tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50167994119515197532024-03-10T03:36:00.826-07:00R.A.Goodwin - Thoughts on just about anything.Here I share bits of my life trying to be a science fiction author, thoughts on technology & software trends, games, and my work. Enjoy!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-19213797169720837972014-09-10T07:58:00.000-07:002014-09-10T07:58:05.969-07:00Why Net Neutrality is Important & the Great Internet Slowdown<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://www.battleforthenet.com/images/change_avatar/avatar-cat.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://www.battleforthenet.com/images/change_avatar/avatar-cat.gif" width="320" /></a>Today, September 10th, is the Great Internet Slowdown, a multi-site protest against the concept of "fast lanes" on the internet. The FCC is considering this suggestion from Internet Service Providers and this week marks the last days of comments from the public. This is all part of the broader conversation of "Net Neutrality".<br />
<br />
But why is any of this important? What is Net Neutrality and why are fast lanes bad?<br />
<br />
<b>Net Neutrality</b> <i>is the concept that all content is delivered as fast as possible regardless of source, message, or size.</i><br />
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In a world of Net Neutrality, when all hardware is equal, Netflix movies are delivered just as fast as Amazon movies which are as fast as Youtube videos, which are as fast as a Torrent download, which are as fast as any web page download. The reality is, of course, that different businesses have different infrastructure and deliver content a varying speeds. The key piece here is that the ISP (Verizon, Comcast, LevelOne, etc) do <b>not</b> discriminate and deliver content as fast as they receive it from the content provider, like Netflix.<br />
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<b>Fast Lanes </b><i>are the concept that content providers can pay a fee to have their content delivered quicker.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Verizon, Comcast, and others have a different vision. They want to charge content providers, like Netflix or my own company, an additional fee so that our content can be delivered "faster". In order to have a "fast" lane, you have to have a "slow" lane. Right now, all the lanes are moving at the same speed, understood to be <i>as fast as possible already</i>. In practice, anyone <b>not </b>paying the fast lane fee is going to be operating in a more congested, possibly intentionally slow infrastructure.<br />
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Verizon would have you believe that they building the internet infrastructure is expensive and to have Netflix or Google, or other sites pay these fees would only be fair so they can offset the costs of delivering their content.<br />
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Understand that Verizon, Comcast, and others already have two groups paying for service. You and I, we pay a monthly bill to pay for cable <b>and</b> internet access, which are essentially the same thing. We're one group. If you pay for both, your bill is likely around $100 per month. There are <a href="http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/">279,834,232</a> users online in the United States.<br />
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That's possibly $27,983,423,200 / month spent by Americans for online access. $<b>27 BILLION</b>. <b>PER MONTH.</b> Verizon alone made $<a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/vz/financials"><b>60</b> <b>BILLION </b>last year, <i>after expenses</i></a><b>. Total sales were $120 BILLION</b>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx6s8XwBozBfI9xwyNUKggSeRI4SNTvxvRxXSXhZ4raRpmVbvXziCfNX3MM0IaWEIdOVmka6_mT09GB8GWbs6mq1eFWV9rtpCWK1pveXp3jHdsEOG-7DobEyHrJh4t1Q3V5_TMaCAUzKk/s1600/isps-red.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx6s8XwBozBfI9xwyNUKggSeRI4SNTvxvRxXSXhZ4raRpmVbvXziCfNX3MM0IaWEIdOVmka6_mT09GB8GWbs6mq1eFWV9rtpCWK1pveXp3jHdsEOG-7DobEyHrJh4t1Q3V5_TMaCAUzKk/s1600/isps-red.png" height="50" width="400" /></a></div>
Sorry, Verizon. It's tough for me to believe you can't afford to deliver Netflix content and expand the web.<br />
<br />
So what's the second group paying for the web already? Businesses have to pay for internet access to deliver content to the web. <i>We already pay a fee. </i>It's not a cheap fee and it increases for every gigabyte of content delivered. This fee is paid to your pipelines to the web, of which most content providers have at least two. (For redundancy)<br />
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This concept of Fast Lanes mean that not only would my company pay two ISPs, we would then have to add <i>every other ISP to the list of who we pay</i>. Why? Because if we want our content delivered quickly on their networks, we would need to pay the Fast Lane fee.<br />
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I am highly concerned the impact that would have on my company's bottom line. Money that is going to ISPs around the country is not being reinvested in the employees or used to add jobs. <br />
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Nevermind the impact this could have to small business start ups. Fast Lanes create a money divider between start up and large corporation. If you can't deliver your content as quick as your competition, you are already battling from a significant disadvantage. Especially in a world where speedy delivery is expected.<br />
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<b>You need to help</b>
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Go here: https://www.battleforthenet.com/. Sign the letter to your lawmakers. Call your Reps. Call your Senators. We have stopped the government from making bone-headed decisions in the past with the SOPA & PIPA protests. We can do this again. We will have to keep doing it until we elect people that understand the web & what the technology means.<br />
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<b>Last Thoughts</b><br />
We wouldn't be having this conversation if competition actually existed in the ISP market. Unfortunately, most of us live in a location that only has one, maybe two options for internet access. This lack of competition allows the ISPs to push agendas like this from virtually unassailable positions, forcing anyone that wants access to pay whatever fees demanded. That the major ISPs are all acting in concert is worrisome as well. What's more, the motivation is greed, pure and simple.<br />
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It's not about providing a better service or building new infrastructure. It's just about more money going into stake holders hands. From ours to theirs. Away from businesses that need to be moving that money into raises or more workers and into theirs. If their income statements weren't so blatantly fat, maybe there would be argument to be made by the ISPs. But they're very fat, with nearly 50% margins. If you have 50% margins, you're not reinvesting your money.<br />
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<b><i>And now they want more.</i></b>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-81974646174519863992014-04-03T11:30:00.002-07:002014-04-03T11:34:37.949-07:00On SXSW 2014 : Getting Physical With Software.Physical software? I struggled a bit attempting find a succinct way to convey <a href="http://schedule.sxsw.com/2014/events/event_IAP21154">Michael Hendrix's talk at SXSW</a>. He's a consultant at IDEO and has been investing much thought into this concept of injecting physical metaphors into product design. Product design in this context was more about things you can touch, not software.<br />
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What I'll attempt to do is take these concepts of embodied cognition and the tie between the physical and psychological that Micheal reviewed while applying them to software product design.<br />
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<b>What is Embodied Cognition?</b><br />
First, though, is we need to establish what <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition">Embodied Cognition</a></i> is. Basically it describes how the physical inputs from your body have a direct, sub conscious affect on how you perceive the things and people around you. Some examples that Michael reviewed were :<br />
<ul>
<li>Warmth conveys affection, safety.</li>
<li>Weight implies quality or seriousness.</li>
<li>Cold can mean distant, unfriendly.</li>
</ul>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/17700000/Cup-of-coffee-coffee-17731301-1680-1050.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/17700000/Cup-of-coffee-coffee-17731301-1680-1050.jpg" height="200" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13.333333969116211px; text-align: center;">Mmmmm!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Some recent research suggests some ways these can alter our perception. Put a bunch of strangers together in a room with hot coffee and they'll perceive people as friendly. Replace the coffee with ice water and a less friendly impression will linger. Give students heavy clipboards and they'll take an experiment much more serious than if they had small flimsy pads of paper.</div>
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In practice, this has manifested itself in various ways. BMW tightened the hinges on their car doors, giving them a heavier feel and imparting a sense of quality or safety. Apple stores use high tables, forcing you to lean forward helping to emphasize progress and momentum. Converse stores have scuffed, slightly worn floors, drawing a parallel to the comfort of a well-worn pair of Chuck Taylors.<br />
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Those are all well and good, right? So how can you take these physical examples and apply them to software? The obvious pieces are going to be visual parallels that you are likely already aware of, but may not exactly understand <i>why</i> they're better.<br />
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Look at these two apples :<br />
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<a href="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTRVGeigNLwD-k_OhZTUpLrozseNGBRMgcIklK6s9SUkw3tW2fp540VyVV_" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTRVGeigNLwD-k_OhZTUpLrozseNGBRMgcIklK6s9SUkw3tW2fp540VyVV_" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/rotten-apple-16073043.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/rotten-apple-16073043.jpg" height="185" width="200" /></a></div>
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Which is more appealing? Pretty easy, right? The fresh, plump, clean line apple is much more appetizing, right? The wrinkly older apple is not very inviting. So translate these same visual elements to an interface.<br />
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You would want :<br />
<ul>
<li>Clean lines (plump)</li>
<li>Less clutter (wrinkles)</li>
<li>Inviting colors. (red, green)</li>
</ul>
<div>
The idea is not to make the page look like an apple. It is about identifying what are the things about a fresh apple that make it have the psychological connotation that it has.<br />
<i><br /></i><i>What makes it physically inviting?</i><br />
<br />
This would be a great start for a page explaining why to purchase a product or asking people to join a service.</div>
<div>
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<b>Practical Application</b><br />
This was one of those talks that made feel a little silly. Not because it was incredibly eye-opening, but because this helps explain some fairly obvious trends in design. I felt silly because I never really connected the deeper understanding of <i>why</i> we find physical metaphors functional in design. Still, with that realization, there is the practical application of the concept. Which is made a bit more difficult when you're talking about software.<br />
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We can't tighten some bolts to make our software heavier. But we can include sounds that impart that same feeling. We can't make our software warmer, but we can use colors and spacing to provide a sense of freshness and welcoming. Before you can do that, though, you have to decide on what sense you want your software's interface to convey.<br />
<br />
Is it warm and inviting? Serious and strong? Light and casual? A method to discover this could be to go to various locations that you get this sense from and consider your software with that theme. So if I'm building a new dealership management software suite, I might go to an office lobby to find the elements that convey "serious business".<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/Es2uYtSJh-Y/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/Es2uYtSJh-Y/maxresdefault.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13.333333969116211px;">Some serious business happening in this lobby.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
From there I then need to boil down the elements of that location which convey those themes and find ways to elicit those same sensory inputs in my UI's presentation. Maybe it's straight lines, spacing, and a marble-like color palette to give the sense of structure and importance.<br />
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<b>Final Thoughts</b></div>
<div>
As the subtleties of this point of view began to sink in, I became reflective on my sites. They are information dense while having banner ads on virtually every page. They are more like the wrinkly rotten apple than the fresh inviting apple. The challenge is to reconcile the two. How do I present the data that our user's demand but still recall inviting elements to make sure they come back? Never mind adding the business case to augment existing revenue with additional advertising.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is why consultants that are really good with UI and UX are paid well. Anyone can tell you the clean design just feels better to use, not everyone can articulate why they feel better and how to apply it to a new product.</div>
</div>
<br />
I became most excited about this conversation when I began applying last year's concepts of <a href="http://ragoodwin.blogspot.com/2013/04/on-sxsw-2013-vanishing-interfaces.html">No UI</a>. Finding the right visual cues can help keep our interfaces trim and easily digestible. My goal moving forward with our larger design projects will be finding the right physical metaphors to combine with minimalist interfaces. There's a good recipe taking form here, particularly as our automated systems continue to improve!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-66897030380745964752014-03-27T07:51:00.002-07:002014-05-01T10:54:01.888-07:00On SXSW 2014 : Data Privacy after Edward Snowden.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://media2.newsobserver.com/smedia/2014/03/10/16/51/1adeCP.AuSt.156.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://media2.newsobserver.com/smedia/2014/03/10/16/51/1adeCP.AuSt.156.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.600000381469727px; text-align: left;">Photo by Jack Plunkett/Invision/AP</span></td></tr>
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First things first: <i>this post is not a judgement for or against Edward Snowden</i>. What this is going to be is an analysis of the impact, response, reality of the aftermath of the documents that have been shared, and what we should be doing about it. There is a direct impact upon the technology community. One that touches the very basic responsibility we have as the builders and stewards of the software and data that are driving the 21st century's economic engine.<br />
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At SXSW, Edward Snowden was present for his interview virtually, using a Google Hangout. He was piped through seven proxies in an attempt to keep his location as secure as possible. While this caused the video to be very choppy, the audio was clear.<br />
<br />
Christopher Soghoian, a technologist of the ACLU, and Ben Wizner, Snowden's legal adviser from the ACLU, conducted the interview. Before I dig into the meat of the discussion, I want to level-set the scope of the NSA files released to date.<br />
<br />
<b>What has been revealed in the NSA files?</b><br />
This timeline is derived from the <a href="https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline">EFF's comprehensive list of events</a>. I will <b>bold</b> particularly troubling attacks on tech privacy.<br />
<ul>
<li>June 5th, 2013 - "<a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/confirmed-nsa-spying-millions-americans">Dragnet</a>" NSA is collecting every Verizon user's cellphone call metadata.</li>
<li>June 6th, 2013 - <b>"<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/">Prism</a>" NSA is tapping into Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, systems, collecting user data.</b></li>
<li>June 9th, 2013 - "<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-boundless-informant-global-datamining">Boundless Informant"</a> NSA's tool that allows broad searching of collected data by other programs revealed.</li>
<li>June15th, 2013 - Additional NSA programs "Mainway", "Marina", & "Nucleon" revealed. Includes how Nucleon process the <i>spoken words</i> of phone conversations.</li>
<li>June 21st, 2013 - GCHQ revealed to be collecting Facebook, internet history, & phone calls. Shares data with NSA.</li>
<li>June 27th, 2013 - NSA Inspector General's detailed history of domestic surveillance shared.</li>
<li>July 6th, 2013 - Details on how US companies are working with government agencies.</li>
<li>July 11th, 2013 - Details on Microsoft's relationship with U.S. Government.</li>
<li>July 11th, 2013 - "<a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/07/11/xkeyscore_program_may_have_allowed_nsa_to_spy_on_google_maps_searches.html">XKeyScore</a>" detailed. Monitors Google Maps activity, collected phone, email, login, internet activity for international users.</li>
<li>Aug 5th, 2013 - DEA is using collected data and funneling it to police across the nation.</li>
<li>Aug 7th, 2013 - IRS, FBI, & CIA also using collected data.</li>
<li>Aug 9th, 2013 - <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/09/nsa-loophole-warrantless-searches-email-calls">Legal loophole used to authorize NSA programs is revealed</a>.</li>
<li>Aug 15th, 2013 - <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-broke-privacy-rules-thousands-of-times-per-year-audit-finds/2013/08/15/3310e554-05ca-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html">Internal NSA audit detailed thousands of privacy violations revealed</a>.</li>
<li>Aug 20th, 2013 - <b>Depth of penetration of the U.S. internet backbone is revealed with details on cooperation by U.S. ISPs.</b></li>
<li>Aug 23rd, 2013 - "Loveint", or violations of privacy by NSA employees searching for information about romantic interests detailed.</li>
<li>Aug 29th, 2013 - "<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/black-budget-summary-details-us-spy-networks-successes-failures-and-objectives/2013/08/29/7e57bb78-10ab-11e3-8cdd-bcdc09410972_story.html">Black Budget</a>", 56.2 billion for 2013, the funding for the secret programs is revealed.</li>
<li>Sept 1st, 2013 - "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/us/drug-agents-use-vast-phone-trove-eclipsing-nsas.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=1&">Hemisphere Project</a>" details of AT&T's and U.S. government's partnership, with storage of 20 years worth of phone call data that moved through any of AT&T's systems.</li>
<li>Sept 5th, 2013 - <b><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security">NSA & GCHQ have hacked encryption protocols and exercise control of their use with various companies.</a></b></li>
<li>Sept 28th, 2013 - NSA is using collection of data to map American social network activity/data in order to "identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information". Included storing phone location data for 2 years.</li>
<li>Sept 30th, 2013 - NSA storing everyone's data up to a year.</li>
<li>Oct 4th, 2013 - <b><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/04/tor-attacks-nsa-users-online-anonymity">Details of how NSA attacks the TOR network through Firefox. Includes details on how NSA collects data with taps into the fiber network using programs called "Stormbrew", "Fairview", "Oakstar", "Blarney".</a> Several other programs also revealed, including "FoxAcid" and "Quantum".</b></li>
<li>Oct 30th, 2013 - <b><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-infiltrates-links-to-yahoo-google-data-centers-worldwide-snowden-documents-say/2013/10/30/e51d661e-4166-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html">"Muscular" - Revelation of how NSA captures data from Google & Yahoo!'s systems.</a></b></li>
<li>Nov 11th, 2013 - "<a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/ghcq-targets-engineers-with-fake-linkedin-pages-a-932821.html">Quantum Insert</a>" - Program that used fake LinkedIn pages to infect engineer's computers withe malware for the GCHQ detailed.</li>
<li>Nov 14th, 2013 - CIA collecting bank transfer data.</li>
<li>Nov 26th, 2013 - NSA will collect porn-browsing habits to discredit targets. Details 6 Muslim targets and examples.</li>
<li>Dec 2nd, 2013 - Australian agencies share raw citizen data with NSA, GCHQ, and other foreign agencies.</li>
<li>Dec 4th, 2013 - "<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-tracking-cellphone-locations-worldwide-snowden-documents-show/2013/12/04/5492873a-5cf2-11e3-bc56-c6ca94801fac_story.html">CoTraveler</a>" NSA collecting billions of cell phone location data points across the world every day.</li>
<li>Dec 9th, 2013 - NSA & GCHQ collected data from online video games.</li>
<li>Dec 10th, 2013 - "<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/10/new-documents-show-how-the-nsa-infers-relationships-based-on-mobile-location-data/">Fast Follower, Happyfoot, Fascia</a>" - uses collected cell phone data to build map of relationships between people and locations.</li>
