Democracy 101

How to write your congressman:
Start by going to this link:

https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

1. Select your state from the drop-down.
2. Enter the zip code for your home address
3. Select the button "Contact my Representative

This should take you to a page like the one for my district, which includes a host of methods for contacting my local congressman.

Chose email if possible (it should be), if not, write and print your letter and snail-mail it to the address shown.

Be polite and as objective as possible. Here's an example:

Name: Mr Paul Ferris
Address: My Address
E-mail: [email address]

Message Subject: WEBECON
Message Text:

Dear Mr. Boccieri,

Recent economic events, the banking crisis and the bail-out have put our country in obvious jeopardy. I wanted to weigh in with my observations and opinions here because I'm deeply troubled. I take primary issue with the bailing out of financial institutions. I am troubled to read that the money has gone partially to bonuses for the executives of these institutions. I take issue with the fact that they don't feel that they're accountable for the money. I also don't think that our government should function as an owner of these kinds of institutions (it's a bit too late for that, I understand).

I'd appreciate some attention to these matters, mainly in the area of better regulations for the people at the top of these organizations. If we're going to hand them cash to fix some issue then:

1) The heads of these organizations have failed -- part of the rules of engagement should dictate that the board governing the organization choose new leadership -- leadership approved by some government regulatory committee.

2) Bonuses in this context are out. If the leadership of these organizations are not happy with their pay and don't have faith that they can create long-term wealth with their position (future bonuses based upon performance), then they should find some other line of work. Bonus in this context: any pay beyond base. This means any kind of perk, including travel perks, housing -- anything beyond their documented pay.

3) We should have a direct, obvious window into where the money is going -- we, being the American citizens that have provided a safety blanket. This could be done by some kind of Internet-based reporting that would be transparent to everyone.

4) As long as the company (or bank) is receiving welfare like this, the board and the executive leadership of the company should be agreeable to scrutiny and governance. Pay levels should be set at some citizen-approved level. Excess of this level should not be allowed until the organization has gotten off Congressional welfare.

5) People that do not comply should expect jail-time. We jail people that sell drugs in this country -- these people are doing arguably similar damage. Why they should not expect jail time for obvious immorality is beyond me.

Please understand that I usually write my representatives only when I feel a matter is of utmost importance. If you wish to contact me via phone, I'm available to talk about this subject at any time. Mobile: [my mobile number] . Email: [my email address]

I'm not involved in Banking industry at this time (I've worked in IT for a bank a few years back), but these recent developments are troubling and at this moment in time I am happy to report that I'm in a different industry -- and I'm saddened to see our great country projecting the image of immoral behavior at this point in history.


Thanks in advance for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
--Paul Ferris

Your letter should be to the point as much as possible and as professional as possible. Swearing is bad. Jargon is bad. Anything not diplomatic -- bad. You want to address issues objectively and express opinions where possible as such (in other words, you're free to put in an opinion -- just make it obvious).

It's fun, it's easy -- it's Democracy. Let's make it work!
-=FeriCyde=-

Art Imitates Life

Scott Adams has probably captured the back-end conversation behind the Belkin Astroturfing Fiasco that I commented upon a few weeks ago. You should read it (and laugh) here. Scott's definitely got a way of exposing the ethical issues in a rather comical fashion -- the sad thing is that a lot of people view ethics in an optional (rather than mandatory) light.

Smart -- The New Cool?

I woke up this morning and did something I usually don't do -- I turned on a TV set. This is unusual for a host of reasons; I don't watch TV as a rule, I was in a hotel room, and I had access to cable.

Bryant Gumbel was on talking sports and I stopped channel flipping for a second. He was talking a bit of hope on his program from the bully pulpit -- but it was interesting and it caught me a bit off guard. I'm not a huge sports fan, but I was captivated to hear some things about his view of hope from the perspective of someone viewing Barack Obama as a positive influence.

He was saying that a lot of today's athletes were identifying with Barack and that some of the influences he was hoping to see from our president were extremely positive from a role model perspective. He was talking about how Barak was a basketball player and the unspoken target was obviously the young African American male. Things like Barack's respect for his wife, his obvious morality were topics that he quickly touched on. His not speaking like a Gansta Rapper. His ability to articulate issues and engage in intelligent dialog.

Bryants' speech was well done from my point of view. It was extremely to the point and diplomatic -- the kind of stuff that might have an impact on someone. Hate speech doesn't work well when you're attempting to affect a target audience -- this is why the pundits gain a lot of my ire -- they're making the people that have already made up their minds happy and at the same time, intentionally or otherwise creating a rift in our country over important issues.

I liked what Bryant had to say but I caught myself wishing he'd have selected a broader audience. My own son could benefit from his words and he's not African American. The general young male population, speaking from my own observations, could benefit. We've had a couple of decades of culture focused upon young males and extreme ignorance as cool. Beavis and Butthead, Dumb and Dumber, Bill and Ted -- Hannity and Colmes. Rap music culture has components that are in part an obvious worship of the immoral but I'd argue that Jackass did similar damage.

Barack has obvious mental clout. Standing next to our prior president, he makes "W" look like a degenerate frat boy when he talks about anything. This isn't because George was a Republican -- it's because George thought ignorant speech was cool. I'm told that George W Bush wasn't a dumb guy behind the scenes -- that the talk was an act and the cowboy swagger part of what he thought was a cool image.

I hope Bryant Gumbel is right about this one, but I'd like to hope that the Barack effect here hits all American kids -- male and female. I hope that they learn to articulate problems and be a part of a general positive, intelligent discourse.

Yeah, I'm reaching for a lot -- I'm hoping for some rather impossible ideal conditions -- but we've had such a downturn in culture. Stupid used to be cool.

Maybe Barak's image will set a new trend. Maybe Smart will be the new Cool.
-=FeriCyde=-

It's Not That Simple

It's easy to get press if you simplify a problem so that any idiot can join a side and cheer for his ideology. In the Wall Street Journal video piece here, author Steve Moore is inteviewed about a book, which I won't read, purposely, about Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged. You can argue that this is ignorant of me but I have my reasons. I would push back that having actually read Atlas shrugged, having understood and liked portions of it myself kind of gives me some leeway.

I agree with Steve Moore on some rather key points -- I think the bailouts were wrong (I've said it here many times). I think big government is bad. But I feel compelled to point something out that is far more dire -- Atlas Shrugged is a work of fiction. I don't need to read some authors lame posturing based upon a work of fiction to understand the problems we face today -- and I certainly don't need to read some book by someone who wants to superimpose a fantasy on top of our reality. Especially a fantasy written 50-some odd years ago.

Look, it's simple -- Ayn was trying to prevent the United States from turning into a socialist, communist or dictatorial state. The more government you get, the more dangerously close to this line we get. I'd argue that we're already partially there, what with buying into the banking and auto industries. We have a huge government, despite the professed belief in less government by the prior administration. We owe a huge debt to the Chinese, in part to help fund a war -- but also due to huge trade imbalances and a lack of manufacturing in the US.

Steve Moore, the author of the book, doesn't realize a major problem he's creating -- or possibly he does realize it and is part of some vast conspiracy of people that I would classify as ideological idiots. These are the people that, if the world ends sometime soon will be still doing the same thing. Picture them sitting among the ruin, shouting at shell-shocked passers-by saying "You liberals did this!". Just as stupid, sitting on top of some other pile of debris, will be some other idiot shouting something similar back about conservatives or big business.

And the truth will be far more painful to accept: if the world ends, it will be a mass of stupid human beings that allowed it to happen. Possibly part of the problem will be that they didn't figure out that problems are not liberal or conservative in nature -- the ability to classify things as someone else fault, instead of working through the issue as a cohesive society -- I believe that this is a big part of this problem. People want to adopt an ideology much like a brand. They want to believe in something. It's human nature.

