Topic Tuesday #37 2013/04/02 - "To the Cloud! Part 2-Storage"

Topic Tuesday #37 2013/04/02 - "To the Cloud! Part 2-Storage"

Continuing from To the Cloud Part 1 #35, today we will delve lightly into cloud storage, specifically those that sync to multiple computers and devices.
Again, if I get too far in the jargon weeds and I lose you, let me know in the comments.

A number of cloud based storage providers have dove headfirst into the business of storage. Some are "better" than others. Some are more private than others. Some are just a better deal with many free-to an extent. Thus far, personally, I have not found a single solution more to my liking than any other.

Top Contenders I have become familiar with:

Google Drive (Collaborative Apps, Storage, Mail, Chrome browser sync).
Microsoft Skydrive (MS Office Apps, Storage, Mail).
Apple iCloud 
Dropbox
Box
Tonido (not the Tonido Plug)
PogoPlug (not the physical device, but the computer based software)
Jungle Disk
Carbonite
CrashPlan

If you have an iOS device or a MAC you are already in the iCloud. You have most likely enabled syncing of your devices, and that has made you pretty happy, if you were in that ecosystem already.
If you have a Gmail account, then you already have Google Drive and may be familiar with some of the features available.
If you have a Hotmail or Live.com account, similar to the iCloud and Google Drive, you are familiar with some cloud storage options and document editing features and perhaps still more.
Dropbox and Box have become the kleenex of cloud storage, Dropbox much more so. It's largely free to play up to a few GB and more if you publicise it for them. You can purchase, for a monthly fee, large quantities of storage.
Tonido and PogoPlug are special in they allow you to be your own cloud by attaching a drive or installing their software on your own, and accessing it from the internet or via their mobile apps. These also have drive mapping utilities so you can access the files as a drive letter on you computer. They also have pay to play versions where you can get online storage for a fee, but it is not necessary. The biggest benefit from these two is the option to not trust them. You hold your information on your own device. Your data can be secure in that it does not go through the companies hands, unless you bought storage from them. Great for the paranoids and the mistrustful, or the criminal.
Jungle Disk, Carbonite, and Crashplan are all essentially backup providers. They have a selling point of also having apps and the ability to access your files from anywhere and turning your backup in to cloud storage. This is the same as say Dropbox or Box, but the other side of the coin, and focused on the backup portion. This ability is only available if you "trust" the company with the key.  Let me explain very simply what that means.

If a storage provider can provide your saved data to you in an app or on the web, it is safe to say, they can access it at any time and not require your password to do so. Keep that in mind. If you don't want something to fall in to the wrong hands (melodrama intended) don't put it where people can read it.
Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, Box, Apple and any of the providers that can display your files in their interface, can and will comply with law enforcement and relinquish access to your files to them, with a court order. Crashplan, Carbonite, and Jungle Disk, if you setup the options to have a private key, all they store is the random bits and they don't know what they have. They can't access it, and are then free to tell law enforcement that they cannot comply. This makes them TNO, or Trust No One, compliant.

But there is a convenience that we enjoy with these cloud applications that is undeniable.

Google Drive, has very inexpensive storage. They have the Google Apps, as an office product replacement that has the single greatest feature to hit the web in a very long time; you can simultaneously edit documents with collaborators. You can see exactly what they do! It's quite the experience. There is also a desktop sync app, that allows for a folder on your computer to be replicated to the cloud and any other machines you install it on. We will label this feature as "Desktop Sync". Also, their cloud allow for backing up of your Android phone, which is indispensable. The Drive application is a little resource heavy and can bring system performance down.
SkyDrive has storage, backs up your Windows Phone, has a light version of MS Office (no simultaneous collaboration, yet), email, "Desktop Sync" once you have installed their Sky Drive "Desktop Sync" you can access all the files on your computer from the web. Convenient, and a little creepy when you think about what they CAN access. It's all about trust.
iCloud, honestly... Pretty useless except for those items that are Apple centric. It's not a catch all and there is no way to edit your documents in a browser. It is handy for recovering your cloud backed up phone or ipod.
Dropbox has become the ubiquitous cloud service. All the apps for your phone will be able to sync to it, if anything. It syncs well across all your devices, and you can earn free storage. The price tiers are a bit steep, It's usefulness is without question.
Box is very similar to Dropbox. Their software is very well executed and handles syncing with less resources than Dropbox. They have occasional promotions where you can get free storage. I ended up getting 50GB for free by simply signing up for service with the iPhone app. That is hard to beat, and hard to come by. They do have a fault in there is a file upload size limit of 250mb. This is raised on paid plans, but not removed as a restriction. Dropbox has a significantly higher restriction.