<li><dec -="" 10th="" 2013="" b=""><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/10/nsa-uses-google-cookies-to-pinpoint-targets-for-hacking/">NSA uses Google's browser cookies to home in on a single individual & observe their online behavior/communications.</a></dec></li>
<li>Dec 20th, 2013 - <b><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/20/us-usa-security-rsa-idUSBRE9BJ1C220131220">NSA paid 20 million to RSA in order to provide an encryption "back door".</a></b></li>
<li>Dec 29th, 2013 - <b>"</b><b><a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors-for-numerous-devices-a-940994.html" style="line-height: 22.0049991607666px;">ANT</a>" 50-page catalog leaked that details NSA's physical tools for infecting/interfacing with computers and physical networks.</b></li>
<li>Jan 16th, 2014 - "<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/16/nsa-collects-millions-text-messages-daily-untargeted-global-sweep">Dishfire</a>" NSA/GCHQ collects millions of text messages every day.</li>
<li>Jan 27th, 2014 - <b><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/world/spy-agencies-scour-phone-apps-for-personal-data.html?gwh=BC4AAA90E37DE71367EADD4F89EBDBD4&gwt=regi">NSA uses unsecure mobile apps to collect data about users.</a></b></li>
<li>Jan 27th, 2014 - <b>"<a href="http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/27/22469304-snowden-docs-reveal-british-spies-snooped-on-youtube-and-facebook">Squeaky Dolphin</a>" GCHQ tapped directly into fiber cables in order to watch YouTube user's browsing in real time.</b></li>
<li>Feb 27th, 2014 - "<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo">Optic Nerve</a>" GCHQ captured millions of images of Yahoo! users through the user's webcams.</li>
<li>Feb 27th, 2014 - "<a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/snowden-docs-british-spies-used-sex-dirty-tricks-n23091">JTIRG</a>" actively uses denial of service, false flag, & fake social posts to discredit and attack targets, such as Anonymous. Includes viruses spying on journalists, jamming phones/computers & sex traps.</li>
<li>Mar 12th, 2014 - <b>"<a href="https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/03/12/nsa-plans-infect-millions-computers-malware/">Turbine</a>" NSA/GCHQ actively spread malware in an automated manner. Use spam emails & will masquerade as popular servers, like Facebook, in order to infect user's computers.</b></li>
</ul>
<div>
The list is extensive and startling. Having attempted to pay close attention to this issue, I'm sure I experienced some "NSA fatigue" and ignored or missed a bunch of stories. Now looking back to the actual timeline and information published in the media, my eyes cross and my stomach sinks. The penetration is thorough. It goes to the very base of the software in the encryption keys, to the very base of the physical infrastructure in tapping the fiber lines directly.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://rt.com/files/news/1f/99/b0/00/prism-slide-6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://rt.com/files/news/1f/99/b0/00/prism-slide-6.jpg" height="238" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Slide published by the Washington Post detailing PRISM.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Point One - It's way too easy.</b></div>
<div>
First and foremost, the level of penetration indicates one thing: it's been too easy. What's more is that we don't know who else is listening to our data. And let's be clear, that data represents just about everything: telephone conversation, email conversation, instant messenger conversation, video chat, what websites you browse and therefore what your interests are, your location, who you pay and how much you pay them, who you associate with, who your friends are and how close you are to them, what products you buy and what stores you buy them from, and what TV shows and movies you like.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>It is your identity and the keys to your identity.</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
That all the NSA, GCHQ, and other agencies had to do was tap into the network reveals a disturbing truth about the internet that we've built: it's too easy to snoop. It's incredibly easy to snoop. The first hurdle for anyone, government or not, to eavesdrop on our data should be how they're going to snoop. Someone can always tap the physical fiber lines moving data between servers. That so much of the data is "in the clear" is the problem.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Even <b>Google</b> was caught with its pants down. Nevermind Yahoo! and Microsoft.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We should be <b>encrypting everything</b>. Yes, the NSA has the keys to the RSA , who provides many of our encryption keys. But now that we know, separate groups can begin providing them - groups not affiliated with any particular government or corporation.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is, in fact, what's happening. Mr. Soghoian pushed the point that these revelations have radicalized segments of the IT world. Individuals are building better systems to provide better data privacy. In his words, there are lots of engineers that are "pissed". It should be very hard for the government or anyone to siphon any meaningful data from our networks.<br />
<br />
This quote stresses this: "data should not be collected without people's knowledge and consent."<br />
<br />
More importantly, perhaps, is that decryption does not scale. The amount of compute cycles needed to decrypt a message without the key is vastly greater than that needed to encrypt it. As the amount of encrypted data increases, the computation horse power needed to brute-force decrypt all of it rises exponentially. <i>It is our greatest defense of our digital presence.</i></div>
<div>
<br />
<b>Point Two - You Are Stewards Of User Data.</b></div>
<div>
To bring this back home to the "every man" working for some web/mobile app company, we need to clean up our acts. Snowden stresses the point that Privacy should be first and awareness that we are the stewards of our user's data should be second in how we construct our systems.<br />
<br />
Once a user gives consent to hand their data to us, it is our responsibility to protect it.<br />
<br />
We do this by only asking for the minimum data we need to perform our services. Only retain that data for the minimum amount of time necessary. All of the data we collect should have a time to live attached to it. Once that time frame has passed, the data is purged.<br />
<br />
The crucial point here is: <i>encrypt everything and all data expires</i>.<br />
<br />
This helps secure our user's privacy and security not just from a government agency, but also anyone who may break into our systems. Let's not forget what happened to Target. We have a tendency to think that once inside our firewalls, all data is safe. Target's failure indicates that once a malicious organization gets past your firewall, they can very easily cause catastrophic losses.<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5271388a6bb3f7ac4756d90c-960/google-cloud-snowden-slide.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5271388a6bb3f7ac4756d90c-960/google-cloud-snowden-slide.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">NSA slide published by Washington Post detailing how they are syphoning internal Google data. Note the SSL encryption note.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Point Three - Google is not your friend.</b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<b></b></div>
<br />
I use quite a few Google products and while this point seems obvious, I found it eye-opening. Google is what? An advertising company. By nature, Google's goal is to analyze your behavior and expose that data to various services. At some point using those services you are served advertisements. That is, after all, how Google makes their billions, right?<br />
<br />
This inherently makes their software vulnerable to attack. Google would never build a browser that provides end to end encryption. If they did, they couldn't read the data being sent back and forth and build an analysis of your habits. It would make Google Now useless. GMail could serve no advertisements to you.<br />
<br />
I use Google as an example here. Microsoft, Yahoo!, neither of these guys are really our friend either. It is going to take some group in the tech community to get together and build an OpenSource end to end encrypted browser. If Google or IBM were to take on this task, as Mr. Soghoian stressed, you better believe that it will not be free. They would have to make up the lost revenue dollars somehow and charging a monthly fee for access to the software is a likely avenue.<br />
<br />
<b>Point Four - The NSA is too focused on cyber-offense and not on real-world clues.</b><br />
This portion of the conversation elicited some groans from the audience. Snowden was making the point that the NSA's single-minded focus on gathering as much data as it could has made it blind to the data that matters most: what's happening in the real world. His argument followed these lines :<br />
<br />
Before the underwear bomber ever got on a plane, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/26/father-of-wouldbe-bomber-_n_404046.html">his father went to the United States embassy and told them to watch his son and get him help</a>. Before the Boston bombings, <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/russia-warned-u-s-about-tsarnaev-spelling-issue-let-him-n60836">Russia told the U.S. Government to watch Tamerlan Tsarnaev</a>. What the NSA should be doing is working to make our networks the most secure they can be. Instead they're focused on weakening them through back doors, compromised hardware, and direct taps. Perhaps if they worried more about security than attempting to gather every piece of data they could, strong signals like those from the underwear bomber's dad or the Russian's embassy would not have been ignored.<br />
<br />
With two reports, one from left-leaning <a href="http://natsec.newamerica.net/nsa/analysis">New American Foundation</a> and the other from the right-leaning <a href="http://justsecurity.org/2014/01/13/guest-post-connecting-dots/">Hoover Institute</a>, having come to the same conclusion of the system's ineffectiveness in stopping any terrorist attacks makes one wonder at the the amount of money spent and scope of the data collection. The processes have borne no fruit and yet we are spending 55 billion on them?<br />
<br />
We should focus those dollars on a more-secure internet and real-world police work, not exploiting every vulnerability that can be found.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://kswt.images.worldnow.com/images/20586086_BG1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://kswt.images.worldnow.com/images/20586086_BG1.jpg" height="238" width="320" /></a></div>
<b>Point Five - Why is all of this bad?</b><br />
The question came in from the audience: "Why is it bad for a government to have your private data, but okay for a company?"<br />
<br />
The answer came in two parts, the first from Snowden: governments can take away your Rights, companies cannot. Google can't send the police to your home for violating some new law, but the U.S. Government could.<br />
<br />
The second part of the answer is that it's not good for corporations to have all of your data either. If their systems become compromised, there goes your data and maybe your identity. Which is exactly how the NSA and other agencies around the world have acquired these vast amounts of information.<br />
<br />
Don't forget that even if you're okay with who is running the government today, you may not tomorrow nor do you know what laws may be passed tomorrow. The only way to be truly secure in your privacy is for your data to not persist <i>anywhere.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Point Six - Change starts with technology.</b><br />
Snowden and Soghoian stressed this point several times. While there is certainly a political response necessary to unfettered government access to our data, the primary response will come from the technologists. It will be us who constructs secure systems to ensure the privacy of our data. If we improve our standards, then it won't matter who is trying to access our data, it can remain secure. We'll be the ones who build the next generation browsers and network protocols.<br />
<br />
It was this point that Snowden said is why he spoke to SXSW Interactive. It was the best way to reach the most technology professionals and send this specific message.<br />
<br />
This point resonated with me. There's a cultural change that needs to happen in technology. Security and privacy cannot be tertiary thoughts. It has to be our primary thought in our designs. Those measures have to be agnostic of who is trying to access the data. Our Right to Privacy is not just privacy from a neighbor, it's privacy from anyone, including the government.<br />
<br />
<b>Closing Notes.</b><br />
Snowden ended the interview on an interesting note. I'll share the quote (with link to clip) :<br />
"<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxPKoXTKDc8&t=58m13s">...the interpretation of the Fourth Amendment has been changed - in secret - from no unreasonable search and seizure to 'hey, any seizure is fine, just don't search it' and that's something public ought to know about.</a> "<br />
<br />
Just this month <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/20/gmail-traffic-between-google-servers-now-encrypted-to-thwart-nsa-snooping/">Google has finished updating their infrastructure to encrypt all of the internal data</a>. <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Farstechnica.com%2Finformation-technology%2F2013%2F11%2Fyahoo-will-encrypt-between-data-centers-use-ssl-for-all-sites%2F&ei=cUYzU7CLBMbfsAS9oYHADg&usg=AFQjCNFJ2v5pA6jA3Y-U19zAoDF08m2v9A&sig2=sUdOdw7Ch3hOEPUyEH5xxg&bvm=bv.63738703,d.cWc">Earlier last year Yahoo promised to do the same by March of this year</a>. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/22/business/fallout-from-snowden-hurting-bottom-line-of-tech-companies.html?_r=0"> Large American tech companies have faced significant losses and are spending billions to move their data centers off of U.S. soil</a>. These disclosures will continue to reverberate throughout the technology, political, and economic worlds. <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/25/us-usa-security-obama-nsa-idUSBREA2O03O20140325">The pressure has pushed the United States Government to consider ending its bulk surveillance</a>.<br />
<br />
Regardless of what you think of Snowden, these reverberations, while painful in the short term, will only make our software and networks more secure. The better they become, the more secure we can feel about our online privacy. Our "papers" as referenced in the Fourth Amendment have evolved into digital documents and correspondence. They should be as private as the same papers that are sitting in your filing cabinet, free from search and seizure. They should be as private as the letters you put in the mailbox.<br />
<br />
We technologists are in a very unique position to shape the digital future. We should be thinking of and implementing methods that can improve our privacy and the security of our networks rather than waiting for a political response. It is clear that the government will break the rules in secrecy to get what they want. If we want to defeat that we need to build better defenses so no one can collect our digital identities.<br />
<br />
It starts with you and me.<br />
<br />
<b>Interview Video</b><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/YxPKoXTKDc8" width="560"></iframe></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-21864038450020923752014-03-17T15:04:00.000-07:002014-03-17T15:04:00.233-07:00On SXSW : 2014 Retrospective<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZpY3BOJ_pU_MEqJkCqYs6DVY1_jGhhyD2DampI3juDXvVILJJKUR7u9h7DZeoc_RWbld0gBfRqQQgZRXs0FrLsb6QxRICkL3Q1F3zlhZQTQ_xNDCqN5kXuqPMc0z1NmoXQDAe7_d3J78/w661-h882-no/IMG_20140308_211434.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZpY3BOJ_pU_MEqJkCqYs6DVY1_jGhhyD2DampI3juDXvVILJJKUR7u9h7DZeoc_RWbld0gBfRqQQgZRXs0FrLsb6QxRICkL3Q1F3zlhZQTQ_xNDCqN5kXuqPMc0z1NmoXQDAe7_d3J78/w661-h882-no/IMG_20140308_211434.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
This year's SXSW Interactive was a unique opportunity. It was an opportunity to experience Neil deGrasse Tyson's enthusiasm for science, to see and listen to Edward Snowden's first public interview, see Adam Savage be quirky and engaging, and as always, open my brain up and let people dump things in.<br />
<br />
These retrospectives help me filter out all that was poured in and find some of the key nuggets within the themes. Each person's SXSW is a little different: an amalgamation of the talks they listened to and who they met while experiencing the night life. Still, given that, there are themes that resonate through-out the experience that you'll hear talked about whether on the shuttle ride or over the tables at the food truck court.<br />
<br />
These themes fell into these categories:<br />
<ul>
<li>Privacy of your data.</li>
<li>Where are the Apps and Responsive design.</li>
<li>Wearable tech.</li>
<li>Continuing Simplicity.</li>
<li>Experiment. Be scientists.</li>
</ul>
As usual, I will write some deeper dives on each of these following this summary!<br />
<br />
<b>Privacy</b><br />
There is a renewed focus on privacy, specifically privacy of your data. With figures like Julian Assange and <a href="https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/coming-soon-virtual-conversation-edward-snowden">Edward Snowden making live virtual appearances</a>, it would be hard to say that privacy wasn't a major theme for SXSWi 2014. Both of these names tend to polarize individuals whether you believe them traitors, patriots, or something in between. I won't comment on that, but what I will comment on the effect of Wikileaks and the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/the-nsa-files">NSA files</a> have had: <i>technologists are pissed and are actively working to build better security solutions.</i> Perhaps one of the more salient points made by Snowden was that it wasn't difficult for the NSA to start vacuuming up data from across the web. That was easy. The hard part is processing the data in a meaningful way. That there was little challenge in seizing the data means that many of us have failed in our roles as stewards of user data.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://media2.newsobserver.com/smedia/2014/03/10/16/51/1adeCP.AuSt.156.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://media2.newsobserver.com/smedia/2014/03/10/16/51/1adeCP.AuSt.156.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.600000381469727px; text-align: left;">Photo by Jack Plunkett/Invision/AP</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This isn't just a message about governments, but about corporations, too. What are you doing to better secure your user's data? Do you delete it when you're done? Do you only ask for and keep the absolute minimum that you need? Is it encrypted? These should be active questions for all of us, whether we're writing the code, managing the data, or designing the interfaces.<br />
<br />
An additional point driven home: while a political change is necessary, more so is a change in the technology and its standards. The drivers of that change to secure our data will be thought-leaders in technology. Whatever the politicians do, we need to push the boundaries on security.<br />
<br />
<i>Not just because the NSA may be spying, but because <b>anyone</b> may be spying.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Apps or Responsive?</b><br />
Noticeably absent were big pushes for Apps. While people talked about building Apps in a greater context, the "Oh my God, you must have apps!" reaction has passed. In its stead is a cautionary tale about company after company that has built an App for one reason or another and not gained any tangible benefits. And don't forget the hassle that App approval presents.<br />
<br />
Many companies have built whole teams centered just on App development, sunk gobs of cash, and haven't realized a windfall of money or users. People are still trying to figure out what the rules are around what to build and what not to build as Apps. This is leading towards a trend of building flexible, scalable sites using Responsive methodologies as a stop-gap. Even then there is sub-context since most Responsive techniques are fairly immature and certainly not optimized for speed. While most technologists today will tell you to build Responsive, there are arguments to be made for device-optimized sites.<br />
<br />
The biggest concern around device-optimized sites is the scalabilty of maintenance. With the growing number of wearable devices coming, can you reasonably build for each device you want to be available on?<br />
<br />
Which leads me to...<br />
<br />
<a href="http://i.imgur.com/BuSN5xh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.imgur.com/BuSN5xh.jpg" height="320" width="297" /></a><b>Wearables, Wearables Everywhere</b><br />
Shocker, right? Not likely. With numerous conversations about wearable tech, there is definitely an air of excitement around the <i>potential</i>. But the experience with Apps has left many people cautious. A common thought in conversations around SXSW was that wearables will be awesome once dynamite Apps are built for them. But who is building the Apps? The software community is cautious while the hardware community is bullish.<br />
<br />
The end result, I'm predicting, is not going to be good for many of the wearable manufacturers. The ultra-specific devices have to be incredibly good at their one task to remain relative. How many of you, or people you know, jumped onto the <a href="http://www.fitbit.com/store">FitBit</a> band wagon only to ditch it after a few months? This type of use and discard mentality is a carry-over from the Apps phenomenon. Apps that did their job very well stick around on your device. Those that don't or lose novelty collect dust until they're eventually deleted.<br />
<br />
