Category Archives: Wondering - Page 14

The Contributors and The Creators

Posted by on December 3, 2014 No comments

Well, it’s been a year of lessons for me.  As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, I am on the board of a non-profit organization.  And after a little over a year of operations, that organization is shutting down.  The experience that I got out of it has changed a lot of how I view the world, especially towards the end.  The net take-away for me is that being a contributor to society doesn’t really have any payoff, either monetarily or emotionally.

Let’s look at the beginning.  When you start a business with a group of people, you might all be excited that you’re all building something great.  Don’t believe it.  Everyone has their motives for the creation of the entity and one or more people involved will only happy to be receiving the benefits of the existence of said entity.  The assistance you get from them will be minimal at best.

As time goes on, because of the lack of contribution, you will find yourself picking up the slack, through donations of time and money.  You will convince yourself that the business just needs to get over the hump and it can become self-sustaining.  As the excitement wears off for the others, you are left more or less alone.  Don’t believe in any “build it and they will come” dreams.  You’re going to have to drive people to your cause, and probably will have to do it alone.

Then, as you’ve put so much time and effort into your creation, and it actually seems like it might be stabilizing, you might be fortunate enough to be the recipient of an attack.  That attack could be in any form, whether financial, betrayal of a corporate officer, character defamation, or something even worse.  Maybe you can survive it.  Maybe your supporters rally to your cause and get you through it.  But, maybe, it just changes your entire perception of why you built the business in the first place.  Is it worth playing in the same playground as the bullies and the attackers?

And then, as time and negativity set in, there is no one left that believes in the cause.  The ones that were originally in it for themselves have already left.  If you’re lucky enough to have fresh members who you hope would feed the excitement for the cause, they may falter and leave.  What do you have left?  Start from scratch again with all the time and money investment that goes along with it?

The ideal life of a non-profit is like crowdsurfing at a concert.  The original people holding the surfer can’t keep doing it forever.  It needs to be passed on.  But when there’s no one available to pass on to, there can only be a collapse.

But anyway, back to the the title.  People may think being a creator is easy, since you just have to think the idea, get it started and off it runs.  That’s not always how it works.  Think of a for-profit business.  Sure you can run that until it explodes in a torrent of money or disaster.  But when you create a non-profit, you are not an owner.  There are NO owners.  You are a creator and a perpetual contributor until someone chooses to relieve you.  That time may never come.

All Things Considered

Posted by on November 18, 2014 No comments

Since I’ve been working on my CD collection, I’ve been thinking about CDs a lot lately. There’s a lot of talk on the death of the CD format, with it being replaced by digital downloads. On top of that, there’s talk about the music industry not making any money anymore. On top of that, there’s the discussion of digital piracy and how to get people to pay for music again.

All these issues are intertwined.  The industry is losing money in some areas, but not in all.  Part of it is because of the third point, piracy, but another good part of it is that there are now multiple, durable playback mediums.  CDs are very durable, and where they may fail, digital copies and CDRs fill in the gaps.  So the industry doesn’t have the opportunities to resell an entire collection to a consumer in a new format, and the instances where the industry has to sell replacements has decreased, too.  You can see the industry trying to adapt by selling special editions and remastered versions.  It’s not working out all that well.

Some say the CD is dead for the same reason “books are dead” – because the physical media takes up space.  I recently read about a company whose purpose is to license out-of-print classical music and create CDs on-demand.  It made me wonder if the entire music business could be like this.  (I’ve also wondered if automobile sales could be like this, too.)

My issue with that concept is that CDRs do have a limited shelf life.  Supposedly, aluminum CDs also have a shelf life, but that is yet widely proven.  Also, for me, buying a CDR is no different than downloading the music and making the CDR myself.  So, unless someone is willing to archive the glass masters and one-off actual CDs, I’ll stick with my originals.

So, let’s think of the future where manufacturing CDs is obsolete and digital or CDR is pretty commonplace.  In that time, real CDs have value – they are elevated to collectables.  So, why can’t the industry make that happen a little sooner?  Just manufacture less CDs and let the market decide who wants to pay to own a physical copy of the music instead of owning a license to a digital copy.  The CD becomes the collectable.  The industry saves money from having a lower on-hand inventory.  CDs gain a marketing edge as “limited quantity”.

