Category: Uncategorized

Sen. Kennendy, Healthcare, & The Right
If you spend any time reading the blog-osphere, twitterscape, facebookatron, or watch the MSM, you’re bound to hear someone with nothing good to say about Sen. Kennedy. Personally, I don’t have an opinion of the guy one way or another, but I am aware that healthcare was a hot topic for the Senator. With everyone flailing about healthcare reform, I wonder if this will be the catalyst to get people to get together to fix this debacle. And it is a debacle. We pay a ton for Medicare, a government based healthcare program. No one seems to be complaining about the end user experience with that program, but why not make things better?

But back to Kennedy, who the Right tends to want to vilify regarding getting off on what they perceive as criminal behavior. I don’t know all the circumstances, and will it really foreshadow the career of the Senator? We will know soon enough. But I’m sure he will be remembered long after his detractors have come and gone.

Connecting WP to Twitter
Well, I’m thinking that based on the recent TWiT and the fact that I do have a bunch of blogs that I’ve ignored, that I’m going to get back to blogging. But I don’t want to ignore Twitter. So I’m going to try this Twitter/WP integration tool. Now I can write much more than 160 characters and not sweat the load. I can come up with a complete thought, and own my own content.

So I’ll use Twitter to comment back, but WP to post actual content to Twitter…. Now what to do about Facebook.

I’m a fan of both Apple and Google, so to see them fight it out on the same playing field is like being forced to wear one of those double billed hats to a football game. But looking at the direction of travel of these two companies it really appears that it will be Microsoft left in the dust when it comes to the consumer.

There are two dominate platforms emerging in the Smart Phone market, the iPhone (Apple) and Android based (Google). But unlike the Palm and RIM based machines, these two companies have an ecosystem that stands behind their product. Let me talk to Apple and Google separately and you’ll quickly see what I mean.

Apple

Integration using iTunes
Available on both Mac and Windows based PCs.
Runs Mobile Safari based on WebKit.
Has a total developer program to bring applications to the device based upon Mac OS X.
iPhone operating system based on Mac OS X.
Google

Integration using existing Google Services (Gmail, Google Voice, Documents, etc.)
Available on any platform.
Runs Google Chrome Browser based on WebKit.
Has an SDK program to bring applications to the device.
Android OS is unique to the hand held device based on the Linux kernel.
So what is the game plan going forward? Google believes that Chrome is the future of the desktop. (That) We will get rid of lots of overhead and push the on button and be online. Apple on the other hand may have developers that can develop for one and develop for all by keeping some consistency between the way you develop for both the Mac OS and Mobile Mac OS. 90,000 applications is a lot of applications and if that translates to developers for the Mac, it can only be a good thing for Apple.

Because Google mostly sees the Application relying on the browser and on the Internet, that would lend one to believe that people who make web based Apps will have the most success, since they should run smooth on both an iPhone and an Android phone.

I’ve heard it said that business is about making money and yet it is also about getting your products in the hands of users. It’s still too early to tell who is the David and who is the Goliath, but as we see more of Apple’s business plans come together towards the end of January, we can all be sure that the fun is just beginning.

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If you live on the Space Coast of Florida, then you know that the loss of the Space Shuttle means the end of decent paying jobs for the community. It is simple that space and dollars go together. There are virtually only two customers in the Space Business these days. NASA and the Department of Defense (DOD). So it is amazing that anyone would believe that some unknown company will rise up with a viable commercial heavy lift rocket so NASA or DOD could hitch a ride whenever they need that capability.

Right now there are only a handful of companies that are providing the Aerospace Engineering and hardware capable of any launches. On the Cape Side, Lockheed Martin and Boeing Corp combined forces to create United Launch Alliance (ULA). This company launches payloads off of Pads 41 and 37, Atlas V and Delta IV respectively. If any company is poised to pickup the pieces of NASA’s decision to scrap constellation, ULA certainly is.

On Pad 40, there is the Falcon, by SpaceX Corp., while they have an ambitious launch plan, they don’t have any track record of successful launches.

There is the philosophy that we could reuse everything but the shuttle. Make more tanks and reuse boosters, hence the DIRECT project and Jupiter. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_(rocket_family)

The NASA places forward request for proposal to companies to create the next great thing, but no company is incentivized to expend great money without any possible return on investment.

The fact is that not a single one of these programs is Man Rated, and to add that would create additional expense to any of these rocket programs. Only NASA has a Man Rated requirement for their payloads, unless we deregulate space.

Right now we must rely on a single rocket program in Russia to service the International Space Station.

The United States has put the most amount of money into the ISS and space exploration. The director today stated that he is looking to Internationalize the space program. America needs to be the lead in space. If we are putting our cash there, then we shouldn’t have to compromise on the direction of the research.

As the director said, only Russian and China will have Human Space Flight programs for an unknown time after Shuttle retires. It’s unbelievable. What’s worse is that we have no idea when we will bring one back online.

What is really at risk is Jobs, Science, Leadership and Pride. When J.F. Kennedy boldly asked us to go to the Moon, we did it as a nation. It put industry at work providing the tooling and know-how. 40 Years after we put a man on the moon, we have squandered all of it, and no one has a good reason as to why.

——

SailorJ is a pseudonym for a former technician on one of the Unmanned Rocket programs at Cape Canaveral, FL.

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Ok, so iPhone OS 4.0 is going to be announced this week! Can I get a resounding Woo Woo!