Therefore most of the software people are adopting a wait-and-see approach. Don't get crazy trying to be present everywhere. Be selective and husband your resources.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Simplicity, assisted by Body Cognition</b><br />
Last year I was rather impressed with the combination of <a href="http://ragoodwin.blogspot.com/2013/04/on-sxsw-2013-vanishing-interfaces.html">AI advancement with the No UI movement</a>. The crossroads of those axis of advance is a nice sweet spot where good software delivers relevant services without requiring much interaction from you.<br />
<br />
A great addition to this No UI concept is the integration of <a href="http://schedule.sxsw.com/2014/events/event_IAP21154">Body Cognition</a> principles into the design of software. Body Cognition is the science investigating how physical inputs to your body influence your perceptions at a subconscious level. I'll do a whole lot better explaining this by using some examples.<br />
<br />
Being in a room of strangers with a warm cup of coffee is more likely to make you more comfortable than if you had ice water. A heavy clipboard and lab coat is more likely to make you take a science experiment more seriously than if you just had a notepad and board shorts.<br />
<br />
When it comes to software, this is more about pleasing visual cues or cues that evoke other physical senses. Clean, fresh lines and colors are more likely to be found attractive than a messy, disheveled presentation the same way a fresh apple is more appealing than an old one.<br />
<br />
Applying this line of thought is a challenge for me. With sites that are data-heavy, finding a "clean" presentation that is also informative is not always straight-forward. Applying some of these ideas can help make the optimal path a bit more obvious.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Science means experiment, experiment, experiment!</b><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoHoqpOrdR2S8MuCRkRXISKr0bsHtRmwJDc5PIm-ZQSCgPzGGsxN4FXFW2waeFTir4vFEPuhNcT9V29gbEGM8xWqgjjwe-Q7H1fG4jAR7SZT3QOpRkoVMW8rkLI3UMPJYFnRPCh0so-G0/w990-h743-no/IMG_20140308_140716.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoHoqpOrdR2S8MuCRkRXISKr0bsHtRmwJDc5PIm-ZQSCgPzGGsxN4FXFW2waeFTir4vFEPuhNcT9V29gbEGM8xWqgjjwe-Q7H1fG4jAR7SZT3QOpRkoVMW8rkLI3UMPJYFnRPCh0so-G0/w990-h743-no/IMG_20140308_140716.jpg" height="238" width="320" /></a>If there is anything <a href="http://mashable.com/2014/03/09/neil-degrasse-tyson-sxswi-2014/">Neil deGrasse Tyson</a> and <a href="http://sxsw.com/interactive/news/2013/adam-savage-keynote-sxsw-interactive-monday-march-10">Adam Savage</a> represent, it's the scientific method. Their keynotes spent a bunch of time talking about this and stressing why it is important for our future. Adam took it another step forward emphasizing that Art is Science and Science is Art, that one cannot live without the other.<br />
<br />
A few of you may roll your eyes at this, but he has a subtle point. The scientist cannot create a hypothesis without being creative enough to think of one. The artist cannot find what is most pleasing to them without trying different techniques. In my business we exercise our creativity every day - whether designing a new interface, data model, architecture, or attempting to find a solution to a bug, it's creative thought that drives. It's the scientific method that takes a creative idea and molds it into a design pattern. It's the computer science that optimizes its performance.<br />
<br />
This means you have to experiment and allow your teams to experiment. Which also means you may have to budget some padding for that experimentation time. <a href="http://network.intuit.com/2014/03/10/intuit-sxsw/">Scott Cook</a> of Inuit fame encourages this behavior in his development teams. With a business infrastructure designed around percolating the best ideas into experiments, they spend significant amounts of money/time testing ideas understanding that the end result will be a better product. The success of TurboTax and QuickBooks speak for themselves about the potential of this type of business management.<br />
<br />
At the end of the day, as Neil stated, we can only be a competitive nation in the 21st century if we continue to teach science and be scientific minded.<br />
<br />
<b>Other Details</b><br />
There were several other interesting talks I sat in. One had the first 3D-modeled live fly-through of an active human brain. There were a few API conversations that had some tid-bits to bring back. I'll try to wrap these up into a "miscellaneous" post.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisAMKY1bDFVbNKTb-nvHSJXgY7424wVszZOQo9nNXzMiq-R7M3tJ29AFSoRNMAJpJLru3EhrT0EE_O08Vgcs_-3xzO1DTscPd2H5hZBinL6NvvJn2J-eYiv8Aby7auFKITbs-STPCaAwI/w875-h657-no/IMG_20140310_161141-MOTION.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisAMKY1bDFVbNKTb-nvHSJXgY7424wVszZOQo9nNXzMiq-R7M3tJ29AFSoRNMAJpJLru3EhrT0EE_O08Vgcs_-3xzO1DTscPd2H5hZBinL6NvvJn2J-eYiv8Aby7auFKITbs-STPCaAwI/w875-h657-no/IMG_20140310_161141-MOTION.gif" height="297" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A GIF of the 3D active brain-fly-through.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
All in all - another fun & challenging SXSWi, despite the ridiculous traffic!<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-51756613253716034622013-12-27T09:26:00.000-08:002013-12-27T09:26:39.778-08:00On Writing: A New Intro to Darkness!It's been, well, years since I've posted anything about writing. But I have been working on <i>Darkness Before Light</i> inbetween the rest of life's craziness. So I wanted share a quick bit - the latest version of the introductory paragraphs of my story. It's taken me many, many revisions to arrive at something that I'm much more proud and confident in. Take a read send feel free to critique!<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-43532e6b-3510-6c28-b7e9-5332bf21b2e3"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The black sphere of a gargantuan space station shook, vibrated by the internal explosions ripping swaths of hull from its surface. Showers of red-hot shrapnel spun off into the endless dark, chased by ephemeral trails of smoke that rapidly dissipated into space. No sounds pierced the long dark as gray specks, lit by their burning yellow chemical fuel motors, frantically rocketed away from the dying battle station. Their survivors shivered, cried, cursed, and stared into speckled deep space, not yet at the point of wondering when, or if, rescue would find them before the zero energy cold of space<span id="docs-internal-guid-43532e6b-3513-5ec9-1437-da82a00d0de6"><span style="font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> seeped into their bodies</span></span>. They were survivors, but certainly only on a delay from their fate.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The battle station heaved one more time, then split diagonally, an instant of red flame and white glow separating the pieces of the structure. Hundreds of segments, each thousands of tons massive, spread apart in a slow dance, a giant spherical puzzle coming apart in white-hot bursts of energy, crimson fire, and silent screams.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thirty vessels thundered away from the shattering battle station. Their flat, sleek hulls lit by the white exhaust of their curved, bulging engine clusters. Some were small and nimble destroyers, only a few hundred meters in length. Others were kilometer long battleships, armed with rows sleek twin-barreled Gauss cannon turrets. Two were the truly massive five kilometer long behemoths, the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Everest</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kilimanjaro</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> assault carriers. The other twenty-eight vessels were only there for their protection, for those two ships carried more than four-thousand anti-gravity tanks and twenty-thousand troops between them. The fleet stretched across thousands of kilometers of space, angling for the third planet from the star Sigma Draconis, their weapons still warm from bombarding the space stations guarding the way into the system.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sigma Draconis’s dim, cool yellow barely reflected off the hulls of the fleet. Being cooler and smaller than Sol, it was only just bright enough to turn its third planet into a point of light a little brighter than the rest of the stars stretching across the void: one small, un-twinkling speck against a backdrop of millions. The way into Sigma Draconis had been forced and the Interstellar Navy was accelerating to begin the next phase of their battle and possibly reunite mankind.</span></div>
<div>
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</span></blockquote>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-76026855959234975482013-04-10T13:22:00.000-07:002013-04-10T13:36:45.733-07:00On SXSW 2013: Vanishing Interfaces, Wearable Tech, & AI's.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR0WYxmjTcvB9FnMokwSV337eXvU5hG5NJze5KRRgoQny3yyGRQHBgDWkY0fckxagUph_g1H3fXt3n5iw2O7D84XXd77lupbgwrDFbH_p9fSk-8arwaPC7i14VVGFiPMIxUHHuC5oicFs/s1600/interfaces-everywhere.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR0WYxmjTcvB9FnMokwSV337eXvU5hG5NJze5KRRgoQny3yyGRQHBgDWkY0fckxagUph_g1H3fXt3n5iw2O7D84XXd77lupbgwrDFbH_p9fSk-8arwaPC7i14VVGFiPMIxUHHuC5oicFs/s320/interfaces-everywhere.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Interfaces. Interfaces everywhere.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Less than six years ago the Apple iPhone blew our minds with a new way to think of something we thought we knew really well: the cellphone. A couple years later, tablets crashed the party, giving us a big, rich interface to browse and connect with while leaned back in our recliners. Technologists like myself have been scrambling all the while to find the best methods to utilize the capabilities of these new interfaces ever since.<br />
<br />
The last year has presented us with the vanguard of the Wearable Tech revolution. <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-for-iphone-and-android?ref=live">Faced with products coming out of Kickstarter</a> and perhaps most prominently, the <a href="http://www.google.com/glass/start/what-it-does/">Google Glass</a> project, the equation is about to become very complex. How we think of technology is going to radically change, again, over the next five years. With it, how our devices interact with one another and how we build our applications for them will need to evolve significantly. One talk and one panel at SXSW underscored how we need to begin thinking and designing if we want to stay sane while managing a system of devices and inputs: <a href="http://www.goldenkrishna.com/">Golden Krishna's</a> <i><a href="http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_IAP1472">The Best Interface Is No Interface</a></i> , and <i><a href="http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_IAP6736">How AI Is Enhancing the User Experience</a>.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Krishna spoke specifically to the idea that we need to eliminate as many interfaces as we can in clever ways to enhance the User Experience. The AI panel emphasized the changes coming to the User Experience as predicted by products like Siri and Google Now. Together, they paint a picture of how building with an eye to streamlining interfaces with AI modules will build a new future for us - a future that is going to be increasingly filled with various devices.<br />
<br />
<b>We Are Interface Happy</b><br />
It seems that every time I'm involved in the design of a new product we focus an especially great amount of time on the interface. What buttons will go where, how big text fields will be, in what order they present, colors. Which is good, right? We want a great UX, so getting that interface right is key.<br />
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When you have a single interface, like a desktop website, this is fairly easy to maintain and design. Add a mobile version and it becomes a little more complicated. Add a 10'' tablet interface. Now add in an interface for a TV, 7'' tablet, and maybe even a car dashboard. Each adds a level of complexity and restrictions on space and sensors that may be present.<br />
<br />
Now add in wearable tech: smart watches, Glass, and even arm-bands, each with their own style of interface. We will make ourselves crazy attempting to maintain a small solar system of devices, never mind maintaining applications for all of them.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRHJ3RZ6ek8Ttfh4b6DZIUpxKh3e9fL_y6ZjEfgPIM4rEOXVNShlirsp1GqISvFOMcJRAT05pUQUMxmMB6_Ecxu-sq6lmzsG8xMOYyAnA1NOtaPBJsnkXfyYnRYN8iknm1DgN0jpZ-lQA/s1600/LG-Smart-Fridge-Thinq.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRHJ3RZ6ek8Ttfh4b6DZIUpxKh3e9fL_y6ZjEfgPIM4rEOXVNShlirsp1GqISvFOMcJRAT05pUQUMxmMB6_Ecxu-sq6lmzsG8xMOYyAnA1NOtaPBJsnkXfyYnRYN8iknm1DgN0jpZ-lQA/s320/LG-Smart-Fridge-Thinq.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.lg.com/us/refrigerators/lg-LFX31995ST-french-3-door-refrigerator">The LG Smart ThinQ Refrigerator.</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The first obvious question here is: <i>do you need to be in all of those places?</i><br />
<br />
I would actually adjust that question a bit to: <i>what functions do your products have that best fit on those interfaces?</i><br />
<br />
Eliminate the functions that don't make sense and streamline the functions that do. In fact, automate as much of the process as you can! This is something we're all already familiar with. The most commonly used version is data caching so that a user doesn't have to enter their contact or credit card information over and over again on a particular site.<br />
<br />
Here's a great example of this: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=468480">Amazon's 1-click purchase</a>. Why re-include all of these interfaces between what I want to buy and the actual purchase? Automate it and make it seamless.<br />
<br />
But how does this concept apply to all of these other devices? We're used to thinking this way with web pages, but what about with physical activities?<br />
<br />
<b>The Evolution of AI</b><br />
Seems like a bit of a stretch, I know, but this is coming. The vanguard is already here in <a href="http://www.apple.com/ios/siri/">Siri</a> and <a href="http://www.google.com/landing/now/">Google Now</a>. Each of these represents a type of agent that knows a few things about us. Google Now will tell you, without your asking, the time it takes to get home from work. Siri and Google Now both will take your voice input and perform actions that would normally be fairly complicated through a series of interfaces.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJl3wKGokf9E2Steo5G3Og7qmoOKNe-RMFfrjjZzcXjx_yq6k-bbqhmunTSzLB4fiS6JL0f-iU_6QtpNHYDLWxgLtCFlxKliJQjiYci6_BMdp0wFgNgdvOCzFfJPXR41OO_4NKUu4tC0M/s1600/google-now-directions.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJl3wKGokf9E2Steo5G3Og7qmoOKNe-RMFfrjjZzcXjx_yq6k-bbqhmunTSzLB4fiS6JL0f-iU_6QtpNHYDLWxgLtCFlxKliJQjiYci6_BMdp0wFgNgdvOCzFfJPXR41OO_4NKUu4tC0M/s320/google-now-directions.jpg" width="178" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Google Now in action.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Let's look closer at the Google Now "time to get home" use case. Normally, I would have to open up a browser, enter in some data, then pull up directions from work to home. Depending on the service I'm using, that may or may not reflect current traffic conditions. So to do that, I might have to pull up street cameras and observe what the traffic flow looks like. There's quite a few steps in that process. Nothing crazy, but there's a bit of work.<br />
<br />
Since Google Now does this already, those intermediary steps are gone and the result is automatically presented for me. This eliminates decent amount of interface.<br />
<br />
Siri's voice recognition allows similar interface-elimination. You can say to it "schedule a meeting at 4 o'clock on April 16th". Normally, you'd have to open your calendar app, swipe to your desired date, then time, then tap, then enter in some meeting details. This voice recognition eliminates all of that work.<br />
<br />
Obviously, Siri and Google Now are not Skynet. Or Johnny Five. But they are clever bits of programming that represent a personal agent. Voice processing allows them to take a set of spoken instructions and convert that to an action. The better the voice recognition tech becomes, the better the agents will be able to perform and the more interfaces they will be able to eliminate.<br />
<br />
A smaller scale example of this is the <a href="http://www.nest.com/">Nest thermostat</a>. The simple "AI" in this device learns your patterns and then begins to adjust the temperature in your home based upon what inputs you have historically given it. No more getting up in the middle of the night to adjust it. Sure, it has an app interface you can use to control it as well as an interface on the device, but the "AI" makes those redundant and simply a back-up plan.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLZZF94AK-gIRWR2Z_Zd199satR0NA9WlZSX_40lSn60XnFfwKY-dTwujoEz_C0-uA31G2jOD77tVIykmmLE5SVeqPKrOmna6i2iB4RES_kqf85QdxZuiT0wFUvOhAgiPdwmme5fJ40KE/s1600/hal-9000_cr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLZZF94AK-gIRWR2Z_Zd199satR0NA9WlZSX_40lSn60XnFfwKY-dTwujoEz_C0-uA31G2jOD77tVIykmmLE5SVeqPKrOmna6i2iB4RES_kqf85QdxZuiT0wFUvOhAgiPdwmme5fJ40KE/s320/hal-9000_cr.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What you don't want to have your phone become.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<b>AI Meets No UI</b><br />
But let's bring this back to earth. Not all of us have access to complex and robust voice recognition libraries and a network of camera-equipped cars. Many of us are, however, in a position to collect or analyze large sets of data.<br />
<br />
I'm not sure about you, but we often have a situation where we're trying to figure out what's for lunch. So let's say we want to build an app that suggests, every day, where to go for lunch.<br />
<br />
It's easy to start with something like creating a mobile app that just shows you a map of the area with restaurants pinned. The next logical addition are reviews from Yelp or Google Places.<br />
<br />
But we still have an interface, right? How can we eliminate it? Why do I even need to pull my phone out of my pocket?<br />
<br />
How about we have an AI, which pays attention to what restaurants you like to eat at, how much you spend, when you ate at them, and what types of food you like. Then, to eliminate any sort of interface, this app sends you a text around the time you normally go to lunch with its suggestion. Perhaps it even includes a suggestion of things to order at that restaurant. If you use something like a wearable health monitor, maybe it can even read your general mood and suggest that one place you love to go to get away from work stress.<br />
<br />
Maybe your smart phone's app sends the suggestion to your smart watch or your Google Glass.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP44TI2uXWvMZon1EE-NU3X9yKpjm3X4y3LqneISRtkrPSkK6e3_iX5m8PEmvQ8PAghILdZA0wYX1oZ3RN6xo8-izD8ZkAHmhZ-nCx8qq8DIWn7Eer2jOCbMWgPElxuyD_ZPSFKsb5MVg/s1600/whats+for+lunch.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP44TI2uXWvMZon1EE-NU3X9yKpjm3X4y3LqneISRtkrPSkK6e3_iX5m8PEmvQ8PAghILdZA0wYX1oZ3RN6xo8-izD8ZkAHmhZ-nCx8qq8DIWn7Eer2jOCbMWgPElxuyD_ZPSFKsb5MVg/s320/whats+for+lunch.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">App collects data, sends output to wearable tech.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Sure, an interface can still exist behind this. You can open the app and adjust parameters or inputs, but these interfaces become <i>supporting</i> elements, not the primary interface element. Data that's collected becomes the primary input, done automatically.<br />
<br />
<i>Let the robots do the work!</i><br />
<br />
<b>Its about Streamlining</b><br />
So here are the brass tacks: in just a few years, we're going to be surrounded by devices. They're all going to have an OS, varying screen sizes, and use cases where they make a huge difference and others where they don't. We have to be savvy in figuring out which interfaces makes sense to go on a device and which functions can be easily performed in that form factor.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKEi45e7_gzD5dfUQgrL8zNrTetQwnchWxDhZ5-t3pXNgIWcbWZbqSgq7MS6dEkWCeotF5_OA2u6f_T6Vatyf4IMaDWo7H4IsJF7nozlY-Ttd8X693dkLZ4tPWfsYA0nD4APb4AOfVb8E/s1600/dick_tracy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKEi45e7_gzD5dfUQgrL8zNrTetQwnchWxDhZ5-t3pXNgIWcbWZbqSgq7MS6dEkWCeotF5_OA2u6f_T6Vatyf4IMaDWo7H4IsJF7nozlY-Ttd8X693dkLZ4tPWfsYA0nD4APb4AOfVb8E/s1600/dick_tracy.jpg" /></a>Are you going to read a book on a smart watch? No. But you might set a reminder to do so. Especially if you can talk into it ala Dick Tracy, right? All it has to do is interface with your phone to gain access to something like Siri or Google Now.<br />
<br />
More importantly, we need to look for ways to leverage our data and the sensors built into these devices to eliminate UI's. Whether this is through a series of a "AI's" or sensors is going to be a decision to be made by us product designers.<br />
<br />
We will have to learn how to use a brain-device, like a smart phone or desktop computer to centralize control over a system of devices. These will control our interfaces with watches, tablets, thermostats and the like. Application of AI-type of technology will give us numerous opportunities to streamline tasks that are tedious.<br />
<br />
Are you prepared? Are you ready to start thinking of ways to kill the UIs you don't need? Are you ready to start identifying which you need and which you don't?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-45028521567392169772013-03-20T10:40:00.001-07:002013-03-20T10:42:31.033-07:00On SXSW 2013: OpenHealth, OpenEducation, CrowdFunding, OpenEverything - OpenSource Principles Continue To Change The World.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
