steven n fettig's Jitterin' Thoughts

So often, I assume that good lighting is the source of good photos; and by good lighting, I mean a lot of light. How wrong I am... I couldn't help but post this photo from the flickr user stuck in customs. He has absolutely captured a view that I have seen in my head on those lone, deserted roads while the clouds roll on. I always assume that such a scene makes for a bad picture - and I'm assuming many other people would as well. Here is proof that the eye and patience for photography is truly amazing. (A special thanks to Trey - aka stuck in customs - for showing his photo under a CC license that allows me to post it in this form!)

This morning, I was going through my twitter feed and came across a Chris Pirillo entry about getting 1TB of online storage for free. Now, that is very intriguing. In Amazon S3 terms (the best pricing for reliable online storage that I have yet to see), 1TB would cost $150/mo, plus transfer fees, which I calculated at around $54/mo. (especially if you are using the storage for continual backups). Amazon's S3 service has proven extremely reliable and safe for my needs (I'm backing up things like photo and iTunes/music libraries - not private documents) and the pricing tends to be reasonable when you calculate the cost of maintaining space for the backups on your own. Thus, it is hard to not take a second look when someone mentions you can pay $0 for something that costs over $150/mo at the most reasonable place you know of.

I cruised over to Oosah and started to take a look at their service. It looks very interesting, as they offer ways of creating image, video and music mashups. You can connect content from disparate services and upload your own content. It also looks like they support a multitude of codecs and file formats. All of this looks fantabulous, until you read between the lines:

9c. Ownership of Content: You retain all ownership rights in your Content. However, by posting Content to Oosah, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Oosah (and its successors) an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, assignable, royalty free, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, distribute and to prepare derivative works of such Content in connection with the Site and any current and future services offered by Oosah, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. (from Terms & Conditions)

As with many of these types of agreements, I understand why Oosah wants perpetual rights to your content - to do with it as they please forever - but it is not something I am interested in handing over to anyone; whether or not they are providing me of some type of compensation in return. This is the same type of verbiage that recently caused an uproar over Google's Chrome browser (i.e. in their first EULA, they received and retained ownership over any content created and/or uploaded via their browser). I'm not sure if the content I create will ever be worth something, but I do have enough foresight to know that by passing on perpetual rights to my copyrighted works, I give up the ability to control what happens to it. When I'm taking the time to create things on my own time, on my own dime, I at least wish to control what happens to it in the future. You never know what type of value your works may have as time goes on.

Perhaps you don't care whether or not you retain ownership of your creations. That is up to you. Before you sign up for a service, however, be sure to understand what you are giving up in return for what they are giving you. Good luck to Oosah. Sorry, though, its not a service for me.

A Tale of Two Conventions (Tim Cavanaugh - Reason Magazine)

But the rules have changed. Who could have guessed that the first black man running as a major-party presidential candidate would be battling accusations that he's an elitist who's had life too easy? It's almost as weird as the second woman running for vice president getting flak for being insensitive about women's issues.

I've been trying to slowly plow through the three book series The New Ansel Photography Series and finally landed on The Negative (Book 2) yesterday. Today, I came across the following section that made me really sit back and think:

Crystals of silver halide that are exposed to light are "triggered" so that they will reduce to black particles of metallic silver during development. On exposure, the light produces an invisible latent image composed of crystals that will form image silver when developed, but have not yet undergone any detectable change. Portions of the film which have been exposed to great amounts of light yield a considerable deposit of reduced silver upon development, referred to as a higher density; areas of film exposed to less light yield less silver, or lower density. Thus the image on film is negative, dark areas of which correspond to bright areas of the subject. When printed, the dense areas of the negative give relatively little exposure to the paper and produce a light area on the print, and the low negative densities produce dark print areas. Thus a second reversal occurs that re-establishes the original relationships of lighter and darker values.

