Categories
politics

Splits inside both parties, a wish

Both the democrats and republicans are starting to feel pressure from divided constituencies  inside their own tent. The split seems to be along moral/money lines. Conservative/liberal is a pretty good label for social values, but a pretty terrible one for fiscal ones. When you call someone liberal or conservative, what does that mean? Are gay members of the military conservative or liberal? What about a pro-life democrat? Should black millionaires vote for Obama or Romney? Clearly, the liberal/conservative label is almost as useless as the republican/democrat label. Practically speaking, those are the only two parties we have though. What if that changed?

For a  while now, democrats have generally been for broader use of government power in social programs than republicans. More recently, both parties have been hijacked by moral platforms that significant parts of the party do not approve of. Conservative Christians have a lot of control over the republican party moral platform and this makes a lot of the more tolerant/liberal people inside the party uneasy (see Ron Paul and his supporters). In the same vein, the democratic party is also the party of minorities. Black and Latino voters tend to be more socially conservative than the typical white democrat. Close to 40% of democrats don’t approve of Obama’s support for gay marriage.

Clearly, as long as the government is in charge of both money matters as well as values, both the democratic and republican parties are going to confuse and come up short for a lot of people. If parties have to align along two axes (only… I’ll get to a third one in a bit), 2 isn’t going to cut it, we need four. Here’s how I’d break the current parties down:

1) A group that wants less government money spent on social programs and is socially conservative. This is the current popular view of republicans.

2) A group that wants less government money spent on social programs and is socially liberal. This includes gay republicans and republicans that are just tolerant of different kinds of people.

3) A group that wants a lot of money to be spent on government programs and is socially liberal. This is the stereotypical white democrat. 

4) A group that wants a lot of money to be spent on government programs and is socially conservative. This is going to include a lot of religious democrats and that includes a large number of blacks and latinos. 

 

You’ll notice that I didn’t mention the military or foreign policy. That’s because both parties are so similar in that regard that I have trouble telling them apart nowadays. There are of course more than two axes, things like abortion, immigration, and the drug war are all possible single issue voter concerns. Currently, groups 1,2 and 3,4 are supposed to come together at their conventions and hammer out platforms that they will agree to. We then have two parties in DC that do battle. I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that a lot gets lost in that process. I would much rather have all 4 groups present in DC. It can be argued that they already are, different states, and different congressional districts have different breakdowns on the social/liberal continuum. The problem is that all of them are still beholden to the machinations of the main parties political influence. The RNC and DNC hold big purse strings and make people they support toe the company line. I think it would be much more useful and representative if these groups could be on their own and form floating coalitions on  a bill by bill basis. The current atmosphere of having to score points against the other team is marginalizing too many people’s interests.

 

There is another axis that isn’t discussed nearly as much as it should be and that is the idea of how much control you are comfortable giving the government. This is the axis that libertarians get screwed on. While self described libertarians obsess over this, republicans take it as ancillary to how much they get taxed and democrats typically don’t notice until it gets to a ridiculous point. Many libertarians point out that a lot of the culture wars would go away if the government didn’t try to legislate morals or be involved in people’s personal affairs. The two core things about libertarians that are routinely glossed over are peace and tolerance. Tolerance doesn’t mean you have to approve of what other people do in their own lives, but it does mean that you allow them to do it. If the parties adopted a live and let live attitude instead of legislating values, we could then concentrate on money matters.

All of this is pie in the sky thinking of course. I do think that if this split came about and caused distinct parties that more or less shared power, we would have a much more representative government. The two party system tends to flatten differences out between people that happen to have a loose connection on fiscal matters. My more libertarian suggestion is to simply remove the moral aspect out of laws, but the 4 party system would be a step in the right direction.

Categories
technology web

How much would you pay for Facebook? (app.net)

We all know that Facebook is free. I mean, it is free, right? On the other hand, we all also have that kind of unsettling feeling that they are doing something with our online identities. Facebook is what made the question, “Why are they showing me this ad?” a common one. We never thought about it on TV or radio but we all have a sense that they are looking at us and targeting specific ads towards us. They’re sometimes way off of course but that is their game plan. There is also the worry about what other companies they are allowing to look at us.

