Reinke Faces Life

http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2007/071007-backspin.html

Technology for the People by the Money
Backspin By Mark Gibbs, Network World, 07/10/07

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A new federal rule is now in effect that means SDR/CR systems that use “open source elements” will find it hard to get FCC approval or perhaps be excluded altogether.

The FCC’s reasoning – inexplicably prompted by Cisco, of all companies – is that manufacturers should not use open source software “if doing so would increase the risk that … security measures could be defeated or otherwise circumvented to allow operation … of the radio in a manner that violates the Commission’s rules.”

This means that what the FCC and Cisco apparently want are unhackable software products! As Homer Simpson would say, “Du-oh!” Gentlemen, you must know that there is no such thing and anyone with the slightest clue will tell you that security through obscurity has never and will never work.

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Gooferment “protecting” you from those evil companies!?!

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He knocks the ball out oft he park. He took every liberal topic and precisely defined what he’d do. No ifs, ands, or maybes. And, he appeared to be well received. The new citizen who flew down from Seattle with a check was the most eloquent witness.

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http://product.thinkfree.com/products/

ThinkFree Online

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ImageManage, access, and edit documents over the internet. Get the best Microsoft Office compatibility available. Share and get everyone’s input on your story, schedule, or marketing materials.

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THINKFREE is messing with my neatly laid out paradigm (i.e., consultant speak for how one looks at the world).

In the beginning, there was the (big mainframe) computer and it had input devices (i.e., punched cards) and output devices (i.e. printers). And after that everything got complicated. IBM’s SNA allowed intelligence and processing power to escape from the mainframe datacenter and go “native”. Then came IP and someone eventually hung one of them new fangled personal computers and there was a paradigm shift.

So we now have a zero footprint web browser, a thin client (i.e., gotomypc and it’s ilk), a fat client like some of the universal instant messengers or Microsoft Outlook, and (obese) clients that are servers like SBS that can do everything with or without the network.

THINKFREE has ONLINE (zero), DESKTOP (fat), SERVER (obese), and (now) PORTABLE (that acts like my uninstalled life).

You have to dig for pricing, but it looks like $50 except for server where they don’t tell you the price. (Always a bad sign.)

The free online will have premium options as yet unpriced. (Always a bad sign).

And, it still doesn’t integrate email.

I’d classify it as Zoho’s stupid brother!

Except for the blurring of the lines between online and offline. In that sense, it’s innovating. (IMHO)

You really want to be able to work without having to think about your connectivity status or what hardware you have available.

Looking at the DESKTOP minimum requirements, it’s very hefty.

In summary, it’s an interesting dead end that could be expensive.

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http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/07/eleven-lessons-.html

Eleven lessons learned about blogging, so far
* Marc Andreessen
* Jul 10, 2007

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Fifth, writing a blog is way easier than writing a magazine article, a published paper, or a book — but provides many of the same benefits.

I think it’s an application of the 80/20 rule — for 20% of the effort (writing a blog post but not editing and refining it the quality level required of a magazine article, a published paper, or a book), you get 80% of the benefit (your thoughts are made available to interested people very broadly).

Arguably blogging is better because the distribution of a blog can be even broader than a magazine article, a published paper, or a book, at least in cases where the article/paper/book is restricted by a publisher to a limited readership base.

This of course assumes that you’re not trying to make a living writing magazine articles or books, or you’re not trying to get tenure as a professor by publishing peer-reviewed research papers.

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Clearly, a blog is a light weight way to update your web pages quickly. Stale content on a web page is the kiss of death. Blogs are really nothing more than a web page with content rolling out like “toilet paper”. (A deliberately chosen metaphor.)

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CONTINUING THE DISCUSSION ON MLPF

>But, I say pity the poor soul who thinks that America’s only wealth is
>measured in tax dollars.

It’s not that I think America’s wealth is measured in tax dollars. That’s a negative measure; it’s the load on the vitality of Americans. The sand in the economic engine. The friction. Tax dollars are a measure of how much is REMOVED from some American’s investment account. Taxes are opportunities that can never be taken by the original earner. If you earn 100k from MLPF or Alba earns his 100k from JibberJobber AND you each lose 50k to taxes, then you and he can NOT invest in my latest get rich scheme — color coded name tags for families at wakes to tell who’s from what side of the deceased’s family. It’s a real winner!

Seriously, taxes deprive you and Jason from using your 50k as you see fit. Invest it, spend it, throw a party for all the MLPFers, or give it to your favorite charity. It’s YOUR money. It’s STOLEN from you at gun point. It’s nothing more than other people robbing you to use the sweat of your brow to feather their nests, reward their friends, and punish their enemies. The “good works”, that incidentally they use the illusion of legitimacy to do, hides the fact that they are using the proceeds of theft. Why if I steal your 50k and give it to the Salvation Army, do I go to jail? But the gang in DC steal your 50k, call it taxes, give a bureaucrat a job, throwing a bone to some purpose or other, and we’re all supposed to applaud them for the “service”? The hidden problem is that whatever you were going to do with your profits doesn’t get done. It right out out the Economics 101 “the broken window” fallacy. Society is a net loser when wealth is used to fix the broken window because it was NOT available to do something else. We see the window, but we don’t see all the effects of the action precluded. So too, we see “Seattle” but we can’t see what it precluded!