For a great example of this, watch the video segment. Steve, in the interview over his book about a hypothetical book states clearly "Liberal's are going to say it was Free Markets that cause the collapse, and people like me and Ayn Rand would say 'No it's government programs' that created the crisis in the first place." During this time he's all smug and smiling -- he's reduced our current crisis to a "debate". I have a shocking concept for ya Steve: How about it was not quite that simple. Possibly the economic problems we're facing today can't be simplified into two sides of a debate that third-graders would have on a playground. Maybe it wasn't something quite so simple as the failure of "Free Markets" or "Government Programs" that got us here.

No, it's possible that what's caused the collapse of our present system is a multitude of variables. Rampant immorality by some corporate executives. Deregulated derivatives. Legislation that allowed sub-prime (and worse) mortgages. Banking executives that should have tempered their zest to make more money by not embracing things that they knew were high risk. People that wanted to own things that they could not afford. A contrived war in the Middle east that was funded by borrowing money from a Communist state. A lack of accountability by people in the executive wing -- of our country and businesses. People voting for politicians for the wrong reasons. People not caring about government. People not caring, period. Rampant lobbying. A lack of trust in government overall -- for really good reasons in some case.

In other words, I'm not objecting to Steve's embracing of the concepts in Atlas Shrugged -- I'm objecting to his desire to simplify the debate. To make a bold, callous, and stupid statement like the one above is counter-constructive. Has Steve missed the fact that all of the things I've mentioned here were spread across the at least the past 16 years of "Liberal and Conservative" leadership? No, I don't want to debate Steve on his view that all of the problem we're facing would go away if we could just get our government to not interfere. It's a nice fantasy, and it makes a good read. But it is, at the end of the day, a fantasy.

I have my own opinions: I think we need our government to interfere -- the right way. We need them to step in and tighten the rules for financial institutions, for example. We need to stimulate new ideas around reducing our energy dependence on foreign oil. We need to re-evaluate the wars we've taken on, how we're funding them, and our image on the global stage. We need some action, in other words, that's going to take unity of purpose and general cooperation. Do I think we need more people using the word liberal or conservative as hate speech? Get a clue here: No, I think I've seen enough idiotic ideology to last me a few decades, if not a lifetime.

None of the above items are liberal or conservative agenda items. All of them are pressing problems. To make some sort of lame debate around them at this hour might feel good, but haven't we had enough of this kind of stupidity? Atlas Shrugged is a wonderful read -- I loved the book, for what it's worth. It's view of the world and the weights that government add to productive business paint a terrific canvas for Ayn's philosophy.

Coming from Russia, Ayn obvious was obviously motivated to write something that would warn people away from totalitarian communistic society, and I can't blame her at all.

It isn't going to be a liberal or conservative point of view or stupid one-sided debate that gets us out of our present jam. It is going to be some smart politicians working together on solutions. Note the shift in my language here -- a point of view is an observers stance. A one-sided debate is something that Bill and Rush do for (sad) entertainment. Solutions are things that solve problems -- dialog is something you do to hold a constructive conversation. You can post comments to my blog and I will respond to them. That's dialog. You want to simplify reality and back it with a fantasy and say "You disagree with me because you're on one or the other side of a contrived debate" -- I'm not going to be involved.

Here's a thought -- maybe I disagree with simplification of extremely complex problems. Possibly I view this kind of simplification itself is a worse problem than the oil crisis. It's worse, in my opinion, than the economic crisis. It's worse than a lot of the things we face right now. Oversimplification is worse because it keeps people from working together on solving the obviously hard problems of the day.

Steve Moore feels good reading Ayn's book. Good for him! Give the man a lime sucker and have him join the 3rd-grade debate team that's probably already forming on the playground. I'd like to say this to Steve: It's fiction, man -- get over it. We're living in a real world with lots of complex problems. We don't need you to simplify these problems -- we need you to work with the rest of us who are trying to solve them. It's time for you to stop feeling smug about your fictionalized view of the world. Let's try something new -- let's try looking at problems as they exist in our complex society, free of the prism of liberalism or conservatism. Possibly then, after dropping this filter, people can truly understand what things like our government are for at the end of the day.

We don't need liberals and conservatives heaving rocks at each other over stupid ideology. I am not going to be blowing my time in stupid debates (cast from fictional work no less) -- look where it's taken our country these days. I sincerely believe that rabid, rampant partisanship has taken us here. I worry that more of the same is going to be what brings about the end of the world as we know it. I also sincerely believe that its going to be unity that gets us out of the mud at the end of the day.
-=FeriCyde=-

Bad Belkin Bayard Business ...

Seems a Belkin employee was caught red-handed looking for people to write positive reviews of one of their products.

Speaking as a person who's seen his fair share of AstroTurf (In this context -- AstroTurf refers to the practice of generating "phony grass roots"), I can only say I'm not surprised. It points to one of the darker sides of social media -- the ability for a corporation to quietly influence the blog-o-sphere or other social media with misleading content.

And the sad thing is, there really isn't much we can do about it. Social media wouldn't work very well if there were "social media police" that checked each and every blog or facebook post for authenticity or even more difficult, intent. There is the occasional story posted like this one that serves to highlight the problem.

Is this a new phenomena? Not really. For years companies have paid writers to create authentic-looking story content for magazines, for example. It's just something that's likely to increase as social media's incredible power manifests in the digital ecosystem that is the new generation of marketing.

I should take a second to mention that I work for an interactive marketing firm and that my job is IT-related -- I'm more of a user than a mover and shaker. This post is more about my experienced observations in the space, being involved as the editor for a rather popular news site in the late 1990's that featured a lot of user-contributed feedback to news stories. Issues arose that made these ethical issues apparent and caused me to reflect upon them early in the game.

Marketing campaigns are interwoven into youtube "viral marketing" videos. These videos are more than tolerated by the users for one obvious reason; they're blatant advertisements. People know, after the smoke clears, that they've been watching something created to drive traffic toward a vendor. I've enjoyed almost all of these kinds of intrusions -- they're viral for a reason -- they market and entertain at the same time.

Things go bad, however, when a company exhibits this kind of behavior posting to technical message boards or worse, staging phony letters to the legislative bodies of our government (both real-world examples from the same company -- and not one I would ever be associated with). Things like this have a way of dampening community enthusiasm, to say the least. They make people wonder what kind of noise is being generated at the community level. The long term effects of sowing this kind of distrust in the potential customer base of a product can only be bad.

All of this is part of a general break-down of our society. Ethical matters matter. Societies have to have ethical foundations or they will ultimately crumble. Treating the social ecosystem as something that can be AstroTurfed will ultimately ruin the value. Transactions are ultimately more than financial events, after all -- they are fulfilled value propositions. Taint the perceived value and you're likely, as a vendor, not to win the business.

Pushing against this obvious motivation to build marketplace trust is the lure of the quick win in the marketplace. What did Bayard expect out of this? Maybe he was surprised when this news story broke, but it's hard to imagine that he didn't know somewhere in the back of his mind that he wouldn't get caught. Possibly he was focused on the short-term gain of shoring up an inferior product. If so, it was a rather dubious gamble -- one that cost not just the trust of Belkin, but potentially the social media marketplace as a whole.

In this particular example, we can only be thankful that Bayard was so blatant about what he was trying to accomplish. Possibly he didn't see anything wrong with it at all. Belkin's management has since apologized for the misstep and although a positive sign, they're going to have a hard time gaining the respect of their market.

Is stuff like this illegal? No -- but it's far more damaging than something that's illegal. You can serve your time for something illegal. You can be fined or correct the problem and your market will probably forget about it or not notice at all.

But trust -- trust can't be bought, and as this example illustrates, it can very easily be lost.
-=FeriCyde=-

GM and Brand Name Deletion

Those of you who have never had the privilege of working behind the walls of something as massive as General Motors have no idea what kind of politics are present. All of this blog focuses upon my perception of GM from my (somewhat limited, but probably correct -- from the mid eighties) view of their internal politics, and how they apply to their present (somewhat dubious) plans to delete brands like Pontiac, Saturn, Saab and Hummer.

My view: GMs politics were similar to the ones in our government -- only with several political parties instead of just 2 major ones.

