The End Of The Beginning Of Hand Crafted Content

Michael Arrington has an interesting post on companies like Demand Media and Associated Content suggesting they are doing nothing more than encouraging bottom of the barrel content rather than quality journalism of the old print media.

First, many would suggest, and I would agree, that “quality journalism” hasn’t existed in the print media (or TV media for that matter) in a very long time.  So bottom of the barrel is subjective.

Second, I have to disagree with Arrington’s premise that the only content on such sites is of poor quality.  Sure there’s a lot of bad stuff there but I would argue that with Associated Content’s model especially that there is financial incentive to produce quality content.

Before moving on I should add the disclaimer that as of tomorrow I will be an employee at Associated Content and this or any other posts and opinions I make here do not necessarily reflect that of my employer.

My employment with them should not diminish the fact that with Associated Content, if you write quality content on a topic that is of interest to a broad swath of the population then you the author will be paid for it.  The more demand there is for that content the more you will be paid.

I think Demand Media’s model is different in that, if I recall, they pay up-front* and try to monetize the long tail more so than AC.  I think that model might tend to encourage lesser quality content so some of Arrington’s arguments may be valid in that case.

To my mind it would behove the journalists who are leaving the failing print media companies and putting their own stake down to post their articles and blog posts at Associated Content in addition to wherever else they might place it.  As Arrington said, more outlets means better reputation and, in the case of AC, more potential for revenue.

* Correction: Demand Media does offer a revenue sharing option in addition to paying up-front for content.

The Government Should Be Protecting Us!!

Just read an interesting post at TechCrunch about an apparent scam by Video Professor.  I’m not saying it is or isn’t a scam necessarily though I do think Michael Arrington makes some good points.

What bothers me is this quote, “Our governments should be protecting us from this nonsense…”.

To which I reply, why?  Why should our governments be protecting us from this when we have outlets like TechCrunch to warn us about scams?  And I would argue that TechCrunch alone is probably far more effective at making people aware of such scams than a government ever could.

I would also submit that given the number of individuals and other governments around the world who are actively trying to destroy us I think our government has plenty on its hands doing what its actually relatively good at.

Should the government be taking legal action against Video Professor?  If they are in fact doing something illegal then I say wholeheartedly yes.  Should the government be proactively trying to protect us from scammers?  Well, just ask yourself how well the SEC protected us from Bernie Madoff.

My Fallacy With Donating To Lobbyists

For the longest time I had a personal policy against donating to Special Interest Groups, aka, Lobbyists.  It wasn’t that I disagreed with some of their views.  I’m a die-hard gun rights advocate but I never donated a dime to the NRA purely on the principle that I disagreed with the entire idea of lobbyists. My problem is the fact that the SIGs can afford to pay millions of dollars to sway the vote of elected officials and I can’t.  In fact, who are my lobbyists?  Oh, right, its supposed to be those same elected officials.

Sure, organizations like the NRA do a lot more than lobby congress but thats a key function for them so I chose to support them vocally rather than monetarily.

The fallacy in my thinking is that I’ve actually already been supporting SIGs all along and so have you.  Every time you buy something from Microsoft, Apple, Dell, and many other software companies you’re supporting the Business Software Alliance.  You probably don’t care much about that unless you’re an opponent of software copyrights.

Ever taken an Ambien?  You’ve supported the Pharmaceutical lobby.

This is one of the reasons I support the Change Congress initiative.  The idea isn’t necessarily to make lobbying illegal (fat chance of that) but rather to put pressure on the elected officials to work for the people more than the SIGs.

The other problem with my choosing not to donate to SIGs is that it also prevented me from donating to organizations I definitely support like the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  It can be argued that their lobbying is significantly less than that of the Pharmaceutical lobby.  Regardless, they do very important work at the EFF and standing on principle prevented me from helping them.  Sure I can donate my time and I plan on doing that when I can but money talks. Especially in Washington.

Premature Chrome OS?

So now that Chrome OS has been out for a few days the consensus seems to be a little bit of “meh”. Did Google release it too early?

When Gmail came out the world was abuzz. Even Wave has people begging for invites despite not knowing what to do with it once they get one.

But the hype doesn’t seem to be there for Chrome OS. So why did Google release it so early?

The reason they give is that they wanted to get the code into the wild early so developers could start hacking on it. And while I think that’s a good and perfectly valid reason I’m not convinced that’s the only reason. I think the marketing machine part of Google is kicking in. It was inevitable. Taking on a marketing giant like Microsoft can’t be done by geeks alone.