In some of my daydreams where I am a famous musician or maybe the owner of a record label company, I would brainstorm how to make my albums valuable and how to get people to buy instead of steal.  A long time ago, I thought including a video with the album would be a nice value-add.  Back then, digitally copying a DVD was prohibitive in storage and bandwidth.  Not so much anymore.  And now today, lots of special edition albums include a behind-the-scenes DVD.  So then what?  I also thought about books.  Books are more difficult to reproduce digitally and don’t hold the same allure when seen on a screen.  A recent album I purchased was being sold direct by the record label as a bundle with a DVD, a shirt and a poster.  It was 3x what I paid for it, but I think that’s a nice option.  Whatever the solution is, it has to be physical, because digital has no value.

And maybe in the future, the only physical thing needed to make the album special will be the CD itself.

Hard Times

Posted by on November 14, 2014 No comments

The last couple weeks have been difficult for me and have resulted in me performing a reassessment of society.

First, I have learned that intolerance, prejudice, and hypocrisy make up a holy trinity.  When someone publicly attacks you for something that they find offensive, and then pins a label on you that can’t be proven, you have little defense.  You can try to be rational with them, you can try to argue with them, you can try to dismiss them, but you cannot win.

Second, I learned that everything in life must be treated like open-heart surgery.  You get one chance to do anything and if you don’t do it the correct way and do it perfectly, you are an utter failure.  This is especially true when you are doing the work you have done all your life.

Now, I will say that these are not things I believe, only things that I perceive right now.  It’s going to be a while to recover from these latest blows to my faith in civilization.

Prediction

Posted by on November 5, 2014 No comments

A while ago, the world was abuzz with the celebrity nudes hack.  I was recently reminded of a recent update I had seen for Dropbox.  It’s easily understood that anything that can be used by you for good can be used against you for bad by someone else.  This feature is no different.

The specific feature that was added to Dropbox was “Remote Wipe”, which is intended to be used if you lose your phone or other portable device.  By triggering a remote wipe, your data is no longer available to steal.  That is a good thing.  This is presumably done through the Dropbox website.

But what happens if someone gains access to your Dropbox website account?  They can remotely wipe your data.  Now instead of your portable device being a backup copy if the service ever became inaccessible, now it’s vulnerable whenever the service is accessible.

Naturally, the hacker would either change the password and/or copy off all the files for their own potential ransom request or personal use.  Can you imagine opening up your Dropbox folder one day and have it be empty except for a text file with instructions on submitting a ransom in bitcoin?

I keep saying it one way or another.  The cloud is not to be trusted. 

You need to:

  • Keep your data locally.
  • Have unique usernames at each website – Use a password manager like KeePass
  • Have unique passwords at each website – Use a password manager like KeePass!
  • Keep a PIN on your phone.
  • Keep catastrophic data in an encrypted file – Use TrueCrypt 7.1a

The more of this you do, the more secure you will be, which means the more comfortable you will be. 

Gas Runners

Posted by on November 3, 2014 No comments

A few days ago, I was driving home and saw a couple of gas stations with different gas prices.  The one station’s prices were “cash only”.  It got me thinking about a couple of things.  First off, I thought that there isn’t any incentive to go to a cash-only station if the prices are practically the same.  I wondered if it was a desperate concession for the station owner to implement surcharges for credit cards.  This led me to consider gas stations as a whole business.

With any business, you have income and expenses.  You can play with these elements in any possible way to create profit, that is, more income than expenses.  When you are selling gas, you have one income source – gas sales.  You would have many, many expenses – licenses, maintenance, labor, taxes, utilities, and on and on.  One of those expenses would be credit card processing fees.  Like I said, play with these sources to create profit.  Eliminate CC fees and you may make a profit, or more of a profit.

With larger gas stations – ones with integrated convenience stores – you would have multiple sources of income, including food/merchandise sales and possibly lottery ticket sales commissions.  Your other expenses may go up too, but we all know that buying anything from a convenience store is not the cheapest choice.  You are paying dearly for the convenience.

So, by having the C-store, your profits from one sector can offset the expenses from the other.  You can absorb the CC fees because your C-store sales are subsidizing them.  This made me wonder how gas stations could even survive without solid c-store sales.  Maybe this is why they have to sacrifice CC processing.

So now, on to my idea.  You have a gas station with customized gas pumps.  The pumps have a large touchscreen that performs as a kiosk.  After you swipe your card to activate the pump, the screen allows you to purchase items in the store.  Within the store are one or more “runners” that will pick and run the items out to you at the pump.  That’s it.  A simple idea.

