Scripting News

An idea for Obama

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:16:36 GMT

If he gets to ask McCain a question in tonight's debate, try asking a friendly question, like Schwarzenegger asked his opponent Phil Angelides in a 2006 gubenatorial debate. "What's been the funniest moment in your campaign?" or "Where were you when you come up with the idea of picking Sarah Palin?" It's all so serious -- what about relaxing a little.

Morning Coffee Notes

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:59:28 GMT

Haven't done one of these in a while.

On Twitter we're talking, to the extent you can converse on Twitter, about where we'll go if McCain wins the Presidency. Last time it came up, a couple of weeks ago I think, I was saying Vancouver -- because it's just up the coast, about a 2-day drive from Berkeley. Easy to get to, and it's got an American-friendly border, at least so far. Maybe if McCain wins they'll start turning us away so many people will want to emigrate. It's one likely response to his idea that they should start taxing health benefits.

Then came suggestions that I emigrate to Spain or Paris. Hmm. Interesting ideas. So I added them to the list. Today Moscow got added (Russia is a capitalist country now), Argentina, and my favorite so far -- Italy! Now that's a brilliant idea. I could move to Firenze, hang out in the piazza all day eating and drinking, and blogging on my Asus (although I might have an MSI Wind by then, seriously considering it). Who needs a Twitter Bar when you got a piazza with Italian food! Yum.

Okay since this is a MCN piece, I get to ramble.

Next topic -- did you see Frontline last night? It was an excellent summary of the election so far. It was good to review the events that got Obama and McCain to this point. Most interesting were the segments on McCain's experience as a prisoner of war and the part about Obama at Harvard Law School. McCain had it really hard. I didn't get how hard it was, listening to his speech at the RNC, I don't like listening to his speeches, and these days I have trouble listening to Obama too. You know who I really like -- Hillary! She gave a kickass speech on Sunday in Pennsylvania. We should be hearing more from her, and Joe Biden too. He does tend to ramble, like when he went off-script to say how much he loved HIllary. The first couple of sentences were great, but he went on and on, becoming more incoherent with each paragraph. However when he sticks to the script he's fantastic, even though he says Ladies And Gentlemen so many times you'd think he was Chuck Barris on The Gong Show.

Now the thing that really struck me about the story about Obama at HLS was that it was a time of huge conflict in the early 90s when he was there. I didn't know that. When I was there just ten years later it was totally peaceful, even a bit boring. The other thing they emphasized is something I already understood. Obama is a conservative, not a liberal. By that I mean, he won't do what Carter did when he took office -- Obama moves carefully and slowly and builds consensus. Roosevelt did the same, although that's not how history remembers him. He wouldn't go into WWII until there was a national consensus to do so, even though he knew we would have to, and every day we delayed decreased the chance of victory. Very much unlike the current President who went to war in Iraq without a consensus. This is something McCain struggles with every day, even though he never talks about it in the campaign (he should, even though it'd piss off his base, they can't stand criticisim, but we can't use American leadership that's scared of discourse).

One more idea. McCain talks about Country First. It's a good idea, I wish he would practice it more. They are responsible for the hatred that shows up at his rallies. The honorable thing would be to stand between the crowd and Obama and tell them to chill or find another candidate to rally around.

Now the idea is this -- why isn't John Kennedy in this election?

He was, for a while, when Ted Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy endorsed Obama, they were saying here is a leader like my brother and father, respectively. These days everyone is comparing Obama to FDR, but along with economic chaos, political and military chaos are sure to follow. They all go together. A weakened US is going to be tested internationally, as JFK was in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Every day the world gets more dangerous.

It's good that Obama is laying the foundation for leadership when he tells his supporters it's not okay to boo McCain when his name comes up in a speech. But why not invoke JFK in response to the Country First mantra. Remind everyone that there's a Democratic version of that, that goes like this: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country? Isn't that the response to the 80s and 90s and 00s? Isn't that what the next decade is going to be all about?

The house of outlining on Comanche Trail

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 02:35:09 GMT

I got my hands on an old Lowell George album I haven't heard since 1980 or 1981 when I lived on Comanche Trail in Los Gatos. It was a wonderful time, although I wasn't so sure about it then. I was young, and reaching my peak of creativity. I was hanging out with smart people at Personal Software and some shady people too. It was at this time that we created the expand and collapse display for outliners, and move-by-structure. Outliners for personal computers were being invented at the house on Comanche Trail. With Google Maps I can almost go to the exact house. Maybe at some point they'll send their car down that street and I'll be able to find the house itself. Those were great times!

