieve success. We look forward to continuing that relationship at Google.
Best wishes,
The JotSpot Team
———————————————————————-
JotSpot
167 Hamilton Ave.
Floor 2
Palo Alto, CA 94301
Read the VerticalResponse marketing policy.
LIBERTY: Economics is about choices. It’s nice to have some.
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0503g.asp
Professor Williams does Economics in ten lessons.
You get a whiz thru an interesting area. And, you’ll come out the other side, looking for the flaw in every politician’s argument.
TECHNOLOGY: WEB20 sites for exploration
http://www.realsoftwaredevelopment.com/2006
/10/best_of_the_bes.html?
October 26, 2006
Best of the Best Web 2.0 Web Sites
***Begin Quote***
Web 2.0 sites are cropping up all over the place! From Social Bookmarking Sites, to Real Estate sites, this list has only the best Web 2.0 Sites available today! What makes a site a Web 2.0 Site? Web 2.0 is the second coming of World Wide Web. New and improved sites that make the web their platform, provide users a way of interacting with each other, and organize and categorize their content are perfect examples of Web 2.0. Below is a list of web sites that are the best of the best!
***End Quote***
There’s an exhaustive list of “stuff” to be looked at. It’s too much. The whole application space is truly out of control.
TECHNOLOGY: WEBOFFICE for the big boys with money
http://www.weboffice.com/EN/Services/
***Begin Quote***
WebOffice brings together powerful, professional web-based business applications specifically designed to make collaboration easy and cost-effective. Everything you need to manage your business on the web is together in an integrated, centralized place.
***End Quote***
Sounds like about 80$/month for a fully integrated web offering.
GUNS: I can be for gun control. Control the gubamint’s guns!
http://interdictor.livejournal.com/113522.html
interdictor ([info]interdictor) wrote,
@ 2006-10-30 14:04:00
Incompetence — Oops, Have You Seen My Machine Gun?
***Begin Quote***
Well anyway, here’s some more government incompetence for you:
****** which quoted ******
The Pentagon cannot account for 14,030 weapons — almost 4 percent of the semiautomatic pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and other weapons it began supplying to Iraq since the end of 2003.
The missing weapons will not be tracked easily: The Defense Department registered the serial numbers of only about 10,000 of the 370,251 weapons it provided — less than 3 percent.
Missing from the Defense Department’s inventory books were 13,180 semiautomatic pistols, 751 assault rifles and 99 machine guns.
****** which ended here ******
Hmmm. But it says some were stolen. They just won’t tell us how many. It’s comforting knowing our government has lost some unspecified number of RPGs. Yeah, losing the other stuff is bad, but you don’t want a bunch of RPGs floating around. Hopefully they didn’t lose any shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles like we’ve done in the past in Central America and Afghanistan. I don’t think the insurgency has much in the way of aircraft, so hopefully we didn’t bring over stinger missiles for the Iraqi defense forces, but given how incompetent our government is and how much some suppliers could make off a deal like that (and give kickbacks in return), I would not be surprised. That would REALLY be making Americans safer.
***End Quote***
What a bunch of bozos! First we had the story of “bricks” ( 100k$ clear plastic shrink wrapped USA currency). And, now they lost enough guns to arm … a small army … or an insurgency!
I’ve changed my mind. “Gun control” no longer exclusively means “citizens hitting what they aim at”. I’ll now include “keeping an inventory of the gubamint’s ordanance”.
So, if someone asks if you favor “gun control”, then you can say “sure, for the gubamint”. Gun owners don’t lose their weapons.
TECHNOLOGY: PRINTERANYWHERE adds webprint functionality …
… for pictures?
*** BEGIN QUOTE ***
PrinterAnywhere™ WebPrint
You can now print documents directly from the web without having to install the software on your machine. The number of supported formats is limited to the following:
* JPG
* GIF
* BMP
* PNG
*** END QUOTE ***
TECHNOLOGY: HUDDLE has a typo!
http://www.gohuddle.com/pricing.asp
choosing the right package for you
***Begin Quote***
Manage multiple huddles form your homepage
***End Quote***
Not inspiring when you have a typo on a features / pricing page.
I have typos, often lots of them, but I’m not trying to separate you from your money!