I had to read the above because I was confused by two things. One, what the hell did he just write??? I'm not that far out of college that I can no longer read technical writing, but the second bit of confusion caused a bit of the generic first. Second, I couldn't figure out how colors were produced out of crystals of silver halide, etc. It took a few seconds for me to realize that Adams was only referring to black and white film/photography. I had forgotten that I was reading a book on the negative. Such is my world paradigm that despite the fact I think and talk about shooting film from time to time, it escaped me - if only for a moment - that I was reading about the development of a negative for film photography.
I took a few moments to step back and think about the photo I had just posted to flickr last night. The original photo was shot in color and I was having a hard time dealing with the colors, so I decided to convert it to black and white. With the flick of a mouse, voilà, black and white it is. With a few adjustments, I was relatively happy. (Frankly, I would have liked to have spent 20 minutes or so in Photoshop really getting into the nitty gritty of adjusting shadows, etc, but the day was drawing to a close and this was simply good enough.)
Twenty seconds of click-this-click-that. None of this silver halide light exposure triggering.
I usually accept my paradigm as is, but tonight I laughed and thought, how far we've come...

I'm trying to learn to blog "shortly," I'll call it. Even though, that's not the right word, nor is it used correctly in any way here.

My head is about to friggin' explode.

Just because you want a poor family to receive health insurance such that your next visit to the doctor does not drive them further into the poor house, it does not follow necessarily that handing said responsibility to the government will solve the problem.

You state that you wish to help people in need, that we all need to sacrifice. We all need to be willing to give of our excesses. And I agree. That is a motto to live by. Whether or not it is because you believe in Jesus or Karma, giving is good. It does not follow, however, that it is the job of government to manage said transfers of money.

You wish for adequate this, fair that, and equitable practices and yet you deem a system whereby coercion is used to subjugate everyone to a planned order of life that follows your every whim is the manner in which to wish to achieve your goals is adequate, fair, and equitable.

You condemn one side for their voracious taking of civil liberties in the name of protecting our borders, yet you rot our internal system that has created the wealth you depend on with ideology that says fair is not fair and just means doing what you think is right.

You're an idiot.

This morning, I had the opportunity to interview a seemingly wonderful young lady. Lately, the interview routine has been a bit stifled with the requisite can't wait to start work and the inevitable it's Monday and I'm sick follow up. We are seeing a lot of good people these days, but at the end of the day, people will be people and interviewing is like playing paintball - the object of the game is to not get painted (too much, that is). So, we dance and lie and sprinkle in some truth to present a picture of promise.
Years ago, I ditched the traditional interview routine for one that assumes the person in front of me is not going to tell me everything I want to know and it would be best to simply try to learn a bit about the person in front of me. (We use staffing agencies to do the background and work history heavy lifting, so people should have already gone through some type of vetting process.) My hope is not only to put a story and face with a name, but get a feel for the person's personality, including likes, dislikes and general attitude.
I guess it could be argued that such types of interviews are unlikely to tell you whether or not to start a person. There must be psychological and statistical testing that you can apply to a series of questions to know whether or not someone is going to work out for a given position. Perhaps... Perhaps. I would argue that your rate of success - i.e. finding the right person - is going to be no better than following a basic background check process and throwing darts at the names of the resultant applicants. Given time, I would love to do the experiment and see what the success rate is (although, then we would also have to ask, what scenario implies success?).
In the mean-time, I have chosen to ask the question, do I want to work with you - why and why not? The way I answer this question is to ask people about themselves and what they do. What about you makes you, you? Some people naturally open up and others are quiet. Some keep me laughing and others make me look at my watch hoping for a quick end to this painful experience (by the way, usually a personnel/HR manager sees people all the time and going beyond one or two word answers can really help endear yourself towards that person). If the method is not successful (I really don't know, as I haven't tracked the statistics and I would venture that my gut reaction is going to be in my favor), it is at least interesting and even entertaining.
Today, however, was one of those days where the positive mannerisms and initial responses of the interviewee were not enough to overcome a grave issue that creates a negative undercurrent in our job market. The woman's primary language was obviously not English, as her thick accent gave that away. Not a problem. I actually like accents and it is likely that someone with one has an interesting story to tell as to how they ended up here, in southeastern Wisconsin. The problem is that besides the accent, there was a gulf in understanding between what I was asking and the responses I received.
What did you do in your last job? Was met with, yes...
No... um, what I'm asking you is what you did before you worked for ___? Smile... pause... yes...
Okaaayyy. Moving on.
I tried to find another way of phrasing the question and approached the question a few different ways a few sentences later. Sometimes by not getting a sensible response you find that there are other, easier ways of phrasing a question. We are not looking for PhDs here. A basic, I would guess, 3rd grade level of English is all that is needed. Where did you last work? definitely falls within that expectation.
The communication litmus test - a subtle component of my interview - was failed miserably. Despite having the positive mannerisms and cogent responses to my first series of questions, a simple question tipped the balance negative - and quickly. In my eyes, people who have been in the US for a short period of time, say less than a year, get a pass on not understanding a question like where do you work? If you have been here for longer, though, and don't understand, there is a problem There is a big problem. Basic communication skills - i.e. talking to your community member - forms the foundation of a successful life. (This is assuming you don't wish to live like a hermit in the mountains.) Too many people are content with the idea that there is no primary language in the US and to each his own. As far as what you do in your free time is concerned, I agree. The moment, however, you wish to engage in society, you need to be able to communicate. You cannot ever expect to progress without doing so. Perhaps you will get by, but progress towards something greater (which is why I assume you made the effort to come here in the first place), you will not. I feel sorry for people in this situation. Either they are there because someone lied to them and told them it was not important or they are too naive to realize the damage they cause themselves by not realizing how important basic language skills are to succeeding. There will always be those around who are biased or don't like you because of who you are, the way you dress, or how you talk. Bigots and idiots abound. But, without the ability to talk back and defend yourself, you can never hope to overcome this. Never. That is an opportunity dashed, among many others.