It’s a tradeoff. Facebook has to be paid for somehow. All of the programmers, the servers, the IT guys, the bandwidth, none of it comes for free. Just like radio and TV before it, Facebook decided to go with ads to support the site. TV and radio ads are annoying, but they don’t have the creepy factor that social media sites do. The TV can’t know who your friends are and what all of you like.

So if you don’t like the way Facebook uses our information, would you be willing to pay them directly instead?

I routinely pay for content so that I don’t get ads. It helps that I really only follow one tv show, Dr. Who. I don’t watch it on TV anymore, BBC America is just brutal with the ads. The show is chopped up enough to make it annoying. Instead, I watch it a day later when I can download it from iTunes. No ads, no interruptions. 

I also subscribe to several music services. Slacker Radio, LastFM, Spotify, and Amazon Play all cost me money, but it also means that I get to listen to the music I want, when I want it, the way I want it, without ads. Nowadays, I can’t sit through FM radio and network TV. I do the same for apps, I buy them whenever I can to avoid the ads. 

App.net is an attempt to bring a paid experience to social networking. You pay them directly and you get the service with no ads and no usage of your information. Almost everything I’ve read says that it is trying to be Twitter so it is bound to fail because it doesn’t have the numbers that Twitter has to make it a viable service. It’s true that the current Alpha release (a release that is not meant for general use, it is for demonstration only. Traditionally software goes through an additional Beta phase before being deemed fit for end users) looks like Twitter but as GigaOm has pointed out, the goal is to be a platform and not just a Twitter competitor. As a platform, app.net could then be used by other application writers to access it and do some amazing things with it including expanding the social aspect of it. 

The minimum buy in fee was $50. That would allow you to secure your desired user name plus give you a year’s worth of time on it. Some of my friends have balked at the price and I had to think about it. I realized that I pay that (and more) to other services without even thinking about it. If this takes off, would you be willing to pay 4.25 a month for a social experience that isn’t interested in selling you? That made my decision for me. My handle is IsaacC.

There are plenty of other types of paid vs. free experiences on the web and on our devices. Apps, web development sites, photo galleries, even blogs! Not sure why something like social networking couldn’t be the same. Has anyone else ever tried this? I know of services that are private social sites, but app.net is trying to scale to allow anyone to interact with anyone else if they wanted. I wish them luck and I’m excited to see what developers can do with this platform.

Categories
medical MS

Another month

It’s official, I’ll be doing at least another month of physical therapy. I finally feel some muscles where I didn’t have any before, but my stamina just isn’t there. Certainly not enough for a whole day’s worth. It could be worse really. I am seeing some improvement, now we just need to speed that up.

Categories
technology

New router!

Yes, I’m a geek, I know that! I installed some power line adaptors the other day to get a wired connection for my Apple TV. It had the desired effect, streams are now faster and more consistent. My long term plan was to also set up another wireless router up there to give better wireless performance. I hemmed and hawed over this since the existing wifi signal was OK. But you know me… More speed!

Turns out it was totally worth what the airport express cost me. I am shocked at how much faster everything is. Here’s how I have it set up; I run an ethernet cable from the power line adaptor to a switch, from there I have ethernet running to both the Apple TV and the airport express. The AE is in bridge mode so that it is just acting as a wifi access point without doing any routing of signals. Looking at the wifi signal strength, I gained 1 bar. Subjectively, it feels much faster than before. The other thing that has changed dramatically is mirroring from the iPad to the TV via Apple TV. Lots better.

I had thought it was a good idea to hard wire everything when you can, glad this agreed with me.

Categories
technology

Online security (kind of long)

Mat Honan was the victim of a rather vicious hack. It resulted in the erasure of his iPhone, iPad, his Mac, and his Gmail account. It was accomplished through a combination of social engineering (a hacker term for fooling people to obtain important information), personal complacence, and the ability to obtain disparate pieces of information that by themselves are harmless but together can be used to exploit security systems.

Honan compounded the problem by not having a backup of his computer (an unforgivable sin for a tech blogger). he lost a ton of pictures and other information when his Mac got wiped. He also helped the hacker by doing some things that made it easy to jump from account to account. Unfortunately, those things are incredibly common practices with the public at large.

His misfortune made me reexamine my own security habits. Some of the things that happened were behind his control. Both of the companies involved with the social engineering aspects are in the process of addressing that angle. He could have prevented a lot of the other things with just a few tweaks but those involve work and most of us lean towards convenience instead of security. So what could he have done, and what should I do?