Tonido is a mashup of different things. There is a sync application and a drive mapping application. Inside he web interface there are options for calendars, Thots (a wiki of sorts), media streaming and you can send links to share your files directly with people (and even see when they downloaded it). Overall, since the desktop installation is free (with limitations of file syncing and such) it is well worth the look. If you want to shell out some cash, and have an extra laptop hard drive around, the Tonido Plug is a very handy home file server with all the features I highlighted above. The Sync and Drive applications can be flakey, but that may depend more on your own internet connection speed, so your mileage may vary.
PogoPlug is similar to Tonido, but their desktop application I found to be very resource hungry using lots of ram. A colleague of mine has the stand alone PogoPlug device, and he has been very pleased with its performance. Some things are better when they are dedicated, and somethings to do not scale well. I have several TB of data, and that may have been the limitation of my PogoPlug experience.
Carbontie and Crashplan I will lump together as they provide the same service. Crashplan was more economical for multiple computers for unlimited storage. Carbontie has a more friendly interface.  Bothe have applications and you can access files an stream media with them, unless you have the setup a private key. Having done this for security, my overall experience with using them as a cloud storage option is limited but mentioned as it has tremendous value for low risk material.
Jungledisk and many of its type that I have left unmentioned are very highly configurable and somewhat daunting to setup. Additionally you pay for the storage separately, and you would choose your own provider. This is a very finest of geeky solutions, but may not be your cup of tea. It is mentioned more to show the opposite extreme.

There is more to say about these, and each could warrant its own place of honor as a post here and in your life. Give them a try and let us know what you think.

Topic Tuesday #34 2013/03/12 - "Going Paperless"

Topic Tuesday #34 2013/03/12 - "Going Paperless"

The modern information age has presented a few problems our forebearers did not consider.
In a day (24 hour period):
If you read the newspapers you see around 30 headlines, with the attributing article.
If you then use the internet for news, you are likely to pass by over 300 news articles, with various links to other articles and source material and pictures and media and blah blah blah. 

Carry on to email and search and other various tasks; on average somewhere around 200 web pages will be encountered.
With all this, daily we encounter roughly 500,000 words. To put that in context; Leo Tulstoys's 'War & Peace' was only 460,000 words.
So we have a plethora of information at our fingertips and clouding our minds, our inboxes, and our desks.

What do we do with all this? How can we manage all this information?
The simplest way is filters. A way to index and search for what you want out of all your sources. The problem with this is that we can't index paper by much more than some basic keywords, like author, subject, date, etc. The full text remains hidden to us. Solution: Going paperless.

How do we do that?
It's a good question and one that is still very much in debate. I have seen in my daily work that most "paperless offices" actually generate MORE paper than they did before they were paperless. Doesn't make much sense, until you add the human quality of mistrust of new technology into the mix. In a few more years, the hard copies will start to become less and less. Until such time, they do have the advantage, at the end of the day, of being able to search all those papers virtually.

What does it take?
The Source Material, An imaging unit to make the source digital, A place to store the files it creates, A way to recognize the text and make it searchable and editable, Time, Effort, and An organizational plan.