But more than just simple, this is an improved form of convenience – you don’t even have to go inside the store.  You don’t have to run your credit card twice – your gas and purchases are combined on one receipt.  The store doesn’t even have to be customer-accessible.  It could be optimized for quick-picking.

The ordering kiosk software could remember people by their credit card numbers and provide frequent, recent, and favorite item lists to choose from.  As with everything modern now, you could tie it to an online profile where the customer could review purchases and create lists of favorite items to be shown on their next visit.

If you haven’t determined it by now, this is how a small station could compete with a large C-store.  You have the extra income stream of the merchandise sales, but a much lower overhead of running a large store, including maintenance, taxes, cleaning, utilities, and more.  And, in some ways, the service level would be higher.  With so many people in a rush, saving the time of going in, shopping, and standing in line to pay (again), all that time is saved.

If I Only Didn’t Have a Day Job

Posted by on September 10, 2014 No comments

To go along with all my other damn posts about missing out on inspiration because of life,  I found this in my drafts – a beginning to a short story I wanted to write.  It was going to be about how life is sort of a game played by spirits in the afterlife.  Your spirit controls your body and tries to make it live as long as possible.  Real-life Sims, I guess.  Steve meets one of the “monitors”, who supervise “gameplay”…

“And then the ambulance just rolled away with no lights or anything.  Much different than when the person is still alive, huh?”

Although he tried to make it sound humorous, there was little in his voice that indicated it.  There was only a dull monotone that sounded like the shock hasn’t passed yet.

“But Steve, it really wasn’t your fault.  From what you’ve told me, it isn’t.”

And that part was legally true.  No charges from the police.  No insurance hassles.  The woman had pulled out in front of him and he…

“Yup.  I couldn’t do anything.  Couldn’t do anything but kill her.”  Steve wasn’t making himself feel any better by relating his story.  Wasn’t that what was supposed to happen?  “Get it out” and all?

His sounding board, Paul, had no comforting retort for Steve this time.  He could only sit and silently provide support.  Paul had known Steve for many years.  Although they weren’t what you would call best friends, they would get together often enough to keep a friendship strong.

Paul was exactly what Steve needed right now.  Someone who wasn’t too close that would be shaken by his recent accident and the effect it had on him, but also someone close enough that would actually care about him getting over this.

“It’s shit like this that makes me question everything in life, Paul.  Why her, why now, why not me?  You talk to the religious types and they say ‘God has a plan for everyone.’  And you talk to the non-religious and they say ‘That’s life, dude.’  I have to say, there’s gotta be something in the middle.”

Paul looked down at the mug of coffee in front of him.  “Let him talk it out,” he thought.

“I started reading a lot lately.  Looking for some reasoning.  I came across this thing called Theosophy, which is supposed to explain the whole life and death process, without religiousness.  Or at least that’s what I got out of it.  I read other books about after-death communications.  So I have all these ideas about karma and purposes and reincarnation, but even considering all that, it still doesn’t make any sense as to why.”

Paul looked back up at Steve.  “Why what?”

“Just, why.  Why did it happen.  When you think about ‘God’s plan’ or predestiny or even some weird cosmic theory that someone dies so that someone else can learn a lesson.  There’s the big debate about free will in there, too.  It just seems… random.”

A figure in the booth behind Steve spoke up.  “It’s calculated.”

“Excuse me?”  Steve half turned around, not sure whether to be annoyed at the eavesdropping or intrigued at the stranger’s certainty in his declaration.

“It is calculated, or I should say, pre-calculated.  The outcome isn’t really known, but the scenario is a generated one based on known factors,” the stranger explained in a matter-of-fact way.  “The outcome will change a lot of future events, events that were pre-planned, but get adjusted with current data.”

“Data,” 

We Believe

Posted by on August 16, 2014 No comments

Today I saw a funny video on a forum.  I thought to myself, “this is going to explode”, so I went to YouTube to see what the play count was.  400k.  Not bad.  I’ll have to check it later.  I noticed something really peculiar in the video description:

“For licensing/usage please contact: licensing@jukinmedia.com”

Huh?  This was supposed to be someone’s funny personal video.  Did this person have the foresight to actually license their personal video?

I visit the website and this statement jumps out at me:

WE BELIEVE CONTENT CREATORS SHOULD BE REWARDED FOR THEIR WORK.

What the hell?  Further:

JukinVideo.com has the world’s largest selection of short-form, viral video content available for licensing.