There are several types of security exploits that I know of. It is possible to have a key logger or other surveillance software installed on your machine and a cracker could then directly access your information. It’s also possible to have a directed social engineering attack like Honan did. Both of those exploits usually require someone wanting specific information from you. These are the kinds of things that the FBI might do to get information on a suspect. In Honan’s case, they were after his Twitter account. 

The things that regular folks need to worry about are theft of their devices and online services being hacked and exposing their information. Obviously, if a thief has your computer, phone, or iPad, they could potentially do all sorts of damage. Luckily, most thieves are much more interested in selling the device and will therefore promptly erase it. Plus, I would imagine it would be a little more difficult to find buyers of information than devices. 

Ideally, if a service gets hacked it would only affect that particular service. The real problem is that so many people use the same password for so many things. If someone gets your email address and a password, it wouldn’t be too difficult to try other services. Hell, they may not have to try if you use the same password for your email. They could just read through your emails and see what services you use.

So that’s lesson #1, use different passwords. Yes, I know, it’s a total pain, but it is necessary. There are a number of ways to organize and maintain all of the different passwords we have. I use 1Password, a well known password manager and generator. Other people keep a file of their passwords (encrypt it!) and others resort to writing them down. The main point is to start using different passwords, just start doing it.

So OK, you have different passwords for everything, but so did Honan. What happened? The weak point is your email. Every online service that I know of will send you an email to reset your password. If someone gets into the email you use for services, you are done. It is super easy to reset passwords to lock you out of not only your email but also all of your services. Think Facebook, Twitter, banking, credit cards, brokerage, the whole 9 yards. If there’s one thing you have to concentrate on securing, it is your email. How do you do that?

Obviously, a good password is a good start. Honan freely admits that if he had a feature called two step authorization activated on Gmail he could have avoided a lot of subsequent damage. If you have that turned on, signing into Gmail from another machine will require a code that is texted to your phone. A hacker would have to have your password and your phone to get into your email account. Clearly, that is much more secure.

There is usually a tradeoff between security and convenience. The more secure something is, the more difficult it is to get into it. Makes sense really. That’s the trade off, two step verification is much more secure, but it becomes problematic if you have a lot of apps that make use of your Google information. Apps typically can’t deal with two step verification so Google generates special passwords for each app. In my case, that involved 12 different passwords spread across my computer, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV. Still, once you put it in, it will stay there.

One thing you shouldn’t overlook is that securing your email from hackers makes it really tough for them to get to it. It could conceivably make it hard, or impossible for you to get into it as well! I can envisage a situation where I would not be able to get into my own account and therefore wouldn’t be able to access a lot of other things as well. If I didn’t have one of my own devices at hand, including my phone, I wouldn’t be able to log into my own account. Google does provide you with a list of passwords that can be printed out for absolute emergencies. It’s an important key so take care of it!

So this is what I have done so far in reaction to the massive hack of Honan. I have gone through and made much more secure passwords for all of the online services that are important. I will update others like online forums as I come across them. I have enabled two step verification on my main Gmail account. I have three others left to do but they aren’t used for anything facing the web. I need to activate two step verification on them and Facebook. I also need to make secure passwords for my iPhone and iPad. It would be silly to go through all of this just to have someone take one of them (again) and have direct access to my email.

I’m only really truly worried about someone stealing my devices or a hack of one of the services I use. The two step verification is for piece of mind. It’s nice to know that the lynchpin is locked down really well. Having different passwords will most likely prevent a breech of any of my other services. It has made things slightly less convenient but the tradeoff is worth it to me. 

 

UPDATE:

OK, the secure password on my iPad and iPhone simply isn’t working. Typing in a 15 digit password every time I pick up them up is just not acceptable. I realized that I have the ability to erase these things remotely so all I need is a little time if they get stolen. I have a better password than the default 4 digit option that is offered, but it isn’t super long. I think that’s a good compromise.

Categories
MS

One week in

I’ve been out of work for a week now. It has helped in a lot of ways. Mentally, I feel much better. The absence of constant stress of getting worn down at work has allowed me to start thinking clearly again. 