From reading the news, GM will likely sell Saab and Hummer (though that's also speculation) and simply blow away Saturn and Pontiac like they did the Oldsmobile brand.

A disclaimer here: GM -- I'm not a fan. I don't purchase your products. Although my father was a big fan of your Buick products, I didn't find the excitement there at all. But I feel compelled to weigh in (albeit, briefly here, given my time constraints) on the obvious coming shortage of GM brands.

Likely, there's some huge internal power struggle going on inside of GM, with VPs and other executive types acting upon the current crisis with all of the surgical precision of say, cluster bombing.

I can almost read the politics from remote: "My division is more profitable -- yours is not." and so on. Somethings gotta give -- why not a bunch of brands? Isn't this required to show that GM wants to pare down to some kind of lean, mean fightin' machine?

Well, in my not so humble opinion -- tactically, maybe, but strategically, no.

Brands can't easily be created (look at all the work that went into the creation of Saturn, for example). Brands have an emotional impact upon buyers. People are very brand-centric when it comes to a purchase. Getting people to switch to another GM brand if they're a loyal Saturn buyer -- and its gone, for example, isn't exactly a sure thing.

If GM wants to get serious, they should seriously rethink this thing from the perspective of the customer, in other words. Here's what comes to mind, when I quickly think of GM brands that exist today:

• Cadillac: Sport Luxury.
• Saturn: Import fighter.
• Pontiac: Sporty. Younger crowd.
• Chevy: Mom and Pops reliable shop.
• GMC: Rebranded products from the other lines. Redundant.
• Buick: Family cars for Sophisticated people that .. no.. crap. I hate the whole idea of this car segment -- ask someone else.
• Hummer: SUVs for people that want to pretend they're fighting some kind of war -- or for people that want people to see them in a Hummer... I have a queue of Hummer jokes here that I'm omitting.

This is a lame assessment of their brand status-quo from my perspective. It's probably about 80% accurate though. GM needs to do this kind of assessment with some teeth, and then re-cast the vehicles they produce to match the brands. They need to merge all of the control of the brands and engineering into one spot and keep the names and the products. They need to consolidate the management of the stuff in other words -- but don't blow away the brands.

Want to piss off your buyer base GM? Try being a Pontiac-lover and finding out that your favorite vehicle is no longer available. Maybe you (the customer, in this context), will just have to find a new favorite -- say over there at Toyota. Toyota: remember those guys? They went out of their way a few years back to create a whole new brand. Probably took them some time... Creating the Pontiac brand over again after pissing off a huge group of people isn't a snap. Moving buyers isn't going to be easy, and maybe they'll try some other game if this one has been canceled due to rain (or tactical stupidity).

Consolidate the management, and clearly do some surgery on the brands that exist today. Does Cadillac need a corvette? Does Cadillac or Buick need an SUV? These kinds of things, floating around your brand-space, tend to be somewhat confusing in my humble opinion. Do you need to make stuff exclusive? Can you sell the missing components from all the brands from all of the dealers, in other words? For example, you're at Pontiac -- they don't have a Corvette equivalent -- can't GM relax the rules a bit so that the dealer is allowed in this context to sell a Chevy Corvette?

All of these items probably seem crazy, so I'll shut up now. I just feel compelled to point out that the deletion of Oldsmobile was extremely short-sighted. It was short-term thinking to address a short-term problem of profitability. Rather than do the easy brand-delete, GM should have taken stock of what they were doing wrong to chase off potential customers to that brand.

My guess is that all of this deletion contemplation is a way for some executives with power to out people they don't want to work with at the end of the day. Rather than do the hard thing -- re-organize into a single power structure that makes sense, they're probably killing off brands (and all of the redundant people that manage them).

All speculation, on my part, I know.

Regardless -- making brands make sense is still the hard task at the end of the day. Blowing away time-honored brands (and loyal customers), is the easy part.

GM, think strategy here. Think about your customers. Think about a lean GM with all of the brand names of today. I know it can be done.
-=FeriCyde=-

Stewart Nails The Issue to the Wall

Jon Stewart's recent piece on "Pundits" has pretty much nailed the issue right on the head.

The issue is the confusing practice of news organizations that mix "news" with "commentary". The general population wants commentary but needs, at the end of the day, the news. People like Bill O'Reily, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage all have similar attack profiles -- they call people names, attack people from their bully pulpits, scream over dialog and are overly emotionally angry while not really making a whole lot of sense.

Or rather, they make sense by appealing to people's emotions while not addressing the world from an objective point of view. This is where it gets hairy. I've got some good friends that seem to otherwise function well (they have logic circuits, in other words), but cannot get "un-fixated" by people in the aforementioned list.

They somehow have missed the fact that regardless of the opinions these people are expressing -- for one, they're not telling the news (but are parading around as journalists) and for two -- they're doing it in a way that doesn't help build consensus. Sure, they maintain consensus among their target demographic (conservatives in the cases mentioned here -- but I could have just as easily mentioned Keith Oberman), but they don't convey new information to people that don't understand the issues from their (albeit obviously) slanted point of view.

Our country is not united right now. It has a big rift in it between "left and right". Pundits mentioned here, in my not-so-humble (pundit-like) opinion, are doing serious damage by preaching loudly and emotionally to the choir. For sure there are times to rally the troops against issues that need support. The people that take this role should make it clear that they're not being journalists. The people that do this kind of rallying should be attacking problems -- not spreading descent. The deficit is a problem. Terrorism is a problem. The financial crisis is a problem.

Liberals or Conservatives: These are points of view. They are not "problems". Pick up (and then put down, quickly) the kind of tripe Ann Coulter prints in her books (or Savage -- similar work) -- you will see that you can barely find a page where she doesn't schpew liberal hate-speech like a Nazi at a war rally.

You read a lot of print about the recent loss by the RNC. To me it's obvious. They lost their centrist (read: non-polarizing) base when they embraced people like Rush and Ann. By accepting this kind of crap as OK "dialog", they lost a lot of people. When you listen to Colin Powell's breakdown of what drove him to endorse Barak Obama, he mentions listening to Sarah Palin talk about "Small Town Values". He then, not so casually, mentions that he didn't grow up in that kind of a neighborhood.

I know a lot of people probably think that Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter are not related entities. I urge you to imagine a universe where the kind of hate speech that Ann, O'Reily and Savage talk is not toleraged by the RNC. With that missing in the backdrop, possibly Colin Powell would have felt just a bit more comfortable in his own party.

This is an obvious simplification, but overall I think Fox has unwittingly helped the Democrats by polarizing the right so clearly with "Pundits" that shout ideas rather than hold clear dialog. This in turn scared people into action. It caused a clear break for some and earned the disgust and disrespect of the intellectual base in our country. The shouting down of ideas and opinions, in my opinion, bled over into the McCain/Palin campaign.

Near the end of the McCain campaign I think he got the message. There was an obvious attempt to stop the anti-Obama train and go for the pro-McCain message of conservative change. Unfortunately for the RNC, this came way too late in the game to make a difference. People are tired of negative shouting -- they want positive dialog. In the long run, any constructive aspect of their party will demand constructive dialog as a base.

Look the popularity of Mike Huckabee in this context. This isn't an accident -- Mike, love him or hate him, actually listens to people and does this thing called "dialog" that is sadly missing in the Pundit space these days. It's a sad commentary on the Republican party that he didn't fare well in the race for the Presidential nominee. It's a sadder commentary that he has better interviewing skills than any of the Pundits listed in this article so far.

You have to give Jon Stewart credit -- the Pundit problem is clarified by the piece (linked above). As a clear "non-journalist" too, he does a remarkable job of illustrating the facts. Another piece of irony in this context. Gotta love it.

When the RNC finally picks up on this they will finally be able to rebuild the backbone of their base and we will possibly see the balance of power restored in America.
-=FeriCyde=-

America: The Land of The Lost

Sacrilege Warning

Warning dear readers, I'm about to piss all over something you may hold dear -- especially if you were raised around the time I was, a time when watching schlock Saturday Morning TV was the only thing to do. For the younger FeriCyde chat readers: there was a time when you couldn't use a game system or surf the web to shed some spare time as a wasted youth. Oh, and the "wasted" here isn't referring to any drugs, it's more a concept of wasting time.

