http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3905.html#

One of the main points made my Laughlin in this interview is that “anything that allows you to make money is not [shared or published]“. (As add’l context for those that didn’t listen to it, this is contrasted by “any information that allows [the owner of the information] to make money is published”.)

I would argue that, while there are undoubtedly industries where this is true, the state of the world is actually quite a bit different from the stark one painted by this idea.

Anything where craft matters renders this irrelevant. Harry Houdini published several books outlining in detail exactly how to perform his magic tricks. When asked, he said “Well. No one can do it like I can, now can they?”

I work every day on technology that is “open source”. The source code is published, very little is hidden behind the curtain. The work I do requires a certain level of craft, creativity, and innovation that is more the sum of manuals and source code.

There are flaws in the internet and it’s model, to be sure. The corporatization and monetization of it was inevitable and has some pretty serious side effects. Nevertheless, collaborative works like Wikipedia and the blogosphere community represent diametric opposites to Laughlin’s world view.

It’s an interesting idea, and the notion that we should question the source on everything is a sound one, but it’s neither new nor particularly poignant.

Remember, the dude didn’t win the nobel prize for philosophy. He won it for physics. I think that, if we question the source here, we’re simply seeing a man who is frustrated by his own inability to spread the knowledge in his head freely. (In the first few minutes of the interview, he brings up nuclear technology and how entire sections of knowledge in that field have been wiped from textbooks for security reasons.)

Furthermore, if my presumption is anywhere near the truth, this human desire actually backs up my argument further and serves to disagree with his. People want to share knowledge just because; it’s innate. So the act of hiding bits and pieces, as he asserts, is an unnatural act.

What do you think? Is there a damaging pack-rat mentality around information, or is Mr. Laughlin just blowing smoke?

I have a question. I intend it to be open-ended and simply spawn discussion.

Assuming you, dear reader, happen to be part of the pro-life crowd (all one of you), are there ever any exceptions? The canonical examples, of course, are rape and incest, which I suppose will do. Think about this in the context of your wife or your 15 year old daughter. Ok, maybe not the latter if we’re talking incest, but you get my drift.

Think about this, please, then scroll down.

Time out for a joke… (check out the Obi-Lincoln about 3 minutes in!)

Ok, you ready? Thought about my question?

So… are these legitimate consideration? If your underage daughter were raped by your worst enemy, would you insist that she keep the baby? If your wife were raped by that same worst enemy, would you raise your enemy’s progeny, supporting their offspring as your own?

Yes?

Ok. While I might disagree personally, I cannot in good conscience argue with you. Everything that follows debates your belief system, not your logic. I find your philosophical stance consistent and rational.

But if you didn’t… if you made an exception for these extreme cases, then you absolutely must consider the pro-choice alternative. Because an exception — any exception — indicates that you believe there are bad things that occur out there in the big crazy world and that there are hard decisions that must be made in their aftermath.

Sometimes those hard decisions have moral consequences.

Nevertheless, if there is room for that exception, I assert that this is more of a pro-choice stance than anyone realizes. That there are exceptions — that the world is morally gray — means that hard decisions, nay choices are to be made.

Put another way, if abortion is acceptable given the extremes that we all wish did not exist, then you must admit that there is a time and a place for choice. And if you believe this, then this becomes a non-partisan issue. It becomes an issue of where you divide your grays… where you make the morality call.

Why would we presume to let the state draw that line?

The thing that irks me is that it seems to be a foregone conclusion that tax cuts — especially the Republican version of it — are empirically good.

The Obama folks don’t want to get into this discussion, even though, as I’ll show in about eight paragraphs, they’re right. A tax cut on the middle class, even one financed by the top 5% of income earners, is a significant step in the right direction.

Now, before you conservatives close your entire browser window in disgust, I’ll give you a nod. Categorically, tax cuts should have a stimulating effect on the economy. Go ahead, gloat. Yes, you’re right. When McCain says “a tax increase right now would be bad for our economy”, he’s right. Across the board, if nothing else changes, raising taxes — even if only on the top 5% of wage earners — should have a negative aggregate effect on consumption and saving with an appropriate echo in production.

But the Obama plan doesn’t just raise taxes on “the rich”. It reduces taxes on the other 95% of the population. You can use all the incorrect negative allusions you want, e.g., “socialist”, “redistribution of wealth”, heck, even “unfair”, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is actually a good thing for both (a) more people more of the time, and (b) the economy as a whole.