All of it brought back by listening to an old album! Music is great that way.

BTW, the sound system I'm listening to Lowell George on is a billion percent better than the one I listened to then. I also smoked then and did a lot of drugs. I don't do that no mo, although gotta admit sometimes I wish I could.

So far my favorite two songs on the album are 20 Million Things To Do and Cheek To Cheek.

IRC for the last debate

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 03:36:38 GMT

The last debate is tomorrow night at 6PM.

irc://irc.freenode.net/#presidentDebate3

Once again we are having a gathering to watch the debate at the Hillside Club in Berkeley, 5:30PM, suggested contribution $5.

New UI for bit.ly

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 21:27:42 GMT

A new user interface for bit.ly was deployed last night.

Two disclaimers: 1. I am part owner of bit.ly. 2. I participated in the initial design of the product and this redesign. They surprised me by making the new implementation public, so I made my comments public.

1. Only error messages should be red. Confirmation messages should be green or black. Prefer green.

2. I'm still using the old bookmarklet. It should work the same as it used to. Shorten the url parameter and put it in the Twitter box. This violates Rule #1 -- no breakage.

3. When you ask the user for a new password you must always ask for the password to be confirmed. This is not necessary when you ask the user for a password to another service, e.g. Twitter, because you can confirm (and do) confirm the password with the other service.

4. Why are there two bookmarklets? What's the difference betw the two? The description is very vague and cryptic. Much better just to have one bookmarklet to start.

5. There must be a place to leave a comment. Strongly suggest using Disqus. I want to be able to see the comments other users provide.

6. Since I can post to Twitter from bit.ly, which of course is good, I want the posts to show up in my "Recent" list. I also want an RSS 2.0 feed of all the items I post to Twitter.

7. The new tagline, Shorten and share your long urls, is very good.

8. On the whole I am pleased with the new design.

I need a server strategy

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:45:00 GMT

First accept as given -- my server must be, at least for now, a Windows machine. Most of the server-side software I depend on is written in either Frontier or the OPML Editor, which are not reliably running, as a server, on any other OS, as far as I'm concerned. I know some people use the Mac versions as servers, but I don't have the time or patience to carefully redeploy everything one step at a time looking for incompatibilities.

I am basically happy with the service provider I use, they're certainly not the cheapest, but they're reliable. But last year they got acquired. And they keep sending me emails saying they're running specials, and the prices keep going down, and that only means one thing to me -- I should be worried.

If I were to look at my vulnerabilities, from an online perspective, my guess this is the weakest point. If they were to fail, I'd have a big problem. I'm making sure my backups are good, my backup process was pretty flaky. But it would still be a major dislocation and a huge pain in the ass if I had to switch to a new ISP without the old one on the air and available to copy stuff from. I'm trying to do that as much as possible in advance.

So when Amazon announced that they were going to offer EC2 with Windows -- I was practically elated. As soon as it's available I will switch to that. I sent an email to Ray Ozzie thanking him for this, along with Werner Vogels at Amazon, but Ray responded saying that what Amazon was offering and what Microsoft would offer are two separate things. Now I'm really confused!

All I know is that this service is very much needed, at least by this developer, and it can't come too soon. Whoever provides it first is likely to get my business and attention (and they might not want the attention, btw, that seems to be Microsoft's approach).

BTW, one of the reasons I want to accumulate Asuses is that I feel intuitively they would make good servers running at the house. If neither Amazon or Microsoft's services are usable (it's conceivable they limit Windows in some way), my fallback is to get a T1 line for the house and centralize my entire presence. If the power goes out, or the house burns down, so be it. At least there would be one less thing to fail, to worry about.

But outsourcing the cloud is much more sensible. Let's hope Amazon and/or Microsoft will open their services very very soon, there might be a Depression coming, so stability is something many of us will be looking for.

I would buy an Apple netbook

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:30:24 GMT

It's October and I still love my Asus Eee PC 901, purchased in July. I use it all the time. It turned my 17-inch MacBook Pro into a desktop, podcast downloader and Hillside Club video projector. When I leave the house, even to cross the country, the only computer I take with me is the Eee.