The hallowed ground I'm about to piss upon is the old Saturday morning TV show, The Land of the Lost. Like disco (sorry, there's another demographic that's probably going to be sore), some things about the 70's were really, really bad, but for whatever reason, a whole generation embraced them and they became embedded as memes in our subconscious. Like bad subroutines in the collective minds of the mainframe that runs the zeitgeist, every once and a while you stumble upon a whole batch of things that don't add up -- or rather shouldn't, but there they are.

Hollywood, in its infinite lack of creativity, has decided that it's time, in 2009 to do a remake of the "Land of the Lost" as a full-length feature film. You read a lot of fan complaints from people that are upset with Hollywood for making a favorite book into a film, or for pissing on hallowed ground doing a remake and getting some obscure fact wrong, or for in some cases, driving all over the plot of the original material so badly that no one can even recognize the connection (see the latest remake, God forbid, of the Planet of the Apes, for example -- if you can sit through it, that is).

This isn't one of those posts -- this is pretty much the opposite.

I'm sitting here thinking "Some things were meant to die." Land of the Lost was a seriously bad piece of television. It was so bad that my brothers and I would watch it only if all other vectors for entertainment were lost. Like we had checked all other channels -- the count is 2 other channels on TV in mid-Missouri, by the way -- and say, pro wrestling was on one (don't think today's Pro Wrestling -- think something much more local and much more pathetic), and say, a farm report was on the other.

But I digress: Land of the Lost was horrid. The acting was bad, the props were bad, the writing was bad, heck, even the opening sequence effects looked like they were shot by a 3rd grader in his garage. Remaking this is on the order of, say, a remake of Starksy and Hutch (crap, there goes another demographic). Yeah, I know, they remade that too. Complicating this badness, and gut-reflex, "remake" mentality, they "updated" the series in all of it's sad, pathetic glory -- and made new episodes. Now my own son has bad memories of the show in his subconscious, to match the ones in mine.

That's my point: Hollywood can't seem to embrace any kind of creative new idea. They have to revisit crappy old ones for a few reasons. For one, there's a certain amount of nostalgia that will drive people into a theater to say, waste 10 good dollars and 2 hours of their time to be mind-numbingly insulted at an intellectual level. For another, it's such a safe bet to do this that the cash for the venture is easier to raise than say for some new film idea or plot that no one else has ever tried.

Which brings me to part of our present situation -- you knew I was going somewhere with all of this toward the automotive industry and our government, didn't you? You didn't? Sorry.

The Land of the Lost is fractal image of what's wrong with our culture as a whole. We have become more enamored with backing schlock things that have a marginal success ratio than to try new things that haven't been tried, have much higher payout if they succeed, but are somewhat risky as a venture.

Let's revisit the recent "bail-out" request to congress. Here you have the big three, appearing in front of congress, hands outstretched, saying "Help! A bunch of jobs are going to be lost if we go down!" What's wrong with this picture? How about the fact that GM ispaying their CEO in excess of 14 million dollars. Even assuming worse than reported conditions -- say an average line worker taking home 140k a year, the guy is in front of congress, asking for an allowance, all the while making 100 times (possibly more like 150 times) what his line workers make.

Yeah, lots of things are wrong with this picture. For one -- GM is a manufacturing company -- 100 to 150 line workers in this day and age with some decent automation can likely produce quite a lot of product. Oh, and where were you guys for the past 20 years, worried about jobs and local economies all the while shipping local jobs to other countries and giving yourselves bonus for the transaction?

I'm not going to say they were doing anything illegal. Heck, our government has even gone as far as to make the climate balmy for such things and encourage people to move their stuff out of this country. No, I'm going to say it was, however, immoral. The people that built GM were more than the executives -- the workers, at the end of the day, good or bad, working on good or bad cars -- those people are (or were) owed something when it comes to the success of the company.

By the way, in case you think I'm a one-sided person here -- I'm not a big fan of what the Unions were doing in this transaction either. I do think, however, that if a company is successful the workers should share in that success. They shouldn't find their jobs gone one day to another country where the pollution controls, compensation and treatment of people don't align with what counts as acceptable here. The workers that helped GM be a success should share in that success. Similarly, in bad times, they should willing take a pay cut -- all the way up to the CEO, who should recognize that he's not worth 100 to 150 line workers. Can he get paid this amount? Sure! Is it legal? Sure.

Is it ethical? No, it's obviously not.

I'd love to say that the answer is regulation, but in this case I'm not sure what to do about it. Like the way our news system is fundamentally broken, the auto industry is facing a multitude of crisis. In this dimension, the guys at the top (all ready to work for just one buck now that they've been caught with their pants down), obviously aren't all that accountable for their failures. Some people want to compare the automotive bailout to the banking bailout as a justification -- two wrongs in this case, definitely don't make a right.

Speaking of accountability, we need to revisit the SEC. These people were supposed to be watching out for things like Ponzi schemes, and have supposedly audited Madoff's company 8 times in the past 16 years. It's time for some people to go to jail. Time for Congress to recognize this for what it is -- it's a moral crisis of Biblical proportion. These people (the SEC) were obviously not doing their job.

Bail-outs? Some victims of this thing want the government to bail them out. Banks are going down, charities are going down -- all kinds of things are going down in the face of the Madoff scandal -- but let's not have our government go down with it. The more I see of bailouts, the less I see value. In these trying times we shouldn't be bailing out banks or auto companies. The mentality seems to be along similar lines to breathing life into things that are dying. I think this is flawed thinking and corporate welfare -- worse, they're taking money from the taxpayers at the bottom to fund the bad ideas in a big, bad way. Like a remake of the Land of the Lost, it's cash being spent on a bad idea.

Maybe, like all bad ideas, some things were meant to die. Let's not remake America as the Land of the Lost. If we're gonna put some investment into something, we need to take some risks on some creative new ideas.
-=FeriCyde=-

Toxic Social Media

You'd hardly think that spam would be the first input toward popularity, but here it is. Recently, I made what I thought was more of a whining complaint about reunion.com (and classmates.com), thinking that if I just got the thought out of my head about how annoying these two sites are (mainly reunion.com, though), that it would settle my mind a bit and I could go back to my usual facebook perusal and joy. My reunion.com profile had been viewed exactly two times in history -- and I'm honestly proud of this fact -- or I was. Now my profile on reunion.com is extremely popular. Why? Because I used their lame blogging feature (lemme tell ya, it's really lame) to post the complaint. Knowing what I know about shiftless ethics and sites that edit your postings to remove "offensive" URLs, I posted the "real" blog entry here. Oh, and reunion.com's auto-editor chopped all references to facebook and classmates out horribly -- it left my article reading like a picket fence.

So far it's stayed. I have no idea why it's popular, because finding my own damn blog posting on their site is tricky -- how other reunion.com people found it is honestly beyond me. There is one clue, however -- the people that found it and commented upon it have all signed up for their service. Actually, I'm very hesitant to call what they're offering "service" in this context.

Let's look at some of the responses, so far:

• Very well said.
  I too am one of the lonely saps who got suckered in... I'm in a wheelchair now, not able to get out much. The net is the link to the outside world for folks like me. .Going to Facebook. The only way these predatory sites can be stopped, (or at least thinned out) is to boycott.

That's one example. Google a bit on reunion.com and boycott and some really disturbing things come up. Recent complaints come up:

• There are many rip off companies like this on the web. I was also led to believe my card would be charged $3 a month instead of the full $120. The "agreement" that says the fee is non-refundable has a window field of 3-4 lines and fails the legal contract prerequisites.

This is something lending me to believe that the problem is far worse than I had imagined. I, luckily, did not sign up for their "service". I find stuff like this, and I can only imagine how pissed off I'd be if I had been tempted to do so.

