Scripting News

Reverse robo-calling tomorrow

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 02:32:17 GMT

The Republican Party and the McCain campaign are saying some really awful things about Barack Obama in robo-calls in battleground states. It's strange and remarkably honest of them to self-identify, given that everything else they say is a lie. They even provide their phone number.

So tomorrow I'm going to call the Republicans and tell them, politely and honestly, how I feel about them bothering people at home with lies about Obama. I'm going to call them at 202-863-8502. This is the exact opposite of what they're doing. I'm a real person, not a robot, and instead of lying I will tell the truth.

If you want to help the Republicans straighten their act out you can call them too. I'd wait until their office opens tomorrow, though, all the voicemail boxes seem to be full at this time.

Just bought an MSI

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:22:11 GMT

Well, I decided it was time to upgrade my netbook act, and I plunked down the money for an MSI Wind U100-279US at a place called JustNetbooks.com.

Apparently they do their fulfillment with Amazon, I paid through Amazon, got cheap 1-day shipping (fingers crossed) for $3.99 because I'm an Amazon Prime member. Hopefully it'll be here tomorrow so I can start setting it up before my next road trip.

This looks to be an improvement over the Asus, which if all goes well I'll turn into a server.

BTW, I had a thought, wouldn't it be great if Apple sold netbooks, even though they aren't making them, at Apple stores? They sell printers made by other companies. When they finally get around to making an Apple-branded netbook they could kick out the other brands. It would be nice to be able to impulse-buy one of these babies locally.

Update: You can buy an Asus at BestBuy for $299.

Update: Apple contracts out design and manufacturing?

FreshAir cracks Sarah Palin

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 01:54:06 GMT

It's amazing that Sarah Palin, would-be VP to a 72-year-old cancer survivor asks Who Barack Obama Really Is? and yet we know almost nothing about her. More than amazing, isn't it imprudent?

Well, they cracked the nut on FreshAir, inviting Michael Carey, a former editor of the Anchorage Daily News to a 40-minute interview. He answered a lot of the outstanding questions about Sarah Palin. Highly recommended.

Fresh Air: Sarah Palin, A View From Anchorage.

It's not too late to ask who this would-be VP is. And if you believe Obama, and I do, there's no reason to assume she will not be elected on November 4.

Ev is Twitter's new CEO

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:45:04 GMT

This is a surprise!

http://dave.bit.ly/evNewCeo

Not sure exactly what to think.

W movie party in Berkeley

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:44:57 GMT

Let's play hookie tomorrow and see the W opening at California Theaters on Kittridge at 4:05PM. We can go out and get a bite to eat after. If you'd like to participate sign up on this Upcoming page.

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1237753/

Is this what they meant?

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:17:46 GMT

Is this what they meant by Let McCain Be McCain?

Tools that build on Netflix API?

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:09:02 GMT

A few weeks ago Netflix announced an API.

Following up -- is anyone aware of tools that build on the API? I'm specifically interested in tools that can be used to extract my reviews data into XML so I can use it in other applications.

Debate Party at Hillside Club tonight

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 23:22:54 GMT

If you're in Berkeley come to the Hillside Club at 5:30PM for the third and final Presidential debate. Suggested contribution $5. Cheeseboard pizza, pay as you go.

If you can't be here, join the discussion on IRC.

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

See you at 5:30PM!

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.