Why (b), you might be wondering? Because rich people don’t buy more stuff (and therefore spawn more production) when they make more money. That’s the definition of wealth — having everything you need! If someone who takes home $50 million a year suddenly takes home $51 million, will he (sorry ladies, statistically speaking, it’s a dude — that’s another blog post for another day. Don’t kill the messenger!) go out and by 30 new Ford Taurus Sedans? No, he’ll hoard it. He’ll put it in the stock market. He’ll buy some oil futures. Now, yes, if you took Econ 101, you know that this wealth should in theory being put to work in the economy in the form of capital investment — which banks would then loan out to build more factories. But we have a credit crunch, banks aren’t making loans, and it’s a time of historically high inflation (no, it’s not 1979, but it has been over 5% for most of the year — meaning T-Bills are effectively returning a negative rate, but again — sigh — that is another blog post). So, even if those wheels can start turning again, and that extra million dollars gets invested and then spawns some new factories, it will take a while to “trickle-down”.

On the other hand, we have some real problems. In aggregate terms, banks aren’t making loans, and even if you think that this particular problem will subside in a relatively short period of time (and I agree with you — heck, I just purchased some stock in the few banks I think will weather the storm and hold deposits more than our annual GDP in 24 months), trickle-down economics does nothing for the short term. This is aside from the utilitarian aspect that most of us believe government should be about, at least in rhetorical terms. (For those of you that missed that day in philosophy or political science, utilitarianism is the idea that policies should be set up to make the most people the most happy. There are certainly problems with this idea — at some point the pain of the few still isn’t worth it — but I think the generalized version is what public policy should be about. My impression is that most of the population would agree.)

So, instead, we should give money — in the form of a permanent tax break, which will immediately pad their paychecks — to the working poor and the middle class. Rich people hoard extra money, which takes quite awhile to echo into the system. Poor people go out and buy more toilet paper and better food. Middle class folks go out and buy newer cars and replace those nasty incandescent bulbs with Compact Fluorescents (don’t you?!). Both groups buy more Coca-cola and pay off a little credit card debt (another form of saving just as powerful as the rich guy investing that money, I might add — probably more, in fact, because American Express immediately uses that new capital to loan to the Small Biz right down the street and our aforementioned rich guy took his million bucks and bought a position in a hedge fund that holds a crapload of AIG paper). This has an immediate positive effect on job creation, wages, and aggregate prosperity. Oh yeah, and it makes more of the populace happy.

What’s my point? Well, if it’s an equal sum game — if the total tax revenue collected stays the same — then it is absolutely better in the short term (say, 24 months) for a little bit of belt tightening (that’s maxes out at 4.6% — you know, roughly a third of what the average American pays in regressive payroll taxes… again, another blog post) for the folks that make more money than you, your Mom, and your brother. Put together.

Still awake? Ok, here’s the whammy. Taxes change behavior. What, that’s it?

Well, yeah. Want that as a sound bite? Ok, here’s the kicker: Higher taxes on the rich encourage more capital investment.

In other words, if you raise taxes on the top tier of wage earners, you don’t need to trickle that shizzle down. You get new factories right now.

What? What’s that you say? You say today is election day…?

Ok, here ya go:

Given that our aforementioned Richie Rich makes $50 million a year, he is almost certainly in a position of some power at his company. setting aside state taxes for the sake of simplicity, at a 35% tax rate, Rich takes home $32.5 million. Let’s say this is all in salary because he owns the company. Now, what does he do with that hoard of cash? He spends a couple million, he drops $10 million into a hedge fund, he drops another $10 million on his favorite college so his drunk, mostly lazy son named George can get in to school, and he buys a yacht or two.

Now, let’s say the tax rate is 80%. Yeah, that’s jacked up, I know. I’m not suggesting we do that, I’m just making a point here. The typical conservative response to this is “why would anyone ever work?” Well, do you happen to think that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet give two shits about their net worth? I mean, sure, it matters, but do you really think that either of them planned on being the richest guys in the world? No, they just wanted to get laid. Ok, they wanted to get laid by some gorgeous gal way out of their league several times a week while eating caviar, but you get my point. That higher taxes on the rich discourage innovation is a tenuous argument. You don’t need to be a billionaire to pull a gorgeous girl out of the crowd. A million or two will do just fine, thank you.