Reunion.com is example of Toxic Social Media -- media that isn't leveraging social connections to enhance the social experience one might have in real life. Instead, it's using aspects of human nature to trick end-users into choices that turn out to be more or less a dead-end street.

Here's another post on my blog entry:

• wow couldnt have said it better myself paul.

  i agree 100 percent,well lessoned learned for me,i just payed yesterday and i am counciling any future payments taken out of my account,amanda in louisiana!

And another one:

• I totally agree, unfortunately I am one of the poor saps that got robbed for $60.00 (their premium feature). This site is preying upon people searching for family members and it does not live up to what it blatantly advertises. If you enter a name and see there is a possible match-they want "MORE" money to get that information. I can see now why they say their service is non refundable, it stinks.....spread the word........

Well, that's as good a set of marching orders as I can imagine. I think I will be glad to do just that.
-=FeriCyde=-

Reunion.com and Classmates.com

Reunion.com and classmates.com are both examples of social networking gone horribly wrong. Here's a Tip for future business -- stop asking for free things and giving nothing in return. Worse, stop doing that and then expecting to charge people on top of it all.

The general reason social networking sites exist in my humble opinion is to connect people and be as un-intrusive into that connection as possible. The Reunion.com site spams my email in-box every so many days trying to make me believe that someone is searching for me, or viewing my profile -- only two people have ever viewed my profile, yet I've gotten countless messages letting me know this fact as if it's news -- it's not every time -- the count is two and will likely remain two for quite some time.

I suppose lonely people wanting to believe that there are people out there looking for them fall for this feature. It's possible it gets them revenue at these moments of weakness. So far, however, it's had an effect quite the opposite from me. It's clogged my in-box with garbage and I see hardly anyone on there that I know. I don't see the site taking off anytime soon.

Why is this? Why isn't reunion.com taking off?

Because they want to charge for me to use the site while I build my network. It's that simple. To get the most basic functionality out of the site I've got to pay -- to view people's profile, I have to pay. To "find out who" has been searching or viewing I have to pay.

Another obvious complaint about this site is the amount of personal data they're collecting along the way -- If I search for someone in a prior search the site then tries to notify me that this person has shown up in searches ... later.

All I can say is creepy.

I don't want people knowing that I'm looking for them. I may just be testing the search engine waters (it's partly how I determined that the site is under-populated) -- and honestly if I have to pay to look at their profile I could give a rat's butt at the end of the day.

All of my personal information they want for free -- they don't want to reciprocate in the social transaction by giving me anything in return.

I can only imagine what a premium service from this site is like.

All of this is moot, however, as there's something that's going to take the place of both classmates and reunion.com at the end of the day -- it's called 'facebook.com' and it's already won. All of the features in comparison are better, you don't have to pay a dime and they have a classmate finder at faceebook.com that's extremely easy to use. I'm writing all of the classmates that I've located on classmates.com and reunion.com and telling them to join me on facebook. There they will be able to view my profile, look at my photo albums and find out, truly, what I'm up to from a social perspective. Oh, and they won't blow away posts with external links - like say, classmates.com -- nice feature guys! It took about 30 minutes for me to help my wife connect her on-line photo album with a reunion event.

At the end of the day, using facebook, we'll all be able to connect to and view the profiles, pictures and posts of people that we care about -- all in exchange for providing our personal information. Sound like a deal?

My strategy for reunion.com? For incoming reunion.com email I'm hitting the spam button from here on out.

Enjoy, guys.

-=FeriCyde=-

The Coming Gasoline Crisis Isn't Liberal or Conservative

I recently joined the Facebook group: 1 Million Americans for a $1/1 Gallon Gas Tax ... Save The World, NOW!

And immediately earned the scorn of a couple of friends.

This blog posting is about two problems:

1.: We're hooked on fossil fuel.
2.: Americans are hung-up with partisan idiocy, so much so that simple, good ideas get a bad rap.

Where we are: Americans as a nation are addicted to fossil fuels. Disclaimer: I'm addicted just as badly as everyone else (Man I love horsepower!)

But I'd have to be an idiot not to see that whomever controls the oil-supply has this nation by the balls.

So I did what I thought was a good thing -- I joined a group on Facebook that deals directly with the issue in a good way -- add a dollar tax to gas that will be used to stimulate the business of alternative fuel. Why would I, a rabid capitalist, do something like this?

Because I think this is exactly the kind of function that I think a government should be executing. They shouldn't be running around bailing out auto makers and bankers, essentially socializing our country and rewarding bad behavior -- they should be working on matters of national security in the best way possible. When it comes to fossil fuel, it's come down to an obvious matter of national security. Adding a buck to the cost of a gallon of gas in this context is the opposite of a bail-out -- it's about penalizing energy consumption of fossil fuels to make way for something safer, and in our national interest. What remains to be discussed (other than the idea of the input of the funds) is how long this tax should be in place, and who would get the cash. More on that later.

I've been for this idea for years -- I've said it many times. It's not a popular idea -- no one wants to pay more for gas -- it's going to be somewhat painful. But if you think about it, the alternative to the situation is one where someday down the road we have our productivity grind to a halt because lots of people want cheap gas in the short term.

Do I have any partisan motivations for this behavior? Let's make this official: I'm not a democrat or a republican. I find partisan politics where two sides line up and yell at each other like they're right and everyone else is wrong, stupid and distasteful. I think it's exactly this kind of stupidity that has brought our nation to the brink of disaster over the past few years. It has kept us focused upon fighting two sides of a losing struggle when we, as a collective unit, could have been solving some real problems.

I urge people that think of things like gasoline running out as a liberal or conservative issue to step away from the partisan bong for a couple of minutes, let the smoke clear, and think about what kind of situation their son or daughter is going to be in come the near future. In this near future they're very likely going to be attempting to find gas for their car to get to work -- and it will simply be gone or so ridiculously expensive that they cannot afford it.

Now, some people might want to say "Market Correction" here, and just expect things to work themselves out -- new fuels will emerge at that time, in other words, or possibly there will be an abundance of cheap electric vehicles or hydrogen available. But far more likely, if we don't do some preventative and strategic work to get in the right place, energy-consumption-wise, there will be a huge problem where lots of people are stranded, can't get to work and the economy (worse than now) will land further in the crapper than anyone can imagine.

That's not a fear -- it's a reality with a very highly potential. It's not too late right now to do something smart -- something like raise the tax on gas and stimulate alternative forms of energy distribution as it pertains to automotive transportation.

So, back to the situation where you or your kids can't get to work -- the present excuse "Hey, it was a lot of fun yelling "Liberal", "Tree-Hugger", "Stop helping Big Corporations" and "Redistribute the Wealth" back then -- that excuse isn't likely going to mean a lot to your wife or your kids at the future date and time.

Is the excuse of today going to work, 5, 10, 20 years from now, in other words -- the excuse: "Hey, don't worry about your life coming essentially to a grinding halt -- I did it for the fun of yelling the party line!".

They're going to look at you like an idiot -- because you were listening to people like Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh, Al Franken and Anne Coulter, rather than using your brain to solve problems -- like how the heck are we going to get 'un-addicted' to fossil fuel?

I've had the idea long before this stupid Facebook group (which is worth joining in my not so humble opinion) that we should raise the tax on gas and get with the alternative energy program. Hydrogen, electric cars, solar cars, bio-diesel -- all of these things are potential realities. None of them are going to be cheap when it comes to switching over.

It'd be nice to imagine that these alternative business models are simply going to get traction and come into existence due to the usual market forces. The fact is that in a solution-centric way, oil has a virtual monopoly. It makes it too hard for something competitive to emerge to replace it, in other words. Sure, you are free to chose -- you can always chose not to use gas -- if you rule out the fact that you already own a gasoline consuming car, that most of the fueling stations sell gas, that most of the mechanics know how to work on gasoline-powered vehicles and so on.

I'm simply skeptical given the scale of say, adding a few hundred thousand fueling stations, for starters, that the usual speed of market response will be there when we need it.