So the Google marketing team is being loosed upon the world and they’re doing what marketing people do. They’re drumming up buzz. But at least they’re doing it the typical geeky Google way. In the recent past we’ve seen them announce Android and it’s various versions, Chrome, Wave, Go, Closure Javascript tools, and now Chrome OS.

The problem is that the marketing group is getting a little ahead of everyone else and now we have Chrome OS about six months too early. Imagine what we would be playing around with had Google waited until Q2/Q3 2010 to drop their Windows killer.

We might have O3D built in so we could develop and play more modern games. They could have packaged it up for the various virtual machine products instead of relying on some altruistic but potentially nefarious hacker to do it for them. There would certainly be better offline support.

That’s not to say we won’t be getting all these things and more with a world of developers tinkering with the code instead of just Google engineers. But did Google set themselves back a bit by releasing too early? Its highly doubtful the Netbook makers will shun the OS. In fact, I don’t think Google will have any problems at all getting people to use it. But their releasing Chrome OS this early is indicative of Google adopting classic Microsoft-style tactics. That being by releasing a premature product you get market share and mindshare by stunting the growth of more mature comptitors products. OS/2 Warp anyone?

Getting Out Of Debt: An Update

In our quest to get completely out of debt within 3 years we’ve been actively evaluating options. On option we hadn’t really considered was selling our house. Given the current state of the housing market (especially in the Denver metro area) we didn’t think we could do anything but lose money which we didn’t want to do.

The other day I happened to check the latest Zestimate at Zillow. Curiously it said some comps in our area had sold fairly well. Enough so that it might be possible to sell without losing money. Wouldn’t make any either but thats not necessarily bad.

Some might say that it is necessarily bad. We’ve been in this place for five years and selling without a profit would be for naught. I disagree. First, we’ve had a nice tax deduction for the past five years. Also, had we been renting all this time we wouldn’t have anything to show for it. Not even a tax deduction.

After talking it over we decided to contact our Realtor and have her do a market study. After doing so and talking to another agent who also happens to represent the builder of our place she informed us gloomily that we probably could only ask for about $1000 less than what we originally paid. Except to us that wasn’t gloomy news, it was actually better than we had expected. FAR better. Helped by the fact that we had put a nice chunk down as the down payment when we bought as well as having give years worth of principal paid down.

So it turns out we will be able to walk away with enough cash to pay off most of our non-mortgage debt. Yay!

Yeah, yay but the best part is going to be when we can give Wells Fargo the big fat international symbol for “GFY” and no, I don’t mean “Good For You!” Over the past year they have been actively screwing us over. I’ll get into more detail in another post but believe me when I say that I would rather slide down a fifty-foot razor blade into a vat of alcohol and dry myself off with a towel made of salt than ever, ever do business with Wells Fargo again.

But that will leave us at zero right? Well, yeah, kind-of but zero is a lot better than negative. Plus, with no debt we’ll be able to sock away cash for a year or so and then use that as another nice down payment on another house. A house which all indicators suggest will be at a relatively low asking price.

So the moral of this story is to never rule out options for getting out of debt. Run the numbers! And wish us luck that this place doesn’t sit on the market too long.

No Gifts From You!

We have set a goal for ourselves to get out of debt in three years.  That’s ALL debt–including our mortgage.  Its going to be tough but I have no doubt we can do it.

As part of that goal I sent out an email to family and friends letting them know what we’re trying to do and that they shouldn’t expect to receive any gifts from us during holidays for the next three years.

I also asked that they not buy us anything because if they did we were going to sell it and use the money to pay down debt.  This includes the kids.

Now before your sphincter implodes at how harsh that last part seems let me explain.  First, our kids are both under the age of three.  The latest medical research suggest that humans really can’t remember much if anything before the age of three.  So them not getting anything for their birthday or Christmas won’t stunt their emotional growth in any way.  By the way, if someone wants to buy the kids a savings bond or give us money to put towards their education then we have no problem with that.

Second, at this age they don’t even understand the concept of giving and getting. Sophie is 2 and has just now grasped the concept of “mine” and by that I mean she thinks everything is hers. Flynn is 10 months and only cares about things that are edible.  They do understand the joy of being with other people though, and that is exactly what holidays and birthdays are all about.  The celebration of getting to spend another year in each others company.  Though after that holiday many people prefer not to see certain family members for another year but that’s a different story altogether.

A hundred years ago you were lucky to get a handmade doll or a wooden horse as a gift and then it was only from your parents. Unless, that is, you were part of the rich elite which you probably weren’t.  It has only been since World War II that we have showered children and each other with an orgy of gift giving.  So much so that a major part of our economy rests on how well retail sales did after December 25th.  People back then survived.  They even thrived.  The prosperity of the latter 20th century allowed people to give their children what they didn’t have growing up.  There’s nothing wrong with that but now we’ve taken it too far.