Back to my 80% world (which, incidentally, has happened in US history — and during a period of great economic growth, I might add. One might even call it a [baby] “boom”). In this world, Richie Rich gets his corporation to buy that yacht he wants, and the company holds sales meetings on it. The company also uses it to reward employees, which makes them work with more enthusiasm, creativity, and tenacity (all great, with no real loss to Rich’s happiness). He gets the corporation to donate a bunch of money to the school of Georgie’s choice. Of course, the board of directors cuts the endowment a bit, so George has to wait-list and go to junior college for a couple of years, but heck, when he runs for president in another 30 years, that will help him understand his constituents better (again, no real loss to Rich).

In short, Rich takes home less money. He still wants (and will) avoid paying taxes any way possible, so he funnels what he can out of the company, lives a little less high on the hog, pays more taxes in sheer dollars, but pays far, far less than the $40 million implied because he changes his behavior. He lowers his own salary. This leave more money in company coffers, which leads to all kinds of social goodness — the company has more money for salaries and dividends (which Rich gets some of as a shareholder). The CEO as egomaniac factor is reduced (c’mon, high salaries make men more proud. Higher salaries still make them arrogant!). Rich even pushes the company for more social activism, even if it is based mostly on the plight of poor Georgie stuck in junior college.

Oh, and then there’s the core point that I haven’t cycled back to, yet — more money in company coffers means they invest in more production. They build factories, hire more smart people, buy technology, and put money into basic research. All good stuff that yields direct economic growth. Directly, not via some sort of “packaged asset” issued by Lehman Brothers to the hedge fund Rich started back when he took home more than the GDP of most African countries.

Taxes change behavior. Rich guys have control over their own salary. The behavior — how much they pay themselves in the form of wages — will change if taxes rise.

Couple this idea with lower taxes for the average consumer (who, again, immediately consumes with those dollars), a pay down of the national debt (gotta fight that inflation at some point, somehow!), and government investment in infrastructure that private industry won’t readily subsidize (this means everything from national defense to bridges that go nowhere — and all of the completely reasonable things in between, like basic research, high speed rail, and renewable energy), and the Dow might never drop below 10,000 again. Imagine that.

Now, I’m not telling you who to vote for (although I’ll happily do so if you ask), but I am suggesting this: McCain’s rhetoric on what will help the economy is dead wrong. Trickle-down economics via maintaining fiscally imprudent tax breaks for the rich will not improve the economic situation. That is not a sound policy towards maintaining a healthy economy. It will lead to a weaker dollar, higher inflation, and more unemployment.

Oh, and just in case you want to point out that the 1980s under Reagan rocked, let me remind you that the top income tax rate through most of the 80s was 50%. If we let the Bush tax cut expire, the top rate rises from 35% to 39.6%.

Some items worthy of consideration:

Philips Sonicare Advance (A-Series) Replacement Brush Head, Standard

Emergen-C Vitamin C Fizzy Drink Mix, 1000 mg, Super Orange, 0.3 Ounce Packets (Pack of 36)

Unfortunately, they completely missed the boat on a truly obvious candidate for automated purchase:

Trojan Pleasure Pack

Oh how times have changed. Here’s an old photo of the device, courtesy of about.com:

So. I’ve been carrying around a Pearl for about a year and recently purchased a shiny new iPhone 3G. It’s been reviewed all over the place, and if you read my blog, you almost certainly already know about, ahem, visual voicemail. So this article won’t mention SMS messaging and the “ooh” factor of the entire thread in view when text messaging. (Besides, my pearl does that, too, albeit with less animation.)

I’ll start with the cons first. Everyone and their Mom wants a friggin’ iPhone, and these things are supposed to be the most innovative devices since some goofball thought selling stuff (starting with porn) on the darpanet using a simple markup language might be a good idea. (If you don’t know the lore to which I’m referring, please do comment saying so. I’ll be happy to post the appropriate Wikipedia links if it’s that unclear.)

In other words, everyone wants one. I’m choosing to not hop on that bandwagon. At least not up front.