Is taxing gas and creating new potentials such as this "re-distributing the wealth" as one person suggests? Not in my opinion -- the item being used, gasoline, is part of the scale of the problem. If we tax the rich people that made huge bucks on the last oil speculation run, and then in turn created these new alternative fuel interests (effectively giving that money to someone else) -- then, yes, I'd agree with the "re-distribution" description of the situation.

But even more to the point -- "Joe the Plumber" is more of a fictional idea around something stupid people want to believe in, than he is real. I know he's a real person -- but the fact is that all of the yelling about what Joe believes is pointless if we run out of oil. The oil isn't going to be on the side of the democrats or republicans -- it's simply a complex chain of polymers, after all, and will have no partisan feelings about being or not being in the conversation.

This is the bottom line -- Being energy secure as a nation is a good idea.

The money for making new business of this magnitude is hard to find -- but we have just been through a huge run-up where people were paying 4 bucks a gallon for fuel. Now it's dropping toward a dollar a gallon and I hear SUV sales are on the rise. Great -- just what the doctor ordered -- more people thinking about the next 10 minutes of joy ride instead of the next 20 years of potential insecurity.

This, in my humble opinion, is exactly why things like government exist -- it's what I'd expect them to do in our national security interest -- find some way to make a dis-incentive for the masses to make the place just a little less dependent (that's sarcasm) on the whims of the folks that control the oil supply (that's mostly people outside of our country these days, in case you've been in a coma for the past 10 or so years).

I urge people to stop looking at everything with stupid, partisan glasses. Resist the urge to say "no way!" because it's a tax, for example. I'm not for a permanent tax here, by the way -- just until a certain level of security is reached. Also, the cash should be carefully controlled by non-partisan interests (read: some kind of democratic, scientific and objective controls for passing out the cash -- not some pork-barrel reward or dole). So, how to determine this threshold? Say when we're 80% dependent upon energy generated inside of the borders of this country. At that point the tax would be repealed.

Back to the partisan end of things -- for example, this idea would potentially create new industry and that's also good for our present situation -- as a rabid capitalist, I think this is a great idea -- more competition in the energy market. That slant on this issue, by me, however, could be cast in a partisan light -- so you don't hear me focus upon it as a reason. Rather, the dire needs of our present energy situation put this in an entirely different light -- one that has to do with our security over the long haul.
-=FeriCyde=-

Elliot Spitzer Gets A Column on Slate

See: Too Big Not To Fail. Forget any scandal about the man, please -- his opinion, in my opinion, is dead-on. I remember Elliot's work in shutting down organized crime (otherwise known as monopolies) among other shining moments.

His comments about the banking industry bailout is work worth reading.
-=FeriCyde=-

Death, The Universe, and ... Nothing.

A few years back, right after my grandfather died after a months-long struggle in the hospital, I was sitting at a family reunion in attendance of two of my aunts as they spoke about death. They were talking about how they wanted to go, very much in the same manner as someone picking out the kind of car they would like to own.

One Aunt was talking about how she'd like to have a quick heart attack and get it over with. The other one said she'd rather pass in the night in her sleep.

The conversation was going back and forth as I remember it for about 10 minutes as I sat mortified that they would talk about death so casually. I finally said "I want to be dropped from a plane."

That pretty much ended the conversation.

As funny as this sounds, I'm realizing that I missed an opportunity to have a good solid discussion about the subject with two people that cared. Death, it seems, makes us all uncomfortable. Often bandied about by political parties as agenda items, death is not an easy subject, even today, to converse about. I'm a good 10 years older now, and after witnessing two more deaths in the family (my Mother in-law and my Father in-law) I realize that the people with the most experience with it are closer to it. As children we're not typically roped into any real discussions on the subject both out of respect and fear -- no one wants their kids to be mortified and it's understandable.

You would think that adults would be more prepared for it than they are. As usual, the people with the most valuable input now for me and the recent experiences I've had are the ones in retirement. They've seen the most death, they're closer to it and they've obviously given it more thought.

All of this is clear in my mind as my wife's mom passed yesterday at noon. It was a long struggle -- she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure last year in the spring and they gave her (at that time) no more than a month or so. Hospice came, made her comfortable and we all said our long goodbyes. Months passed. The hospice people aren't really setup for engagements that last for that length of time -- so they eventually had to pack up and go.

Speaking of hospice: I honestly can't imagine going through death without these people. The hospice in our case was Hospice of the Valley in Youngstown -- and they're angels in my humble opinion. The nurse on point for both deaths is an amazing person who was there for both deaths -- a caring soul who has a heart of gold. People can have an impact on your life that words cannot describe.

Back to this last situation -- as my wife's Mom came near to death the hospice people were called back. They arrived, did what they could to make her comfortable, and finally, yesterday, she passed on. Death was a release and I honestly cannot imagine how painful it would have been without the aid and comfort brought by hospice.

We spend a lot of time thinking about Life -- we spend very little time as a society thinking about or preparing for Death. It's a difficult subject and it's made complicated by right-to-life agenda, the medical and legal establishments. I understand more now why Kevorkian is so passionate about this subject. Face it: Quality of Life (er, Quality of death? -- not in our vocabulary.) doesn't quite have the ease of conversational value (in the context of our media) that it should. Things like Britney Spears underwear, for example, get a lot more attention.

Don't believe me? Google search on the word "Kevorkian", and you get about 890 thousand hits. Google search "Britney Spears Underwear" and you're at about 3.5 million hits.

Don't get me wrong: I understand the aversion to death and all things death related. I'm merely pointing out human nature. A lot of people are probably saying "Thank you Captain Obvious", in other words, to this observation.

Back to the recent situation and why I'm writing this entry. The person in question had multiple (about 3) opportunities to die. At each of these moments, there was too much ambiguity and not enough preparation. This isn't a criticism of the people on point (my wife and related family) -- it's an observation of the circumstance. It's hard to have a conversation with someone near death about what to do when they're close to dying and unconscious.

I know what some people are thinking: "Living Will" -- and my wife's Mom has a living will that clearly says not to resuscitate. No, it's a bit more complicated than that due to the situation. If, for example, she was having a heart attack, it was next to impossible to sit down and say "We're just going to sit by and watch you die". Possibly if they (the family) could have had a conversation about what to do in that circumstance, things might have been different, in other words. The situation is complicated by an obvious problem: Someone wishing to be left to die of a heart attack, comfortably, can't really get a hospice-like service engaged that quickly. So, when that occurred, the ambulance was called, she was rushed to the hospital and of course, the doctors in those situations will do what they're trained to do -- keep people alive.

All of this is hard to comprehend unless you've been there. It's hard to watch a slow painful death when it takes hours -- it's even harder to watch when it takes years. I don't see an easy fix for this. Death is heard to gauge, hard to talk about and even harder to legislate. You're out of control of the situation and normal problem-solving skills, while handy for dealing with the side-effects, don't help much in this context as we're geared (wired, so it seems) to keep people alive by default.

The living will is a good device to make sure people don't keep bringing you back into a bad situation -- it's unfortunately, in my humble opinion, not enough to ensure comfort and quality of life. Complicating matters is the simple fact that no one wants to converse about death. Worse, the conversation, if possible, would need to be documented and take place while you're able to think clearly. Finally, even if there were controls that could document your full wishes when you're near death, our society isn't geared to help people die quickly if they want that as an option.

All of these points trouble me. I return to the punch line from the beginning of this post -- the more I think about it, the more it sounds like the best option for me. Quick and full of acceleration -- not a bad way to go, actually.
-=FeriCyde=-

Fun with TypeAnalyzer

Ok, two references to something really cool has piqued my interest. Essentially, there's a web service in beta called "TypeAnalyzer", which aims to analyze your personality based upon the text from the URL you pass into it.

