WATCHING:
Waiting for Superman
Davis Guggenheim, Director and co-writer

This documentary stakes a basic premise – that for all the problems the US’s public schools have, they are fixable, and the solution is to have great, high-paid teachers.

The teacher’s union, however, clings to the past and wants to remain the same – meaning most teachers get tenure after two years. So even if they are terrible teachers, they stay.

And the kids suffer.

While the movie did speak to parents getting involved with their kid’s schoolwork and so on, that was the main take-away.

It’d be interesting to have discussion about this with a teacher. Get the other side of the story – because the movie did show charter schools that didn’t have union contracts (or different ones; not sure) that allowed a bad teacher to be replaced. So it’s not like this is just a theory; there are schools in poor areas like Harlem that are turning out huge number of college-bound graduates.

Very interesting flick; almost two hours long and I really didn’t want it to end. Watch; discuss; do something about it.

All movies

I was updating my Portfolio page – which lists some work I’ve done behind firewalls and so on – and I was struck by how many sites I’ve worked on that have either totally changed (different language, but still ecommerce…) or are just gone.

Poof.

I did a quick site for a friend of a friend several years ago – just your basic “I exist” site (home page, about us, contact us, what I do etc), and I now see that the woman has turned the site into a WordPress blog (not a bad idea) that hasn’t been updated for almost two years. Even if she was still blogging, my work on the site is gone. Down the rabbit hole.

I realize I’ve been building web sites for over a decade, and have worked at a couple of start-ups (one that’s out of business), so that’s to be expected, but still…

To be fair, I’ve contributed to this web rot – my Geistlinger.com site moved from Cold Fusion to PHP, so those old pages don’t even exist anymore (on a different host). Ditto with this blog – was on Blogger, but when Blogger took away FTP publishing (which I used to host the pages on my own site), I installed WordPress and now the pages are served up dynamically – and are .php, not .html.

Again, Google confusion.

Bob Dylan – aka Robert Zimmerman – is 70 years old today. This has generated some press, especially the “top X songs” or whatever lists.

I rise to the challenge!

Here is CNN’s list of the Top 10 Dylan songs.

Here are my top Dylan songs, in no particular order, and I’m certain I’ve missed some. These are, to me, the best Dylan songs, not necessarily my favorites.

Whatever; lists are always fun/controversial.

Here we go:

• “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” – Best version (to me) is Live From the Gaslight: 1962. Live, when he was trying to get it right. (To me, he nails it.)
• “Like a Rolling Stone” – awesome electric Dylan, with lyrics that can cut glass:
  

  You’ve gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
  But you know you only used to get juiced in it
  And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
  And now you find out you’re gonna have to get used to it
  You said you’d never compromise
  With the mystery tramp, but know you realize
  He’s not selling any alibis
  As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
  And say do you want to make a deal?

• “Positively Fourth Street” – again, electric poetry.
  

  Yes, I wish that for just one time
  You could stand inside my shoes
  You’d know what a drag it is
  To see you

• “Idiot Wind” – Yes, I like Blood on the Track‘s “Tangled Up in Blue” best, but “Idiot Wind” is an extension of “Like a Rolling Stone.” And that’s not a bad thing.
• “All Along the Watchtower” – so good that when Jimi Hendrix cut the definitive version of same, Dylan began mimicking Hendrix.
• “Blowing in the Wind” – not the greatest, but was on the lips of every folk singer in the 60s or 70s. Hell, it’s the anthem of a generation.
• “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding”) – when Dylan really got Kant/poetry into his recordings.
• “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” – Early political song; great apocalyptic poetry. Nuclear rain is going to fall.
• “Song to Woody” – From his first album, this song – that I’ve never heard on the radio – is important in that it really sets up where Dylan was at the time (moved from his native Minnesota to New York) and what he was trying to do (make it as a folk singer). It’s a nod to Woody Guthrie, as well as the other folk heroes that help shape Dylan.
  

  I’m out here a thousand miles from my home
  Walking a road other men have gone down
  I’m seeing a new world of people and things
  Hear paupers and peasants and princes and kings.
  […]
  Here’s to Cisco and Sonny and Leadbelly too
  And to all the good people that traveled with you
  Here’s to the hearts and the hands of the men
  That come with the dust and are gone with the wind.

• “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” – Remember, rock and roll can be fun
  

  Well, they’ll stone you when you walk all alone.
  They’ll stone you when you are walking home.
  They’ll stone you and then say you are brave.
  They’ll stone you when you are set down in your grave.
  But I would not feel so all alone,
  Everybody must get stoned.