Why iPod Sucks

1. Calendar, schmalendar. Blackberry talks to my google calendar seamlessly. I can transfer an ical invitation in my inbox to my calendar with a single click, and before I can open 3 browser windows on my desktop, it’s already in my online google calendar and my offce manager knows about it. iPhone, on the other hand, a year after initial release, uses MobileMe, a subscription based service on top of the $40 minimum I have to pay AT&T every month. And then it talks only to Exchange. How well does it work? I dunno. I’m not gonna go install Exchange just so I can get a locked-to-outlook version of my perfectly good Google calendar. Sure, there’s an alternative out there, but it looks — ahem — a bit dodgy to me. Plus that ain’t gonna be free as soon as they can hire a designer for their web site.
2. I can sync contacts. To Outlook. With a Cable. Wireless? Just kidding!
3. Oh, wait, I can’t actually sync. I can DELETE EVERY CONTACT ON MY PHONE and then REWRITE them from Outlook. WTF? I’m sorry, I know that my little boutique software firm would have a hard time writing a seamless contact synchronization algorithm in less than three months. Hell, it might take four if you (gasp) asked for synchronization against more than one contact management system. But you’re Apple. You have $25 billion in the bank. C’mon, guys.
4. I can’t sync using Bluetooth. Sure, it might be slow. Sure, it’s not standard on all laptops. Heck, do MacBooks have them? Maybe that’s why there was this subtle omission. But what about that inevitable road trip where I forget my USB cable? Having Bluetooth-to-laptop connectivity at least as a backup would have been a nice value-add without a lot of additional engineering resources.
5. Speaking of cables, why do I need one? EVER? Let me repeat that question with a little more context. Why does my bluetooth-having, wi-fi sensing, 3G Network boasting, so cool it helps me get laid, star trek communicators are so 20th century, always-connected device EVER NEED A F***ING CABLE? You want to use one because it’s faster the first time you load up 14 Gigabytes of totally legal digital music on your brand new “I’m a Steve Jobs groupie” badge, sure. But a device with so many connectivity options should have an over-the-air (OTA) option for everything. EVERYTHING.
6. I can’t download a song from iTunes unless I use Wi-fi. Thanks, AT&T.
7. Mail has no search function. And, yes, my crackberry does.
8. Sideways keyboard on web pages, but not in (ahem) the mail application. I don’t much like the software keyboard, anyway.
9. I can’t delete podcasts. I can’t even mark podcasts for deletion on my next cable synchronization. Insert another expletive here for the cable issue. Yes, again. This is meaning of life stuff here, Jack.
10. I can’t download podcasts. Not even from iTunes over wifi. So I have to cable synch to my laptop connected to the same stinkin’ wifi network just so I can get my latest Robert Reich commentary and last week’s This American Life. Yes, I know, I’m a bourgeouis pampered bastard, but I grew up poor and I work harder than you, so bite me. =)
11. The software keyboard, take two. On a Blackberry with a full keyboard (e.g. the Curve), I can type probably 35 words per minute. No, not the 75-90 I can blast out when blogging passionately on a full-blown keyboard, but still not too shabby. Good enough, in fact, to manage a software project completely from a blackberry, especially with solid administrative help. I can reply to an email with three paragraphs in two minutes, including the requisite backspaces. The apple predictive capabilities with the software keyboard are top-notch, but it’s still dependent on software to guess at your intention after you fat-finger your way to gobbledy-gook heaven. You will remember predictive texting, right? You know, that feature you turned off on your old Nokia the minute you started trying to send your third SMS ever back when too much of the country still thought W. was a good president? (I told you so, btw. Yes. I did. 5 years ago. Check my archives. =)
12. Camera — old news, yes, but there’s no light. No zoom. My Blackberry has that.
13. Camera — wish list. It’s a good camera. Good enough to replace my desire for a Canon/Sony/Nikon. I’m not a professional photographer, and I’m well aware that I don’t need more than 2 megapixels to warrant sending Shutterfly a few dollars. But there’s no video (my 5 year old Sony Walkman phone did that for crying out loud), there’s no flash, and there’s no — and this is the biggest issue I have with all camera phones — lens protection. Would it be so hard to allow us consumers the ability to protect that lens so the damn thing can take a good picture for more than 3 weeks after you unwrap the thing?
14. The software keyboard, take three. You can’t send a text with one hand. This is pretty much across the board, don’t even try. Not that I’d ever consider sending a text message or email while doing something (cough) Holding a steering wheel (cough) with my other hand.

Later in the week, I’ll post an entry on what I actually like about my iPhone. Despite all of the above complaints, yes, it still has its merits… but the verdict is still out on whether or not the Blackberry gets retired.

So, if you’re in or around Concord tomorrow, head out there for an hour tomorrow and give a solid shout out for equality.