Using my blog as input produced the following synopsis as to who I am:

ISTP - The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

I have to comment here -- "Yep, that's me ;)"

It's interesting to me that I've gravitated to Rosetta (Formerly Brulant). Rosetta has the highest genius quotient of any place I've ever been. I haven't done the policeman / firefighter gig, but I do own 2 rather fun vehicles and have upon occasion found myself having to use the cruise control on them more as an override than for the purpose of eliminating the manual "chore" of regulating speed. The reason for this is related to a phenomena of a dawning recognition, as hard as you might find this to believe (but trust me, I'm not making it up), whereby I look down and have a cow at the numbers that the little needle on the dash are indicating at that moment in time. The last one was in excess of 110...

In other words, TypeAnalyzer seems to have a pretty good lock on a lot of my personality traits. It's interesting that it does this from analyzing my text and that it can pull it off in a rather short amount of time. I'm sure this thing could be useful for all kinds of insanity -- you're interviewing a person and want to understand them, or maybe on your present or potential boss.

It's a fun gadget. I aimed it at my resume to see what came up:

ENTJ - The Executives

The direct and assertive type. They are especially attuned to the big picture and how to get things done. They are talented strategic planners, but might come off as insensitive to others needs and appear arrogant. They like to be where the action is and like making bold and sweeping changes in complex situations.

The Executives are happy when their work let them learn and improve themselves and how things work around them. Not being (sic) very shy about expressing their ideas and often very outgoing they often make excellent public speakers.

Hmm.

Well, I have done a lot of public speaking events and it's rather obvious that I do have lofty career aspirations. This is potentially another view of me. I decided to aim the thing at all of the articles I've written for LXer.com:

ISTJ - The Duty Fulfillers

The responsible and hardworking type. They are especially attuned to the details of life and are careful about getting the facts right. Conservative by nature they are often reluctant to take any risks whatsoever.

The Duty Fulfillers are happy to be let alone and to be able to work int heir own pace. They know what they have to do and how to do it.

Maybe that's a reflection of my abject terror of making factual errors in my stories that I publish in my role as a journalist for the site.

For the fun of it, I took it down to just one of my stories (FeriCyde Chat: The Linux Virus Threat List for 2005), a joking number in which I pretty much lambaste facets of the industry under the guise of warning the readership about viral threats. I need to do a current one, it's always a popular format. Anyway, the cool thing is that it came back with the same analysis as the first pass at my blog, so I was happy.

Regardless, it's a lot of fun. If you've done a lot of writing on the web, it's probably not a bad idea to do some introspective snooping on your work for the heck of it.

Many thanks to Doc Searls who as usual wrote something to get the ole brain in gear. His article on TypeAnalyzer can be found here.

Happy ThanksGiving Everyone!
-=FeriCyde=-

Muscle-Car Melt-Down

I find it totally ironic as a follower and lover of all things Pony-car that Chevy is about to ship the new Camaro right around the time that Chrysler is releasing the charger for the masses. Here we are, approaching 2010, and the big three are about to get the pony-car formula right!

Horsepower, engineering, look and feel -- it's all good. The Mustang tweaks have been kinda lame, actually, in comparison. But the irony is this -- they're all about to go belly-up. Ford stands the best chance of survival of the three, but it hardly matters -- all these cool pony cars may not survive the next round of hybrid-mania.

I'm really kind of torn about it too. Honestly the whole fossil-fuel thing is getting kind of old. Congress should be bailing out -- of the bail-out game. It's ironic, and unfortunate that the big three are here, but honestly you can't say that it hasn't been a long time coming.

Fuel prices are at an amazing low too -- but everyone pretty much knows that this isn't a long-term gambit we're testing here. We need to be looking at getting out of the combustion-engine game. The sooner the better for national security. The problem is that with low fuel prices come throngs of people that want to be driving the family (or just themselves) around in a 5000-6000lb monstrosity. The prediction that this was a short-lived game to be playing isn't exactly rocket-science. Sure, there's demand -- for the next 10 minutes to the next ten months -- heck even the next ten years. But sooner or later you'd have to be an idiot to not see the end of the cheap-gas era.

Ford has, for example, been for years dumping out lots of cool SUV-like things. Honda just started a couple of years ago shipping the Fit. Nissan has the Versa. Toyota has the Yaris. All of these vehicles appeared at roughly the same time. Why? Were the Japanese auto manufacturers some kind of sage gurus with magic Chrystal balls in the closet?

Hardly.

Obviously they were doing something proactive about the coming crunch. They're all playing the hybrid space. It's not like all of this is outside of the realm of Detroits' manufacturing prowess either. GM even shipped some electric vehicles a while back (leased them to buyers who loved them).

The reason Detroit is on the rocks, in other words, is related to the really cool Muscle cars they've just shipped.

Don't get me wrong -- I love em all!

(But I don't think I'm going to be alone in avoiding the purchase of them like the plague.)
-=FeriCyde=-

Social Media as a Marketing Vector

You might want to weigh in on this poll. There's a lot of cool stuff going on with Social networking. Facebook, Myspace and Linkedin are all the rage for a lot of people. I for one have Linkedin as one of my multiple home pages -- if you don't have this setup with Firefox or the latest version of Internet Explorer, you're really missing out -- basically when I pop a new browser window, 7 or so pages load at once, so I can check all the things I care about in my life simultaneously. Linkedin is one of those pages.

I check facebook probably once a day (it's not a default page) -- from a work perspective it's just not as valuable. Great for distractions though.

What's budding is the value of using this technology to market products. It reminds me of the old interactive TV idea. Remember this? There was once going to be a time when TV had like an attached keyboard and you were going to be able to do cool stuff to supposedly interact with what was going on. I won't go off track here much -- things like the Cue Cat, for example, prove that getting traditional marketing channels to be more interactive are difficult at best.

WebTV was, from what I could tell, an attempt to kind of go that direction. It just didn't make a whole lot of sense at the end of the day. Why? Mostly because TV infected the Web first, and I would add that as a second vector, the Web is far more interactive and entertaining than any set of "channels" with interactive componentry. The concept isn't exactly dead -- it's just not exactly something all that effective -- the reasons why will become more clear as the concept of Social Media in the context of interactive marketing are exploited going forward.

Microsoft is supposedly reworking the WebTV concept for Version two (due to ship sometime soon).

Don't hold your breath on that one...

Social media as a marketing concept is different in a lot of ways. Social media itself is basically another set of nebulous vectors aimed at connecting people. When you look at the potential to harness it to get the word out for new products and ideas, the differences (in my opinion) stand out:

• Less centralized control.
• More motivation by the target audience to use the service to their ends.
• It's more or less a free service to the people that use it.
• No hard-wired anything (hardware, software etc -- you just need an internet connection and a web browser to join the party).
• It's basically a blank canvas from a format perspective -- anything goes.
• People are more emotionally connected to it.

I think this has a lot more potential to work, for all of the above reasons. I think traditional marketing people may be totally frightened by some of the vectors mentioned above -- mainly the decentralization of the beast. In the old days of TV, magazines and traditional marketing this wasn't the case so much.

Sure, you were free as a public citizen to create your own radio, TV station or magazine -- but that's not quite the same thing as creating a facebook page or updating some information on Linkedin.com -- and yes, I think this analogy applies.

It's very much the same kind of decentralization that Linux has brought to the operating system world (see, I knew there was a way to drag Free Software into the conversation). That world is better (in my humble opinion) and I think this kind of marketing is going to be better for all the same vectors.
-=FeriCyde=-

Time asks: Is GM worth Saving?, which I think is a leading headline. Like "Aren't these puppies cute?", it leads the reader to a conclusion before they begin to read.

Where's the headline like this: "Is Tesla, the innovative electric car maker worth saving?" No where to be found on there. GM has for years had tons of cash and potential. They, along with other US automakers, have had opportunities to focus upon continuous improvement of their products. They have potential -- but it's going to be a bumpy road for them.

Handing them cash to fix the problem may sound like a great idea -- after some banking bail-outs by the government, why not major automakers?

This is the "logic" being applied.

Anyone that knows me personally knows that I've not been a huge fan of GM products. I've owned exactly one GM product in my life -- a 1974 Nova that my wife had when we got married. I didn't purchase the car. It never let me down but when I sold it there was an amazing list of things that had broken on the car.