The Great Depression 2.0 has yet to be felt here, except on paper in my brokerage statement, but I sold almost all my stock in January, fearing the meltdown that eventually came, so it's not as bad for me as for others. I didn't get a wacky mortgage, mine is fixed-rate, at a rather high rate for now but I'm too lazy to refinance. My luck has been pretty good, why tempt fate?

So I would make an impulse purchase of an Apple product if they had one I wanted, even a little, and don't already have. But today's announcements, ~~if the rumors prove true,~~ just don't do it for me. I'd much rather buy a new Asus or MSI Wind, perhaps one with a built-in EVDO modem and a real hard disk. Maybe a teeeny bit bigger so it could have a slightly more comfortable keyboard. But I wouldn't sacrifice battery life for any of that. That, and the incredible convenience of it, size and weight-wise, is what I value most. I also love the intelligence of the product, its got the perfect arrangement of ports and slots. It's as if it were designed by someone who not only used a netbook, but took the time to understand it.

These are the qualities I admire in Apple products, but they haven't been willing so far to make a product that sells in the $400 price range and has the sensibilities of the netbooks. Until they do, it's hard to imagine that I'll buy a new Mac anytime soon.

Update: I just watched the video brochure for Apple's new MacBook. It's amazing how they get people to care about the manufacturing process -- even though the product is missing the excitement in today's laptop market. Imagine if Apple had decided to make a MacBook that was priced like an iPod. That's what Asus is doing.

Do you know anyone at Biogen?

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:44:37 GMT

If so, read this plea from Andrew Baron.

His father is dying and desperately needs a drug.

Thanks to TC for pushing this.

When they criticize P.O.O.T.U.S.

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:46:31 GMT

I just invented a new acronym: President Obama Of The United States.

Knock wood.

Okay it really looks like he's going to win, forgive me for saying that, I know it's not a good idea, and I don't really believe it but just in case...

I saw this picture on the wall in a scene in last night's 60 Minutes. Leslie Stahl is interviewing Ray Odierno, the new US commander in Iraq. He was showing off some new technique of hunting down the bad guys with drones, very impressive, except I just watched Generation Kill on HBO and I can't help but wondering if it's a fraud and a hoax. Anyway. On the wall is this portrait of President Bush superimposed on the American flag with the Statue of Liberty in the background.

Whuh?

That's pretty outrageously out there.

So when my guy Barack, POOTUS, is in the White House and the wingnuts are giving him shit about how he seems to be enjoying the trappings of the presidency, I'm going to ask them to have a look at this picture and see if Dubya wasn't just a teeeeeny bit over the top here.

Autumn colors

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 01:28:26 GMT

Michelle Malkin, like her party, is out of touch

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:41:22 GMT

Michelle Malkin has some imagery that shows that there are people with evil imaginations about the Republican candidates, and if the threats are credible the Secret Service should prosecute them to the full extent of the law. If Governor Palin or Senator McCain were hurt or killed because we didn't take action now, it would be a national tragedy the country wouldn't recover from for a long time. (But does she really think Madonna is a physical threat to her candidate?)

There's a world of difference between a random "out there" nutcase expressing his or her rage graphically on a website and the Republican Party's candidates pushing the anger and hate, and not responding in revulsion when they see it at one of their rallies -- and continue to push it after it's taken root. I was relieved to see McCain denounce the hate on Friday, but there were many times when he said nothing, and so far his running mate has not said a word to object when people have threatened Senator Obama at her rallies. That's just crazy. Doesn't she understand that she and her family are equally threatened by this lunacy? They are, for sure.

I don't think Malkin is stupid, but I do wonder if she understands how it would wreck our country if harm came to Senator Obama. And how it would reflect on her party if they played a role in promoting the hate behind the attack. I can only assume she hasn't thought it through. Please Ms. Malkin, get off the ledge, come back to reality.

Electoral vote calculators

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 17:21:50 GMT

CNN, NPR and USA Today both have interactive maps that allow you to play what-if with the electoral vote map. I'm sure there are others. But I wish one of them allowed me to embed the map in my blog, and have it automatically update as I edit it. They would take over the web in an instant.

As it is, it's a lot of fun to play prognosticator. Here's the map as I think it'll turn out. I almost painted Indiana and West Virginia blue, but then I decided that's too much and went back to red. Let's look back here on November 5 to see how it turned out (assuming the world is still here).