When: Saturday 25 October 2008
Time: From 1:00 to 3:00 P.M.
Where: Willow Pass Rd & Market Street, Concord, CA 94520 (In Front of “Concord Auto Center”)

Courtesy of Phlooq: Are My Friends Going?
Phlooq does not endorse or approve of any content within either this post or blog.
(Want one of these event widgets? Then Contact Me.)

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Finally, just a couple of quick thoughts to those of you who insist that the word “marriage” means something ordained by god:

• Marriage in this context is just a legal term. I don’t think it means anything less for your particular heterosexual marriage. Not to you, not to your church, not to your family, and not to me. If you actually do think it cheapens your own status, then maybe there are some other underlying issues in your marriage you need to consider. Have you told your wife you loved her today? =)
• It’s fair. You may not understand another individual’s sexuality, but you can still understand their desire to make the call on medical decisions and such if they’re in a long term committed relationship. While you may be sure that you’ll never be in their shoes, who’s to say that someone you care deeply about (a sister, a son, a best friend or cousin…) might not be, either today or in the future? Remember, if you’re adamant on your views, they might be keeping their sexual preferences quiet.
• Does it really hurt anyone to let gay folks have their titles? (I mean, really? Ok, maybe that’s not a point, but it has rhetoric.)

Got that our of your system?

Ok. Well, it’s Friday afternoon and I’m still struggling to push a new build of another Great Idea That Will Make The World a Better Place(tm). It’s pushing. Er, copying. Er, updating. Wait… what does that script do again?

(The current brain-bandwidth is being occupied by Phlooq, a product designed to help content publishers leverage social networks to promote events. It really is a good idea, but I’m in the middle of Friday rant here…)

The beauty of running your own shop is flexibility. The company picks up your transportation costs everywhere (I sign my own expense reports now, damn it!). Once you have employees, you can even delegate most of your less urgent task items.

The bad side is that you never turn off. I haven’t worked this hard since… oh wait, never mind. I’m a workaholic. But, yeah, the phone woke me up three times this week with someone begging for help. Thankfully it was a client in good standing every time (nothing is worse than when the client who hasn’t paid you for three months makes that call), but still… yawn.

So, yeah, that’s why I haven’t been blogging. The $30 a month google sends me when I blog every day about Ron Paul and Vannessa whats-her-butt from High School Musical just doesn’t quite seem worth the effort when one is working Sundays.

Maybe Moses had something going there with that whole Sabbath routine. Heh. Keeping a bunch of nomads inspired while you wander around in circles for 40 years is a tough job — you need those Sundays off, damn it!

Anyhow, here are a few things I dealt with this month:

• Had an employee resign, then re-apply. I hired him back. Woot!
• Moved across town. Well, no, not across town. Eight blocks. It was still a move.
• Started offering health insurance to employees.
• Registered to Vote. Please do the math and vote for Obama. Unless, of course, you actually do happen to be in the top 5% of incomes, in which case, please Contact Me. I’d like to partner with you.
• Bought an iPhone. I have a full blog post in my head just around that, actually. Good thing I’ve written it. (sarcastic humor)

Okay, that’s enough for this month. Happy Friday!

My bad. He did finally get a replacement laptop shipped to him in the interim. After spending 30 hours of effort on it, of course. :-\

The following are not my words. I’ve copied and pasted this story directly from the source — a less-than-happy customer who happens to be in my mobile phone’s address book. I don’t own (or have a short position in) any HP stock.

–

I’ve always liked Hewlett Packard products. In the past, they’ve had good enough build and support to satisfy my needs. Lately however, the #1 company in customer satisfaction (who said this anyway?) has been causing nothing but trouble.

It all started around November 2006. Well that’s when I bought the laptop anyways. A brand new shiny Compaq V3000 customized to my needs with a 1 year standard warranty. After playing around with it for a bit, I completely reinstall the machine due to all the bloatware HP just loves to install for you. Now the machine is finally ready for use.

Fast forward to the Summer 2007. My sound card dies on me. I mean the computer has the “mute” light on and it doesn’t get detected at all…completely dead. After doing all the troubleshooting over the phone, the HP warranty kicks in and I send it off for repair. I do have to say the box to ship it off came the next day and within 2 weeks on the scheduled delivery date, I had the laptop back good as new. Of course, they had to re-image my computer but I let that go.