Several discussions and talks at SXSW 2013 fit into a theme around Opensource principles. Whether they directly talked about it or only showcased a particular element of the thought-model, SXSW is a place to find some of the best and brightest discussing how Opensource is influencing our lives.<br />
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Common among them all? <i>Giving freely of your own resources to create something.</i><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt5ny80qRsSHOO1aGAwfuUsYe3HSGuO4Ltk9C9lkoHmTynQij3vfwiKwVAYeRhZLGLtQL3EOxLsmkKSK7Bn9L-m-0dqiy2UKOJu-scZMDDB6-_ZtyK7INgWKecoB_0cRj1UMmOhlsYCLg/s1600/IMG_20130308_142611.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt5ny80qRsSHOO1aGAwfuUsYe3HSGuO4Ltk9C9lkoHmTynQij3vfwiKwVAYeRhZLGLtQL3EOxLsmkKSK7Bn9L-m-0dqiy2UKOJu-scZMDDB6-_ZtyK7INgWKecoB_0cRj1UMmOhlsYCLg/s320/IMG_20130308_142611.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">3D MakerScanner in action at SXSW.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The first was the keynote by Bre Pettis. He launched his company's new 3D MakerScanner, which an scan any shoe-box sized object into a 3D model. That model can then be exported to a Makerbot for mass fabrication. The second talk, <a href="http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_IAP5118">Improve Your Business with Open Source Principles</a> by Ruth Suehle (#openbiz) from <a href="http://www.redhat.com/">Redhat</a>, underscored how Opensource principles are migrating out of the world of geekdom and into mainstream industries. She stressed to us that it's key for us, as technologists, is to find ways to not just use, but to give back to the community.<br />
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Much of what I talk about below is my interpretation of Ruth's points as well as taking them the next step in context of the rest of the content shown at SXSW. What's most astonishing to me is the tremendous potential and speed of change occurring. And it is all because of the application of a few principles driven by an active technology industry.<br />
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<b>First</b>, let's look at the classical example: Linux/Unix. It started with one man and a vision. In the decades that have pased, we now see some flavor of Linux on virtually everything. In fact, there are more computational devices running a derivative of Linux than anything else in the world. Those Android devices? All Linux based. Mac OS? Linux based. Sure, they may be heavily modified, but they are possible because of a world-wide effort to create a free, functional, capable operating system by thousands of individuals.<br />
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Redhat is perhaps the greatest example of a company endorsing Opensource software development and being financially successful. <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/red-hat-the-first-billion-dollar-linux-company-has-arrived/10692">They recently crossed the $1B revenue mark</a> while utilizing the donated efforts of who-knows how many software engineers. That is pretty good momentum for a company barely a decade old.<br />
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So that's all well and good, right? Opensource is in the domain of the IT geek, programmer, and maybe the product-idea person. It might give me newer, shinier gadgets, but that's nothing new.<br />
<br />
<b>Wrong!</b><br />
<br />
In the past two years the movement has made tremendous strides outside of technology. There are four primary areas:<br />
<br />
Healthcare<br />
Education<br />
Funding<br />
Hackerspaces/Makerspaces<br />
<br />
Below I dig into each.<br />
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<b>Healthcare - Find others and help others.</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDITisvNC-zCgKBrnI4fJHTII42Srv33Ct_laWGkyQBYNxPiCAev6kgGazMQUgWTxbLu0J-mzEpK0ze75_bTUHFI_WhusQbPemD08Dr6u-M3KwAhNzRck_DH5pAkCHqeDnh1ScBPkLgZg/s1600/Live+better,+together!+-+PatientsLikeMe.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDITisvNC-zCgKBrnI4fJHTII42Srv33Ct_laWGkyQBYNxPiCAev6kgGazMQUgWTxbLu0J-mzEpK0ze75_bTUHFI_WhusQbPemD08Dr6u-M3KwAhNzRck_DH5pAkCHqeDnh1ScBPkLgZg/s320/Live+better,+together!+-+PatientsLikeMe.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">www.patientslikeme.com</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
What a trigger word: healthcare. In the United States, this often conjures up visions of Republicans and Democrats dueling over Obamacare on Capitol Hill. In Canada, it may bring visions of people with private healthcare getting service before their public healthcare planned fellows. Elsewhere perhaps long lines at over-worked doctors.<br />
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Various groups have seen this, too, and instead of relying on our governments or insurance companies to solve the issue they have begun to build communities to allow the people to help one another. <a href="http://www.patientslikeme.com/">PatientsLikeMe</a> focuses on building smaller groups who have similar conditions and share experiences. <a href="http://www.curetogether.com/">CureTogether</a> is building groups of anonymous folks that can share information about their treatments.<br />
<br />
These groups are extracting the information they gain from their healthcare providers and putting it into a set of central locations for collaborative learning. Will it replace a doctor? No. Could it be a vehicle to alleviate a reliance on doctors to treat everything? Absolutely.<br />
<br />
Consider: do you really need to go to the doctor for every cold or flu? I would argue not. I would also argue that learning to be more self-sufficient and using services like PatientsLikeMe or CureTogether could help healthcare in a couple ways : reducing cost through fewer doctor visits and prescribed medicine.<br />
<br />
I'm excited to see how this could evolve over time. Will it come to a moment when doctors and insurance companies will actively integrate group-sourced services into their policies? That remains to be seen but don't be surprised - especially if it means a way to lower costs and increase margins.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8uXyvO06InPcGzzCeerU-QSrKoH95uJMGEqgur_I5dJ1GHv1munDqWU5IshHqvm_qbEPLNXv78SdibOXd8DlMMP0T3egLv0WhwlQyj29ngaqIqOiIeMx4u_1DwaaXoqdqQPSUpqh1fb4/s1600/matrix-morpheus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8uXyvO06InPcGzzCeerU-QSrKoH95uJMGEqgur_I5dJ1GHv1munDqWU5IshHqvm_qbEPLNXv78SdibOXd8DlMMP0T3egLv0WhwlQyj29ngaqIqOiIeMx4u_1DwaaXoqdqQPSUpqh1fb4/s320/matrix-morpheus.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Free your mind!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Education - Freely expand your mind.</b><br />
This is, perhaps, the one piece that can truly change the world. It will take time to do so and there will be people battling this tipping point, but you can count on this being a huge factor in the 21st century. How is that?<br />
<br />
There are two main threads inside of this larger effort:<br />
Free Education.<br />
OpenTextbooks<br />
<br />
There was a tremendous buzz about the web last year when <a href="http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm">MIT announced a free, online</a>, AI course. They have since continued with other topics, freely sharing knowledge. Sure, the courses are not credited, but at what point do we start to respect this line on a resume: "Completed MIT online course on business administration" or some other subject? Consider what this tells us: the individual is willing to take their time and take advantage of a course offered by a leading university.<br />
<br />
Additional resources are available as well, for free: <a href="http://www.khanacademy.com/">Khan Academy</a> and <a href="http://www.coursera.com/">Coursera</a>. People are freely donating their time and knowledge to build coursework for others to learn from. It's <b>free</b>, people! The people who are building it are doing it for <b>free</b>! The web provided the vehicle to democratize education, but this truly is democratizing learning.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxHXIyIrJu3wDhGXAYOIzBxfpbuSmvUNL2mY_cC0JKx4nXWdSjj67Z-Fk2i_quDlade97TrYuM89UsGO8Ctv0jBhG5aKHsEeXpr2343PwR9XGdPPxnBUsfAP6yOiVzgNYno4od7N-OJNo/s1600/us-history-1st-ed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxHXIyIrJu3wDhGXAYOIzBxfpbuSmvUNL2mY_cC0JKx4nXWdSjj67Z-Fk2i_quDlade97TrYuM89UsGO8Ctv0jBhG5aKHsEeXpr2343PwR9XGdPPxnBUsfAP6yOiVzgNYno4od7N-OJNo/s320/us-history-1st-ed.jpg" width="248" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cover of an OpenTextbook, credit:<br />
www.collegeopentextbooks.com</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
All because people took some of those most basic Opensource principles and said: <i>let's creating something that everyone can benefit from and let us do it for free.</i> That truly is the most basic of Opensource thought.<br />
<br />
Along with these course is an effort to write <a href="http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org/">Opentextbooks</a>. Again, people are donating time and knowledge to create text that is freely available. Download the text to your reading device and you're set. Consider the savings that could happen in public education when you can take the publishers out of the loop. Consider the savings college students would have, again, if you take the publishers out of the loop. It is a direct transfer of text from the people that know the content directly to the person wanting to learn.<br />
<br />
Hand in hand with free, online education, and this is a mix that can really change how our kids, and more so for their kids, are educated. Don't forget us, either - we are able to now expand our own skill sets, for free, using these resources.<br />
<br />
<b>Funding - Power to the people's wallet.</b><br />
This had to happen. It really did. You cannot build so many free resources without finding a way to apply the Opensource principle of providing your resources for free to the money equation. How does this work?<br />
<br />
Well, the simplest explanation is to head on over to <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/">Kickstarter</a> and start snooping around. Each of those "kickstarters" is an idea by a person or group of people who are asking you to donate funds. <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-for-iphone-and-android?ref=live">The Pebble watch</a> famously started off this way and is now in production. Several games have started this way. Most recently, this bled into pop culture with the huge speed with which the <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the-veronica-mars-movie-project?ref=live">Veronica Mars movie kickstarter</a> crossed 1 million dollars. It's now up to 3.7 million, by the way.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-rAaW1LAwMG-gCs2DcIUOGlnTXGUU3tys5Zr-BbHg7n9Ohtwo7EegAt7u6dK5Jd2kg-UA9fYt63kdUYPSAjPa9hBaMD105o5mRrlsjjJv2dpvapLMv7KtxPdObvxtPsnsrlg7l3r1w7I/s1600/pebble-watch-full2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-rAaW1LAwMG-gCs2DcIUOGlnTXGUU3tys5Zr-BbHg7n9Ohtwo7EegAt7u6dK5Jd2kg-UA9fYt63kdUYPSAjPa9hBaMD105o5mRrlsjjJv2dpvapLMv7KtxPdObvxtPsnsrlg7l3r1w7I/s320/pebble-watch-full2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A selection of Pebble watches.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Consider the broad implication this has on <b>everything</b> that requires funding: books, movies, television, software, cars. The list goes on and on. Suddenly you can take the funding out of the hands of venture capitalists and investors and put it in the hands of the people.<br />
<br />
This idea isn't necessarily new. You could equate it to the stock market. But instead of a money return, you get a product return. But don't think that Kickstarter won't soon be engaged with stock. It only takes a person to say "<i>give me X dollars for Y and you'll not only get product Y, but N stock options in return.</i>" Then anyone can be an investor through an interface centered around a specific product.<br />
<br />
Crikey, that makes me a little tingly thinking about the potential!<br />
<br />
<b>Makerspaces - Fabricating ideas.</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj00vxcrCsHSbVHkyeTO6i9AzZGre0tik8kp8vvmzBkBFWgE634C9XPLZHo0vZeYBO7_wjmiZ0wwQYgPP03rgbQMJ_e27WWHkUGjld4Y5RPERUo_7CK7NCMOGbs4TOkL2DXCcEcMaOC8w0/s1600/ATXHS-Floor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj00vxcrCsHSbVHkyeTO6i9AzZGre0tik8kp8vvmzBkBFWgE634C9XPLZHo0vZeYBO7_wjmiZ0wwQYgPP03rgbQMJ_e27WWHkUGjld4Y5RPERUo_7CK7NCMOGbs4TOkL2DXCcEcMaOC8w0/s320/ATXHS-Floor.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A photo of the ATX Hackerspace in Austin, TX.<br />
Not mine, found on hackerspace wiki.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This is awesome and I love that people are doing this! So what is a <a href="http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/757_Labs">Makerspace or Hackerspace</a>? Essentially, it's a club of people that, well, build stuff. They may or may not pay a monthly due to have access to a space which has a whole bunch of things. Computers, Makerbots, mainframes, laser cutters, drill presses, circuit boards, robots, you name it, they probably have it. The dues go to purchasing these items and as a member, you get access to not just the equipment, but also to the people who have knowledge using them.<br />
<br />
Suddenly the creative juices move out of the office building or garage and into a community of people who are <b>paying</b> to spend time creating things for, well, the sake of creating something. Sure, a bunch of those folks are thinking that down the road it may be lucrative, but to get there the act of creation must happen and that's what these spaces are for.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Wouldn't it be neat to...</i><br />
<i>I wonder if we could...</i><br />
<i>Hey - I had this idea...</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Add a few doses of high octane coffee or booze and you have a mixture that could alter minds. The Makerbots and Maker 3D Scanner, launched at SXSW Interactive 2013, fast forward this effort by providing cheap methods to fabricate ideas. The plethora of Opensource software available simplifies the integration of software with fabricated products. And let's not forget the <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/2011/05/10/google-picks-arduino-for-android-open-accessory-kit/">Google Arduino integrated circuit board</a> plugged into Android or the <a href="http://www.ti.com/analog/docs/enggresdetail.tsp?familyId=82&genContentId=1037">Texas Instruments' modular circuits</a>!<br />
<br />
Hardware is sexy again. Hardware + Opensource software is kickassenly sexy.<br />
<br />
Example Makerspaces:<br />
<a href="http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/757_Labs">757 Labs</a><br />
<a href="http://atxhackerspace.org/wiki/Main_Page">ATX Hackerspace</a><br />
<br />
<b>What Potential!</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Q1va13grylOXyqoX6pkBuKIsmo3DRy1Tf5XJsvb_DOj4i0TvXEVKkOVNdl8U2n0IYsjba_gd4BBHrknC4EWIzMW9yFt65iZYg08Er-d4D0mu3J_eRVOJXsf9wPkqy9U64f7PN4sqCgQ/s1600/mind-blown.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Q1va13grylOXyqoX6pkBuKIsmo3DRy1Tf5XJsvb_DOj4i0TvXEVKkOVNdl8U2n0IYsjba_gd4BBHrknC4EWIzMW9yFt65iZYg08Er-d4D0mu3J_eRVOJXsf9wPkqy9U64f7PN4sqCgQ/s1600/mind-blown.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mind = blown.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Think about this for a moment. A few people in a Makerspace could fabricate an object, maybe write some software for it. But maybe they need some insight on a problem, so they hop online to MIT or Khan Academy, poke around and find a course. They take some time to learn about the problem and find a solution to their idea's hurdle.<br />
<br />
Then they jump on Kickstarter and say: <i>Look what we created. Fund us and we can take this from just a neat idea to a viable product</i>. A whole bunch of people jump in, thinking it's an awesome product, and then months later, we see a new product roll out. Maybe it completely changes how we think about our health. PatientsLikeMe start talking about how this thing has helped them and then others adopt the same tech, improving a bunch of people's lives.<br />
<br />
This isn't a dream - this is a real possibility and the entire chain of events can exist outside of the traditional models of creating a business, product, and getting it to the people who need it most.<br />
<br />
<b>How are you utilizing Opensource principles?</b><br />
It's easy for us to grab some product of Opensource thought and use it to our own advantage. But are you giving back? There are many ways to work in the space ranging from programming or marketing, to evangelizing and funding. The system works best when you just don't take, but also give.<br />
<br />
What's more, how is your company participating? Are you another RedHat and finding ways to leverage the principles and thought processes? Or are you a closed environment? You cannot ignore the influence the open thought movement is having on the world around you. Businesses will need to find a way to integrate, accept, and leverage - especially if they want to stay ahead of the curve.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-16536585163508693482013-03-15T12:23:00.002-07:002013-03-15T12:29:35.535-07:00On SXSW: 2013 Retrospective<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU_y8o1CfXy60nh_5nmNPCEjaK_QmRHPZ0A_MS9rv-neFcn4oqtXBlKa4w4CIfO8D5IMGaRG9R92cmoEaqqZtvlV10gec3NPTPD_9d7_Pb_pcMK1phNj1F74XQr2OhI_WxcZ5-5GYp0UQ/s1600/sxsw-logo-2011-e1331152356668.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU_y8o1CfXy60nh_5nmNPCEjaK_QmRHPZ0A_MS9rv-neFcn4oqtXBlKa4w4CIfO8D5IMGaRG9R92cmoEaqqZtvlV10gec3NPTPD_9d7_Pb_pcMK1phNj1F74XQr2OhI_WxcZ5-5GYp0UQ/s320/sxsw-logo-2011-e1331152356668.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
I've attended two SXSW's now, both as a representative of <a href="http://www.dominionenterprises.com/">Dominion Enterprises</a>. Both have been eye-opening experiences, each with their own "flavor". I'm sure this flavor is a bit different for everyone since the ingredients reflect the panels, talks, and networking one attends. Last year I was impressed by the focus on story telling, tipping points, and DevOps. This year it was a different perspective and one focused on two things significantly different:<br />
<br />
Simplicity. A Better Place.<br />
<br />
The last ten years has bombarded us with a myriad of technology: phones, big tablets, small tablets, apps, Android, iOS, Blackberry - you get the picture. The choices and decisions we make between these items shapes our experience of the world around us. It seems that the very near future is going to see a new evolution of technology and applications focused on diminishing, or at least minimizing, the disruption devices and applications present. Like last year, I'll be digging further into each of the topics below.<br />
<br />
So how did I get Simplicity out of <a href="http://sxsw.com/interactive">SXSW</a>? I mean, one is surrounded by gadgets and apps and ideas while there, right?<br />
<br />
<b>Simplicity: The Amazing Vanishing Interface.</b><br />
This one trend is likely to be the "smart phone" of this decade. Last decade we received a horde of new screens and operating systems to manage. Never mind all that "smart" tech that's showing up in watches, glasses, microwaves, thermostats, dashboards and anything else that has a power source.<br />
<br />
How can we reasonably expect everyone to keep up with three, really five common devices: phone, tablet, desktop computer, television, and car? Depending on your choices, you might have five completely different operating systems, set of applications, and ecosystems.<br />
<br />
<i>You do it by removing the interface and constructing smart controlling devices.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
There really isn't a reason for your TV to be a smart device. Your computer, tablet, and phone already are. And they're perfectly capable of managing your TV. They're also capable of managing your car dashboard. Devices are going to start forming into ecosystems of open and closed groups, with dumb devices acting as satellites to your smart devices. Things like Google Glass will plug into your phone the same way Pebble does. All of the fitness bands and gadgets will also extend your phone's capability.<br />
<br />
<i>The Smart Phone is not a phone. It's a sensor and a broadcaster. It's an interface to AI's.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixOepn9njEpptEc7HpVAG6pnejlz2ySvvE87zdAnCbXPAyoBShFIqb-Gba4VGtgbywpuTzAr_ozwZhUF6O8yZHAS8gjnf6I9yVfP1_mUzRo5DwTD6w5uB3UbgPX49nJdzLqiwUj7u_H38/s1600/IMG_20130308_215828.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixOepn9njEpptEc7HpVAG6pnejlz2ySvvE87zdAnCbXPAyoBShFIqb-Gba4VGtgbywpuTzAr_ozwZhUF6O8yZHAS8gjnf6I9yVfP1_mUzRo5DwTD6w5uB3UbgPX49nJdzLqiwUj7u_H38/s320/IMG_20130308_215828.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Downtown Austin with JWST model in foreground</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Product designers are starting to see this and are beginning to <a href="http://nointerface.tumblr.com/">eliminate unnecessary application interfaces</a>. The <a href="http://www.nest.com/">Nest thermometer</a> learns your patterns so you don't have to manage it. Sensors in car doors and in bumpers automatically open doors or lift gates for you. This trend of seamlessly integrating robotic action into your life is going to continue at a rapid pace and your smart phone is going to be the brains that manages all of it.<br />
<br />
AI's like Siri and Google Now are going to continue to expand and become better, eliminating bulky forms. Start-ups are rolling out industry specific AI's (think travel, food) and these will streamline what is today a very input-heavy experience. Why should we always re-enter the same data over and over? Why couldn't an agent existing on our device auto-supply data points and learn our behavior patterns?<br />
<br />
In the end, experiences will become simpler. We will configure the dumb devices around us through our smart device to respond to our particular set of unique needs.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, I suspect the car industry is going to be the last to realize and implement these ideas.<br />