There’s a reason that taxes are compulsory. No one would pay them if there weren’t.

Gooferment “sells” us “services” that we don’t want at prices we can’t afford. Compare it to the “free market”. Not some of the nonsense where an industry is “regulated”, but a real free market, like the computer hardware market. If you want to “sell” me a service, then you have to satisfy my needs. If I’m in the least way dissatisfied, I have choices. If the gooferment “sells” me a service and I’m not satisfied, there’s nothing I can do.

>America’s greatest asset is attitudinal.

America’s greatest asset is the liberty that allows us to “be all that we can be”. We are the beneficiaries of a lucky happenstance of the American experiment. The Classical Liberals have freed us from oppression by Kings, Churches, and random gangs of thugs. They given us the “invisible hand of the marketplace”, the “division of labor”, and “all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”. They weren’t perfect by a long shot, but they gave us a huge start. We’ve, like the Prodigal Son, squandered or birthright by being lazy. Lazy in our thinking; that gooferment could give us something for nothing. Lazy in our complacency; that we need to always reinvent ourselves to take advantage of opportunity. Lazy in our faith; faith in our own abilities, the honesty of our fellow men, faith in the universe that gives us all we need. We’ve allowed gooferment to take over charity (i.e., welfare), education (i.e., indoctrination), and basic slew of other stuff!

Sorry, but we’ll have to disagree agreeably on the value of Seattle’s innovation. I’d be looking for the “hidden opportunities” that the “Seattle innovation” precluded.

fjohn

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Responding to an MLPF comment about Seattle Schools using tech in educational themes.

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>Now that is innovative thinking and the administrators of the Seattle Public Schools should be congratulated!
{Extraneous Deleted}
>What say you?
>Jay Deragon
>Social Networking Strategist

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I say pity the poor Seattle taxpayers who had their wealth stolen so that some highly paid bureaucrats could mess with other people’s children all at the point of a gun. (Don’t pay those taxes and see what happens. Don’t send your children to gooferment skoolz and see what happens.)

Sorry, but making happy videos and playlists isn’t education. It’s glorified babysitting and brainwashing. There are hungry people around the world learning in the pressure cooker of poverty to “eat these kid’s lunch”. In a day and age, when we should be first in a whole bunch of categories, we’re last in just about everything that matters. (We may be tops in “I felz gud abut myself”!)

Congrats, you have to be kidding us.

No, I think that we as a society in the USA have “really screwed the pooch”. We, deluded by our politicians (No one can say we don’t have the best money can buy!), have a track record of bad decisions. Just to name a few of our mortal sins: The Civil War, All the various Wars to <insert favorite slogan> creating the American empire, Leaving the Gold Standard, Creating the Federal Reserve, Permitting the Income Tax, Prohibition, Social Security, Creating the ‘dole” of New Deal programs, Bombing Hiroshima – Nagasaki – Dresden, Gooferment Education, War on Poverty, War on Drugs, Medicare / Medicaid, and countless venial sins.

IMHO “our” action plan, that of the USA, should be to: end the “dole” (i.e., welfare to individuals and companies); end “public” education; return to honest money; bring the troops home from the 170 countries becoming like Switzerland and instituting a MYOB foreign policy; and cut the gooferment down to a tenth of what they are today by getting back to strict Constitutional interpretation.

See empires can’t sustain themselves.

As innovative Power Forum members, we should be able to see where the future is taking us and not just “go along for the ride”. The essence of “seeing the future” is to be able to avoid the pitfalls. Else, we are nothing more than the Delphi Oracle with a neat tool (i.e., the crystal ball). We can tell people what’s going to happen but we can’t change “their destiny”. I think we can. But it calls for some “heavy lifting”. First is, at the very least, to be judicious with our “congrats”. If I was going to give kudos to anyone in education, it would be those in the “home schooling” movement. They are demonstrating success. Then maybe I’d look to the private and parochial schools who educate in direct competition with the gooferment’s free education. They are demonstrating success. Then, maybe I’d look to the various “bees” (i.e., the National Spelling Bee; the National Geography Bee) who are seeking to make “learning” kool. Then, I laude people like Bill Cosby, Walter Wiilliams, and others who are castigating the culture of “being dumb is kool”.

No, I’d say that is NOT innovative and we should NOT send Seattle congrats. Sorry to be the bearer of an opposing point of view. Wish I could be funny and make a joke. But this is “funny”. Not “funny haha”. But “funny sad”.

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