Fast forward to Spring 2008. The computer has now been upgraded with more RAM due to a gift and of course was completely reinstalled when I had gotten it back from repair the past Summer. By this time, the wonders of Linux have been discovered by me and I use Ubuntu as my primary OS. Now I get complaints from my friends that my computer is really loud (the fan is always on for some reason). I pay no attention although the computer does get pretty warm on the bottom. As I’m trying to burn a DVD, my hard drive dies on me. Neither Windows or Linux will boot and all my data is lost. I open the machine up and it’s a Seagate drive (which gives a 5 year warranty on their drives if bought from Seagate). Of course it’s not covered under any Seagate warranty and HP will make me pay for it. I buy a drive off of Ebay and install it myself. Once again, reinstall everything and get everything just how I like it. So far so good…

Let’s fast forward to Summer 2008 which brings me to the real story. By this time, I had started seeing weird things happen with my wireless card. Sometimes it would get detected on boot but sometimes it wouldn’t. Very random and no pattern to it. I decided to do a Google search and came up with something very interesting:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01087277&dlc=en&lc=en&cc=us

Yes, HP has a recall on this and most of its mainstream laptops. Apparently the fan spins too fast or some other BS that HP wants to feed you and it makes the computer overheat and the insides melt and things die (yes, things really do melt). Usually the wireless card goes first and then the video card soon after which I hadn’t gotten to yet. It’s a free repair with free shipping so I decide to go for it. Let’s delve into the world of the best tech support in the business.

First phone call on June 18th, 2008:
HP Rep wants to troubleshoot my laptop before sending it off. When I tell him I only have Linux installed (by this time I use Windows so little that I forgot that have a dual boot) and he says they can’t help me. Great, the tech support people aren’t trained in Linux so they can’t replace a dying hardware part. By the way, Dell and other companies not only support Linux but also sell it on their machines if the customer wants to choose that option. I finally remember I have Windows installed and we go through all of the troubleshooting steps before the guys agrees with me that I can get my system replaced under warranty. I tell the guy that I can’t afford to have my hard drive wiped or re-imaged (I really didn’t want to go through the hassle of reinstalling and setting everything up again when this was obviously unnecessary). I am told that they will do what they need to and it will involve a re-image. After enough explaining to him that it’s not necessary, I get nowhere. I call his supervisor and the best she can do is send a request to contact me if they are to re-image anything.

Box comes on June 23rd, 2008:
Enough time has gone by but the box is there as promised. I keep the battery and wish I had kept the hard drive too but I figured it would only cause problems if I had removed it. I also included a big note on 8.5×11 paper saying I don’t need anything re-imaged and to contact me if they even think about it. Note is written in red and black sharpie in bold and is put inside the lid. If they open the lid, they will see the note. Off to HP it goes. A few days later I see online that the expected delivery date is back to me on June 31st. Awesome.

June 30th, 2008:
My laptop is supposed to come back tomorrow. I check the status online and the status is as follows:

Hewlett-Packard is awaiting the arrival of a part to complete your product repair. Once the part is received, Hewlett-Packard will expedite the repair of your product and its return to you. So that you may monitor progress, any change in status or expected delivery date will be posted to this web site as soon as possible.

Expected delivery date is still June 30th. Let’s hope I get it but I’m not too enthusiastic

June 31st, 2008:
No package for HP. Still the same status as before. New delivery date changed to July 15th, 2008. Also get a call from a guy from India telling me a part is on backorder and the new delivery date. He thanks me for being a customer.

July 14th, 2008:
Day before I’m supposed to get my laptop. Status hasn’t changed.

July 15th, 2008:
Same status. New delivery date is July 29th, 2008. Another phone call from India with the new delivery date and more thanks and appreciation for being a customer. See a pattern happening here?

First online chat on July 20th, 2008:
I come home from vacation this evening and first thing I decide to do is chat online with an HP rep. because I don’t feel like calling. The only thing I get from the conversation is a phone number that I should call the next day to get support.

First call to customer support on July 21st, 2008:
I get a guy from India who I barely understand and who doesn’t know anything. He wastes my time and reroutes my call to a guy in the United States. This guy is friendlier and more understandable and actually seems to understand my predicament. I need my laptop back repaired and HP isn’t giving that to me. He says there’s nothing he can do because he is too low in the chain of Customer Support but does assign me to a case manager. These are the people who can actually help you supposedly. I have no way of contacting the case manager so I have to wait for a phone call. While I’m at it, I send a nice e-mail to the CEO of HP through an online link. Of course it doesn’t go to him but someone has to see my kind words!