What do I want to see? Well it’s pretty obvious:

Multitasking. I don’t want to exit Pandora because I want to check some email… Jeeze! I think we should at least be able to have 2 or 3 apps run simultaneously. I can understand if there is a limit.
Better App Navigation. For those who only have 30 Apps, well, this doesn’t apply to you. For those of you and you know who I’m talking about; you are laughing and crying with 11 pages… you need much much more. But you know, the pages thing kinda sucks, I’d rather have a most frequently used page, and be able to navigate using some sort of hierarchal method.
Printing. Yeah, it would be WiFi based, but with a home network, wouldn’t it be great if it could find a printer and send the job out, especially for the iPad.
Better integration of Mobile Me, so when a family of people who all have their own accounts want to share music or Apps, they don’t have to just have one account and sync multiple devices, rather that App or music (DRM) is considered purchase for all of the account holders under that family plan.
I don’t think I’m asking for too much. I think we’ll see at least one of those things, but I won’t hold my breathe. Let me know what you think. The announcement can’t come too soon, huh! 🙂

Ok, Apple, what’s up with your new developers terms?

People are up in arms over the new developers terms that effectively are going to shut Adobe Flash developers out of the iPhone.

There are accusations flying and terms that aren’t making a lot of sense regarding how Apple operates, and let’s just cut to them.

Apple designs a complete ecosystem, hardware and software. No one complains about the closed ecosystems for gaming platforms such as the Wii, Xbox or PS3. And they are unarguably very successful.

The real question you might ask yourself is who is Apple’s customer for mobile devices. Is it Adobe? Microsoft? Google?

It’s the end user, and quiet honestly, the end user has pretty simple needs. How often have I heard a person riddicule the iPhone or smartphones saying, all I want to do is make a phone call! Simplicity!

Apple got it with the simple apps that come with the phone.

Flash support means that Apple will have to support another technology on it’s phone and ensure it is stable and doesn’t interfere with the product. According to Apple, it drains battery life significantly faster.

But what about…

What about what? Apple makes both the hardware and software. They don’t license it to anyone. For 1 full year the idea of an App was foreign unless you jailbroke your phone. One page of Apps was it. People still bought the phone. No one complained that it didn’t have Java Apps or lots of other stuff.

Why? Because there was no expectation.

Oh yes, I’m a fan of Apple. But I also offer criticism when that’s due too.

Personally I believe that the flash/CS5 deal has more to do with Adobe’s lack of OS X support for 64 bit with Photoshop, which may have moved Mac Sales to Windows PCs.

Who bit whose hand first? Huh?

Of course you can’t write terms of service that say, if you use flash, it won’t be supported, now can ya, so they made it generic.

I think that the people who have more room to criticize are Independent Musicians who use iTMS to sell their music.

But atleast music has gone DRM free.

If you don’t like the Apple mobile experience, there are plenty of other well established competitors, Blackberry, Android, Palm, Windows7 mobile. Just to name a few, not to mention all those feature phones out there.

Criticism is good, but let’s not call it a monopoly.

I wrote this a while ago when the Iran stuff was going on, and I can see with hindsight that green avatars were a flash in the pan.

————–
Are you Green for Iran? Well, I’m with you in spirit, but I’m not changing my avatar. And why not may you ask? First off, symbols like this lose their meaning or even worse don’t really have meaning when you think about it. What does it really mean that you are changing your color to green or you believe that the elections in Iran were totally fraudulent?

Hey, There was fraud in Iran, better change my avatar to green! That’ll show ’em.

Do you really think that the Mullahs and other religious spiritual leaders in Iran give a fuck about Twitter or whatever social network you are on, and the color of your avatar? You don’t live there, you’re not volunteering to take up arms against this “fraudulent” government, you’re not willing to do anything but send a condolence card by way of a watermarked ICON.

Sorry but I call BULLSHIT!

Do you want change in Iran? First off why? Are you convinced that a regime change might change their Nuclear Weapons development program to a screeching halt? Do you think that this country is a true democracy that is being denied majority rule? What is your angle?

Point me to a website with your view, because I don’t really know what YOU stand for.

How long will you be green? Until the next folly comes to Twitter perhaps? You know where we need to change Healthcare, Climate Change, Gay Rights in the US, better health care for our wounded vets?

OK, turning green brings awareness, but it’s like carrying coal to Newcastle. (you can look that analogy up). The Twitter audience is keenly aware of many things, and they are the people that need to used for a call to action rather than call for awareness.

Do you want to have a call to action, then what will you do?

Write letters to world leaders that could influence the Muslim world particularly in Iran.
Tell Oil companies not to buy their oil from Iran until t

A mystery yet to be solved.

A philosophy yet to be learned.

I sit and contemplate the future,

I sit and contemplate the past.

We are the creatures of today and yesterday,

Molded like clay, carved like blocks of ice.

We are so fragile.

Where did it go?
I don’t know where it went.

All I know is I didn’t even know.

It was too late from what I was told,

I felt like not a chance,

I missed the signs,

I should have known.

I’m smitten, and bitten, and still not shy.

I want it back, but alas that’s not to be.

You are so lucky when you find out what love is,

And sometimes, you just have to pine away.

I don’t know where it went,

I don’t know where did it go.

Written 31 DEC 91

Welcome inside

The place where miracles hide.

I can’t figure out all the answers,

yet there are things I surely know.

I want to fall… In Love,

Closer than just a friend.

Me and you on the horizon,

Forever to the Day.

Our binds shall never break,

And our love shall never depart.

So naturally, I can hope that

Miracles will happen.