I’ve only gone to two PT sessions so far but I can already tell this is going to be good. Still haven’t been able to get an actual cardio workout, my muscles just aren’t up to it. I can see the possibility though. Still not sure if 6 weeks is going to be enough but I’m willing to imagine that it could be. The real test will come on thursday. That will be the first time I will go in with only one days rest. If I can do that then I can go to three times a week and I’ll be much more likely to be able to get where I need to go in the 6 weeks. Wish me luck!

Categories
technology

New realities for making websites

Back in 2004, I started a blog on Livejoural. Yes, yes, I know Livejournal is kind of laughable but give me a break, it was 2004 and I was new to the whole blogging thing. I eventually made my first website in 2005 because I wanted to show some of my pictures, writings, etc. in addition to my blog. At the time, the best integration I could manage with LJ was to have it in a frame or direct to another webpage. 

I didn’t like either option, it was always ugly and awkward. Not that I was any great shakes when it came to web design, but even I couldn’t help but notice how bad that was. I decided to host my blog on my website. The software I was using (more on that later) made it pretty easy to do. While I was in Yemen I switched over the Google’s Blogger for hosting my blog. If I remember correctly, the idea was that I had more access to Blogger over there. When I was hosting my own blog, I had to write it in the software on my computer but I had some serious problems getting my computer to work in the internet cafes at first. With Blogger I could email a post or use the web portal to make new posts. A plug in on the the website software allowed me to host my info on Blogger and still have it show up on my site styled like the rest of it. Later on I downloaded Mars Edit software to make it easier to post to multiple blogs. My workflow has remained the same for quite a few years now.

Even though I haven’t really changed much when it comes to how I make the website, there are ongoing costs. I have updated the website software twice, I also have to pay to register the domains I own as well as a fee for hosting the content. I’ve been using Dreamhost for domain registration and hosting and I don’t really have any complaints. Well, not about them.See, the thing is, there is a lot of fiddly things that make me a little crazy. I have changed the look of my website twice and both times it was a total pain in the neck. 

I have been using Rapidweaver software. It isn’t as powerful as Dream Weaver, but I’m not sure anything is. Ease of use is the calling card of Rapidweaver. I really didn’t want to learn to code just for a website, I don’t have to with Rapidweaver. You pick a theme, you pick what kind of page you want, then you drop the content into the pages. Violá, you have a website! Well, a basic website. It looks much better with third party themes, and you get more control (while still laying off the code) buy buying plugins for the pages. Of course then you have to figure out which plugins will work with things like iPads, you have to keep the main software, the themes, and the plugins up to date. You have to keep track of FTP settings and go back and forth between the “auto” loading of the website onto the host and doing manually. In short, even though the software made things a lot easier, it was still a lot of detail and fiddling around that I really didn’t want to bother with.

Still, I’ve put up with it because… well, what else could I do? Turns out things have changed quite a bit over the years. The emergence of Web Content Management Systems (WCMS) has finally given us a viable option. Essentially, instead of having software on my machine, I log into a service on the web and do all the website work there. What would I gain by doing that? It’s true that there would still be the fiddling with design. I’ve always found that annoying and I’m not very good at it (those two things are probably related). It does look like it is both simpler and better looking than the defaults on Rapidweaver though. Think it will be an easier setup overall. The updates come automatically, there are no FTP issues to deal with, they do the hosting and domain registration. It will replace the website software, the hosting company, and the hassle of making all the moving parts working together. Basically, it will make my life simpler when it comes to my website.

True, I give up some freedom in design, but that’s fine by me since I don’t want to deal with it anyway. The bigger issue is what happens if that company goes away? It’s one thing for your software company to go away, you still have the site on your computer. Ditto for the hosting company. If one company is doing it all, you could be setting yourself up for trouble if there’s problems with that company. I do think a lot of that can be mitigated by picking a good company to begin with. If the company goes under, I will still have all of my content. Between regular exports of the site and the duplication of the blog posts in Mars Edit, I don’t have any worry about losing my blog. The same goes for anything else that I put up there. True, it would be a royal pain to recreate everything, but I could do it. RIght now I have everything being exported by Rapidweaver and I have all of the content, HTML, CSS, etc in a folder but realistically I couldn’t do anything with that stuff if Rapidweaver went away. Seems to me that I am in the same boat in either case.