Update: Kos has a very nice map that editable and embeddable, but it's too big to be useful here. I have embedded it in a page on the OPML Howto site.

Waiting for November 4

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 15:47:05 GMT

Are the markets are waiting to find out who wins the election?

Will trust return if the voters go... for Obama? Republican?

Me, I can't wait for the election to be over. But I'm totally looking forward to the final debate (we're doing another debate party at the Hillside Club, Wednesday 5:30PM, $5) and I'm totally looking forward to the W movie that opens on October 17 (next Friday).

Thinking about a blogger's event for election returns on November 4. A newsroom where 20 bloggers report on the returns in real time, Hypercamp-like.

After November 4, the credit markets will unfreeze, all people who were laid off will be re-hired. The stock market will soar to 20,000. Housing prices resume their march to the sky, home owners once again can borrow against the soaring value of their homes. Massive amounts of oil will be discovered in the middle of the Nevada desert, and scientists at Cal will find a way to convert carbon dioxide into gasoline so we won't even need to tap our newfound reserve. President Obama takes office and announces he's eliminated taxes and retired the national debt, and we all can work three-day weeks. A new drug is discovered that reverses the aging process. Microsoft relents and buys Yahoo at $200 per share.

A note about conferences

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:35:11 GMT

I was recently invited to keynote a prestigious conference in a European city. I agreed to speak but only on the condition that they cover my expenses. I didn't ask to be paid for my time, but after they said no, I realize I should have.

Here's why. I didn't have a product to pitch or have a company that could benefit from the PR. If I were in their shoes (and I have been) I would insist on covering expenses, otherwise the talks would just be advertisements. It seems analogous to asking a vendor to write an article in your publication, and somehow expecting that it wouldn't be an advertisement.

That's why most conferences aren't worth going to -- you're being pitched by people with a business model for being there. However if conferences were treated like journals, where you were required to only share your knowledge and not promote your products, they might be more interesting.

BTW, this came up once before -- with a conference about syndication in NYC. I agreed to speak but only if they covered expenses. They said no. They thought they were being generous by letting me speak for free! I thought they were being hypocritical, every other speaker there was promoting a product, I didn't have a product to promote.

So I thought -- why not offer my services to promote someone else's product. (When they found out they disinvited me. Ouch!)

How the world got this crazy I don't know, but it must be part of the bubble that's bursting now.

Bottom line -- if you're speaking at a conference and they're not at least covering expenses, it's probably all advertising.

Will this election end in a civil war?

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:13:10 GMT

During the Democratic primary, as the choice narrowed to Obama and Clinton, it was pretty common for people to say that no matter what we'd have a strong nominee and President. There was a lot of confidence that either candidate would win the election over the Republican alternative, and would go on to be a strong leader.

As the campaign went on, this feeling faded -- losing became unthinkable on both sides, and the campaign turned ugly -- but there was still something held in reserve, some places we did not go. I can't speak for anyone else as to why we didn't go for broke, but my own opinion is that we felt that after the primary we'd have to work together. And while there was some discussion before the DNC that the party was split, the convention unified the party.

What about after the general election, now less than a month away? The same logic applies. We'll all be Americans, and we must unite behind the President, no matter how unthinkable that might seem now. But there's a lot of concern, expressed openly, that there will be violence if Obama wins -- that somehow the Republicans will not feel that an African-American, even if he wins the Electoral College, is a legitimate President. If so, this is a prescription for nothing less than civil war.

I know what it feels like to be bewildered by the choice made by our country. I felt we were poised on a precipice of disaster in 2004 when we re-elected President Bush, but I accepted the result. I said at the time that we need to listen to the Americans who voted for him, because they must be trying to say something. Well, I spent four years listening and nothing came back. So we worked and patiently waited as our country continued to fumble and blunder and waste opportunity after opportunity. Now, facing a global economic collapse, and who knows what politically and militarily, our country will have to either unite, or fly apart.

I'm going to add my voice, as humble and unpowerful as it is, to the growing chorus asking the Republicans to take a step back, and think longer term, bigger picture. This is not going to end well if we can't agree that whoever wins this election is our leader for the next four years, at a time when we desperately need leadership. There's an awful spirit to this competition that says when it's over we will not unite, and that would be a disaster.