Ok.  I am feeling totally ripped off now for even watching that and considering sharing it.  “Viral video content” – I don’t even know how to describe this.  I was under the impression that “viral” was something that happened to a video, not something that was premeditated.  How naive I am.

But let’s jump back to that first statement.  I do believe that people who become viral sensations are rewarded in some way for their work.  They do get lots of media attention, then it’s up to them to parlay that into something of lasting monetary value.  This site is not needed.

This site’s statement should read: “WE BELIEVE WE DESERVE A CUT OF YOUR SUCCESS.”  Because that’s what they’re doing, injecting themselves between your work and the world, buffered by a team of legal experts that will “protect your (they really mean their) content rights.”  This is a company that is intent on taking everything wrong with the entertainment industry and applying it to the free internet.

I am curious how this works, because they do have examples of honestly homemade videos.  Do they seek out funny videos, then approach the owner and say, “Let us license your video and we’ll pay you a percentage of the licensing fees we get. Why not, you won’t make anything on your video otherwise.”  But is that true?  If this company owns the right to that video and it goes viral, what are your rights for show appearances, travel and reimbursements?  Do they own you?  I know enough about the entertainment industry to know you are not the one who will profit from this deal. 

You can be assured that the rights will be in perpetuity, which means they can resell your video over and over forever, to TV shows, DVD collections, or even Time-Life greatest hits.  The video isn’t yours anymore.  Depending on how the contract is written, you may not see any “royalties” after a certain period.

I am disgusted.

Can You…

Posted by on August 9, 2014 No comments

…be any more of a victim? – Chandler Bing

I get a call yesterday from a number I don’t know.  I don’t answer it and the person leaves a voicemail.  It’s a relative of a neighbor – I guess I’ve met him a few times.  He needs help with his computer.

Still in voicemail, he relays the whole situation to me.  He thinks his email was hacked.  Yahoo Mail, maybe?  So he “called Yahoo” and these guys “went in a did a bunch of stuff.”  They charged him like $190 for this work.  Unsurprisingly, it didn’t fix his problem.  But, surprisingly, they called back and said they wanted to refund his money, but first he would have to wire $300 to a place overseas.  Luckily at this point, he cut his losses and gave up.  But that wasn’t the end.  He shut down his computer and when he started it back up, he was prompted to log in and they had changed the password on him. 

I call him back and offer to copy his files off the hard drive and reinstall the OS.  He asks how much that’s going to cost because he’s not working and he’s on disability and he’s currently at an AA meeting (and I guess he’s already paid almost $200 so far).  Oh boy.  I told him not to worry about it.  I know that I can fix this, but there’s a lot more wrong here and this certainly isn’t the end of the problems.

As I’m mulling over how much seems to be wrong: AA, disability, jobless, hacked, taken for a scam, it made me think about my persistent thought about how the PC revolution almost had something; how it almost brought enlightenment to humanity.  This case was a stark reminder that some people just can’t handle a PC.  These people need simpler devices like tablets.  And yet, among the downloaded files on the laptop, were utilities for rooting Android phones.  Just enough to be dangerous, indeed.

Tech Terms

Posted by on July 21, 2014 No comments

As someone who has grown up during the computer revolution, I can look at today’s society and marvel at how computers changed so many things in our lives.

A phrase I repeat in my posts is “I blame Windows,” which refers to the idea that Windows allowed a user to customize lots of different visual and behavior aspects, which then caused the user to expect that sort of custom, tailored experience in the real world, which then possibly contributed to the self-centered nature of younger generations.  Maybe.

But the thing I was thinking about last night was how computers have introduced language that possibly would never have entered into the mainstream otherwise.  I’m not talking about computer-specific terminology, despite my slight fascination of the term “drive” – disk drive, floppy drive, hard drive, usb drive, flash drive, and thumb drive.  I am talking about a couple of terms that possibly existed (I can’t be bothered to take the 10 seconds and check) but were of no concern to people until they got computers.  For example:

Font.  Everyone that uses a computer now knows about fonts and what they are used for.  That’s because everyone that got a computer has become a publisher in some way or another.  Even with something as simple as emails, you could get a admonishment, “your font is difficult to read/too big/ too small/ the wrong color/not installed on my computer”.