I finally bit the bullet and installed Flashblock on my Firefox.

I’ll miss it a bit – you miss a bit of the Zeitgeist when you don’t see the ads and so on, but I won’t miss the speed hit I was taking.

Between the upgrade to Firefox 4 (very nice, except for memory management) and iTunes, some nights it’s a pain to keep things stable. No crashes, but iTunes would stutter all the the time.

Turning off Flash solved 95% of the problems. And – at the same time – when I go to sites I’m familiar with, no issues. HTML 5 and jQuery (especially) are removing the need for Flash in most cases. (One notable exception: Nick Denton’s sites: Gawker, Lifehacker and so on. Killing JavaScript would kill the site; it appears nuking Flash does the same. The sites – beyond the framework – never load any content. Awesome redesign, guys!)

Once again, Steve Jobs was right…or the success of the iPhone/iPad made people scramble to de-Flash sites so iOS devices could view same. Whatever.

Works for me!

Well, today marks the 10th anniversary of the opening of the first Apple store. (Read the CNN story.)

It’s hard to believe today, but when the first Apple store opened, there were no iPods. No iPhones. Certainly no iPads.

The store just sold desktops and laptops, which now lag in sales behind the iEverythings.

Like much of what Steve Jobs does, this was dismissed by many at the outset. Why? Gateway was actually in the process of trimming down their stores (and heading for eventual bankruptcy). Why a store just for Apple products (and a few select 3rd party products)? How could such a venture possibly be feasible?

Critics piled on the iPhone, and – more recently – the iPad when each arrived.

But Steve was right.

He certainly seems right about the stores, as well. Apple has opened more than 300 stores in the US and abroad, and is just starting a push into some very juicy markets – think India and China; think Brazil.

And the Genius Bar is just that – genius. I don’t know how many computers I’ve had to save for people (I was the genius bar, but I came to them), but if they have a Mac, it’s like, “Take it to the store.” While I have run across some very arrogant employees at the stores (a common swipe at the stores), they have been in the very small minority. For the most part, it’s a great experience – and what other store can you say that about?

FYI – I’m not a Mac fanboy. I have a Mac, but my primary computer is a Windows box, simply because I’m a web developer, and the majority of people currently access the web with Windows. I need to develop for them, and then test on other platforms. If I had another occupation, I’d almost certainly be on a Mac of some sort (my servers would still run Linux, however).

The stores were a somewhat out of left field concept, had a very good chance to tank in a spectacular manner, but … they didn’t.

The future is still a bit mixed. Hell, Dell got everyone conditioned to buying computers online, and now – with Amazon and the rise of ecommerce – there is less reason each day to actually go into a store. Any store.

As I mentioned, the Genius Bar alone could keep the stores open, but it’ll be interesting to see the staying power of these stores. Yes, at least one has been around for a decade, but does it – or the others – have the legs to last another 10 years?

I honestly don’t know.

Groklaw, the site that famously chronicled – and researched the absurdity of – the years-long saga of SCO’s attempt to “own” Linux, is changing leadership today.

Pamela Jones – aka “PJ”, the site founder – will keep the servers running but will no longer be writing for this important blog. She’s handing the reins over to Mark Webbink, a law professor and open-source fan. I’m not familiar with Webbink, but I trust PJ’s judgement.

I just want to give a shout-out to PJ; I’ve been a fan since virtually the beginning, especially during the crazy SCO days. We’ve exchanged emails; I’ve donated code. Groklaw was a very interesting – and bold – experiment at the beginning (essentially crowd-sourcing the research/reporting/investigation of intellectual property issues); it has blossomed into a powerful tool that I hope will continue to do the OSS community proud.

Thanks for everything, PJ!

(Screenshot: news.com)

OK, Apple and Google (smartphone OS makers) hauled in front of the US Senate this week to ‘splain their collecting user data (BAD!), and then there’s a Justice Department official arguing that mobile phone operators should store more data (to make it easier for law enforcement to use data to catch bad guys).

Huh! Bad you collected this data, but, by the way…collect/retain more…

TechDirt has a good (short) shot at this dichotomy, but, basically, this is something we are going to be dealing with for a long time – the battle of open vs. closed; access vs. not; privacy vs. not-so-much.

It’s been an ongoing battle; this latest kerfuffle was just a exclamation point on the matter.

And why is the Senate concerned with this? It reminds me of when the Senate did all those hearings on steroids in professional baseball.

Huh? (both cases)

(Screenshot: news.com)

According to this article, FTP is celebrating its 40th birthday today.

Wow.