<br />
<b>A Better Place: Big Open Thinking.</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjACgjkHeVMwLOhE8TV0xmOsUy4JXelDh0iUbvL2WbofxUp9gNrLzK7xzjrhcQ7ujp5MB45OpvoYlznG6le7PA_ThNKUgYZzPkUZzvbtSgtDGaREG4GYSwluweVEoakf2Iqd2e9Ta8zosU/s1600/IMG_20130308_142623.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjACgjkHeVMwLOhE8TV0xmOsUy4JXelDh0iUbvL2WbofxUp9gNrLzK7xzjrhcQ7ujp5MB45OpvoYlznG6le7PA_ThNKUgYZzPkUZzvbtSgtDGaREG4GYSwluweVEoakf2Iqd2e9Ta8zosU/s320/IMG_20130308_142623.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bre Pettis launching the Maker 3D Scanner at SXSWi.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
OpenSource has been a buzz word for a long time. Emerging today is "Moonshot Thinking". Combined, these concepts have a tremendous amount of power. Now add to that mix Makerspaces or Hackerspaces and you have a recipe for real, tangible change. What's more, they are already altering the world around us, bit by bit.<br />
<br />
We're seeing the effects of big thinkers with resources in things like Google Fiber and SpaceX. What is happening on a smaller scale and gradually infiltrating other aspects are big thinkers using OpenSource community principles to affect world-wide change. Linux was, perhaps, the first few bars of what's a greater piece which involves the ingenuity displayed in Makerspaces around the world: people with knowledge joining others with different knowledge and building things just for the sake of creating them.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtCUoZgfQbAPVatahKoMZaBbVkYA_Kf8tA26mVNtoIm57TI5ZM_0-_iMJJz6UEizaFKacR5cg6NRYOyn_2okf921PESMTjlZWNw0JR3ihxgmesH9g0Ziy_qIDUfHHoKjPqxmj84mjv954/s1600/IMG_20130311_130738.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtCUoZgfQbAPVatahKoMZaBbVkYA_Kf8tA26mVNtoIm57TI5ZM_0-_iMJJz6UEizaFKacR5cg6NRYOyn_2okf921PESMTjlZWNw0JR3ihxgmesH9g0Ziy_qIDUfHHoKjPqxmj84mjv954/s320/IMG_20130311_130738.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">LeVar Burton speaking at the 100 Year Starship Panel.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Education and health care are both evolving under the Open principle. MIT, <a href="https://www.coursera.org/">Coursera</a>, <a href="https://www.khanacademy.org/">Khan Academy</a>, and <a href="http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org/">OpenTextbooks</a> epitomize Open learning. <a href="http://www.patientslikeme.com/">PatientsLikeMe</a> and <a href="http://curetogether.com/">CureTogether</a> are the first steps in democratizing health care to groups of people. OpenPacemaker has solved basic issues within pacemaker software that I'm sure none of us realized even existed.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://100yss.org/">100 Year Starship</a> project exemplifies this on a massive scale.<br />
<br />
Our challenge is going to be adapting modern business practices to a world that is not closing, but opening it's doors. No one has a true hold on any knowledge or content today. Will we also be able to leverage the OpenSource community? Will we also be able to Moonshot Think and stretch for big, beneficial goals?<br />
<br />
<b>Conclusion</b><br />
There are strong undercurrents rippling beneath our every day lives. They start in the depths around technological innovation and are finding their way into many industries - industries we cannot live without or succeed without. The success of certain types of thought are being applied in new, creative ways to old problems in education and health care. New thought is changing how people are thinking of devices and how they enrich our lives - and by extension how they change those old-world problems.<br />
<br />
SXSW is a great place to get a tad of exposure to those currents. And, one hopes, enough warning to keep one's head above water when those currents become a wave of change.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-56744993790280047922013-01-15T09:25:00.000-08:002013-01-15T09:25:02.377-08:00Lucky 7 Work In Progress<br />
Lucky 7? What's that?<br />
<br />
Well, there's this "game" where authors (or wanna-be's in my case) share their lucky 7 lines. You pick either page 7 or 77, scroll down 7 lines, then share 7 lines of your WIP!<br />
<br />
Here are my Lucky 7 from <i>Darkness Before Light - Part 1 </i>:<br />
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.7780937443021685" style="font-weight: normal;"></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.7780937443021685" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gabriel shook his head slowly, smirking. Lucy could be such a computer sometimes. Horns and drums played a few hundred meters away, orchestrating the rising and swaying anthem of the United Terran Government, but Gabriel wasn’t paying any particular attention. His mind diverted, remembering how it all began.</span></b></div>
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.7780937443021685" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> At fourteen he had been scooped up, having scored very high in spatial awareness and computational skills, and thrust into the nascent Urban Combat Armor training program. His class was the third into the academy. One of the first things they did was add the brain, ear, and body implants that allowed him to merge with the ten meter tall robots and their assistant AI’s.</span></b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.7780937443021685" style="font-weight: normal;"><div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.7780937443021685" style="font-weight: normal;">
</b></div>
</b></blockquote>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-36887123196801376712012-05-01T09:21:00.001-07:002012-05-01T09:21:10.082-07:00The Littlest Journey. The Greatest Journey.<br />
First, watch this:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/9D05ej8u-gU?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
<br />
Our story starts with cataclysm and a fraction of a mote of tiny: a quantum of tininess. There's incomprehensible light, flame, burning plasma and speed - such speed as no can imagine. A velocity so great that everything is a passing smear, blended colors of burning reds, boiling blues, brilliant white.<br />
<br />
And then darkness.<br />
<br />
And cold. Oh, so cold. The world is black and the numbness of cold is beyond measure. It is lonely here, speeding in the dark, out into nothing.<br />
<br />
But what's this? Something tugs, it pulls. Look! There is another. What is it? Is it me? Am I it? It is a mystery, but it tugs at me and soon we spin, together, like two lovers joining hands, a hug between a father and his daughter, two pieces of a puzzle joining.<br />
<br />
And there are more of us. First another pair. Then eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, one-hundred twenty-eight, two-hundred fifty-six, five-hundred twelve, one-thousand twenty-four, and so on. We pull together, finding one another, but lost in the deep endless blackness.<br />
<br />
Still we speed through the void, the endless dark. There is no edge to be seen, just a world of black. Yet we continue to find more of ourselves, drawing together. We are a teeming mass and together we generate our own warmth. Our own heat. We bump into one another and it is good. We have a home and that home is with one another.<br />
<br />
There are so many of us now, I feel the crush of the others and this excites me. We spin and twirl, dance and dive, but always with our pairs, always together. There is no time, just our endless dance.<br />
<br />
But the weight! The pressure. The gravity, it tugs, it pulls and as it pulls the excitement builds. The heat, it is nearly unbearable but fulfilling all the same. We are together, we are one.<br />
<br />
We are a dusty mass, I can feel it, pulling together. Somehow I can sense our shape, a disk, spinning & flattening.<br />
<br />
Oh! Suddenly light - bright, incomprehensible, burning light. It is everywhere, it is penetrating, it is blazing. <br />
<br />
It is me! I am the source of the light. It is us! We burn, we blast forth into the darkness, illuminating the void, shining out onto the dusty disk spreading around us. We are the bright watcher, the flame in the black, the steward of ourselves.<br />
<br />
We can see other masses in the dusty disk, the gradually growing spheres, not as great as ourselves, but our light bathes them in warm, great light. Some of them are hard, others are wispy like great dust balls. Some are dark and black, some are bright and red, others are cool blue or dirty tans. They race around us, colliding, and dancing about. Soon there is no dust, but just our companions, little worlds, orbiting about us, reflecting some of our light back at us, gently tugging at us, while we greatly tug, swing them about us.<br />
<br />
And there! In the darkness about us, there is another point of light blazing out of the dark. And another! Another! They are everywhere and they are like us! The dark is not so dark anymore. The dark is not so cold anymore. It is satisfying, knowing we are not the only ones in the void, that there are other bright flames in the dark. My dancing partner and I, we twirl and spin with an excited happiness.<br />
<br />
The pressure, it is so great. It presses and I feel those around me pulling at me. Their light shining, pouring out of them. Some are merging, fusing, becoming.... like me, but different. They are somehow the same, but bigger. Different. They shine different colors than me.<br />
<br />
My spinning, twirling partner grows closer, moving ever closer, our dance pressing closer, our dips and dives tighter and then - in an instant - my partner is me and I am my partner. We are something greater, a combination of what we were, but now different. We shine a different color.<br />
<br />
The others, around us, they too are fusing, merging into one. And some of them into others, creating yet something else, something new. Something we don't know, but once we fuse, we feel right. We balance. We find others like us to dance with, or perhaps we find two others smaller than us to dance with. Still we dip and dive, swirl and twirl, exalt in our bright, burning, existence.<br />
<br />
But we cannot dance as fast. We are heavier. We are slower.<br />
<br />
Soon our light changes, our bright, massive, burning dance moves from brilliant white, to yellow, to orange, and now to red. We are massive, swallowing some of our companions, making them a part of us, breaking them down into smaller pieces. They fuse with some of us, some of us with them.<br />
<br />
Wait - are we falling? Why are we falling? What is falling? We are racing, falling together into a great, massive, heavy, grave heap. The pressure: it compresses, and presses, and constricts, and binds. Our dance! We cannot dance.<br />
<br />
We. Must. Break. Free.<br />
<br />
Bright, brilliant, magnificent light! Everywhere! It burns, it excites! It comes from us and we are racing, again, into the dark void. Reds and blues and yellows echo around us, flaming plasma into the void.<br />
<br />
And then it's dark. Again. And cold. Oh so cold. But I am still me, merged with my partner and our partners after that. We are not a part of a great whole anymore, but alone, and our dance is slow. There is no light, except those others out there, flaming in the darkness.<br />
<br />
It is lonely, again.<br />
<br />
We are falling towards one of those points of light. It's just a yellow dot, at first. But gradually it begins to grow and as we approach, I can feel its warmth. Just a bit. I dance a bit faster with my partners. Just a little. But those little bits become greater, adding up. The point of light is now massive, I cannot see around it.<br />
<br />
Its brilliant yellow light is everything.<br />
<br />
I'm... falling, again! What is this? It's blue and white and green and tan. It fills my sight and a I burn, falling towards it, through a sea of pale blue, towards greens and browns and things. I am whisked about, floating, then falling, then racing.<br />
<br />
Things move about below me, around me, above me. This one, it inhales me.<br />
<br />
I am... what am I now? I dance about, warm, twirling with my partners. This thing I am a part of, that I am, it has arms and legs. It does not just dance about, it moves, with purpose, it does things. Things I did not know, but somehow... know?<br />
<br />
I feel... joy? Oh what joy! I did not know that word, but now I know it. Love! I feel love, beautiful warm love, like the brilliant sun I was a part of before, shining through this thing I am, this person. This person has found their partner, their love, like my bond with my partner, who I first found in the darkness.<br />
<br />
These people, they move like we, dancing about, twirling and growing close. A kiss, a hug. They build things, they work to understand how I work, how we work, and everything works. And this love, we create something new with it.<br />
<br />
Little other people who dance and sing and love and cry. A part them is like me, a spinning bit of me, sent from a glowing star to this little blue and white and green and tan world. They are a part of something and that something is a part of me and at the same time just like me. But different.<br />
<br />
All the while, shining out of the sky at us, are our brothers and sisters, living in their giant bright burning suns. Watchers in the dark, stewards of everything around them. It is a happy thing.<br />
<br />
We live. We love. We cry. We are angry. We are happy. We are sad. We aspire. We are rejected. We destroy. We create. Life is beautiful and it is hard and it is easy and it whips us about. Still, we dance our dance with our partners. Sometimes they leave, sometimes they return. But we always find our dipping and diving partners while we experience this life as a person.<br />
<br />
What is this? Someone has... died? Our partner! Our love! What is this, death? I feel... sadness. Oh what sadness. Crushing, black, dark sadness. It is like the cold, racing darkness. I am warm, but cold, feeling this. But those others, like me, they are still there. They are moving on, no longer a person, but part of this little world.<br />
<br />
They are a part of its blue skies, white clouds, green forests, tan ground.<br />
<br />
And soon, my person, too, is near death It is tough to function. Things don't move like they should and I cannot dance with who I should while inside and moving about this person. Then it becomes cold, again.<br />
<br />
Not like the deep, never ending dark. But it is cooler here. The sun still shines in the sky, spreading its warm embrace across the land. Maybe soon I will be a part of another person and those things that are uniquely living - love, hate, happiness, and sadness - will be a part of me and myself a part of them, again.<br />
<br />
It will happen, in time, because I am star dust and sometimes I burn in the brightest star, over flowing with energy, and sometimes I am part of a person, aware.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-65245695423703590952012-04-30T07:49:00.002-07:002012-04-30T07:49:56.038-07:00On Poetry: Against All We Thought We Knew<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I figured I'd end National Poetry Month with another of my sappy love poems from years ago. This was written with the hope in mind that I'd, as a introspective and wanderlust-obsessed teenager, find someone to truly fall in love with.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Enjoy! & as always, feel free to link to or +1.</span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Against All We Thought We Knew</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How much time do we spend </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sending prayers to silent skies </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While trying not to give in </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To lonely, desperate sighs</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We're always asking when </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We're always asking who </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thinking of all that's been </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Love that hasn't proved true </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then water falls on a field </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Barren, where no love grew </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hard soil that's slow to yield </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Against all we thought we knew </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A smile and a slow, sweet kiss </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A hug and two hands, together </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In those hearts, there's a bliss </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In those hearts, there's another </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Life without and love without </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another soul and another heart </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Is no life, just more doubt </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Its love tearing itself apart</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">- Ryan A. Goodwin</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-71740433412502612212012-04-25T15:57:00.000-07:002012-04-25T15:59:56.994-07:00Bad business is just about money. Good business is about a great product.<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/104560124403688998123/posts">+Mark Zuckerberg</a> wrote in the Facebook prospectus: "we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services."
<br /><br />
This is being presented by <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/author/nicholas-carlson">Nicholas Carlson</a> at Business Insider in his article "<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/maybe-mark-zuckerberg-doesnt-like-money-enough-to-run-a-100-billion-company-2012-4">The Problem With Mark Zuckerberg</a>" as a problem, that shareholders should watch out. The implication is that the only reason a business exists is to make money. His words:
</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>
There is a nagging concern for potential Facebook shareholders: the guy running the company doesn't care that much about making money.</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mr. Carlson goes on to highlight this comment, from a co worker of Zuckerberg's, as a thing to cause concern:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>
if he had to choose, he'd rather be the most important/influential person in the world rather than the richest.</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
Doesn't this seem like a tremendous loss of perspective? Companies exist to provide a service - the money comes from the <i>service</i> or <i>product</i> provided. The companies that provide the best services are the ones that make the most money, with the money made a result of the service provided. People pay for a product, they don't just hand you cash.
<br /><br />
Mr. Carlson tries to use <a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/106189723444098348646/posts">+Larry Page</a> and <a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/101943806155838939404/posts">+Bill Gates</a> as examples of people who built great services but who are primarily motivated to make money. I would challenge that point of view. It seems clear to me that both of these men have had success because they focused on building the best product in their areas: internet indexing & operating system software, respectively. I'm sure they thought to themselves at various points "I'm sitting on a goldmine with this!". Still, their focus wasn't about extracting cash from people, it was about providing people with outstanding <i>services</i> first.
<br /><br />
It's the money-first mentality that has crippled big business for a long time. It's why the greatest companies of today have been founded by young, motivated people, like the Gates, Pages, & Zuckerbergs of the world - they challenge themselves with building a great product.
<br /><br />
At what point did American business people suddenly transition from building great products to just making money? The two greatest recent examples of this mentality have been in banking and automotive industries. In one, the desire to make money off of people's poor decisions took the feet out from underneath the credit market. In the other, the desire to maximize profits at the expense of quality and product led to US government bailouts.
<br /><br />
What was the motivation in both of these instances? Money. Just money. It wasn't about creating a good service or a good product. It was this mentality that the banks and the automakers were just in existence to make more money for the shareholders. This is not just bad business, it is the worst business.
<br /><br />
Why doesn't big business make the connection between the success of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Craigslist, and Bill Gate's Microsoft and their intense focus on product? The disconnect is stark in an article like Carlson's on Business Insider. It's this same disconnect that echoes in our nation's politics around copyright and file sharing.
<br /><br />
At what point did the perspective get lost? Is this some artifact of the '70's and '80's notion that business is war? Are we seeing the influence of a widely taught facet of business education? When will we see the influence of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0wKuO8gWlY">Arnoldo Hax</a> and his Delta Model? Business is not about war or your competition or the shareholders.
<br /><br />
It's about the product and your product's relationship with your consumer. <i>Business is love</i>. The businesses you love are the businesses you stay with.
<br /><br />
Apple epitomizes this to such a great degree that I doubt you could find a better example. On Mr. Hax's Delta Model they have, without a doubt, targeted System Lock In. They want you in their walled garden. And you know what? People don't mind that walled garden because the products are outstanding.