Back in “the old days”, you had a typewriter that had one font – Courier New.  You never had to worry about fonts.  Even people who wanted to care about them and wanted to sound artsy or something would say, “that’s a really nice typestyle on that advertisement”, which would lead a more pretentious artsy person to say, “It’s not a typestyle, it’s a typeface.”  But now everything is a font and everyone knows what that is.

Portrait and Landscape.  I don’t think these terms existed before computers, but I also don’t think they are strictly computer terms.  Maybe they existed in the publishing and photography industries, don’t feel like checking.  The thing I know is that before computers, we used terms like “vertically” and “long-ways” to describe orientation.  What a clever naming convention, too.  Describe portrait orientation to someone.  “It’s like a portrait”  And landscape – “It’s like a picture of a landscape.”  However, it is possible to have a portrait of a landscape taken in portrait orientation, but displayed in landscape.  That is a bit confusing to explain to someone.

Who Wants To Live Forever?

Posted by on June 28, 2014 No comments

Things that MSN Healthy Living says are bad to eat:

  • BBQ Sauce
  • Pasta Salad
  • Macaroni Salad
  • Potato Salad
  • Ranch Dressing
  • Fatty steaks
  • Breaded chicken
  • Fried chicken
  • Hot dogs
  • Sausage
  • Hamburgers
  • Pie
  • Cake
  • Gluten-free foods
  • Greek frozen yogurt
  • Asian Chicken salad
  • Fruit Smoothies
  • Fish Sandwiches
  • Chinese vegetarian dishes
  • Chipotle’s burrito bowl
  • Tomato soup
  • Baked fuckin’ potato
  • Omelet
  • Microwave popcorn
  • Light salad dressings
  • Trail mix
  • Granola
  • Artichoke spinach dip
  • Flavored fat-free yogurt
  • Dried fruit
  • Flavored soy milk
  • Energy drinks (well, duh)
  • Turkey sandwich
  • Parfait
  • Blue corn chips
  • Chicken wrap
  • Low-fat muffins
  • Frozen diet dinners
  • Canned soups
  • Veggie pizza
  • Spinach pasta
  • Wheat bread (or any fucking bread)
  • Diet soda (duh, again)
  • Reduced fat peanut butter
  • Fruit cocktail
  • Swordfish
  • Imported catfish
  • Farmed eel
  • King Mackerel
  • Orange Roughy
  • Chilean Sea Bass
  • Shark
  • Imported Shrimp
  • Tilefish
  • Bluefin Tuna
  • Non-organic strawberries
  • Anything from McDonalds
  • Canned Tomatoes
  • Corn.  Yes, corn.
  • White chocolate
  • Artificial sweeteners (no, really?)
  • Sprouts
  • Anything with food dyes
  • Ice cream sundaes from chain restaurants
  • Eggnog
  • Candied Yams
  • Creamed Spinach
  • Cranberry Sauce
  • Cheese straw
  • Fruitcake
  • Swedish Meatballs
  • Pot Roast
  • Yorkshire pudding
  • Prime Rib
  • Sausage stuffing
  • Dark meat turkey
  • Green bean casserole with fried onions
  • Croissants
  • Potato pancakes
  • Lobster Newburg
  • Yule log
  • Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha
  • Caramel apples
  • Gingerbread
  • Sugar cookies
  • Plum pudding
  • Mashed Potatoes
  • Gooseberry pie
  • Beef Wellington
  • Glazed Ham
  • Gravy
  • Cinnamon Rolls
  • Peanut Brittle
  • Apple pie a la mode
  • Chocolate covered cherries
  • Cheese fondue
  • Shepard’s pie
  • Smoothie King’s Hulk Strawberry Smoothie
  • Starbucks’ Double Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino Blended Creme with whipped cream
  • Coldstone’s PB&C Shake
  • Auntie Anne’s Jumbo Pretzel Dog
  • Cinnabon’s Caramel Pecanbon
  • Wendy’s Sweet and Spicy Boneless Wings
  • Dunkin’ Donuts’ Coffee Cake Muffin

And although there are many more articles I could have pulled items from, I think that serves to show that if you really want to be healthy, all you can eat is organic lettuce.  But even then, some articles complain about foods that are improperly produced or prepared, so make sure that straight-from-the-ground organic lettuce doesn’t have any bugs, dirt, or animal feces on it.

Do not, I repeat, do not cook.  Mankind has been lucky to survive as long as it has with people indiscriminately making food.  If you didn’t pull it from the ground or from a bush or tree with your own hands, it is not safe and you will die.