“It’s the thought that counts!”, you say.  Sure, but when you’re giving a gift to someone purely because you think you have to implicitly means there is no thought put into it.  Witness the pair of black dress socks I got from an uncle once as a perfect example.  Not only did he not put any thought into the gift (I had plenty of socks and rarely needed dress socks at that age) but he didn’t even buy them.  My grandmother did.

You see, he had no money but because he drew my name for the holiday gift swap he was obliged to give me something.  To me, if everybody has so little money with which to spend on gifts that we have to draw names during the holidays then maybe we need to stop and question what the holiday is really about.  I’ve heard suggested several times that we agree to only draw names for the kids.  Yes, by all means lets teach them to overspend each year so they’ll never have any money either.  Or worse, lets teach them to expect that they receive a gift whether they deserved it or not.  Wait, we’re already doing that…

So back to the email.  Since I sent it out I’ve gotten replies back that suggest how hurt they are that they can’t buy anything for our kids. A couple (and I literally mean two) people sent back encouraging words. One of those people is already out of debt and the other said she was setting the same goal for herself.  Everybody else completely missed the point.  The ability for us to ultimately have enough money to send our kids to the finest schools in the nation shot past their heads like a bullet train.  Or the ability to buy for ourselves health insurance to guarantee that if something should happen to any of us we’ll have the time to spend getting better instead of worrying about how to pay the medical bills.

These people seem to think that being debt free is an impossible dream.  Probably because they’ve never known what its like not to be under crushing debt.  They also cite passages from the Bible about how they can’t take it with them.  They’re right, they can’t.  But I’m sure the Bible also mentions something about being good stewards with what we have.  Giant stockings stuffed with useless plastic trinkets from Oriental Trading cannot in the loosest of meanings be construed as being good stewards with your money.

Here is my ideal holiday.  Everyone is out of debt and gives a loved one or friend a gift not because they feel obligated to but because they found something they thought that person would really enjoy.  Nothing big, expensive, or fancy.  Just a little reminder that we were thinking of each other.  If that gift is hand made then more’s the better. You can’t help but to put thought into something if you’re making it by hand.  However, if an aunt doesn’t find something that meets that “just right” criteria for a niece then the gift of her company during the holiday season would be more than welcome.

Is that a pipe-dream?  Maybe.  But someone has to start doing it or no one will.

Code Reformatting Unnecessary?

Many programmers, when they get started on a new project, have a strange instinct where they want to go through and reformat the code.  So for the sake of argument, if the code were indented with four spaces the new programmer will want to go through  and change it all to two spaces because he feels like its easier to read.  Sometimes the new guy will actually try to rewrite everything from scratch altogether!

Usually this is frowned upon as a waste of time.  The new programmer isn’t adding and perceived value by doing this.

While I agree that a complete rewrite is probably unnecessary the act of reformatting may not be as bad an idea as it seems on the surface.  The reason I think this is because for some people simply reading the code to get an understanding of what it does isn’t sufficient.  They need to actually get their hands dirty.  So one way to do that is to reformat the code.  It forces them to look at what each line is doing and thereby helps them to better understand it.

The real problem is in the inefficiency of this method. Again, it adds no perceived value to the project.

I think a better way for a new programmer to get familiar with the code is to fix bugs. I can’t count the number of companies I’ve gone to work for that wanted me to jump right in and start adding features.  In fact, every company I’ve worked for but one has expected exactly that.

At least a week (I think two weeks should be the minimum) spent doing nothing bug reviewing and fixing bugs is a win-win. The programmer is forced to spend productive time getting to understand the codebase and while doing so is actually improving the product.

So if you’re a product/project manager then consider letting your new hires spend some quality debugging time first.  If you’re the new hire I encourage you to beg, plead, or outright demand that you work on bugs your first week or two.  It will be worth it.

Idiocracy At Its Finest

Oh the humanity!  We have corporate executives earning massive bonuses when their employees make pittance by comparison!  How can we stand by and let this happen?  The Government must step in and do something!

Watch any major news outlet and you’ll hear something along these lines. Its a story the mainstream media trips over themselves to report because it seems like such a major injustice.

The part they always seem to leave off is how much money the celebrities our society loves so much make.  The amount an A-list actor can earn on one picture alone makes corporate bonuses look like pocket change.