<br /><br />
Yes, they make money from those products. Yes, you pay a premium on those products. But the focus is always on the product. This quote from Steve Jobs sums it up best, I think:
</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>
Sure what we do has to make commercial sense, but it's never the starting point. We start with the product and the user experience.</i></span></blockquote>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You've got it wrong, Mr. Carlson. You've got it wrong, shareholders. It's about product first. Zuckerberg's obsession with building the best product is exactly where it should be. It shouldn't be just about making money - that would be Facebook's demise.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><i>
Bad</i> business is just about money. <i>Good</i> business is about a great product.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-91964303080622775152012-04-19T07:15:00.000-07:002012-04-19T07:15:10.115-07:00On Writing - Excerpt #2 from Darkness Before LightI've been working to get more scenes built for Darkness Before Light, filling in gaps in the story and fleshing out details that weren't previously included in "part 1". Here's a short scene after a battle in which Gabriel Rodriguez and Josette Durrant ask some questions of a high-ranking Draconian official they've captured.<br />
<br />
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gabriel closed his eyes, hiding the HUD displayed on the inside of his helmet. For a time he relaxed, letting the UCA’s cocoon embrace him with its shock absorbers. Electronic whirs and a soft rumble were the only sounds, muted by the helmet. It was time to watch, wait, and hope for support to move in. Durrant should be in direct laser communication with the fleet as it passes over the crater and hopefully arranging for some sort of extraction.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The speakers in his helmet crackled.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Alright, guys, here’s the plan,” Durrant said. She sounded... resigned. “They’re pushing several battalions of armor in our direction, trying to open up a corridor. Draconian air defenses are still too thick to risk extraction by Pelican, so we’re on our own until the sliders get here.”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gabriel sighed, keeping his eyes closed.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“So we’re supposed to sit here and wait, LT?” Katakana asked.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“That’s exactly it,” Durrant responded. “We’re going to hole up in the bottom of this crater with the Minister and wait for reinforcements. It is way too risky for us to try it and get out on our own.”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gabriel couldn’t hear it, but he imagined Katakana, Neferet, and Biaka all cursing to their AI’s. The speakers crackled again.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What do you think, Rod?” Durrant said.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He shrugged, keeping his eyes closed. “It’s not optimal, that’s for damn sure. But we have no idea what’s happened since dropping into this hole. That was a few hours ago and we have, what? Six hours? Till dawn? We have to herd the Minister through all of that rubble. They’d probably take off as soon as we came under fire. Yea, waiting is going to be our best bet.”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Ditto. Exactly what I was thinking. It sucks, but we don’t have much of an option,” Durrant said.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Exactly.”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There were a few moments of silence.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Off the record question for ya, Rod,” Durrant said, her feminine voice introspective.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Sure, LT.” Gabriel quirked an eyebrow.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“When we’re off the record, I’m Josette. Understood?”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Loud and clear, LT.” Gabriel smirked.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“As long as that’s understood.” She sighed. “You think this is right?”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What? Waiting?”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Don’t be dense. The invasion. All of this. These guys have been on their own for fifty freaking years. They don’t need us,” she said.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gabriel nodded to himself. That was clear. They’d only bombarded them from orbit. No one needed that. “Maybe it’s not about them needing us, but us needing them. You know how piss-poor things have been on Earth. Every hunk of rock between Pluto and Mercury has mines and manufacturing facilities constructed on it. Maybe we need this planet’s resources. Maybe all of Sigma Draconis?”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He paused and she waited.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Still, what bothers me the most, Josette, is what we don’t know. The UTG only tells us just enough and we all know that earth is far too over crowded. Even with the Mars and Moon colonies. Those are a drop in the bucket. Now that I think about it, maybe this is all about expansion and finding places to move people outside of Sol. Sigdrac kinda sucks, but we have no idea where a gravity wave from here might take us.”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yea, so maybe this whole thing is to secure a way out of Sol and to spread humans about?” Durrant asked.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Pretty much, something along those lines. Only the corporations pissed the Draconians off so much when they first opened the mining and processing posts here that they threw a monkey wrench in the whole scheme. They don’t tell us too much about what really happened out here.”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Durrant hummed to herself for a moment. “Rod, we could ask, y’know.”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gabriel’s eyes shot open. Ask? “What, you mean Mubarak?”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Sure. Why not?”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Uh, well. Shit-well, I don’t think we could get into any trouble, could we?” Gabriel stammered.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“There are no standing regulations against the interrogation of prisoners as long as one does not break the UTG Geneva regulations section 1064,” Lucy said into the conversation.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“You hear that, Rod?” Durrant asked.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jack must have just told her the same thing. “Yea, Lucy just shared that bit. Go for it.”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Alright, we’ll keep this short, just in case and I’ll keep you patched in,” Durrant said.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gabriel listened as she communicated with the Draconian convoy vehicles, trying to get a secure channel through to Christopher Mubarak.</span></b></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yes, Lieutenant, what do you want?” said a moderate, tired voice.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Prime Minister?” Durrant said.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“This is him. Make this quick, my arm is throbbing where it is broken, no thanks to you and your men,” he said.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gabriel quirked an eyebrow.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I’ll try. Just a few questions.”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Silence answered her.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Okay. Do you remember what happened that caused the rebellion?”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There was a long pause.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Sir, do you-”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I heard your question, Lieutenant. I’m trying to decide if you intend this insult or if you truly do not know. How old are you?”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gabriel raised both eyebrows. Insult?</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I am twenty, sir,” Durrant said.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quiet moments.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“You truly do not understand then, do you? You are all drones serving your corporate masters without any knowledge one way or another. Earth must be in as sad a state of affairs as we all fear. I am not happy that you have come back to Hydra, Terran.”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Wait, Hydra?”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yes, Hydra. The planet you’re standing on. The planet you have dropped kinetic energy weapons on and killed tens of thousands of MY PEOPLE! Hydra, you incompetent fool!” Mubarak’s voice strained, the helmet speakers crackling.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“So why did it start? What happened? We are taught that the Draconians rebelled over bad pay and questionable working conditions,” Durrant asked, relentless.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gabriel could hear a deep breath being taken.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“That is correct. But the way you say it is understated. Thousands of people were dying out here. From exposure, decompression, starvation - it was a nightmare. Earth, for all the closeness that FTL travel brought us, might as well had been eighteen light years away. No one cared. We had no representation in the government. The companies, they controlled everything and everyone. It was desparate and we fought back when we felt we finally had enough infrastructure to support ourselves. No one had fought an interstellar battle before and so we were able to have time to build.” Mubarak paused.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gabriel sat, staring without sight at his HUD. Could it be true? One had to consider the source. Mubarak is, afterall, the number one politician on Hydra. Hydra. What an odd name.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“And now you have returned and all but destroyed one of our precious cities. You will bring back your government and your corporations and my people will suffer again. We are used to hardship, but we would much rather do it on our terms. Not yours, Terran.”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Things have changed, sir,” Durrant said after a few moments. “Regulations have reduced a great amount of the business influence. There are watchdog groups. This could be a good thing to have mankind reunited.”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Maybe, young Lieutenant, maybe. Is there anything else you want to talk about? I am a tired old man.”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“No, sir, thank you for your time,” Durrant said.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Channel closed, sir,” Lucy said.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Well, that was interesting,” Durrant said to Gabriel.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yea, it was. You think he’s exaggerating?”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Sure, of course he is. But there’s almost always some truth behind the exaggeration. And of course the UTG would downplay the severity of the situation. We have been at war, after all, for fifty years.”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I suspect you’re right about that, Josette,” Gabriel said. “Maybe after all of this is settled we’ll really find out what happened.” He paused. “Or not.”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Agreed. Alright, Rod, let’s focus and get the watch rotation setup. Make sure everyone gets at least a few hours of rest.”</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yes, sir. Too bad these things don’t have showers. Plasma swords, but no showers. Go figure,” Gabriel said.</span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.43678162223659456"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Durrant chuckled. “You joined the army, Rod, not the navy.”</span></b></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-34982703411858797102012-04-10T10:15:00.001-07:002012-04-10T10:20:57.076-07:00On SXSW: Don't Shoot The Player<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="256" src="http://behance.vo.llnwd.net/profiles8/951917/projects/3363285/hd_1949cc2f3bf3a8fbc63ce4bde335f437.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://ogilvynotes.com/49790/456850/sxsw-2012/dont-shoot-the-player-while-theyre-learning">Ogilvy Notes</a> - Don't Shoot The Player</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I had the pleasure of attending a talk by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Salen">Katie Salen</a> about what she's learned from game design in regards to learning. That sounds simple, but I was pleasantly surprised at the depth of experience she shared with us. Her talk ranged from experiences in designing learning exercises for children to conversations she's had with various game designers, including <a href="http://www.thinkwithportals.com/">Portal</a>.<br />
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Here are the key nuggets I hung on to afterwards.</div>
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So what does "don't shoot they player" mean? What Katie is referring to is an experience the Portal game designers had while play-testing an early level design. While players were trying to learn a new skill introduced by the game, the designers had added some turrets to shoot at the player. The play-testers literally couldn't see the exit because they were being over loaded by both trying to learn a skill and dodge incoming fire. They became frustrated and few could get past the level.</div>
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The lesson here was this: when learning a new skill, people need a safe zone to do it in. They need to be able to fail at the task until they learn it. Then you test them on the learned skill under fire and allow them to apply it.</div>
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That is what games are, afterall, right? From Chess and Checkers to World of Warcraft and Call of Duty, the game is a series of learned skills and those players who master those skills the best play the best.</div>
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Furthermore, that's what work is, right? It's a set of learned skills applied for the support of a company, business, or group of people in exchange for compensation. Ideally, those who perform the best on a wide set of skills are the people who are compensated the best.</div>
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What we learn from game design can be applied to our workplace.</div>
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Also, the game designers found that they could <b>not</b> create a level too hard for two players to solve. When two people are working together one person takes the cognitive load while the other follows along. When the first person becomes tired, the second person takes up the cognitive load. The two individuals alternate, meaning nearly full concentration is always applied to solving a problem. They learn from one another's attempts and experiences <i>together</i>.</div>
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This concept of learning together is key. In Katie's words: "learning is social".</div>
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But for some reason, we teach in our schools that sharing is cheating. Does the workplace reflect this? Do we not share what we've learned with one another? Sites like <a href="http://stackexchange.com/">StackExchange</a> are built purely around the sharing of lessons with one another. Opensource theory is all about sharing code and components with one another. We learn from one another's accomplishments, incrementally improving products in doing so. We pair the less experienced with the more experienced to share skill sets and bring people up to speed quicker.</div>
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Collaboration is key and we should be embracing it in our workplaces and in our schools. We are social animals that learn best from one another's experiences and mistakes, not just our own.</div>
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An intriguing experience Katie also shared was the concept of rewarding <b>good</b> failure. This isn't meant in the sense of "Dodgeball with no outs". This is meant in the sense of a person or group of people striving to achieve a goal and missing it, but in missing it they learned some critical lesson. Learning is more about failure and trying again than it is anything else. A company Katie was exposed to had an award for the group who had the highest aspirations but missed the mark. Maybe they failed due to execution or lack of technology or funding or some other thing, but in the end, they learned a profound lesson to be shared with everyone else in the organization.</div>
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This brings us back around to not shooting the player.</div>
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<li>People need safe zones to learn skills in, then chances to apply them.</li>
<li>Learning is social. Remember this piece: there was no level hard enough that two players couldn't solve.</li>
<li>Rewarding lessons learned through failure is as important as rewarding success. </li>
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I had a realization while listening to Katie speak regarding our hackathons here at the office. A hackathon is a great place to employ all three of these concepts. As great as that is, I feel there is plenty of room for application in the day-to-day work experience.</div>
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What would you apply with your work or children? Is there a key concept you find that stands out to you? Feel free to comment below or leave a G+ comment/message!</div>
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<a href="http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP100212">Listen to Katie Salen's Don't Shoot the Player While They're Learning</a>.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-11237337210661466692012-04-03T12:46:00.000-07:002012-04-03T12:46:06.841-07:00On Poetry: Reason to Burn<span style="font-family: inherit;">Did you know? April is National Poetry Month! Since I have a past of writing sappy love poetry, I figured I'd share a few poems over the course of the month. It's been years since I've written with most of what I'm sharing having been written in the mid-late '90's and a few 'round 2004.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This particular poem, Reason To Burn, was written for a young lady I had a crush on who lived quite a ways away. It was, of course, one of those early "online" romances. Me, a shy introspective guy, met and talked to a young lady who lived a few states away. We talked on the phone all the time, mailed pictures back and forth, and generally kept in touch all throughout my high school and college years. During that time I wrote a few poems dedicated to her.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A note on form: I was obsessed with iambic pentameter (Shakespearean Sonnet) when I first learned to write something that wasn't just free-style poetry. This was in my senior year of high school. Since then, I experimented with various combinations of syllables and rhyming schemes.</span><br />
<br />
Enjoy, +1, & feel free to comment/share!<br />
<br />
Reason To Burn
<br /><br />
See the sunlight between us<br />
Bringing our hearts closer by day<br />
With so many miles separating us<br />
Not even that will stand in the way<br />
<br />
You can bring the best out in life<br />
And show the world how to turn<br />
Bringing joy from the deepest strife<br />
And giving my heart a reason to burn<br />
<br />
One day you will see the fire<br />
Bright and glistening behind my eyes<br />
Building with the passion you inspire<br />
Releasing prayers across lonely skies<br />
<br />
One night I hope to share with you<br />
In a darkened room, candle lit<br />
Gazing into the starry midnight blue<br />
My heart and what's buried in it<br />
<br />
And if your love is the same<br />
Then maybe God will bless us<br />
Guiding with his brilliant flame<br />
Our hearts and the hope within usAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-70739766214335906212012-03-29T14:44:00.001-07:002012-03-29T14:44:22.339-07:00On SXSW: Does Your Product Have A Plot?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www2.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/freytag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="202" src="http://www2.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/freytag.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Courtesy <a href="http://www2.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/freytag.html">CNR</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
What a curious question. Does your product have a plot? Do mine? Are we talking about a plot in the sense of creative writing with a beginning, complication, climax, and resolution?<br />
<br />
Yes, actually, that is exactly what <a href="http://interactiondesign.sva.edu/faculty/profile/david_womack/">David Womack</a>, at SXSW, was discussing. His point of view was curious, and while the analogy makes some sense at a high level, when you start considering complications, it became a bit harder wrap my head around.<br />
<br />
So here's what I came away from the talk with.<br />
<br />
Every product we construct on the web, every process, follows some sort of plot. The plots may not be very good in most cases, but there is a plot. Let's use this model:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Someone wants to buy a truck. Specifically, a used Peterbilt 379 semi.</li>
<li>They then proceed to Google and search "<a href="https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ix=sea&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=used%20peterbilt%20379&oq=&aq=&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=&pbx=1&fp=49e91e21499bfe9d&ix=sea&ion=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1280&bih=963">Used Peterbilt 379</a>".</li>
<li>A link there takes me to <a href="http://www.commercialtrucktrader.com/Peterbilt-379-Trucks/search-results?make=Peterbilt%7C2313546&model=379%7C764868253">CommercialTruckTrader.com</a>.</li>
<li>This person then uses the filters in the navigation to narrow down a candidate truck.</li>
<li>They view the ad's detail page.</li>
<li>They decide to email or call the seller, or not to.</li>
<li>They look for more trucks or navigate somewhere else.</li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Straight-forward, right? So how does this follow Freytag's triangle?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The <i>consumer</i> story starts with performing the search on Google. This is the beginning of their story. The start of my <i>product</i> story starts with the user's arrival from Google. While I have some control over where my links appear on Google through SEO and social engagement, as far as user experience is concerned, the story starts with their arrival.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Complication, or rising action, is the user's use of the filters to narrow down results. It is their looking at certain ad detail pages and considering those vehicles. The Climax is them deciding to actually make a phone call or send an email lead. Or their decision not to.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Resolution is after closing the deal.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And that's the story. So what, right? It's just a clever analogy.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Well, maybe not. There is more to it than that. Mr. Womack stresses the features that make a good story. And what makes a good story? A story with an <i>engaging C</i>omplication and a satisfying Climax. A story that has emotional complications and hooks.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
My thought as David dug into this was something along these lines of: "How in the hell do I make the process of buying a truck emotional?"</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
He had an interesting example: Product Reviews.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So Amazon's story wasn't terribly different from mine in the early days of the internet: search, find, buy or not to buy. Then they added product reviews and suddenly added a healthy dose of reality, or humanity, to products. People could review them and write witty stories about their experiences with them, or warn other customers against poor products. The reviews helped the Climax element, to buy or not to buy, become more emotional.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Mr. Womack used the example of the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Passion-Natural-Water-Based-Lubricant-Gallon/dp/B005MR3IVO/ref=sr_1_1?s=hpc&ie=UTF8&qid=1333050807&sr=1-1">55 gallon drum of Passion Natural water-based lubricant</a>. Here was something that most of us would have no need to view or look at (or would you?), yet there are 64 reviews, some of them with hundreds of "I found this review helpful" thumbs ups. Because people are leaving reviews, others are viewing the product, if only to read those reviews. For the product, there are now thousands of folks that are aware that they can purchase a 55 gallon drum of lube.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Helpful, I know.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A better example, I think, is the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Mountain-Three-Sleeve-Medium/dp/B000NZW3J8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333050836&sr=8-1">3 Wolf Moon shirt</a>. For three months straight, this t-shirt became Amazon's top selling piece of apparel. Why? Because Brian Govern left an entertaining review that went viral. Wouldn't everyone like to see that story with their merchandise? (<a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/three-wolf-moon">Learn more here at knowyourmeme.com</a>)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If it weren't for Amazon's review process and the emotional engagement it provides, the company that prints these shirts would not have had so much success. All of this, just because of a customer review.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This happens every day, on a smaller scale for everyone visiting Amazon and every product on Amazon. They search. They Find. They read reviews to assess a product's quality or satisfaction then decide to buy or not to buy.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Not only is this good for the 3 Wolf Moon t-shirt or Passion Natural lubricant companies, it is also good for Amazon. People come to their site just to <i>leave</i> reviews. People come to their site just to <i>read</i> reviews. They might even buy something they normally wouldn't (3 Wolf Moon), just to be a <i>part</i> of the story.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Or they may buy them because of Amazon's suggested items. The use reads a review of a product and decide not to buy it. But wait, Amazon has suggested something similar! This is another example of using additional complication to the rising action of a product story line. Now there's more to choose from. All with reviews.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So, how will you make your site more complicated? How will you engage your users emotionally? David Womack convinced me this is a part of the puzzle while designing our web and device applications. Further more, and worth another blog post, is how this plugs in with social engagement and social signals in SEO.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Social signals will become increasingly important and social activity is a very personal, emotional experience. How will your product fit in?</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-26839134054109968172012-03-19T08:31:00.001-07:002012-03-19T08:40:19.045-07:00On SXSW: Toyota doesn't get auto apps<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYWflzjoPpUIA3CQ2uX4tzl2z22Lw4R-_WboU5o8WFGC5b2CU62d9P0OZhIVb47GSj-NmSHvxtbf5hyYjr_lnzHGsloDDgKu1-JSjjHOzlO4otfFbMkp9SrCLN4JrBc8vdsJI3NRxftNs/s903/IMG_20120312_152120.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYWflzjoPpUIA3CQ2uX4tzl2z22Lw4R-_WboU5o8WFGC5b2CU62d9P0OZhIVb47GSj-NmSHvxtbf5hyYjr_lnzHGsloDDgKu1-JSjjHOzlO4otfFbMkp9SrCLN4JrBc8vdsJI3NRxftNs/s320/IMG_20120312_152120.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Panel at SXSW "Auto Meets Mobile: Building In-Vehicle Apps"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
At SXSW I sat in on a panel led by Michelle Avary from Toyota and Rich Brand from NPR. Michelle represented Toyota's "product" arm and Rich had experience in this space during the development of NPR's auto app.<br />
<br />
They started with driving a point home about complexity. Electronics, including car stereo head units, are hardened devices to withstand the rigors of driving and crashes. Additionally, inside of a single model, different trim levels will have different head units and those head units will each have different operating systems.<br />
<br />
So let's take the Lexus LS as an example. The base 460 trim level will have one head unit, let's call is A with operating system 1. The 460L and 460H will have different head units, too, B and C, with operating systems 2 and 3.<br />
<ul>
<li>460: A - 1</li>
<li>460L: B - 2</li>
<li>460H: C - 3</li>
</ul>
<div>
If one is to build an application to run on each of these trim levels for a single model, you'd need to write it to be compatible with all three operating systems and the different head units will have different capabilities (GPS vs. no GPS). This further complicates when you consider cross-models and cross-brands. From a software developer's point of view, this is definitely sub-optimal. You may be able to write for a particular brand and trim level, but to write for multiple brands would likely become unmanageable rather quickly.<br />
<br />