I’m looking at Squarespace as a possible place to move the website. It’s $8 a month for what I want to do. I’d have to do the math but if I include the price of software updates, domain registration, and web hosting… well, it’s close enough that I’d have to do the math. I feel like I would get a much simpler way to maintain my website and have a lot better support. I still have a little while to go on my hosting plan so I won’t be switching soon, but I’m glad that there are now options,

Categories
medical MS

6 weeks with no work

No, I’m not on vacation… I’ve gone onto short term disability to do another round of physical therapy. I need to build up my strength again. I tried working and doing physical therapy at the same time last time. Didn’t work out so well. The PT wore me out so it was difficult to work. But because I was so tired on the days I didn’t go to PT, I didn’t do a lot of the exercises I was supposed to at home. I still think I got some benefits out of it but it wasn’t as much as I had hoped.

Had my first session yesterday and my gut feeling was confirmed, I need to work on my lower body. Did just a few things and I was wiped out. Was wiped out today too. Honestly, not being expected at work is a great relief to me. I had been steeling my resolve every morning for so long and I got ground down. It’s tough to mentally pump yourself up every day. Having this time away from work will allow me to get stronger and hopefully recharge me mentally.

I’m also going to use the time to get some other appointments out of the way too. I need new glasses, I need a physical, I need a haircut, etc. I have been so tired that I have mostly just hung around the house on my days off. Now I can try to catch up! 

I’m also going to try writing some more on this blog, I’ve gotten out of the habit and I miss it…

Categories
politics

Wisconsin election isn’t the playoffs

In the aftermath of Walker’s win, a lot of people are saying, “See! Outside money is determining elections!” The problem with that narrative is that according to CNN’s exit polling, 88% of the voters had decided which way they were going to vote before May. There was a ton of money spent on that election but it looks like a lot of it was wasted. 

The result shouldn’t be too surprising. If you look at what has happened to Union membership in Wisconsin since dues have become voluntary, you’ll see that membership has plummeted. Drops of half to two thirds are being reported. If union members aren’t willing to pay for membership to fight for them, what are the odds of nonunion folks voting for them? The public sector unions, and let’s not kid ourselves, that is what this election was about, just aren’t that popular in Wisconsin. 

Lots of pundits and news outlets are making a big deal about this and making themselves look silly. I have long since stopped watching the mainstream media, but apparently their coverage was predictable. MSNBC was rooting for the opponent to the last. When it was clear that Walker had won, they said it was a victory for Obama. Don’t ask me, I’m not going to watch them to figure out their reasoning. FOX was of course jumping around gleefully predicting doom doom doom for democrats across the nation. CNN was calling it a close race for a long time (it wasn’t close at all), then they switched to the Queen’s jubilee celebration. They did break in to announce that Walker had won, but then they went back to the Queen. When you Google “Walker Recall” it looks like about half are going with the headline “Walker survives Recall.” 55%-45% isn’t very close. Walker didn’t just survive, it could be argued that he got a mandate.

I think we should all remember that this election was, in the end, for the people of Wisconsin. They had made up their mind fairly early on and it isn’t clear at all that what they think about public sector unions will translate into other states. It’s also clear that the main media outlets don’t live in Wisconsin. They have been the biggest proponents of the politics as sports contests and they had their horses in the race. All of the gloating and despair from people outside of Wisconsin makes me laugh. This isn’t a sports event, this isn’t about you (unless you’re in Wisconsin obviously) or your team. This was about Wisconsin. Apparently 55% like what they’ve had for the past two years. I guess that is where elections are like sports, the contest is won on the field, not by advertisers.

Categories
photography

There’s no perfection in life (cameras)

I had started planning buying my first digital camera a few months back. I had it all figured out. I was going to get a Pentax K-01 and several of the really sweet lenses in their lineup. I love the quality of the lenses, I love the overall look and the feel of them. There’s no question that they are great performers. My main lens was going to be their 35mm macro lens, a stunning lens by any measure. It is a little longer than I would like, but I was willing to deal with that slight inconvenience for the quality. I was then going to eventually round out my collection with the 21mm and the 55mm lenses.