Big fan of FTP – a fast, dumb, error-challenged protocol that’s been around, well, for four decades!

I still use FTP extensively, at work and at home, to just “get stuff done.” Mainly at the command line, but many GUI clients work well. Whatever works for you.

Happy B-Day FTP!

WATCHING:
Despicable Me
Chris Renaud, Pierre Coffin, directors

This is a strange little animated movie that is not great, but it just works.

Highly formulaic story line (bad guy brought back from the dark side by cute little kids – trust me, I’ve spoiled nothing), but is saved by wonderful animation, unbelievably imaginative characters and attention to detail.

The weapons used in this movie would make Wiley Coyote salivate – from freeze guns to squid shooters, and rockets galore.

This is a “rent it” movie. Good fun for all ages, but not something I’ll return to again (as I will with just about any Pixar title).

All movies

Well, the presidential election isn’t for another 18 months are so, but the jockeying has begun. Obviously, this is really only pronounced for the non-incumbent party (the Republicans).

OK, I can see trying to appeal to certain constituencies, but sometimes it gets so absurd that it makes candidates/king makers hard to take seriously.

Take Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who sat down for a radio interview with Bryan Fischer, a prominent voice of the religious right. They talked about the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT), and Barbour – a potential Republican presidential candidate for 2012 – had this to say:

“[I]t’s not necessarily over homosexuality. It’s over the fact that when you’re under fire and people are living and dying of split-second decisions you don’t need any kind of amorous mindset that can effect saving people’s lives and killing bad guys. […]

“I think it ought to be rolled back. I just don’t see how you can take any other position if the person you are trying to protect is the soldier who is actually in combat.”

— DADT DEAD-ENDERS NEED TO GET OVER IT, WashingtonMonthly.com

Well, there is a lot wrong with Barbour’s statement, but – to me – what struck me was the “amorous mindset” phrase.

Here’s my thought – just as “there are no atheists in the foxholes” (William Thomas Cummings), there are “no amorous mindsets when under fire.” When you’re under fire (I have no experience with same), I would expect your thoughts are survival; saving your ass and those of your fellow soldiers – because if they are hit, your odds go down. With the bullets whizzing around, I don’t think there’s a lot of sexual tension. I don’t understand what Barbour was trying to say. I really don’t.

And how does re-instating DADT fix this “amorous mindset” problem? We’ll still have gays who are lusting after other gay/straight soldiers; but they’ll just be in the closet. And to really get rid of “amorous mindsets,” maybe we should get rid of women in the armed forces, as well, right? To keep the straight males focused.

Crazy.

And let’s back up to the radio program this was on – Bryan Fischer’s. His show has recently seen the likes of most Republican presidential hopefuls: Barbour, Huckabee, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty and so on.

He’s big with the religious right.

And what are Fisher’s opinions on government and religion?

“Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy. While there certainly ought to be a presumption of religious liberty for non-Christian religious traditions in America, the Founders were not writing a suicide pact when they wrote the First Amendment.”

[…] Fischer took it a step further, calling Islam a “treasonous ideology” and adding that “from a constitutional point of view, Muslims have no First Amendment right to build mosques in America. They have that privilege at the moment, but it is a privilege that can be revoked.”

— Bryan Fischer: Muslims Have No First Amendment Rights, talkingpointsmemo.com

Now, I support Fisher’s right to say such. I don’t agree with him, and – hopefully – he’d be OK with my right to say same.

But he’s a big hitter – do the candidates really want to associate with this kind of hate-mongering? Fischer didn’t even leave wiggle room for Jews – most of the times issues like this come up, the talking points are that the US is “Judea-Christian” nation. Are synagogues OK?

I am deeply saddened by polarizing rhetoric that passes for reasoned discourse these days. Part of it is the 24-hour news channels – a lot of feeding the beast – but some comes down to simple pandering, where it is easier to say “All Muslims are terrorists” than make that point that, yes, some terrorists are Muslims. And some Muslims are political/business leaders helping the country. Just not as easy to put on a bumper sticker.

One of my favorite musical groups today (I just discovered them a year or so ago) are The New Pornographers. They took their name from a declaration by some conservative religious leader who declared (I’m paraphrasing) that “rock and roll is the new pornography.” They were rock and rollers, hence, the new pornographers. The religious leader meant this as a bad thing; the musical group took it lightly.

To me, the new pornography – in the bad sense (pornography here as pejorative term) – is the accept-no-gray, America is the land of opportunity (but only if you’re like me/believe what I do…), self-righteous, fact-adverse political/religious discourse/diatribes.