There is also a situation where the version of the operating system may not be up to date. Currently OS updates to in-car stereos is done either by a dealership or by mailed storage like a DVD or thumb-drive.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Their next point was about the development lag in cars. Typical development lag, according to Michelle, is five years. I'm sure this varies between brands, but I'll accept it as a general rule. So this means that a brand new car today began development in 2007. What else happened in 2007? The iPhone was <i>first</i> introduced. Apps didn't really take off until some time after that.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That certainly helps explain why car interfaces with Android devices are lagging. My Challenger, as an example, seamlessly interacts with an iOS product at a limited level, but my only Android option is the Auxillary jack.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So I follow all of of this to this point. Lots of head units, lots of trim levels, lots of operating systems and lots of brands. Being a developer, my first inclination is to simplify the system. And the best way to do that is to eliminate the head units. Or, at least, make them dumber. By dumber I mean they should provide a simple interface to a tuner and an amplifier. Out side of that, the brains of the stereo should be provided by a tablet.</div>
<div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.ipodmin.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ipad-car1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="181" src="http://www.ipodmin.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ipad-car1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Custom iPad dashboard install. (<a href="http://www.ipodmin.com/apple-ipad-tablet-installed-into-a-car-dashboard-%E2%80%93-part-1.html">Source</a>)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The holy grail is the ability to take my tablet, which already has my music library along with my favorite apps and plug it directly into my car transforming it into the dashboard interface. Sound nice?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This question was asked after the panel. The responses from Michelle and Rich really missed the mark and the point of mobile applications. They had these reasons why it wouldn't work:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>It would look bad against the aesthetics of the car interior. "Lexus owners expect a certain level of refinement."</li>
<li>Trying to design for multiple jacks would be difficult. (Android's micro-USB vs. Apple's wide-plug)</li>
<li>The software would not be in their control and that's dangerous.</li>
</ul>
<div>
So, to get this straight, Toyota and other manufacturers are already designing black 7'' or 10'' screens into dashboards without issue, but designing a dock for a 7'' or 10'' tablet is too much? Further, designing software for hundreds of operating system and head unit combinations is <i>easier</i> than designing around two different plugs?</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The third point has the greatest chance of being valid, but is still a red-herring. <i>It doesn't matter</i>. People are <i>already</i> using their docked phones or tablets, and the apps on them, to control their experience in the car. OEMs have no control over this situation and it falls on the user of the phone or tablet to find applications that are easiest and least distracting to use.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I don't buy it. There are already aftermarket companies designing iPad docks for cars. Some going so far as to replace head unit installations with docks that plug into tuners and the in-car speakers. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.redmondpie.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/iPadinCar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="204" src="http://cdn.redmondpie.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/iPadinCar.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Scosche iPad Dock it in a Subaru STI. (<a href="http://www.redmondpie.com/ipad-as-car-stereo-and-navigation-device-9140739/">Source</a>)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div>
<b><br /></b><br />
<b>My Proposal - Open Standards, Open Docks.</b></div>
<div>
The car manufacturers should be working with Apple, Motorola, Asus and others to design an open standard that hardware manufacturers can design against. This standard says plugs will be in this location, expecting the tablet to be in this orientation.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
An open programming standard should also be defined, which allows a measure of control with the "dumb" dock and interface with the tuner, microphone, and speakers. This open standard describes the API available to programmers. Apple and Android then develops the necessary updates to their SDK's to give the programmers ability to interface with the dumb terminal.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Further, Toyota and other manufacturers can create a certification system that certifies only the best in-car apps as being safe to use. This will provide a measuring stick for the public to sort the good apps from the bad. Additionally, Toyota can partner with Apple or an Android tablet manufacturer to sell a tablet with the car. Not only are you getting a car, but you might be getting The New iPad or an Asus Transformer Ultra Prime. The manufacturers can write their own applications, as well, as the only "official" dashboard app for a particular model and trim level.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This eliminates your complexity around operating systems and head units. It becomes decoupled, focusing on the open standards letting the software be the differentiating factor, not the hardware. It also gives the car manufacturer a way into the car buyer's home. Those same apps they build for their cars can also provide additional features for their in-home experience. There is much to be gained!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What the OEMs need to understand is that this is already happening. There's already a growing user base installing tablet docks into their cars and there's already a very large user base which has smartphone docks. They use these devices for music, GPS, and internet radio now. Toyota, and the other OEMS, can either fight against the "tipping point", or they can embrace it and push for the advancement of the in-car experience.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-84715148922156245622012-03-14T11:53:00.002-07:002012-03-14T12:01:01.330-07:00On SXSW - Biggest Take Aways from Sessions<br />
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I've been thinking on the general and specific takeaways from this year's SXSW Interactive. What were the things that spoke the loudest to me? It's been difficult to narrow down, actually. There are a number of general things about the event, but specifically? This will require some thought.<br />
<br />
<b>"Tipping Point"</b><br />
I heard this phrase numerous times, mostly seriously, and a few times jokingly. It seems that there a few industries looking for that point where they become entirely digital. This always seemed to use the smartphone as an example: eventually a tipping point was reached where everyone started to acquire smart phones easily and affordably.<br />
<br />
More importantly, are you driving the tipping point or are you fighting against it?<br />
<br />
Jokingly, this guy, Dean, that I pal'd around with Monday evening kept using it in the context of when the party was about to get wild. He had a nose for it.<br />
<br />
<b>"DevOps"</b><br />
I attended a talk by Gene Kim about a development philosophy called "DevOps". It is, at its most basic level, about injecting your operational requirements into your agile sprint processes. DevOps marries the two normally separate groups into one so that they can more effectively support one another. <br />
<br />
This will help you increase your operational/release tempo as well as create more hardened systems with the initial releases.<br />
<br />
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<b>"Distinction Without Difference"</b><br />
Ray Kurzweil used this phrase in his keynote conversation with Lev Grossman. Specifically, he was referring to the idea that we might integrate digital devices into our bodies. He says we already do, in the form of smart phones. That they are not inside us is a distinction with out difference. We already carry them everywhere and interface with them while performing any number of tasks.<br />
<br />
Deeper on this topic was the idea that we would, through these devices, interact with a digital cloud that would expand our mind's capabilities. We are already on the cusp of emulating the human brain's thought processes and so it's foreseeable that we'll use cloud-based data centers to expand our cognitive abilities.<br />
<br />
Being a budding sci-fi novelist, that was right up my alley to hear, if not slightly disturbing.<br />
<br />
<b>"We couldn't create a problem hard enough"</b><br />
This quote came from a game developer who Katie Salen worked with. Her talk was "Don't shoot the player", referencing a game in which a segment was too difficult because the player was just learning and the level designers were shooting the player.<br />
<br />
This specific quote was about how in Portal 2, a game with co-op 1st person puzzle solving, they could not create a problem that was too difficult for two players to solve. They found that one person would take the majority of the cognitive load and when they got tired the other person took over, creating a situation in which there was always deep thought being applied to a problem.<br />
<br />
This nugget can translate well (and does through Extreme Programming) to software development.<br />
<br />
<b>"Reward Failure"</b><br />
Katie's talk was mostly about education and building a system in which we don't just reward success, but failure, too. We shouldn't "shoot the player" while they're learning a new skill. We should also recognize that failure is a legitimate part of success and speed us towards ultimate goals. However, we're taught that only success is rewarded through our current schooling systems.<br />
<br />
This, too, can translate well to software development. So much of what we do is creative in nature and involves a whole lot of failure before finding the sweet spot of success.<br />
<br />
<b>"Does your product have a plot?"</b><br />
As a new "product guy" with more than a decade of web development behind me, I was very curious about this talk. Since I'm also a writer, this definitely spoke to me. I wasn't let down. David Womack gave a soft-spoken presentation about plot in products and how we can translate the introduction, complication, climax, and resolution formula of writing to product construction.<br />
<br />
While his examples were very broad in scope, this can scale down to a web page. I often refer to the "climax" as "the therefore" for any particular product. But this concept of applying setting, seeing the user through the process and engaging them is an elegant metaphor.<br />
<br />
A side note from this is emotional complication and engagement, with an example being Amazon's reviews. The reviews provide emotional investment, characterize a product, and help lead to the climax - which is the decision to purchase or not purchase - the product.<br />
<br />
Intriguing.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqM2ZyOqZAIob2rInoOy3tqXHcXVOjOtFrIkGM8aIlFTfiObiOhxnYiSAsmpzQiq0RcJ4HSOEYGHt1Hjn7YCz3CEi4gzuAdhUHAsUrZRaxsFogM-R55lJ2rOFYlca7etv5IntOIQ-zjW4/s1600/IMG_20120312_212623.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqM2ZyOqZAIob2rInoOy3tqXHcXVOjOtFrIkGM8aIlFTfiObiOhxnYiSAsmpzQiq0RcJ4HSOEYGHt1Hjn7YCz3CEi4gzuAdhUHAsUrZRaxsFogM-R55lJ2rOFYlca7etv5IntOIQ-zjW4/s320/IMG_20120312_212623.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<b>"Austin is awesome"</b><br />
Technically, this wasn't part of any specific session, but I have to say I've really enjoyed Austin. Even with the weather really making it difficult to get engaged the first couple days, I met some very interesting, engaging folks. Several of them work with Green Mountain Energy here in Austin. Others were just relaxed locals who I met through the Google+ HIRL community.<br />
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I was able to listen to music of a type I'd never heard before - Noise Revival Orchestra. Think rock/punk meets orchestra.<br />
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The food has been great, if fattening, and once the sun started shining, the weather was fantastic. I travel back to Virginia tomorrow, but I think I may try to come back when Austin is "normal", although from what I understand, it's all about "Keeping Austin Weird".Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-56575255315854124632012-03-02T20:19:00.001-08:002012-03-05T07:58:25.036-08:00You have lost my vote, Republicans<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">It seems that as this year moves on, the more <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/reactionary">reactionary</a> the Republican party becomes. I used to call it home, but in the last year or so, it has gradually pushed me away - a moderate college educated male.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">We've seen a bill in my home state of Virginia requiring invasive ultra-sound for women before abortion. The amendment swapped it to "jelly on the belly", but it still </span><i style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">requires</i><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"> an ultra-sound before an abortion. Purportedly to gauge the age of the fetus.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">We've read about the attack on contraceptives, last week led by Rush Limbaugh's <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/02/rush-limbaugh-sandra-fluke-john-boehner_n_1316361.html">calling a law student from Georgetown a "slut"</a> because she wants access to birth control pills through her medical insurance. Never mind the numerous medical reasons why a woman would want them or perfectly valid reasons a married couple may use them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><a href="http://caledonia.patch.com/articles/repealing-wisconsin-s-equal-pay-act">We've seen Wisconsin also working to repeal a law that requires equal pay for women</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">It seems that Romney is particularly out of touch with most Americans, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/02/mitt-romney-not-concerned_n_1249531.html">coming from a very wealthy background that has taught him not to worry about the less privileged</a>. Let's not forget, either, who his top campaign contributors are: <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contrib.php?id=N00000286">Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse Group, & Citigroup</a>. It is hard for me to expect someone backed by big banks to want to fix the campaign financing situation.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Then there's Santorum's comments about wanting to "<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/story/2012-02-28/Rick-Santorum-Kennedy-faith/53293630/1">throw up" while reading a JFK speech</a> regarding the separation of church & state. Mind you, JFK was just echoing the Constitution.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">There's <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/03/INFM1N13NV.DTL">wide denial inside the party</a> regarding climate change, despite what the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/02/05/global-warming-has-stopped-how-to-fool-people-using-cherry-picked-climate-data/">non-cherry-picked data shows</a>.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">There was the bill introduced in the Senate which would give<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/02/us/politics/senate-kills-gop-bill-opposing-contraception-policy.html"> health care providers great lee-way in denying contraceptives, or other elements of care, because of a moral contradiction</a>. Thankfully the Senate defeated this.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Now this: a law proposed in Wisconsin which would say that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/02/glenn-grothman-wisconsin-law-single-parenthood-child-abuse_n_1316834.html">being a single parent is child abuse</a>.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Once upon a time, 45% of scientists claimed to be conservative and/or Republican. <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/12/lab_politics.html">Now a mere 6% do</a>.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Why is that? The party is fading & will vanish if it doesn't find a way to embrace the social & scientific progress that has happened in the last 50 years. It's time to put religion back in the church & leave it out of the government. It's time to be rational. It's time to work on the real issues in front of the nation: dependence on foreign oil, the concentration of wealth to a very few people, a shrinking middle class, over flowing jails, government & campaign corruption, a sustainable economy, green technology, & perhaps most important: education.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Education is not the enemy of a democracy, it is its greatest ally. <a href="http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/03/01/class-notes-rick-santorum-college-snobs-and-more-education-news/">It does not make people snobs</a>, it shows one's desire for self-improvement. These bills and statements have alienated me, a conservative leaning college educated male. The Republican party is seemingly out to discredit science, rewind the social clock for women, and is willing to gamble with the the world, through the denial of climate change, in order to maintain a status quo for a <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-02-21/super-pac-donors/53196658/1">small, very rich group of lobbyists and campaign fundraisers</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">While I don't think the President is a great choice, either, I cannot stomach putting someone into the White House who is willing to rewind the social clock, willing to ignore science, & who will put their own religious values ahead of others. This is our nation's future, and the world's, which is at stake. Why are we talking about abortion, contraceptives, gay-marriage, and college education when we have sky-rocketing oil, a lagging economic recovery, potential war with Iran, and a degrading climate?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">If the party doesn't switch its focus & find people to champion true </span><i style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">conservative</i><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"> approaches to issues, then the Republican party will be irrelevant in a much shorter time frame than I think they realize.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-41798138454767453772012-02-16T14:10:00.000-08:002012-02-21T09:52:08.574-08:00UPDATE: SOPA/PIPA/ACTA and the movie industryQuick update today, readers, regarding the ongoing discourse between the technology culture and the recording industry.
<br /><br />
Taylor Hackford, of the Director's Guild of America, went on a lengthy rant on radio with quite a few distorted "facts". <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120216/04513817777/directors-guild-boss-insists-that-everyone-against-sopapipa-was-duped.shtml">The deeper analysys is over at techdirt.com</a>. It's a short read so take a moment to breeze through it. I'll wait.
<br /><br />
So I'm going to attempt to read the tea leaves.
<br /><br />
First, SOPA/PIPA have been defeated in the United States. Second, if you've been watching internet news outlets/blogs, you'll know that <a href="https://www.eff.org/issues/acta">ACTA</a>, the super-secret international treaty for preventing sharing (& even individual internet connections), is being halted by members of the <a href="http://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2012/february/germany-steps-back-from-acta-signing-process/">European Union</a>. Unfortunately, the United States has already signed it. Third, there's the success of the Great SOPA/PIPA blackout of 2012. It was, without doubt, very successful.
<br /><br />
These events must be rather disconcerting to individuals like Mr. Hackford and the other media-magnates.
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It's really a simple situation. Technology is evolving the way new artists create music, movies, or any other thing. The web makes sharing these new artists extremely easy. Technology allows us to quickly make copies of these new discoveries while not diminishing the copy we own.
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The distribution system is evolving.
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It's evolving right out of the hands of the middle-man. Publishers have owned the distribution channel with lock and key for a few hundred years. Someone had to print a book, CD, or a DVD. High speed internet makes all of those formats moot.
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The Amazons of the world can launch digital e-readers and distribute works to anyone who owns a device. iTunes can distribute a single song to millions and millions of people with out anyone ever buying a compact disc again. The middle-man's roll is evolving to digital distribution methods but the Old Media folks <i>don't want to change</i>.
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This is a battle against change. That's why you don't see new movie releases on your on-demand list. They want to keep the huge profits from printing a cheap disc, putting it in a cheap plastic container, and selling it for twenty-five dollars. Maybe fifty if it's a Blu-Ray.
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It's as simple as that.
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The more individuals like <a href="https://buy.louisck.net/news">C.K. Lewis create and distribute their own work</a> through these new distribution channels, the less there is a future for Old Media. They must adapt or they will fade away. They must embrace the opportunities for exposure world-wide digital distribution provides if they want to survive.
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It's not that people want to "pirate" material. It's that it's <i>easier</i> to obtain music, movies, and books online. Make it easy to get movies the day they come out through fast, simple interfaces and I bet your movie "pirating" problem begins to vanish quickly.
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The future is dark for the Old Media folks. They want to keep making money the way they have and try to hang on to that lock and key. The solution they see is to spend gobs of cash on lobbyists and campaign financing. This is where SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA have come from.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-67344086629840424892012-01-31T09:53:00.000-08:002012-01-31T09:56:32.870-08:00On Writing - Realization & ChangeI had... well, I had thought I was pretty close to complete w/ Part 1 of <i>Darkness Before Light</i> - the current title of my story. Upon reflection and some recent feedback, I think I've been aiming far too grand for my first story.<br />
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Originally had I planned a series of "short" stories to form an over all story, similar to the <i>Bolos!</i> novels. But I think that was an artifact of my own impatience and now I am refocusing on telling the entire story behind Part 1.<br />
<br />
Previously I had a climactic battle between my two main groups, the Terrans and Draconians. It ended with a scene many years later of a worn out character. The story after the battle is missing.<br />
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Reading _The Hunger Games_ last week helped with assimilating this, too. Collins does such a good job of beating the snot out of her protagonists, but still making them challenged & likable, that I realized I was missing much of that. There wasn't any characters that really had meat to them, although in my mind, I felt that they did.<br />
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The problem was that none of the meat is written. The last scene had the most emotion in it and it was probably one of my favorite scenes to write. But what of the 20K words before it? Lots of action, giant robots, rail cannons, laser beams, plasma, and people dying - but not much character. Those scenes have merit and I'm keeping them, but the story around them is missing.<br />
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So now I'm going back to fill in the blanks between Chapters 3 & 4 of Part 1, <i>Darkness Before Light.</i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-29283144834247720122012-01-19T09:55:00.001-08:002012-01-20T11:44:15.599-08:00SOPA = Dead [UPDATED 01.20.12] On Activism: Did the SOPA / PIPA blackout succeed?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxCrcYcxAHkV4oftcVcQlGPkUYvRMA3txm0xHxJpv3ffZ8fxWoVgik1QusmYQ1LQLn2PyfpSnVwQ7W4oboVsWzrsdFfyD36e2A8r3miZ82PQtKfDH7mfDklI7kzajIvrgfJkJUB7wG-oI/s1600/anti-sopa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxCrcYcxAHkV4oftcVcQlGPkUYvRMA3txm0xHxJpv3ffZ8fxWoVgik1QusmYQ1LQLn2PyfpSnVwQ7W4oboVsWzrsdFfyD36e2A8r3miZ82PQtKfDH7mfDklI7kzajIvrgfJkJUB7wG-oI/s320/anti-sopa.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Well, yesterday was interesting and exciting all at the same time. It was the first major virtual protest that the internet created and organized, largely through the efforts of Reddit.com and Wikipedia.com.<br />
<br />
But did it succeed? The fall out from this is going to be very interesting. <br />
<br />
<br />
Here are some bullets:<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/18-new-senators-oppose-pipa-after-yesterdays-protests-2012-1">26 new Senators now oppose PIPA</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2012/01/google-anti-sopa-petition.html">4.5 million people signed Google's petition</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/wikipedia-blackout-statistics-2012-1">8 million people looked up their congressmen using Wikipedia's homepage</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.readingthescore.com/2012/01/18/rubio-withdraws-support-sopa-dnc-chief-remains-strong-supporter/">Co-sponsor of PIPA, Marco Rubio, withdraws his support of the bill</a>.</li>
<li>Update: <a href="http://projects.propublica.org/sopa/">There are now 108 confirmed opponents of SOPA in Congress vs. 64 supporters</a>.</li>
<li>Update #2: <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/AJentleson/status/160364162709585920">The Senate "in light of recent events" has chosen to postpone its vote on PIPA</a>.</li>
<li>Update #2: <a href="http://sopastrike.com/numbers">115,000 websites participated in the protest</a>.</li>
<li>Update #3: <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/01/20/sopa-is-dead-smith-pulls-bill/">Lamar Smith has officially pulled SOPA from Congress</a>. It is now dead, but PIPA still exists - just postponed.</li>
<li>Update #4: <a href="http://sopastrike.com/numbers">Great Collection of data</a>.</li>
<li>Update #5: Facebook says "<a href="http://mashable.com/2012/01/20/sopa-is-dead-facebook-response/">We are relieved that Congress has recognized the serious damage the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) could cause to the internet.</a>"</li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkzYn5I_beugynUi274BUeHR8TWrcljGAyMfUcLNXGMPslB0Mop11FcwiCRxvY-eM5dAMynqySSNdtrGeMFGGwalLF8CmKg36VB-v16M9NldKQhZQmu1QSkju9yURqQ99Kx3V2SeDngdE/s1600/wired-sopa-blackout.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkzYn5I_beugynUi274BUeHR8TWrcljGAyMfUcLNXGMPslB0Mop11FcwiCRxvY-eM5dAMynqySSNdtrGeMFGGwalLF8CmKg36VB-v16M9NldKQhZQmu1QSkju9yURqQ99Kx3V2SeDngdE/s320/wired-sopa-blackout.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Wired.com's homepage during the blackout, January 18th, 2012.</div>
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And what are some of the responses?</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399019,00.asp">The MPAA CEO Chris Dodd spoke out, saying the blackouts were an "abuse of power"</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/15/rupert-murdoch-sopa-twitter-google-obama_n_1207615.html">Rupert Murdoch says "Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying</a>".</li>
<li>Jeremy Lamy, of the RIAA, said: "<a href="http://i.imgur.com/j8IqL.jpg">After Wikipedia blackrout, somewhere, a student today is doing original research and getting his/her facts straight. Perish the thought.</a>".</li>
</ul>
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<div>
<div>
Meanwhile, after the Obama Administration posted a note leading up to the black out on January 18th saying it would not support any legislation which limited Rights, <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120119/00332417466/hollywood-studio-execs-upset-that-president-obama-didnt-stay-bought-insist-they-wont-donate-more.shtml">brought out the ire of the moguls in Hollywood</a>.</div>
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">“God knows how much money we’ve given to Obama and the Democrats and yet they’re not supporting our interests. There’s been no greater supporters of him than we’ve been from the first day and the first fundraisers continuing until he was elected. We all were pleased. And, at its heart institutionally, Hollywood supports the Democrats. Now we need the administration to support us. This is a very important time for Hollywood."</i></blockquote>
If this doesn't illustrate the dangers of unlimited campaign funding, I'm not sure what does. They give a politician a bunch of cash then they expect that everything they want to do is done. That is bought politics.<br />
<br />
The goal of the protest was to raise awareness about legislation that could change the way the internet operates. In that, it was very successful. From my own Facebook news feed and Google+ stream, quite a few people seemed to find out about SOPA and PIPA yesterday. Quite a few friends on Facebook also contacted their Senators and Congressmen/women to voice their dissent.<br />