A coworker came into my office yesterday afternoon and asked what I knew and/or thought of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae being taken over by the government. Oh god... here we go again, and I was gonna' get mad. I hate - as much as anyone can hate anything - when the government steps into a situation and cleans up a mess of someone else's making. Except in the case of Freddie and Fannie, the idea that the government was "stepping in" wasn't so clear. So, I took a deep breath, tried to tell him what I knew of the history of both organizations (i.e. that they were created to give out and/or support people who would have trouble getting loans for homes from private institutions) and what seems to have been the reason why the Treasury Department decided to step in and "seize" their business operations. (I was and am angry because yet again, the average taxpayer is going to be financially responsible for devastatingly inept fiscal management and no one will be truly held accountable for making poor choices - i.e. let financial ruin of many of those involved ensue.)

This morning, I open up my news reader (these days, Google Reader) and see a blog entry over at Cafe Hayek from Russell Roberts on this very issue. Here is a taste:

"Once upon a time, Fannie and Freddie were partners in a business. Well, it wasn’t exactly a business. It was almost a charity. Not quite. It was sort of a government agency. Or maybe it was all three together. When Fannie and Freddie talked to investors, they acted like a business. When they talked to the government regulators, they acted like a government agency." (Who is to blame? by Russell Roberts)

Russell nails it better than I could have. Thanks to him to not only explaining a few details of the Freddie/Fannie debacle, but also for making the topic entertaining.

Walter Ferguson's editorial in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from September 6, 2008, The state must be willing to take risks to be 'great' fails on so many levels to develop a cogent argument for state intervention, it took me three tries to read the entire piece. My absolute favorite piece is the ridiculously misleading portion of the article that mentions Denmark as a leader:

"Looking for a role model? You’d do worse than Denmark. Forbes named that country the best in the world for business. According to the magazine, Denmark has public policies that foster low inflation, low unemployment, low taxes, free trade, innovation, protection of intellectual property and the development of technology. In operating their businesses, it is worth noting the Danes are energy independent through wind power for electricity and technologies that convert pig blubber to heating oil."

No, Mr. Ferguson, it would be hard to make the United States or any State more inept and bureaucratically rigid as Denmark. Stagnant population growth (0.295%), low immigration (a measure of a country's desirability for finding new opportunities), and marginal tax rates for middle income (by US standards) reaching over 63% make Denmark a very, very poor example, indeed. I lived south of Denmark for over a year and every Dane I had ever met, whether in Germany or Denmark directly, complained about the ridiculous tax structure that afforded little upward movement for the average citizen, which limited their ability to pursue individual, productive desires and interests. Think of it this way, until mid July of each year, you will have spent the previous months paying your dues to the State. It is only after July that the money you have worked hard earning is actually yours. The motivation to work harder and/or be more creative is nullified by the fact that whatever extras you do earn, most of that will go to the State.