It’s hurting everyone. It’s vitriolic.

Downloaded Firefox 4 this evening. First impressions:

• Wicked fast – almost Chrome fast
• Tabs on Top – doesn’t work for me. I’ll try for a while and see if it’s just me.
• Setup didn’t get upgrades of my extensions, but another click (check for updates) did. Just a little clunky, un-Firefoxy…
• No bugs, lost files/bookmarks and so on.
• Status bar (at bottom) gone. This is an issue – can get it back, but does not behave as before (4.x). Hmm… Bad (to me)
• Normal status stuff – what the link is etc. – is now NOT part of the status bar, instead, a “toaster” on the bottom left. Hmmm….
• Last two comments seem to be Chrome issues (influenced in Firefiox). Maximize web pages; minimize the frame area (valid). So suppress (as default) the status bar. Interesting, but what does this do to add-ons, such as Firebug and Fox Weather(?) – They are currently in the status bar; how will they change/or not?

Again, first impressions.

I’ll have to see how it works with memory (Firefox 3.x could get piggy with memory…). Looking VERY good right now, but whatever.

Again, first impressions.

Update 3/24: If anything, 4.x is worse than 3.x with memory – CPU and RAM sucked up. Could be – in part – the new Flash I’ve installed, but it is still ugly.

Update 3/24 #2: Post-Flash install seems to have settled down things a bit. But need more days to draw true conclusions..

When the internet first rolled around, it was pretty open.

You had gopher, archie, veronica and – later – FTP. Get a picture? Get UUDecode.

Then came the web. AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy and so on.

In the beginning, one could only email a Prodigy account from, well, another Prodigy account. And so on.

The walls came down (relatively) quickly, but new walls quickly came up:

• Windows vs. Apple incompatibilities (let’s leave Linux out for now)…
• Netscape vs. IE incompatibilities (let’s leave Opera out for now, and treat Firefox as the successor to Netscape).
• Lotus 1-2-3 vs. Excel
• And so on…

Today, the walls have changed, but they still exist:

• Still harder to network a Mac than a Windows machine
• Different browser vendors have a different way of “implementing” the (unfinalized) HTML 5 spec
• Different eReader format specs – can’t read that Nook eBook on the Kindle and so on
• Smartphone apps that are different – and nontransferable – from one smartphone OS to another (got Angry Birds on your iPhone? Buy/download again for your Android phone)

The fragmentation into silos makes sense – it’s a point of differentiation (Apple: We’re more integrated; Android: We’re more open). And these are different technologies. Understood.

But – to the average consumer – it’s freakin’ impossible to understand. They don’t understand that, for example, if Amazon discontinues the Kindle, well, it might be a bad thing for them.

Silos are bad. Mebee…

Yet silos can be your friend.

Ten years ago people were horrified at the notion of Intel adding a unique ID to all of its processors. Today every phone has a unique ID, and yours is probably uploaded to apps’ servers multiple times a day. Not so long ago, people were outraged that Amazon could and did arbitrarily delete books from users’ Kindles; last week they clamored for Google to exercise essentially the same power.

— Jon Evans, The Walled Garden Has Won

He’s got a point. It’s part of the Facebook world, confirming Scott McNealy’s (in)famous quotation, “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”

But there are silos of privacy (almost gone), and silos of data (can I easily port my Blogger.com account to WordPress.com?).

The latter is still very difficult – and I’m a web dork. And it’s my data, dammit!

There need to be basic standards that – for example (and not picking on anyone) – blog hosting sites adhere to. So you can easily export your data to a different blog hosting site. Sure, may lose some functionality (think about saving that MS Word doc as RTF – yep, some formatting will be lost….), but, for the most part, intact/possible.

Or you can export your pics from site X to site Y- yeah, may lose the thumbnails/friends, but OK…

That’ll be a good thing.

We’re not there yet, and – for the most part – it’s gotten worse over the last few years, as every new startup does things differently. So porting your (pics/data/spreadsheets/etc) gets messier and messier.

I expect things to get a little worse before they get better – but that means some innovation is occurring, so that’s not a really bad thing.

But it’s frustrating at times.

The average web user has a Yahoo! email account.

Yahoo!, is, unfortunately, dying. It’ll stay afloat due to its large installed base (hey, all those email accounts – how many of you have free excite.com email accounts [that you still use]?).

But – tomorrow – is that enough for Yahoo to say alive? If not, what happens to (a bazillion) yahoo.com email accounts? Including your account, that you use just for X or Y (water bill notifications; kid’s school stuff…)

Silos. Good…bad…hmm…