Later the same day, I get a voicemail from my case manager. She sounds very rushed on the voicemail and I can’t make out the correct phone number. I call the number that I thought was correct and get sent to the Case Messenger Voicemail. No hope of reaching anyone, I leave a voicemail on a machine that has an Indian voice saying the greeting that is barely audible. I call back Customer Support who tell me the number I have is one digit off. Finally, I can reach a case manager.

I get a hold of my case manager after being on hold for a little while. I’ve actually been on hold through every conversation so the music is getting quite annoying by this point. I talk to my case manager who can only tell me that “you need to wait for the 29th because your laptop is supposed to come then”. No matter what I tell her, she always says “I understand but your only option is to wait”. What about the option where HP can send me a replacement laptop because they’re at fault in every way! They sold me a laptop that broke several times, they admit it’s their fault and put a recall on the laptop, and then they push back the delivery date very 2 weeks by 2 more weeks. I don’t feel like I’ll ever get my laptop. The conversation ends with me requesting a new case manager which she doesn’t want to do. I go ahead and file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and also have a friend file a complaint in the internal Hewlett Packard system (yes my friend is an employee there). I spend the rest of the day researching problems about HP and find dozens if not hundreds of users posting their own horrible stories online about HP support and the black hole that is their repair center.

July 22nd, 2008:
I get a phone call from the HP headquarters in Palo Alto who are concerned about my issues. I have a very nice conversation with the lady who is actually sounding like she is on my side for once. She thinks that HP is wrong in this case and tries to help me. In the end, she promises to give me a new case manager. I thank her and feel like I may have gotten somewhere. My new case manager calls me later and leaves a voicemail. It’s too late to call him back so I will wait until tomorrow.

July 23rd, 2008:
I call my new case manager. He’s actually an executive case manager so maybe he can do something? I explain my whole situation in detail one more time although he should have my case all in his files. This guy doesn’t say he understands every sentence but throws in the word sir instead all the time. I rant and rant to him but all he can do is agree with my concerns and tell me to wait. They don’t offer replacements on my laptop because it is 2 years old he says (really only 1.5 years old) and is out of warranty. The recall means nothing and it only entitles me to a repair of the laptop. Whenever I go on a rant and finish, he doesn’t say anything for at least 30 seconds before following up with a “you have to wait”. I ask him if this goes on for 3 months, what will HP tell me then? He says that no matter what, my only option is to wait. This guy is getting me nowhere so I tell him that they are losing lots and lots of customers. People are having the same problem as I am and will never buy HP again. Companies are steering clear of HP as well now. And the first level support in India is horrendous. You can’t understand them and they don’t help at all.

July 24th, 2008:
I am going to call the corporate office again today and see if the only helpful person can do anything. Other than that, I feel totally screwed and at a loss for what to do. I need a working laptop and HP isn’t offering a replacement although I feel I deserve one seeing as though I don’t know when my laptop is going to come and when HP will actually receive the back-ordered part.

I’ll keep updating this as new developments occur but I don’t feel like there will be many of them.

Recap:
- HP doesn’t support Linux and aren’t sure what it is.
- HP has my laptop in for repair for over a month and a half promising to have it back every 2 weeks and not fulfilling that promise.
- HP doesn’t know when they will get the replacement motherboards in.
- HP won’t offer a replacement even though everything has been their fault from the start including the malfunctioning laptop.
- Every HP representatives solution is to wait it out.

As a side note, my latest case manager told me that some people have to wait for over 2 months and they just wait patiently. Does that sound reasonable to anyone?

(It’s a thinly veiled ad for google products, but it is food for thought about (a) market opportunities for your own pursuit, and (b) what some google engineers are probably working on.)

• Today, only the largest companies can afford to hire consultants and experts. In the future, even small companies will be able to purchase on-demand expertise and other services via the Internet.
• Today, marketing intelligence are costly reports describing data many months or years old. In the future, small businesses will have access to real-time data on market conditions.
• Today, only the largest companies can run expensive experiments with their advertising campaigns. In the future, even small business will be able to run carefully controlled marketing experiments that will enable them to better reach their potential customers.
• Today, only large companies can sell products in many countries. Tomorrow, businesses of any size can use online services and outsourced logistics to buy and sell in every corner of the globe.