Don’t believe me? Lets look at an example. Kenneth Lewis, Bank of America’s chairman and over-payer of failing financial services firms, made about $25 million last year.  In the same year, J.K. Rowling made $300 million for writing a book that is just as good at pissing off evangelists as it is at getting kids to read.

GM’s head honcho made $13 million on top of $1.5 million in salary while Madonna made $40 million just for being annoying. Not counting the cash she gave her ex for putting up with her for 10 years.

We directly support celebrities who make massive sums of cash by going to see their movies or buying their books or listening to their music. We have no problem doing this because they have in effect negotiated with us a price for their wares which we have agreed on and subsequently pay.

However, we somehow miss the hypocrisy when we shun and ridicule the corporate executives, who we also directly support by buying their products, and who have also negotiated a price for their services that their boards and shareholders agreed upon (the latter of whom are also us in many respects) and say nothing about how much the celebrities make.

So we turn to our trusty government who respond with knee-jerk reactions and implement idiotic Windfall Profits Taxes because how DARE the oil companies make so much money!

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not excusing all of these executives carte blanche. Many of them need to go to prison for how they make their money. Many of them have and many more probably will. But by the reasoning of the aforementioned Windfall Profits Tax, if we expect Exxon to pay extra taxes on their profits should not also Brad Pitt on his?

Now, if you’ll excuse me I need to go refill my car so I can drive 40 miles one-way to see a Will Smith film.

Children And Remotes

I have two children under the age of two.  They are the single greatest source of joy ever known to mankind.  But if there were one request I would make of them it would be this.  Can they just leave the remote where I can find it?  Honestly, not asking much.  I gave them life and will put them through college.  Is being able to find the remote too much to ask?

Why Shouldn’t You Send Chain Emails?

Welcome to the Christmas edition of getting to know your friends.

Okay, here’s what you’re supposed to do, and try not to be a SCROOGE!!!
Just copy (not forward) this entire email and paste into a new e-mail
that you can send. Change all the answers so that they apply to you.
Then send this to a whole bunch of people you know, INCLUDING the person
that sent it to you……Tis the Season to be NICE!

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Toilet Paper
2. Real tree or Artificial? Charlie Brown.  Easy to put up and fits in a Glad bag.
3. When do you put up the tree? On the 25th at 9am
4. When do you take the tree down? On the 25th at 9pm
5. Do you like eggnog? Only if its spiked.
6. Favorite gift received as a child? Finally being let out of my chains. Those things chafe like you wouldn’t believe.
7. Hardest person to buy for? Just about everybody.  I’m picky.
8. Easiest person to buy for? Me. I always know what I want.
9. Do you have a nativity scene? I tried once but the homeless people I used kept asking passers-by for food.  And the Three Wise Men kept leaving their “wisdom” all over my front lawn.
10. Mail or email Christmas cards? This IS your Christmas Card.  DEAL!
11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? Scotch Tape
12. Favorite Christmas Movie? The “Friday The 13th Christmas Special”.  You know, the one where Santa brings Jason a new machete which he then uses to butcher Santa and all his elves.  It’s become a Brogdon Family tradition.
13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? It’s all about the re-gifting my friend.
14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? If by “recycled”you mean going for a 3-pointer into the dumpster then, yes.
15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Goclate! (That’s Sophie-speak for Chocolate)
16. Lights on the tree? I prefer the lighter fluid and match method. Helps cut down on the heating bill too.
17. Favorite Christmas song? The Paul McCartney one.  But only when Matt’s around.
18. Travel at Christmas or stay at home? I’d rather slide down a 50-foot razor blade into a vat of alcohol and dry off with a towel made of salt than travel at Christmas again.  You hear that people in Georgia?  You want to see us at Christmas again?  Start heading due-west.  You come up on a beach with hippies and bad actors you’ve gone too far.
19. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer’s? Mort, Lewis, Hubert, Chicago, Osaka, Dublin, Purple, Green, Mauve… Wasn’t Renee Zellweger a reindeer once?
20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Whatever I hoist up there that sticks.
21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Bags of coal and sticks are appropriate to open at any time.
22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? That the advertisers insist on starting it in October. And that stupid “Don’t be a Scrooge!” email that always goes around.
23. What theme or color are you using? Chartreuse. It’s just so festive.
24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? Turducken.  Tasty despite the fact it has the word “turd” in it.
25. What do you want for Christmas this year? I’d like Frank Shirley … right here tonight. I want him brought from his happy holiday slumber over there on Melody Lane with all the other rich people and I want him brought right here, with a big ribbon on his head.
26. Who is most likely to respond to this? I just did!  Who else is there?
27. Who is least likely to respond to this? Me.  I never do these things.