But then a few things happened. First, the K-01 started getting decidedly “meh” reviews. The image quality is great, but the handling and focus performance really disappointed. I’m willing to put up with some inconvenience (says the man who liked shooting 4×5 view cameras and pinhole cameras) but not for $800 I’m not. Pentax has since announced a new SLR camera that seems to take care of the more egregious faults of the K-01. While I was willing to rationalize the size of the K-01 (it is a little smaller than an SLR) getting an SLR would be going against one of the things I wanted in my new camera, a small size. Plus, it’s going to be $900. The lenses have also gone up in price, some by quite a lot. The 21mm and 35mm are around $600 and the 55 is now an eye watering $800. They’re great lenses, it could be argued that they’re still a good value, but they’ve gotten to be a bit more than I was willing to spend, especially if I’m looking at a $900 camera as well.

So what to do? Start again I guess. Here’s what I want in a camera system.

1) A small camera. I want something easy to carry around but it has to have really good image quality, so no all in one compacts for me. I want a good size sensor. Also, no SLRs. I want something noticeably smaller than that.

2) Interchangeable lenses. I’m still a bit of a purist, I like to shoot with prime (non-zoom) lenses. They have some technical advantages but mostly I just like shooting that way.

3) Great lenses. This is where the real “soul” of a camera system is. Great lenses aren’t just sharp, they have their own characters and are pleasing across many different parameters.

4) Must have a good user interface. If you can’t use the camera well, it gets frustrating to use.

5) I have to be able to afford it.

So #1 pretty much ruled out the two big boys in the camera world, Canon and Nikon. No big loss to me really, I’ve never really liked cameras from them and I’ve never fallen in love with any of their lenses. #2 narrowed it down some more. There are several compact interchangeable lens systems out there. #3 and #4 eliminated Sony. They are the heavy hitters in the compact interchangeable camera market. They have great sensors in their cameras. Unfortunately, their lenses are known to be mostly blah and the user interface is terrible. I really wanted to like the Sony NEX system but I could never use those cameras. 

That left me with Olympus, Panasonic, and, surprise, Samsung. Olympus and Panasonic both use the same format and have interchangeable lenses between them. They also have some highly regarded lenses available for their cameras. I think I could use them, they are for the most part well thought out and perform pretty well. My problem is with the sensors they use, they are just a bit too small for me. Yes, I think they would be plenty “sharp” enough for me, but I don’t like the character of the depth of field. In general, the smaller the sensor, the more depth of field you’re going to get. I like a little more flexibility than what the sensor in those will give me.

That leaves Samsung. I never would have thought I’d consider them, but they are looking pretty good. Small camera? Check. Their lenses are actually really good and they’re small. Plus, they actually make the lens I want, a 30mm f2. For whatever reason, that’s a tough one to find. The Pentax 35mm is a great performer, but it is just a little too long at 35mm and it doesn’t let in quite as much light as I’d like. The Samsung lens is half the price, let’s in twice the light, and is very well regarded. As an added bonus, I can easily adapt my Zeiss 50mm f1.4 lens I have kicking around. That’s one less lens to buy, and it’s an amazing one.

Samsung also seems to have the user interface down as well. I really like the control layout, everything I need is easily accessible. Its sensor is larger than the Olympus and Panasonic cameras as well. It also has a crazy resolution, enough that I can easily crop or downsize as I need to. Price? I can get the NX200 with a basic zoom lens for $600. The 30mm lens is $300 and the 20mm lens (also a good performer that is small) is $350. I can get an adaptor for my 50mm Zeiss for around $25. This is looking good.

It’s not perfect of course. Geotagging (embedding the GPS coordinates in each picture) is a bit of a pain unless I want to give up the flash shoe for their GPS. The complexity goes up if I want to geotag the RAW picture file. The NX200 is known for its slow speed writing to the card. The biggest drawback may be Samsung themselves. They aren’t known for their customer service. If something goes wrong, it might be trouble getting some help.

Still, for the cost savings I’m willing to take that gamble. Some might say that investing in the Samsung system is a little risky. I’ve been through so many systems that I’m not worried about it. Plus, it’s not as though it’s a tremendous amount of money (relatively speaking). Truth be told, it’s easy enough to adapt other companies lenses to the camera, I will probably pick up a few of those Pentax lenses I covet as time goes by. It would be easy enough to switch cameras if I ever needed too…

 

So I think I’m going to at least get the camera and basic lens fairly soon. It’ll be good to have a real camera again, and it’ll be even better to be shooting again.