You have the stuff you want to scan, that's easy to identify. Now what?
What will you use to make an image?
I have taken pictures with my phone, used a flatbed scanner, a digital copier, and sadly, hand transcription back into a document. Once you have the image then you need a program to turn the print into editable and searchable text. This is called OCR (Optical Character Recognition). Most scanners will come with one that will perform this task, like Abby Finereader. Some are better than others; you have been warned. Many also come with document management software, like PaperPort. Others will have complete package solutions that you will either love or hate, like NeatDesk. You need to be cognisant that you will be living with the imaging solutions for years to come. Many scanners outlive their computer counterparts by a decade. I recommend you select a manufacturer that has a good track record for updating drivers quickly and not abandoning products. Read the reviews. Think ahead. Think of what you would like to have the ability to do.

That said, I have some more genealogy documents to get scanned, and I'm going to buy one of these solutions and cross my fingers that the pile of papers I have, soon becomes a mass of easily indexed 1s and 0s.

What solution have you tried?

Fujitsu ScanSnap iX50

Epson WorkForce GTS50

Brother ADS2000

Xerox XDM1525-WU DocuMate 152

NeatDesk

Topic Tuesday #32 2013/02/26 - "Yellow Journalism"

Topic Tuesday #32 2013/02/26 - "Yellow Journalism"

The term yellow journalism is used today as a pejorative to decry any journalism that treats news in an unprofessional or unethical fashion.

Why do I want to talk about Yellow Journalism? As luck would have it I found out that CNN's Soledad O'Brien is being "bumped" from her spot in the morning to an ambiguous documentary production role. Soledad has been a veracious journalist. She asks hard questions where others ask the safe "softball" questions.She is doing her job, or at least, she is being a real journalist. She should be rewarded for it. She is not. She may have made some people rather uncomfortable. If you have ever faced an authority figure (like a parent) and had them ask you the questions that you really don't want to answer, you can get the feel of this uncomfortable feeling. So it's simple: Soledad wasn't doing her job the way the establishment wanted her to.

I am not going to put on my tin-foil hat and claim conspiracy, as I don't think I need to. It's obvious. What I am going to do is draw a parallel to Yellow Journalism. As the old timers will readily say, "it's to sell soap".

The organizations that deliver, and in some cases manufacture, our news are not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. They are in it to make money, by selling advertising time. The advertisers want to sell to you. Your senses are being sold to the highest bidder. They walk a fine line between validity and entertainment. Let's follow the money. 

1. Widget Maker wants to sell Widgets or Soap. They hire a-
2. Marketing Agency to make advertisements for widgets to the researched demographic group The Marketing Agency the buys airtime from-
3. Network Sales who claims their "Product" (TV Show, News Program, etc) reaches sufficient numbers in that target audience where consumer's eyeballs or ears are enticed to buy while consuming the product that the Network is presenting -
4. And you buy the widgets (or soap [where do you think Soap Operas came from?]) and thereby feed the Widget Maker money to continue supporting the Marketing Agency and they to continue to support the Product that you were passively enjoying anyway.

And the circle is complete. 

Here's where it breaks the last shred of integrity:

The Network Sales team must provide updated ratings of the number of people reached. If the "Product" (that will be supported by the advertising) does not maintain their ratings the Marketing Agency pulls the advertisement and goes elsewhere. Here is where the "Product" gets polished to make it more appealing to demographics. Make the hosts prettier. Make the topics gripping but not always negative. Keep the guests happy. Don't make enemies. Don't give other properties free advertising. And so on. This is why your favorite programs (Firefly) and personalities (Soledad) get cut, and why "Toddlers and Tiaras" gets great ratings. It's also why there are script writers and auditions for REALITY TV... It's a lie, to sell soap, or widgets, or home lobotomy kits.

So what we have is a structure that is not treating "news" reporting in a purely agnostic and ethical way, but a sensationalized way They are apt to pump the news up and parade it around in motley before the target demographic, to sell the the widgets. 

Special interest groups make requests, and in the interest of continuing to sell widget soap biscuits (now with added caffeine), they kowtow to those requests that are mutually beneficial. 

"Stevens, Keep in mind that the next political candidate should want to buy lots of ad time from us and they will be kind to the interests serving our company when elected. We better play it safe and not enrage a potential ally on the Hill. Stop saying negative things and pointing out the facts they don't want to make headlines. You'll loose percentage points for our 25-45 demographic in Boise."