<br />
That backlash apparently swayed more than a quarter of the Senate to come out in opposition against these bills. That is no small feat. It should make the lobbyists on Capitol Hill worry, too. New Media is changing everything, and that is truly the heart of this battle. It's not copyright versus illegal sharing.<br />
<br />
This is Old media versus New media, the print publication vs. the internet, the record label vs. self distribution, the middle-man vs. the consumer. This is about adaptation versus stagnation.<br />
<br />
We're seeing New media start to stretch its muscles, realize that it can organize people into a cause, illustrate the impact that lobbyist-written legislation can have. It can demonstrate who is bought and who isn't. If this is just the first crash of a series of waves, than I would expect some rough seas coming up in this year. It's an election year with many hot-button issues - from campaign finance reform to the wealth gap between the ultra rich and the shrinking middle class.<br />
<br />
The internet is going to continue to influence and press politics. People have to realize that as much as my generation, the 20 to 30-somethings, are ingrained in the internet, we are nothing compared to the generation behind us. As they move from college into the world and politics begin to become a focus for them, the old method of lobbyists in DC controlling the strings will start to turn. They will be raising money through sites like Reddit, educating through Wikipedia, and fact-checking for themselves, not buying what mainstream media is telling them.<br />
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This battle will be the first in a long series of confrontations.<br />
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<br /></div>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-80520631273182400342012-01-10T09:06:00.000-08:002012-01-10T09:06:48.726-08:00On Government: Response from Scott Rigell regarding SOPA.<br />
So I've contacted Representative Rigell twice regarding SOPA, once in November and again in early December. I was initially a bit excited & curious to see his response when I saw it pop into my email, hoping for a "I'm going to argue against SOPA" type of message. Unfortunately, I was disappointed as it is just a canned response.<br />
<br />
The email follows:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: -webkit-left;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Dear Mr. Goodwin,</span></div>
<div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: -webkit-left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: -webkit-left;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;"></span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">Thank you</span><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> very much</span><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> for contacting me to express your</span><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> </span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">views on the issues facing our country</span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">.</span><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> </span><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> </span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">I value and give careful consideration to the good counsel that I receive from you and all those whom I have the privilege to represent in Congress</span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">.</span><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> </span><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> I refer to that good counsel as the "wisdom of the district."</span></div>
<div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: -webkit-left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: -webkit-left;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;"></span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">As you may know, each session, Congress considers approximately ten thousand bills in</span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">volving a wide array of issues. </span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">As your Congressman, it is my duty to ensure that your views and those of everyone in the 2nd District of Virginia are </span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">represented here in Washington. </span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">It is the ideas, opinions, and personal stories that you share with me that allow me to be a successful Representative. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: -webkit-left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: -webkit-left;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;"></span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">It is truly an honor to represent the people of Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Hampton, and the Eastern Shore, and I greatly appreciate your feedback. </span><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> </span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">I will work hard to bring the values of the 2nd Congressional District to Washington.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: -webkit-left;">
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<span style="font-family: Garamond;"></span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">It is important to me that I keep you fully informed </span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">regarding</span><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> how I am representing you in Congress, so please visit my website </span><a href="http://rigell.house.gov/" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">R</span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">igell.house.gov</span></a><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> and sign up for my e-newsletter.</span><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> </span><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> I also encourage you to join </span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">me on</span><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> </span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">Facebook</span><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> </span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">at</span><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> </span><a href="http://www.facebook.com/RepScottRigell" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">facebook.com/</span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">Re<wbr></wbr>pScottRigell</span></a><span style="font-family: Garamond;">. Both sites feature timely updates on the votes I am taking on the House floor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond;"></span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">In closing, please know that I consider it a high honor to serve and represent you and your family in Congress.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Mindful that I work for you, I remain</span></div>
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Yours in Freedom,<br /><img src="http://rigell.house.gov/UploadedFiles/rigellsig.jpg" /><br />Scott Rigell<br />Member of Congress</div>
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Mr. Rigell doesn't say, one way or another, what his view is on the bill. I'm going to interpret this, however, as implicit support. If you do not say you are in opposition, then I think the only safe course is to assume support and to continue attempts to influence.<br />
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Other information:<br />
<a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/search?q=response+sopa">A quick search of reddit</a> reveals the views of quite a few Representatives and Senators, both in support or opposition. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-24230579166705121872011-12-22T09:04:00.000-08:002012-02-19T14:45:54.929-08:00Spiral<b id="internal-source-marker_0.6647306743543595" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wrote this really quick last night & touched it up a little bit today. Curious to get your thoughts. It's a self-contained short story inspired by the recent discovery by the Kepler observatory. It had found some planets which, at one point in their history, may have supported life, but are now too close to their sun to be habitable. Enjoy, typos & all! I'll touch it up some more when I have time & am not rushed.</span></b><br />
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.6647306743543595"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By: Ryan A. Goodwin</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Gobrah, Chief Star Finder to the God-King, Azreul, looked through his sky-lens again. His neck scales rose up and down in consternation, his sinuous neck swaying slightly back and forth. This was not good. Above him against the black void of space, the bright stars spangled the sky in dense, varying patterns.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The sky-lens was focused, however, not on a star, but a grayish smudge just peaking over the horizon. The comet Epefrayla was not where it should be. The heavens were consistent, constant. This was not right. The comet was several degrees away from where his tedious calculations said it should be.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The calculations </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">were</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> correct.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He removed his vertically slitted eye from the sky-lens, focusing over the long barrel of the sky-lens to look at the comet.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> This was not the first omen.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> No, not omen. Mathematical certainty was not a ridiculous superstition. And the math was clear: their world was moving closer to their sun.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Star Finders had been watching, silently, as the heavens were shifting ever slightly. This star a few tenths of a degree off, this planet, a few more. He raised his star finding device, checking elevation and angle, then rotating his sky-lens to another star. He bent his neck again, placing his left eye-ridge scale against the eye-piece.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Skyphene was not where it should be.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He rotated his sky-lens by a single degree left. No star. He rotated it another whole degree and there it was, filling the view through his sky-lens.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just last year at this time, Skyphene was only a fraction of a degree out of place. Now it was two! His large arm feathers shivered and extended. Extremely disturbing. There was no hiding this. Even the most amateur Star Finder would see the placement of the stars was becoming increasingly inaccurate. It seemed that the rate was increasing, too.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He must take this to the God-King.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gobrah stepped away from his sky-lens, the curved talons on his feet scraping and scratching the rough stone surface of his viewing ledge. They gripped the edge, he spread his arms, the long white and black speckled flight feathers extending, and leapt into the night air. Several deep thrusts with his arm-wings and he was gliding above the deep jungle foliage below.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Insects buzzed and flew about him. Normally he might pluck one from the air with a quick extension of his neck, but not tonight. His eyes narrowed, the thick eye-brow scales furrowing. The end of his world was coming, and his people had no way to prevent it.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Minutes passed as he flew above the jungle, towards the towering tree fortress of the God-King. It was the largest tree, by far, in the jungle, stretching four again the height of the next tallest trees. Stone platforms had been mortared around it, creating ledges and rooms. Torches burned in tempered glass housings, casting flickering yellow light across the broad violet leaves and dark gray bark.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He arched back, flapping deeply with his arms, stretching his legs forward, landing on a stone ledge. This ledge led directly to the God-King’s quarters. The two guards bobbed their heads at him, in acknowledgement. He ignored them, striding forward, his neck slightly bobbing forward as he walked, his long, thin, tail flicking back and forth.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Voices echoed down the corridor to him. Screeches of laughter, guttural roars of astonishment, and the gravelly tones of normal talk. The God-King was entertaining this evening, it seemed.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That would be sure to end.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gobrah strode into the room, seeing tens of his fellows perched or stretched across curved wooden benches. Tables were arranged in front of each, covered in pickled dart-fliers, roasted tree-swingers, plump blood-fruit, and numerous other things he didn’t pay so much attention to.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The God-King’s neck stretched up, his red-painted neck scales flaring out as he watched Gobrah enter the room. His bright purple arm feathers stretched suddenly and the room fell to silence. All were staring at him.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Gobrah, while not invited, you may certainly join us. You seem to be determined to do so.” The room laughed around him, high screeches filling the humid night air.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“My God-King, I bring dire news. Otherwise I would not interrupt.”</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The room returned to silence.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Then speak, Star Finder. What portents or omens have you discovered that require interrupting this feast?” The God-King’s neck scales slowly raised and lowered, threateningly.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Our world, Andul, it is falling into our sun. The math is clear. The stars do not lie. The seasons, it has been becoming increasingly warm. I do not know of another conclusion to draw.”</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Arm feathers unfurled around him, the people hissing, their necks swaying back and forth. Jaws clacked and neck scales flapped. The God-Kings eye-brow scales lifted, then narrowed. His feathers did not unfurl. His neck did not sway.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He already knew.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gobrah’s eyes widened, his neck leaning back.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Indeed, Gobrah? You bring this to me here, now, in front of this group? All of you - LEAVE!” The God-King’s guttural words vibrated the walls, and even a wisp of flame escaped his open maw, narrow, pointed teeth flashing in the torch light.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Claws scrabbled and scratched as they fled from the room, leaving Gobrah standing alone with the God-King. The God-King stood, walking around the table in front of his seat. Gobrah instinctively walked side-ways, opposite of the God-King.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They circled like wary predators.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“My dear Gobrah. The signs have been clear for sometime. I can see it in your eyes, you know that I knew of this already. Likely you wonder why haven’t I done anything. That is a fair question.”</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gobrah simply stalked sideways, wary and terrified at the same time. He knew! And why does he circle me like prey? I have brought warning! Why </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hasn’t</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> he done anything?</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The truth is, Gobrah, we have been working, but in secret. If the people were to find out, the world would be in chaos. There is no way to suddenly focus everyone, all at once. And here, you, in your desire to draw attention to yourself, have unleashed the poison.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Word is surely already spreading and now I must not only marshal the people to meet the threat of the end of our world, but chaos.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“This is on your head, Gobrah.”</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gobrah rattled his neck scales. “How would you face the end of our world? What hope would we have?”</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The new sciences are our answer. The metallurgy, physics, biology sciences. We are a people moving beyond ancient omens and portents. We shall fly through the stars as we fly through our jungles.”</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gobrah stopped walking in his astonishment. Fly among the stars? How was that possible? Would these new sciences really take his people away from this doomed world?</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“How long, Gobrah, till the end?”</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gobrah shook his head, thinking back to his calculations.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Five thousands years till our planet’s demise, much less for us, I think. It shall become unbearably warm in only five hundred, maybe one-thousand years.”</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“That, my dear Gobrah, is a great deal of time for us to focus and develop ourselves. But now you may have disrupted that work. Now we may not be able to focus. Unless I can stop the chaos.” The God-King stepped closer.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gobrah bent his neck down, shame filling him. His feathers fell, drooping.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“My God-King, I... I am sorry.”</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I know, Gobrah, I know. I am sorry, too.”</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gobrah’s eyes widened, his voice screeched into the night. The God-King’s mouth, with those terribly narrow, sharp teeth, had clamped down on his neck. He could feel his life blood leeching out, hear splattering onto the stone floor. He kicked his legs up, trying to find purchase on the God-King, but his legs, they were already weak.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He was only trying to help his people. He was only trying to do his duty.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The room was darkening and it was getting cold. Then he felt himself lowered to the floor, gently, the God-King cradling him.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I know, Gobrah, you were only doing your duty. And in doing so you may have doomed us all. You will either be remembered as a villian, or as a hero, the first to warn us of our impending doom.”</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The God-King’s voice was moving further away, as if he were in a tunnel.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I will try to make you the martyr, Gobrah. I shall try.”</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The world went silent.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b> <b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The world went dark.</span></b></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5016799411951519753.post-35624736783346746342011-12-06T09:37:00.001-08:002012-05-17T11:10:28.019-07:00[UPDATED] On Government - What's the deal? - Indefinite Detention - National Defense Authorization Act, S.1867, Section 1034<br />
Sometimes words leave me. I am referring to a group of circumstances, but more specifically for this blog I refer to the Senate bill titled <a href="http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h1540/text">National Defense Authorization Act</a>, section 1031, S.1867. Normally, this bill authorizes expenditures, troop levels, and that type of stuff.<br />
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However, this year, Senator McCain and Senator Carl Levin have co-sponsored an amendment to the bill which says :<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b)) pending disposition under the law of war.</i></blockquote>
The entirety of this section of the bill reads :<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>(a) In General- Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b)) pending disposition under the law of war.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>(b) Covered Persons- A covered person under this section is any person as follows.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>(1) A person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored those responsible for those attacks.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>(2) A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>(c) Disposition Under Law of War- The disposition of a person under the law of war as described in subsection (a) may include the following:</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>(1) Detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>(2) Trial under chapter 47A of title 10, United States Code (as amended by the Military Commissions Act of 2009 (title XVIII of Public Law 111-84)).</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>(3) Transfer for trial by an alternative court or competent tribunal having lawful jurisdiction.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>(4) Transfer to the custody or control of the person's country of origin, any other foreign country, or any other foreign entity.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>(d) Construction- Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>(e) Authorities- Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities, relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>(f) Requirement for Briefings of Congress- The Secretary of Defense shall regularly brief Congress regarding the application of the authority described in this section, including the organizations, entities, and individuals considered to be `covered persons' for purposes of subsection (b)(2).</i></blockquote>
A quick read of this section basically reads something along the lines of:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Congress re-affirms that the President can use all force necessary to prosecute the Authorization for Use of Military Force, including people who were a part of 9-11, have aided al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or any associated forces, against the United States & its allies.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i> The President can detain these people until the end of the Authorization for Use of Military Force, Try them under United States Code, transfer them for trial somewhere else, or transfer them to their home country.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>We don't want this section to expand or decrease the current powers of the President.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The Secretary of Defense will have to tell us who/why/how they are using these powers regularly.</i></blockquote>
So what's the rub? There's all of this yelling going on in the blog-o-sphere about these amendments. Why? It boils down to this text:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i> Detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force.</i></blockquote>
The problem that people are seeing is that there's no exception here for United States citizens. A motion to add text that exempted US citizens on American soil was defeated. Therefore:<br />
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You can be indefinitely detained without trial, without jury, and without charges if you are suspected of supporting terrorists. To detain you, the US Government has to attach you to an organization that is supportive of or affiliated with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or an associated organization.<br />
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Now, some bloggers will go very <i>Vendetta</i>-ish here, saying it only takes a few twists of one's words to create a link between you and some questionable organization that could be supportive of al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Unfortunately, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/News/Blotter/fbi-spied-peta-greenpeace-anti-war-activists/story?id=11682844#.Tt554WMk6nA">instances of un-warranted tracking/spying by the FBI of various American citizens</a> makes this believable. There's even an instance where a person was tracked because of <i><a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101013/14344011415/how-is-it-that-a-random-comment-on-reddit-leads-to-your-friend-getting-tracked-by-the-fbi.shtml">a friend's reddit comment</a>.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
There's a lot of ground that has to be covered to go from GPS tracking or phone tapping to grabbing a PETA activist and throwing them in Guantanamo Bay. But the rub is that this law <b>makes it possible to do so</b>. <br />
<br />
The Constitution already covers how to handle this type of behavior. It's called Treason, and its in Article 3, Section 3 :<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.</i></blockquote>
How close does that resemble the person described in Section 1031 (2) of S.1867? Still, this passed the Senate. How are they justifying this? There's this line in the Constitution, Article I, Section 9 :<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i> The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.</i></blockquote>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus">Habeas Corpus</a> is a legal term basically requiring a person be brought before a judge. The amendments in section 1031 of S.1867 specifically suspend Habeas Corpus for American citizens. The idea is that our continued conflicts abroad put the country in a case of "rebellion or invasion" and that for "public safety", it is required.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Detention_Act">Non-Detention Act of 1971</a> specifically says that only an Act of Congress can detain a citizen of the United States :<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>No citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress.</i></blockquote>
This was intended to repeal the <a href="http://tucnak.fsv.cuni.cz/~calda/Documents/1950s/Inter_Security_50.html">Emergency Detention Act of 1950,</a> which made it possible, just like S.1867, Section 1031, to detain citizens. The people who could be detained? Anyone supporting Communism.<br />
<br />
And let's us not forget the Bill of Rights and the Fourth Amendment :<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and <b>seizures</b>, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the <b>persons</b> or things to be seized.</i></blockquote>
We have, in 2011, our equivalent of the Red Scare. This time it is the Terrorist Scare. Like the Red Scare, there's no foreseeable end to the current War on Terror. Do I think terrorism is a threat? Absolutely. But a few Americans found helping the enemy does not a trend make. We're not seeing a rebellion at home in support of al-Qaeda - the vast majority of Americans hate them and what they stand for. Declaring that anyone can be detained on the <i>suspicion</i> of terrorist activities is not American and over kill. <a href="http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html">The Constitution</a>, Due Process, Habeas Corpus, and <a href="http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html">The Bill of Rights</a> were keystone concepts of what this country was founded on.<br />
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At any time we step away from these concepts, we are letting the other side win. Terrorism is about changing cultures, changing values, and scaring people. We see here the degradation of our Rights, bit by bit, whether its the Patriot Act or S.1867. They are changing our government.<br />
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This bill is now going to the House. It's already passed the Senate.<br />
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UPDATE:<br />
Two Four-Star Generals, Charles Krulak & Joseph Hoar have <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/opinion/guantanamo-forever.html?_r=3">written a note to the NY Times</a> speaking against the provisions in the NDAA for indefinite detention.<br />
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UPDATE 05.17.12:<br />
<a href="http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/05/16/46550.htm">A United States judge has ruled that the provisions in the NDAA of '11 for indefinite detention are unconstitutional.</a><br />
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<a href="https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3895">Take action by using this ACLU form to send a note to your Senators & Representative</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/12/ceding-liberty-to-terror-senate-votes-against-due-process-rights/249388/#.TtpJ2xLtCNs.twitter">Check out this article if you're curious if your senator supported or didn't support S.1867.</a><br />
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Sources:<br />
Analysis & notes on S.1867: <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/02/1041911/-National-Defense-Authorization-Act-Detention-of-US-Citizens-Feinstein-Amd-Text-Debate">DailyKos</a><br />
Non-Detention Act: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Detention_Act">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Detention_Act</a> , Full text: <a href="http://tucnak.fsv.cuni.cz/~calda/Documents/1950s/Inter_Security_50.html">http://tucnak.fsv.cuni.cz/~calda/Documents/1950s/Inter_Security_50.html</a><br />
Full Text of S.1867: <a href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c112:2:./temp/~c112dpzVQa::">http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c112:2:./temp/~c112dpzVQa::</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03313976289911982110noreply@blogger.com0