• The interior lighting.
• The door latches inside the car.
• The hinges.
• The speedometer.
• One of the rear leaf springs.
• The fuel gauge.
• The body (lots of rust).
• The rear brakes, including the parking brake.
• The ventilation system.

And that's the short list. I joked at the time that the only thing that worked was the engine, transmission and rear end. It was a road hazzard. At the time I lived in Niles Ohio, the epicenter of General Motors loyal buyer-base. Surrounded by Lordstown employees (a plant that made cars) and Packard Employees (At the time, the place where the wiring for most GM cars was manufactured), I had an easy time unloading it for a few hundred bucks. Some kid came along with stars in his eyes and drove off happily in the thing.

And, short of a Corvette, the GTO and the new Camaro, there hasn't been much they've made that even came near drawing my attention. They talk a lot about making electric vehicles (and did at one time pilot a few in California), but honestly for the size of the company and the amount of engineering talent on tap, the sad fact is that they haven't been all that innovative.

Now we're talking about cutting them a check. For what? A reward for not being innovative? That's my call.

We're starting to find more and more reasons to reward executives for a lack of sound leadership (that's my concern) by doing things like this. And I think the long-term health of our economy is being jeopardized by actions like this.

Of course, it's going to take some serious examples of why bailouts are bad for the health of the country before anyone will totally understand this -- honestly I think we're (America) being too protective of things like GM and as a country we should be more protective of new innovative things. Tesla, for example, is far harder to get going, and in the long run, far more likely to truly be innovative.

What we're experiencing is the antithesis to the dot com era -- instead of a lot of people hyping stuff that will never pay off and sucking down massive amounts of VC, we're seeing the government putting things that are failing on life support. Wild speculation here: Both ventures, despite living at opposite ends of the funding, political and lifecycle spectrum, are huge wastes of capital.

Will GM survive? Why not let the market decide that one?

Let's hope I'm wrong about the cash, but experience tells me otherwise.
-=FeriCyde=-

Social Media Zeitgeist

Several years ago, one of my friends, Brian Thompson, sent me an invite for this thing, called "linkedin.com". I remember seeing the invitation in my email and thinking, what the heck is this?

Fast forward to today. I'm over at over 400 connections and Linkedin.com has pretty much become a lot of things for me -- my resume is obsolete -- oh, yeah, I still update it pretty frequently -- but it's almost irrelevant. Why? Because my resume is to LinkedIn what the old search engines are to Google's search algorithm. That is, obsolete. Why again? Because my resume says nothing about who I know or who I did what with way back when.

Linked-in has become a lot of things to me. It's a way for me to stay connected and to know at a glance who's doing what, where and with whom. It's a digital extension to my (pretty outgoing) geek personality. It's a Rolodex of sorts. It's a nifty spamming tool as well...

Blogging came about a different way. I used to write a lot for technical publications (Linux Today, LXer, Linux Planet) and that was a creative outlet. As I became somewhat less connected to Linux as a focal point (some might use the words "less obsessed") I began to find myself wanting to write about things that were completely unrelated to anything technical. I realized that I needed to blog the stuff and started doing that as a natural progression.

FaceBook was something different. I came across FaceBook like this, looking over a co-workers shoulder one day: "Oh, hey, that's like linked-in, but for friends." Yes, this is intended to be funny. I decided to create a FaceBook page at that point, after realizing that there was indeed value in being digitally connected on the friendlier side of things.

And now something similar is happening with Twitter. I'm assimilating it today. I'm not going to try an sell you on it (although if you want a good reason to start using it, with some idea of the kind of banter you're going to be exposed to, here's a good article by Adam Cohen -- DISCLAIMER: Adam is one of the partners at my firm, a marketing company, who's really into social media.)

Of course, no good technology gets swallowed by me with out it being complicated (improved?) by more technology -- so I also recommend reading this article on how to update Twitter using a shell script. For those of you non-Linux/Unix geeks out there, just ignore this portion of the article. You'll sleep better not knowing what you're missing out on, being able to type command-line-level things to update your cool web gadgetry.

So, now I'm able to update my blog, facebook and tweet -- all at once. If only I could get this thing to update the status message on my corporate messaging/mail client at the same time.

Joy...

If you're really bored feel free to twitter @fericyde -- bonus points if you can pull it off from a shell prompt ;)
-=FeriCyde=-

Driving Down The Ole' Punch-Card Trail

Maryland and Virginia are switching back to paper ballots. (see 2 States Plan to Ditch Electronic Machines, Part of a Rapid National Reversal)

I've talked about this before in a different context. We're about 4-5 days out now from the 2008 elections. We have all of this technology surrounding all kinds of important infrastructure -- and yet when it comes to voting we seem to lose all sense of the gravity, complexity and competency needed to make for transparent, trustworthy results.

Sad to say, but as a rabid technologist I must once again say that it's time to have the U.N. monitor our election process. Oh, and toss the electronic voting machines until an open, secure and verifiable framework can be established to right this situation.

The reasons for this are many:

• The people running the election booths are simply not technologists in their day to day lives (on average) and the process by definition isn't a day to day process. It would be different if this were something done every day by people who understood all of the moving parts.
• Given the above scenario, it's not all that hard to argue that if there is a flaw in the technology, it wouldn't be all that hard to imagine someone with nebulous intention getting into the system and skewing things -- it wouldn't be all that hard for them to get away with it, given their audience.
• The technology is flawed and opaque -- it needs to be verifiable and transparent. Having proprietary vendors making something as important as voting machines is completely unacceptable.
• The process is one of the most important processes we (as Americans participating as democratic citizens) undertake.
• We've had to many dubious failures in recent history -- if we don't clean this act up people are going to stop believing in the process and the government in general. This is already happening to a great extent -- but the damage, I would wager, is reversible.

It might be something ludicrous, looking at Maryland and Virginia as examples -- one of my co-workers laughed at it, for example -- but a small bit of research will more than open your eyes. I'm not a gloom and doom kind of guy -- I am, however, very willing to look at a flawed system and suggest improvements. Oh, and I'm fairly pragmatic. Punch cards work, they're hard to reverse and they represent a paper trail (visions of me jamming my old WATFIV and WATFOR Fortran programs through a card reader run through my mind -- ahhhh, the terrible old days of IBM mainframe computing and JCL!).

We, as a budding Democracy of 200+ years (yes, that's sarcasm) have to be better than this.

Maryland, Virginia -- kudos for stepping out there for all the right reasons.
-=FeriCyde=-

What Would Darwin Do?

He'd read Ron Laneve's blog.

http://ronlaneve.blogspot.com/2008/10/three-months-in-future-looks-bright-at.html

My company (Rosetta) is a crazy fun place to work -- Ron is the reason I'm there. The company is crazy busy too -- we recently started a merger and the work has kept Ron from sharing a lot of thoughts, but I'm sure it won't be that way forever.

Ron's blog is about evolution and talent acquisition. As I get more involved in recruiting, I see that the challenges of growing an organization and keeping it in one piece are formidable -- and that it's an evolution of a third order. Our brains making conscious decisions where trial and error made the original decisions (that's the first order of difference). But the working pieces of the collective "we" that make up Rosetta, or any company for that matter, fit together to solve problems in ways that often just make sense. This is a lot of what evolution does as well -- it's just that the things that end up working together in our realm have metrics and sentient thought to reward the final outcome (and that's a second order of difference from evolution).

To speed things along, we're out for the best and brightest evolutionary components. The conscious choice to pick really good evolutionary material, is, in my opinion, the third order of difference -- it's one the reasons it's tough to work here (you're being compared to some really brilliant people at the end of the day) -- but it's also more than enough to make up for any and all hardships. Smart people laugh their way out of problems that mire others in years of confusion.

Read Ron's blog. He's doing more than cooking up text -- the company is evolving into something new. The view from that dashboard has to be exciting.
-=FeriCyde=-