This is how it happens. It happens all the time. 

So now that I've pointed it out, where do you get your news from?

Topic Tuesday #31 2013/02/19 - "Placebo"

Topic Tuesday #31 2013/02/19 - "Placebo"

Once upon a time a boy who loved a girl was driven to as a question of the object of his affections. He asked, "Should I worry?". The reply was a thoughtful, "Yes.". The boy, who had not been ill in many years, began to get sick. The act of worrying weakened his immune system and made him vulnerable to the ailments he had years before. In hindsight, perhaps some questions are left better unasked, but it did serve as a valuable lesson; your thoughts have an impact on your physical body.

At the heart of this example lies an effect derived from nothing more than thought. Essentially it's a Placebo, but without the pomp and circumstance of psychic surgery, homeopathy, sugar pills, or other chicanery. The mind on it's own is powerful enough without the props to do harm, or to heal.

You don't have to believe me, or the boy, who may or may not have any resemblance to myself...
I have a little trial for you to do. It's not too difficult but it will take some concentration. Perhaps a rubber band around your wrist or something to remind you.

Tomorrow, I want you to smile. Smile for no reason. Smile for every reason. Just smile. Watch the faces of the people you encounter. See what happens to them. Note your mood though the day.
If you slip, its fine, just do it again. And again. And again. You will know you have done well if your face hurts at the end of the day. Attitude is largely a choice. You can worry yourself sick over things that have little to no bearing on things (as I may or may not have in the past) or you can choose to be optimistic and happy.

If you don't believe in placebos, you aren't alone. They do, however, work. 

Check out the actual inspiration for this post; Fear and Faith by Derren Brown -  

FIRST BROADCAST: 9pm Fri 9 November 2012 C4 DURATION: 47:36

The first part of a two-part event, Fear and Faith is an extraordinary film looking at what happens when people have the experience of fear removed through the use of a powerful new drug. 

I acquired a copy, and I hope the BBC won't mind me sharing their fantastic program. - This would be your queue to watch it before I have to take it down.

Topic Tuesday #29 2013/02/05 - "Meme Machine"

Topic Tuesday #29 2013/02/05 - "Meme Machine"

MEME (pron.: /ˈmiːm/ /mēm/ MEEM) Noun

1.) An element of a culture or behavior that may be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, esp. imitation.
2.) An image, video, etc. that is passed electronically from one Internet user to another.

Culturally we have been inundated with memes in our information age. We should all have a general concept of what a meme looks like, but do you know what a meme actually is? What it stands for? What it's great purpose is? Perhaps, or perhaps not. Let's jump into some abbreviated back story.
In 1976 the book "The Selfish Gene" was published by author Richard Dawkins, a British evolutionary biologist. Dawkins was set about explaining how the genes in all living organisms could be analogous to a replicator. The gene has a simplistic purpose, to replicate itself as successfully as possible. That is the essential take away from the book on the topic of genes, however he coined a term to expand on the notion. When an idea or concept is replicated through a culture, he dubbed it a "meme". The Ancient Greek words; mimeme ("something imitated"), mimeisthai ("to imitate"), and mimos ("mime"). These Greek terms, combined with the concept of the 'gene' being a replicator, served as foundations for the concept. Thus modifying the word 'gene', become 'meme'.

We have seen many of these memes through our lives and mostly we just look over them. We are blissfully ignorant over their (memes) innate power to program us as a host to pass along the memes knowledge and concepts. You might think that a maddening prospect. That an inanimate, no... worse than inanimate, a figment, a concept at best - could be something that could do something like force you to know something and even to pass it along unwittingly. But it's true. Our brains are good at one thing in particular: Pattern Recognition.
Have you heard of a "mnemonic device"? Mnemonic devices are techniques to help remember something. It’s a memory technique to help your brain better encode and recall important information. It’s a simple shortcut that helps us associate the information we want to remember with an image, a sentence, or a word, etc, etc..
Mnemonic devices are very old, and virtually everybody uses them, even if they don’t know they are. It’s simply a way of memorizing information so that it “sticks” within our brain longer and can be recalled more easily in the future. This is the nature of a meme.