McCain must give a speech, like the one given by Obama when racial issues came to the front earlier this year, and say clearly that no matter who wins, we must unite behind the new President. I have no doubt that Obama would echo this. Then during the remaining weeks of the campaign we can rebuild the spirit that America is famous for, and prepare to face the huge challenges that are in front of (all of) us.

Update #1: Cross-posted at Huffington.

Update #2: He's going in the right direction, believe it or not, despite the certainty of some of the commenters here that it would be tantamount to conceding.

Where to go?

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:10:53 GMT

I've got the rest of the month reserved for travel, to see the election up front and close up, with camera, laptop, audio, video and EVDO. I'm trying to figure out if I should go, and where.

I want to be in a state that both campaigns see as critical, so I can drive from city to city and be in the crowds at rallies and talk to the people there. Not like this guy who baited them (they seemed like partisans, not the monsters he was making them out to be). Just want to know what they think. And not as a campaign worker for Obama, though I have given money to his campaign.

Part of the problem is that McCain isn't going to all the places he should be. He just spent two days in Wisconsin. I could park my kiester there, and be pretty sure at some point I'd see surrogates for both campaigns, but I want to go where the stars are going.

Florida may be the best bet. I know the state really well, spent a lot of time there over many years, all parts -- western, northern, east coast and west.

Any thoughts? I'd probably leave a week from tomorrow. Fly to a city, rent a car, and then go to the first campaign event.

Also I'm looking for pages on both Republican and Democratic sites that say where the candidates will be in the next 24-48 hours. I know they make the info available to the press, but as usual I can't get either campaign to respond to me as if I were press.

Maybe New Mexico? Not too hard to pick a spot there. And it's close to Colorado.

McCain is a coward

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:32:03 GMT

He says in this interview that no one has accused him of lacking courage. He must not be listening.

Everything about McCain these days is cowardice.

Snoozing to victory?

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:53:00 GMT

Flirting her way to victory?

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:13:57 GMT

Guardian: "At least three times, Sarah Palin, the adorable, preposterous vice-presidential candidate, winked at the audience. Had a male candidate with a similar reputation for attractive vapidity made such a brazen attempt to flirt his way into the good graces of the voting public, it would have universally noted, discussed and mocked."

Country First

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:43:21 GMT

The hypocrisy of the Republicans is so caustic and damaging in so many ways I hardly know where to begin. But the thing that gets me most is this idea that they put "Country First." What a crock. When they attack people who support their opponents, they're attacking half of the country they say they love and supposedly put first. I've had trouble putting my finger on this for years but there it is. Love isn't something you just talk about, it's something you do.

Think of it this way, Al Gore got more than 50 percent of the votes in the 2000 election. John Kerry got pretty close to 50 percent. Win or lose, Barack Obama will get 50 percent, more or less. So if you love America, it seems you must love the people who voted for Gore, Kerry and Obama too. Otherwise, please explain specifically what it is that you love cause it ain't America.

Another one that ticks me off, as a taxpayer -- the Republicans say that paying taxes isn't an act of patriotism. Well, what is it then? That's a straight question. I've given a lot of money to this country in the form of taxes. I don't resent it, but I do resent people who probably have given less than I have (the Palins) saying it isn't an act of patriotism. I even call it My Patriotic Duty, so I don't feel like it's such a blow when I write those checks to the the U.S. Treasury with all those zeros at the end. It's the price you pay for living in a great country, Ms. Palin. That's something you need to learn about this country and its relationship to its citizens. Esp since you propose to be one of our leaders.

The politics of the Republicans this year has crossed the line, as Joe Biden said today, so well. When one of your supporters yells Treason! or Kill Him! in one of your rallies, in response to your words, a response is called for, yet no response came. You need to stop and say "Wait a minute -- Country First asshole." We're not going to get anywhere by killing our opponents, the leaders of half our citizens. That's a civil war, Republicans -- we fought one of those, and it came pretty close to destroying us. It's time to back off the precipice Ms. Palin and Mr. McCain.

Further, we're told, often, of John McCain's courage and heroism. I expected McCain, a supposed man of honor, to address the personal integrity issues about Obama in yesterday's debate. He didn't. I visualize McCain as a coward hiding behind the skirts of his running mate, without the guts to say to Obama's face, the terrible things they've been accusing him of when he's not present to defend himself. Either you have the honor to say it to his face, or don't say it behind his back, or don't pretend to have honor and courage, to love your country and to put it first.

Update: Cross-posted at Huffington with a new title.