TECHNOLOGY: Sharewood Picnic 76 delivers a winner, three maybes, and six nahs. Great test!
October 29, 2006
New Media Tools Of The Week: Sharewood Picnic 76
Livia Iacolare and Robin Good
{Once again, they challenge us with new web services.}
***Begin Quote***
1. Immense http://www.immen.se/ is a network that provides online video publishers with the capability to use contextual ads in videos.
Nah, I don’t create video!
2. Toufee http://www.toufee.com/ is a web based editor that allows you to create and publish flash movies and presentations online.
Nah, I don’t that much.
3. Veeker http://veeker.com/veeker/ is a service that lets you and your friends communicate instantly using the video cameras in your mobile phones.
Nah, No friends!
4. mTextbox http://www.mtextbox.com/ is a service that enables you to upload text files that you can read on your mobile phone.
Nah, why would I want to do that?
5. Tabblo http://www.tabblo.com/ is a service that lets you upload your photos and create albums that you can share with other people.
Nah, Another one?
6. MediaFile http://www.mediafire.com/ is a service that lets you upload unlimited size files also simultaneously.
Nah, Another one?
7. Huddle http://www.gohuddle.com/ is a hosted service that offers virtual workspaces called ‘huddles’, which can be used to manage projects, share and review documents, monitor timelines and discuss work across the members of the group.
Maybe, if cheap enough, it might be good for any ad hoc group to exploit.
8. Freenigma http://www.freenigma.com/ is a service that adds privacy technology (with strong e-mail encryption) to your webmail service.
Winner, This can be used by everyone in today’s era of snoopy gubamint.
9. Wridea http://www.wridea.com/ is project management tool that allows you to create a page for each project and different categories for each work type.
Maybe, ditto above, it might be good for an ad hoc group to exploit.
10. LocalHostr http://beta.localhostr.com/ is a service that allows you to upload and store any type of file up to 20MB.
Maybe, duplicates other big file store and share site, need to know what the limits are. There have to be limits don’t there? Or, does it do something fancy?
###
RANT: Gubamint population control by cell phone?
http://www.impactlab.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=9649
***Begin Quote***
Men who use mobile phones for more than four hours a day produce fewer and poorer quality
***End Quote***
Is this the way the human race ends?
Not with government genocide? Not with the intergenerational war over social security benefits? Not with depopulation by sex selection?
No, we talk ourselves into sterility by cell phone!
TECHNOLOGY: THINKFREEONLINE now “does” email … but …
I sent an email message using gmail. GREAT!
Now I can’t figure out how to change to a different email account?
LIBERTY: a scary video
LIBERTY: Micro-Finance as opposed to gubamint handouts
http://www.acton.org/ppolicy/comment/article.php?article=348
Micro-Finance: A Way Out of Poverty
by Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow in Economics
***Begin Quote***
Since those early beginnings, Yunus and the Grameen Bank have financed literally millions of small projects. A $50 loan allows a woman to buy chickens so she can sell eggs. As the chickens multiply, she has more eggs to sell. Eventually she can sell the chicks as well. The New York Times reported on one woman in India who started with a $50 loan and a 20-chicken farm. She now has $2,000 in borrowing power, a huge sum for her community. Overall, 98 percent of loans are repaid.
***End Quote***
No gubamint! How could it possibly succeed?
Freedom. Honesty is inherent in the human condition. It’s in the genes.
We can beat poverty!
There will still be poor people, but there will be prosperous poor people.
And, no government overhead. No government graft. Just peaceful markets.
ALUMNI: Move sports to a beta blog
http://jasperjottings.blogspot.com
Switching the blog that I use for the Jasper Jottings sports stories over to the new google offering. I’m always up for some bleeding edge when it really doesn’t matter.
MONEY: CARSDIRECT may save money
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/42704033/
October 28 2006
My CarsDirect Experience
Michael Arrington
***Begin Quote***
Total time spent researching and buying a car: Four hours over a three day period. Total time spent negotiating: none. And I believe I got a better price than if I had tried negotiating with the dealers directly.
***End Quote***
May be I’ll try that next time.
ALUMNI: Weekly issue pushed
And, I was delayed by a young guy dying. Argh! Class of 1990. That ain’t supposed to happen.
Joe Neikro age 61.
very morose!