"Sorensen, who graduated from business school in Copenhagen, found himself earning the equivalent of more than $100,000 before he was 30 - and paying 63 percent of it in taxes...'When you are at 63 percent tax, you don't look forward to the evaluation with the boss to get a raise," Sorensen said. "You look for more vacation or a training course in the tropics - something that you get the full benefit of.'" (High income taxes in Denmark worsens a labor shortage - International Herald Tribune)

Denmark's low poverty level and unemployment is masked by the fact that the State doles out money and "jobs" to persons by earmarking huge portions of the working class's income towards those people. It is similar to the idea that there were no unemployed in the socialist/communist Soviet Union. While statistically true, as they say, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Mr. Ferguson should have stopped writing there. His idea that, "Wisconsin must seek to define those industries or technologies that are crucial for future economic development. The state should then push development of those industries or technologies through the full benefit of public policy instruments and expedient action..." is absolute nonsense. The government - i.e. no governing body, nor State institution - has ever been successful at guessing which ideas will become the next commercial hits. There have been cases where state fostered development of technologies has eventually reached the public and been the catalyst for new opportunities. GPS and Cellular Telephony are two examples. The state was working for a solution to a logistical problem in both of these cases and hadn't foreseen the possibility that your average citizen would find a use for these products - vis a vis mobile phones and in-car navigation systems. This is very different than saying the State should decide which new ideas/technologies are desirable and subsidize them. Let me put it this way: a product was developed because there was a specific, tangible need. Said product was then applied to unknown or unforeseen needs. This is not the same as saying we don't know what the need is for technology xyz, but we're going to subsidize it anyway.

It is surprising that as a consultant and former executive at two Silicon Valley companies, Mr. Ferguson is confused that infrastructure and legal consistencies - i.e. safe and reliable transportation, communication, legible/understandable laws etc. - are the same as providing bureaucratically driven "vision" to business development. Let me say this as a businessperson: leave me alone. Give me a consistent low tax burden and easy-to-navigate rules and regulations and I will provide the success you and your visionaries think the State is there to provide. Furthermore, the State does nothing more than muddle the playing field and cannot be held accountable for the inevitable mistakes it will make. The markets I and my business colleagues serve are very swift at telling us whether or not we are heading in the right direction. A measure of responsibility is handed down by way of business growth or shrinkage. We don't need more "help" from the State. Sure, there are plenty of us that wish for handouts and I believe those of us who do are not only lazy, but ignorant of the long term damage handouts do to any free market system. Socialism in its grand form - i.e. central planning - has had its day in the Soviet Union and modern day China. It lost the battle and will continue to lose the battle because markets and people's desires cannot be planned and they cannot be foretold by some any visionary - from the State or elsewhere.

By the way, all of the "subsidized employee training, property tax concessions, low or interest-free loans..." are patently unfair. Why are we being slapped with the financial responsibility for supporting your new wave of innovation just because our companies and our staff have been successful and providing a product to the market that is of obvious desire? Where do we stand when it comes to fostering growth and success? In your scheme of investing in future technologies, nowhere. You seem to forget that those new industries you wish to "help along" will not only stand on the shoulders of those who have already succeeded, but trample them to the ground through the process of recklessly transferring away from them what they have rightfully earned for themselves and need for future investment. Shame on you for suggesting such a thing.

Perhaps in some time, this will become more of a howto, but for now, I am trying to take public notes on how I finally got Action Streams working in the manner I had originally intended all the way back in May of this year. I called up my buddy, Aaron over at 601am.com and asked how I can do better at integrating some of my social network streams into my regular weblog. I've found Twitter amazingly handy, along with with a host of other social network services. I had originally hoped that my blog could be my own source of these "services," but that would be missing the social component, which I have come to enjoy (for example, trading or showing off photos on Flickr and sharing bookmarks on Delicious). Instead of linking everywhere outward, why not integrate the streams created by each of these services within my own blog stream? Action Streams allows you to essentially re-stream your created content within Movable Type. How it does it is still somewhat of a mystery (I just recently dove a bit into the code and am thoroughly confused), but here were my objectives: for every service I want to integrate, I want to publish it, either on my main blog page or in a concentrated form of my output in a blog and stream mixed page. For longer items, such as my blog entries, I need to start breaking them apart into multi-part entries like I had done in the beginning vis a vis extended entries. For the social networking items like those submitted to Delicious, Flickr, and twitter, there is really nothing more than publishing things as is because they are short by their very nature.

The easy part is installing Action Streams. Download, unzip, copy items to the correct location within your Movable Type installation directory. The difficult part follows, as the documentation is practically nonexistent. Here is what I did, though:

I busted my MT installation and now I am working to figure out what I busted. How frustrating.