Bummer. Here’s a quick refresher on some things to make sure you audit on your own site.

• Use a unique account for your web-originating database access. This means a unique account with its own password and credentials as limited as possible. Making your DB access credentials the same as anything SSH-capable is asking for trouble. You don’t use your ATM access code to login to your email account, do you? (You’d better not!)
• Lockout all but the necessary functions (usually just insert, select, and update) at the database level for your new database access account. If you need to give this user “delete” access, too, maybe you need to re-think your application’s logic. (Deleted should be handled via a flag in most applications, not by actual removal of the data.)
• Place all of your common core server-side includes outside of your root web context. So if your web server’s root is “public_html”, put all of your shared libraries, especially your core database connection library, above public_html in your directory structure. If you can’t do this on your web host and you give two craps about the security of your site, get a new host. In English, this means that no one on the web should be able to surf to any of your core libraries. Requiring authentication to get to these files might feel just as good, but it isn’t.
• Chmod 777 is a Very Bad Idea.

This is by no means definitive, nor should it take the place of a professional audit by a skilled professional. However, if your development staff consists of your left brain, your pooch, and white board, this is a decent place to start.

After about 20 seconds of discussion, someone said, “so they have a whole lot of servers then, huh?”

I retorted that it’s probably the single biggest application on the planet in terms of computing power. Of course, I followed this up by silently asking said google cache about this question. Interestingly, after a half dozen tries (”largest server farms”, “largest application”, “largest global applications”, etc), I couldn’t find a definitive list. Heck, I really couldn’t find any list.

So I thought I’d put one out there for public consumption. Please debate and correct me. It’s all guesswork.

(This is based on total flops devoted to a single application infrastructure, not based on other trivialities, like number of CPUs, number of racks, or raw storage capacity. There’s also probably a distinction between different branches of government, but I’m way out of my league there.)

1. Google. The www cache, youtube, picasa, and all the rest.
2. The DoD. You know, those guys that invented the internet?
3. Amazon. S3, alexa, the wayback machine, and of course their tiny product database.
4. Microsoft. Hotmail, Live, windowsupdate, msdn.
5. Yahoo. Their tombstone aside, they’ve got a web cache and tons of services. All of that info has to be stored somewhere.
6. China’s IT Infrastructure. Suppressing all of that free speech has to take some computing power, right?

Let the debate ensue…

I wasn’t sweating it a whole heck of a lot since, well, if there’s no new content, there isn’t much point, now is there?

Well, I went ahead and tried to login to my feedburner account today, and I was rudely informed that my feeds are screwed. Check out the screenshot:

To fix it, I went ahead and disabled my feedburner extension for now. http://fuery.com/feed lives again!

With that in mind, would you rather see one good article a month, or articles of moderate quality 2-3 times a week?

This means wearing a lot of hats and getting your hands dirty on product design, user interface design, software architecture, development, project management, quality assurance, and support. This doesn’t mean you’re expected to know all of these, but it does mean you should be excited (instead of intimidated) by new challenges every day.

Professional Qualifications:

• A BA/BS or equivalent experience. A CS degree is advantageous, but not a prerequisite. You will be tested during the interview process.
• IT support experience in networks, troubleshooting, and repair.
• LAMP + JavaScript. (Translation for the search engines: Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, JavaScript)
• Familiar with typical web application architectures.
• Pre-development technical research and documentation (ie. Wireframes, specs, and workflow. Wiki + Visio + lots of dry erase markers)
• Strong system integration skills. (bring it all together, even if using only chewing gum and shoelaces)
• Ability to role play as various actors (client, consumer, end user, engineer, etc) to improve/critique software interfaces.

Personal Qualifications:

• Ability to work and solve problems independently with the ability to adapt and take on new tasks
• Flexible with the ability to take on several projects at one time if necessary
• Prepared to take on increasing responsibilities over time
• Excellent writing skills
• Good communication skills
• Creativity
• Logical reasoning skills
• Must be organized and able to commit and deliver to project plans and timelines
• High levels of drive, determination and enthusiasm
• Ability to work in a team environment, meet tight deadlines and work on several projects simultaneously

Knowledge and experience in everything listed above is not necessary, however, we would like someone with as little training needed. We will coach you on new tasks that we assign to you and we are always open to answer questions, however, someone who will take the initiative and try to work independently first is highly valued. If you fit the description listed above, please email your resume to kaitlynne (at) fuery (dot) com.

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