Have you ever been someplace and smelled something that reminded you of something from your childhood? Have you ever heard a word said in a particular way that caused you to have a melody or entire song to populate in your head, so strongly it was there the rest of the day? Perhaps an image that caused you to cry, for no apparent reason. These are all indicators of memory programming. You can call it "learning" if you like.  The result is the same.

So what can you do with this knowledge? Perhaps you can do something great. Program little life lessons into your own memes. A funny little picture, a few well phrased words, inserted in a simple shape (usually squarish), and presented in a way that gets lots of eyes to look at it. Memes spread like a virus. This is one reason for the term, "going viral", on the internet. The meme is so popular, so easy to remember, so catchy, that it spreads like wildfire and soon everyone knows it. Just don't take every meme you see on the internet as gospel. Just because somethings catchy, doesn't make it true or useful.
Propaganda spreads this way.
Misinformation spreads this way.
Songs, pop culture, politics, news, old wives tales, lies, truths, rumors, gossip, and occasionally educationally useful things are all apt to be replicated in the meme machine that is our own brains.

Soon I will be putting out some memes for CanWeFixIt.org. Let's put that 3lbs of pattern recognition meme machine to good use!

Topic Tuesday #25 2013/01/08 - "The Right To Privacy"

Topic Tuesday #25 2013/01/08 - "The Right To Privacy"

In the last quarter of 2012 web browser vendors took on the topic of "DNT" (Do Not Track) as a feature to be added in their various browsers. What is DNT? You may have heard to empty your cookies now and then and delete your cache. That is where tracking lives (for the most part). Cookies are used as a kind of passport from one website (or within a websites various pages). They carry authentication tokens, information about your browser, your computer, you, how long the credential is valid for, and permissions therein. There are "Third Party" cookies that are generated typically from advertising vendors for various web pages and they can quite literally follow you around the internet. Ever notice the ads being targeted to you? Like you just bought something on one site and a completely different site then tries to sell you a competing or complimentary item? I bet you have but you may not have connected the dots. These can all be equated to being stamps in your passport and when handing it to the next "agent", they get to see where you've been and add their own "stamp". 
Where am I going with this? Simple, do we not have the right to be left alone? The DNT engineering specifications provide for meta data to be added to browser queries to "opt out" of being tracked. Sounds great, then they won't be spying on me all the time. There are a few catches to this. 1) The DNT Spec indicated it should be off by default. 2) Websites are under no mandate to comply, rendering it exceptionally weak. 3) Microsoft decided to break the spec by turning it on by default in the latest IE versions, causing a big stir. 4) Vendors have varying levels, from obnoxious to that wasn't too bad, of ease to enable the DNT header, continuing to make it obtuse to user adoption.

Number three is the big game changer here. Microsoft is in the consumers court on this one. The rest of the industry (the other 46% of the browser market) and the Apache Software Foundation (provider of back end web hosting software) are not happy with Microsoft's choice in the matter. There are a few reasons. Apache is mad because it breaks the specification, so they are retaliating by having their servers ignore the request from IE clients. Other providers, like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera, have decided to implement the spec and are capable of it, but turned off by default.  Why are we being tracked at all? Money. Money. Money. Oh and some data metrics too - that leads to more money. Did you ever consider how the web works? It works predominately on advertising revenue. Google, the ginormous search engine company, is primarily an advertising company. That is where their revenue comes from. Why do they give so many services away? Because those services make you see more ads. The companies that provide ads want to know their money is being well spent, so they demand metrics. Perfectly reasonable. Those metrics are collected by tracking cookies. There is an old adage, "if you're getting something for free, you're likely the product being sold". They give you the service in exchange for your participation in giving them information about your spending habits, browsing habits and sometimes, habits in general. 

Recently there was even a researcher that used the vast data stores (known by the buzz words "Big Data") was able to correlate drug interactions between two popular drugs, a cholesterol medication and an antidepressant. The two interacted to bring on diabetes if left unchecked, and this interaction would not have been so easily found if it had not been for the aggregated (anonymized) big data from search engines. 