TECHNOLOGY: PRINTERANYWHERE having problems
Yesterday at work, PA on NOTEBOOK said that PRINTER on WORKTOP was offline. But PA on WORKTOP says it was online.
Today at home, PA on NOTEBOOK says that PRINTER on HOMETOP is offline. But, PA on HOMETOP says it is online.
http://groups.google.com/group/printeranywhere/
Their GOOGLEGROUP has a problem report.
Sounds like a bug at the PA mothership.
I fell back to my PCANYWHERE / GOTOMYPC and printed in both cases. SO I’m sure it ain’t me!
TECHNOLOGY: Ubuntu 6.10 released
Ubuntu 6.10 flexible and user-friendly released
***Begin Quote***
Ubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating system, freely available with both community and professional support. It is developed by a large community and we invite you to participate too!
The Ubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Ubuntu Philosophy: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit.
These freedoms make Ubuntu fundamentally different from traditional proprietary software: not only are the tools you need available free of charge, you have the right to modify your software until it works the way you want it to.
ubuntu definition
Ubuntu is suitable for both desktop and server use. The current Ubuntu release supports PC (Intel x86), 64-bit PC (AMD64), Sun UltraSPARC and T1 (Sun Fire T1000 and T2000), PowerPC (Apple iBook, Powerbook, G4 and G5) and OpenPower (Power5) architectures.
Ubuntu includes more than 16,000 pieces of software, but the core desktop installation fits on a single CD. Ubuntu covers every standard desktop application from word processing and spreadsheet applications to web server software and programming tools. Read more about Ubuntu on the desktop and Ubuntu on the server.
***End Quote***
I couldn’t find a torrent, so I had to do it the old fashioned way. I’ll try it now and report back.
XPfails – luggable – Outlook snarfs another message
http://www.slipstick.com/problems/outbox.htm
Says the problem is caused by add-ins reading the outbox.
LIBERTY: Air America is a campaign finance law end run
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20061025-092624-1737r.htm
Special treatment for Air America
By John R. Lott Jr. and Bradley A. Smith
Published October 26, 2006
***Begin Quote***
When is a campaign donation not a campaign donation? Apparently if you spend the money to run a radio program instead of paying for campaign ads that run on that same program. Just look at Air America. With $41 million in losses since 2004, and $9.8 million owed just to Robert Glaser, RealNetworks chairman, Democrats who bankrolled this “company” weren’t so much investors as campaign contributors. The losses are seen as simple business ineptitude,but Air America effectively, and perhaps intentionally, cleverly avoided the campaign finance limits which Democrats had worked so hard to pass.
***End Quote***
First Amendment? Gone. Courtesy of McCain Feingold.
Keep all that dirty money out of campaigns. Except for incumbents and friends of incumbents.
My rule: No vote for incumbents. No votes for Big Gubamint candidates. Small Government! All the time; no exceptions.
FUN: Do you Google, Yahoo, or Ask?
http://blog.ask.com/2006/10/you_do_andor_ma.html
This is a stich. Best thing I seen from them since they did a bad thing and nuked Jeves. (Sorry Blaise!)
JOBSEARCH: A web-base Office clone … free
ThinkFree is web-based tool.
For seekers, who are “out”, this might be a way to get a “microsoft office” clone that wouldn’t require having your own pc or paying for software.
In my thinking, the baby turkey doesn’t want to start the computing trek right after getting nuked, by having to go buy a computer. Basically, they go from using their employer’s to having to select, operate, and learn their own.
(One reason why I tell turkeys who are “in” to address this need before they are put “out”.)
I’m sure that they take the easy way out — when they have so MANY other problems — and just replicate what they had at their employer. That drops a bundle when they can least afford it.
Anyway, ThinkFree could fill the niche for computing need without investment. For example, usually the local library, or any library, has internet access for free. And there are inet cafes around.
The money that a baby turkey would drop on a replacement of the employer’s desktop would buy many library or inet cafe sessions. Or, at the very least, allow them to buy the cheapest computer and inet connection.
For seekers, who are “in” and not delusional that their current gig will last for ever, this may be a solution to lots of issues. Want to write and send an email without leaving a trace on your work top? Want to send an email from your worktop with out using your employer’s email.
Reinke Faces Life 
You must be logged in to post a comment.