So what we have here is a conundrum of what is ours. When does our search become the property of a search engine? What will they do with that information once they have it? Can "the Feds" come in and take it all and use it against you? What is a reasonable expectation of privacy? 

This is where it gets complicated. The Fourth Amendment is our guarantor of privacy, as long as you expand it to it's reasonable extents: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." You are protected by the Fourth Amendment when people have "a reasonable expectation of privacy in a particular situation". The litmus test for this has been the following statement for the last century or so: "there is a reasonable expectation of privacy only if there is a reasonable expectation that certain information may be kept secret.". Over the last 50 years or so, lawyers have taken to this expectation if you can swap "privacy" with "secret" in a sentence or paragraph and not have the meaning changed.

Is secrecy still a prerequisite for privacy? In out modern times it's debatable...

For clarification purposes, the dictionary definitions are as follows:

Secret: a: kept from knowledge or view b: marked by the habit of discretion c: working with hidden aims or methods d: not acknowledged e: conducted in secret
Private: a: intended for or restricted to the use of a particular person, group, or class b: belonging to or concerning an individual person, company, or interest c(1): restricted to the individual or arising independently of others c(2): carried on by the individual independently of the usual institutions d: not general in effect

Of these definition, A seems to suit out needs well enough in both cases. 

For example: A social security number is not a secret as many people have access to that information. A social security number is private and is only shared with a restricted set of people or companies that have authorization to have that information. 

Justice Louis Brandeis

The world is ever changing and the law is struggling to keep up. Thanks to many of our forward thinking supreme court justices through the years, we have been able to keep a decent pace with privacy concerns. Justice Louis Brandeis, in his dissenting opinion on Olmstead v. United States (1928) attempted to make privacy concerns kin to constitutional law. I'll leave you with this infamous sentiment from that opinion and a few more quotes:  

"The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred against the government, the right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men." - Justice Louis Brandeis in Olmstead v. US, 1928.

"Specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. Various guarantees create zones of privacy. . . . The Third Amendment, in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers 'in any house' in time of peace without the consent of the owner, is another facet of that privacy. The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the 'right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.' The Fifth Amendment, in its Self-Incrimination Clause, enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment. The Ninth Amendment provides: 'The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.'" - United States Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965.

"As the Court's opinion states, 'the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.' The question, however, is what protection it affords to those people. Generally, as here, the answer to that question requires reference to a 'place.' My understanding of the rule that has emerged from prior decisions is that there is a twofold requirement, first that a person have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as 'reasonable.'" - Justice John Marshall Harlan, on Katz v. United States, 1967.

"This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." - United States Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, 1973.

What do you consider private?

Topic Tuesday #14 2012/10/23 "The Signal and the Noise"

Tuesday #14 2012/10/23 "The Signal and the Noise"

Last night was the final debate of this presidential election season. (I am going to refrain from partisan support in this post, but those that have read my work before will inherently know where I lean.) The talk was heated, but fluffy through most of the debates. All of the debates were far less about facts than they were puffed chests, interrupting the moderator, going over on time, and the ever so important last word. They were quite entertaining, and even sickening at times. Overall, I would give them 2.5 stars out of 5 for a you should have seen them, but didn't need to since it wasn't anything new, AT ALL. 

This leads into today's topic. 

We are getting a lot of noise through the media outlets and mailings and signs in years, and graffiti on said signs, and stump speeches and rolling roadblocks when they come to our cities etc... How do we filter the noise to get the right signal? I have been talking to several colleagues about the polls and who is doing well where and it never fails that when I bring up a website or media outlet, it is immediately disparaged and dismissed because of their slant. I bring up another, and another, and another; then dig deeper to find where they get their data and show how they arrive at their conclusions. This is to little avail other than showing that I am actually fact checking and not talking out of my arse. Overall, the chat has been civil, if not mind-numbing. And that's the problem-There is too much noise and not enough substance for the signal. The most bi-partisan organizations still seem to lean one way or the other, or at least someone will tell you they do and dismiss them as biased. It seems the only way to know what you need to make a rational decision is to do your own digging and sifting. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes booze in many cases...

I have said it a few times, but I would encourage you all to read the platforms of the main parties, since until campaign reform happens, there is little point in casting a vote for another candidate (sad but true). Keep in mind that an evolution of ideals has happened and these ARE NOT the same political groups we grew up with. They certainly are not the ones your family has supported for generations. 

Some further advice: 

• Read the platforms - But do it alone, but aloud, first. If the language is difficult to get through, you are not supposed to get through it and it is deceitful by intent. Your challenge is to... 
• Critically Compare - Take a highlighter and red pen to the platforms and mark the heck out of them. Compare which side believes what. You may need to translate the legalese doublespeak into plain english. This usually makes the paragraph a sentence. 
• Look to the future -  The one that is elected will be setting policy for decades to come. Not only that, but the likelihood that they will pick Supreme Court Justices (2 are most likely this time) will weigh heavily on law going forward for a long time. Laws can be overturned and our lives directly affected by this decision. 
• Science & Education - As the song said, I believe the children are our future. If we do not educate them correctly, we lose as a nation. What is being taught is as important as how it is taught. Examine the tail tail markings of where the education is going and ask yourselves if that will hurt the next generation. The best technology that we have came out of the furnace of scientific exploration of space. This is a cold and rational endeavour that is filled with wonder. There is no place for superstition in science. Tossing salt over your shoulder or whispering an enchantment will not replace an antibiotic to make your ear infection abate. Act accordingly in this regard. It's your grandchildren's futures you will be deciding.
• ASK - If you are still left asking questions, then do not keep them to yourself. ASK EVERYONE. Communication is key. You may get some rather interesting answers but you may do a service by prompting others to ask the same or other questions. Remember back to your days in school how a single question in class could derail a lecture and make everyone engaged. It's exactly the same in real life, just you are both teacher and student. This principle is for everyday, not just politics.

In conclusion: 

Educate yourselves and Vote. If you do not vote, I don't want to hear a single complaint about the next 4 years; beyond, "Man, I should have voted!"

How do you sift through the noise to get the signal?

Political Commentary: The run for the White House in a nutshell

Political Commentary: The run for the White House in a nutshell: No matter who runs, it is a fallible human that will take the seat. I believe that most people genuinely want to do the best they can. What must not be overlooked when examining any election is once in the oval office, the ultimate outcome of things related to the president are usually as follows:

• President has a "plan" (Idea, concept for change, reform, etc.) Named "Plan A". 
• Plan A goes to the House of Representatives and is voted down, or re-written.
• Plan A then goes to the Senate as (Plan A rep1). It is summarily executed, or edited again and become "Plan A sen1" and then goes back to the President.
• The President has to then veto his own Plan, or let if fly with the changes to not look like a blundering idiot before the people, because he voted down his own Plan, even though it was hacked to death twice before it his his desk again. The people only hear, President vetoes Plan A. (Not 'Plan A rep1', or 'Plan A sen1') 

I am not a conspiracy theorist, I just know that they are all out of their minds, and rightly so.
Try to do good in one hand. Have too much money in their faces to always do what's right by those that need it most in the other... The human equation...
"I want to help you, so I must stay in office until I can (it does take time), but that requires massive amounts of money to get reelected and then I'm indebted to the people that gave it to me; to... not help you..." This is why money needs to be taken out of politics. Anyone that has to raise millions of dollars to win and then to keep their job 4 years latter, isn't being elected on their ability to do the job. They are being elected on their ability to tell you how much better than anyone else (especially that person over there) they can do the job. I am positive i have glossed over many, many, many, many intricate details, on purpose, to illustrate; just because he has a plan, doesn't ever mean he CAN make it happen. Sadly, opposed to doing what is right and just by their people, representatives in the opposition will try to torpedo every bit of legislation that comes out of the White House. I applaud any representative that sticks to their guns and isn't afraid to go across party lines and vote for what would be best (in their opinion) for their constituents. I applaud them even if I disagree.
The lines are blurry on who is for what and why. It is intentionally so. When this is the case, usually the populace will just not think about it and vote with their party affiliation, regardless of benefit or detriment to themselves. Others will find the issue that is their match head and vote for whoever has the best talking point to that cause. This has become the nature of the best, and I hope that this may open your minds to a little fact finding and strolling across party aisles to see what all the hubbub is. More importantly, before you judge the man in the chairs job by the promises he didn't keep, check to see how he did at trying to make them happen. I bet you'd be surprised.
Personally, I lean to "none of the above". ~Andy Cowen

Topic Tuesday #6 2012/08/28 "Crowd Sourced"

Topic Tuesday #6 2012/08/28 "Crowd Sourced"

Once upon a time, a man had an idea for a product or business. He had to go to the bank and borrow money, maybe a loan, maybe a mortgage against his property. Once he had the money in hand he was able to proceed with the idea. Today we find ourselves in a fascinating and fast paced world of instant communication and global collaboration. Recently the concept of "Crowdsourcing" has hit mainstream. If you have a question you may poll your social graph of followers and friends and get a variety of real world answers. Not all of them good, or right, but you will get contribution almost all the time. Now it has taken a more interesting turn. Crowd Funding. Websites like KickStarter.com, indiegogo.com and equitynet.com are providing a new way to get resources for projects, ideas and causes. There have even been some dramatic and notable projects that have been crowdsourced. Mathew Inman of Theoatmeal.com has just performed two such actions. There was a legal kerfuffle that was staunchly put to bed with massive contributions to a good cause being the result and more recently over $1,000,000 was raised to purchase land for a Nikola Tesla museum. A company called Pebble Technology was looking for $100,000 to put an Android powered E-Paper watch that will be called, "Pebble". They raised $10,266,846 through their Kickstarter campaign.

Non-profits have been using it, individuals have been using it. Some succeed, and others fail. Some get funded and fail to deliver later. It's like venture capitalist gambling, but for everyone. Pledge a dollar, and you help. Pledge more, and they may give you a cookie.

http://nistmep.blogs.govdelivery.com/2012/08/28/crowdfunding-as-an-emerging-method-for-funding-product-innovation/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=crowdfunding-as-an-emerging-method-for-funding-product-innovation


The topic for discussion today is related to the bigger picture. With the way our economy is going, these alternatives to traditional funding can provide rapid iteration and product evolution and allow more people to compete, where the barrier to entry was far too high previously. So what are the consequences? Where could this go? Do we need banks to provide loans anymore? Is this just cyber panhandling?

The Quest For Awesome - Home Server Saga-Part 1

Once upon a time, 
A couple college kids were sitting around downloading the internet over 56k modems and were thinking that the 4GB hard drive that they just scored for a couple hundred bucks was going to last them a long time. Then they got a cable modem, discovered MP3s and networked their machines with BNC cables, at a staggering 2MB a sec! (Long before YouTube was launched in Feb 2005, btw) Their world, would never be the same..
That 4GB drive did last a long time; a year or so. It was replaced/supplemented with an 8GB drive. And then a 12GB Drive... See where this is going?
Now, there are individual files that are over 6GB in my collection of data. That's a single file that I wouldn't be able to store on that paltry 4GB drive. Hell, Windows won't even install on less than 10GB these days.
I'm not here to talk about the old days but only to put into perspective the rate that we are acquiring digital assets. It's staggering. In 1995 I had a single (hardly utilized) 30MB drive that I only upgraded because of a lightning strike. I was able to upgrade to a 130MB and thought I was hot stuff. It was true for the time too, but who could really predict the gravity of the digital revolution?
So, on to the topic, "Where the hell am I going to put all this stuff?"

• A Single Drive?
• External Drives?
• DVD Backups?
• Multiple drives?
• RAID?
• Offsite? 
• Where?
• The Cloud?
• How much will this cost???

These are the questions that we will address as we go forward. So, Go forward with me and I will share the pain and the victories I have had. We will start with the "Plan".