Are my eyes really blue?

We’re a long way from the 90s, technologically speaking.  Removable rewritable media of all types – floppy, Zip disk, CD-RW – have been replaced by flash drives. Token Ring and LocalTalk are long gone; it’s all Ethernet and (more likely) wi-fi these days. Smartphones and tablets are evolving a post-PC world.  I can’t remember the last time I heard the word “Netware”. 

And yet, right there in the middle of everything: Word, Excel, PowerPoint.

Microsoft’s leveraging of Windows to give it a monopoly in the productivity space has left us, in the present day, with the same package everywhere.  There are more Macs in the workplace than ever, the browser wars have returned and given us Safari and Chrome in addition to the revived Mozilla in the form of Firefox, and even Windows itself seems to be headed toward a hybrid desktop-tablet model, but Microsoft Office bangs along, largely uninterrupted by the likes of iWork or Google Docs.

Which is a shame, really.  I don’t know what presentation software was out there before PowerPoint became the standard and then the cliche, but aside from a few Keynote devotees, there’s nothing else out there.  And Excel is literally the only spreadsheet I’ve ever had to support – hell, it may as well be the operating system as far as some users are concerned.  I miss the hell out of WordPerfect – in fact, I still maintain that WordPerfect 3.5 for Mac OS was the pinnacle of word processing and Office still has yet to catch up – but everybody is using Word to this very day.

So we creep slowly on with whatever Microsoft churns up, and maybe something else will get traction but probably not.  Not when we get brand new MacBook Airs with Mountain Lion and the first thing we still install is Microsoft Office.  And then there’s the browser issue. In the previous iteration of the aforementioned browser wars, Microsoft tied Internet Explorer into the OS as tight as they could, to the point where Word is now the default HTML editor (synergy!) and the file systems is still technically being viewed through browser windows. 

The downside, as we all struggled with ten years ago, is that linking the OS to the productivity software to the browser to the email client to the mail server system means that you end up with a nice vulnerable monoculture with a million possible vectors for malware. Which means we have to overlay everything with security and antivirus software, which has to be maintained and updated constantly.  Which is how we had the situation a couple of weeks ago where the Sophos Anti-Virus updater changed its heuristics and decided that every software updater on a Windows system was malware…including its own updater.

And so I’ve spent the last week wrestling with one single Windows laptop, trying to figure out if the spontaneous recurring flash of a DOS window represents an actual infection, damage to the system files as a result of the malfunction, or just some other updater that’s missing or broken and failing to work properly.  And I don’t know if the problem is due to something exploiting the inherent vulnerabilities of the Windows ecosystem or the result of a flawed attempt to protect it.

This is no way to run computing, people. Underhanded moves made during the Clinton era so that BIll Gates could own the world are still causing problems throughout the IT world fifteen years later.  And it may not get any better, because Microsoft’s much-vaunted Surface tablets focus on having a keyboard and trackpad available for the window-and-pointer set…because they include a traditional Windows environment for backward compatibility.  Everything comes back to working with Windows, because Windows is still the whole shooting match.

We let them get too big long ago, and now we can’t get rid of the results.

So the new BLS numbers are out, the last ones before the election, and they show continued (albeit extremely sluggish) growth.  The economy is turning around – could be faster, but it’s going the right way, more or less.

And sure enough, right on cue, here comes Jack Welch, late of GE, to proclaim that it’s a conspiracy, and that the Bureau of Labor Statistics – which currently has a career interim boss, replacing a Bush appointee who lasted most of Obama’s term; there has never been an Obama appointee running BLS – is cooking the books to help Obama. And all manner of radio hosts and elected Congresscritters jump on the train.

Just like, presumably, every single pollster – including Fox News – was cooking the samples to give Obama a lead in the polls.  I wonder if that same level of skepticism will persist if those same polls show Romney narrowing the gap after the debate.

The right wing in this country has entered a completely post-factual phase.  It makes me wonder just exactly what will happen if Obama wins.  Is Conservatism, Inc. ready to deny the reality of another Presidential election? Will ACORN’s zombie ghost steal a second straight vote? And more important – what are they prepared to do in that instance? How far is the conservative establishment willing to go into the fever swamp?

The answer to that is very very important. And presently unknowable. And Dave Weigel, longtime observer, is a little curious about that himself…

The news comes out that the Harrison twins have committed to Kentucky. This after a huge push from Maryland, the involvement of Under Armor, and the absolute certainty of the Junks from reliable sources that they were in the fold. And yet…UK.

Add this to Noel and Poythress and…oh, why bother. We’re screwed, again, as always. Kentucky is reloading every year with the next year’s starting lineup for the All-Star Futures game while we try to bring in guys who can graduate from Vanderbilt and are willing to keep coming back. And even when we have three first-round NBA prospects on the roster, it’s barely enough to get over once on a Kentucky team that may not have even mentally checked in for the game.

How the fuck are we meant to compete with this?

…Because you don’t need to. The story isn’t in the substance, it’s in the takeaway. How people react is a lot more critical than what was said. Which blows, absolutely, but welcome to the postmodern campaign. If facts don’t matter, why waste your time?

From the sound of it, Obama came out in a prevent defense which does exactly what a prevent does. In this case, it let Romney keep throwing underneath for one quick completion after another. Factually challenged and at odds with two years of stated positions? Who cares? It looked good, and a political press dying for a horserace will gladly float that the GOP team has stopped the bleeding and is hard on the comeback trail.

Much depends on the follow-up and whether Romney’s base is willing to overlook his flexibility. But given that they care far more about landing blows against Obama than any actual policy position, I have to think the only way that Romney doesn’t close the gap here is if somebody comes back with some serious in-depth and aggressive fact-checking.

Oh, and like Josh Marshall says: if you’re complaining about the moderator, you’re losing. I seriously doubt that “he was mean to Jim Lehrer” is going to shift things. On the bright side, we’ll probably have a sudden return to belief in polling by the weekend.

Every teabag retard who gets all oogy-boogy that Obamacare means death panels, and bureaucrats getting between you and your doctor, and you won’t be able to get the care you need, and all that?  We have that right fucking now.  It’s called American private health insurance, and it’s the natural result of what happens when a company has a financial incentive NOT to provide the goods and services for which they were paid.

I will stand in a Soviet-style bread line for bureaucratically-encumbered health care for the rest of my life if it means that Blue Shield and all its sister companies would be reduced to radioactive craters of smoking rubble.  You know why?  Because I’m already standing in the goddamn bread line.  At least I should be spared the indignity of paying out of pocket for the privilege of being lied to about what an unsurpassed quality of health care I’m being provided.

China knows as well as Blue Shield: play your cards right and you can have communism for profit.

“Tech support is here to solve problems, not to enable ignorance.”

I said that. That’s an original quote, unlike so much of what I banter around. And it’s absolutely true and essential for anyone who manages IT to understand this.

I’ve said it often, but the worst thing in the world is when people start to think of the computer support as magicians. It’s all well and good to be a magician, right up to the day the little girl falls down a well and breaks her neck and the villagers get out the torches and pitchforks when you don’t bring her back to life.  If you let your users think you’re a wizard, then you’re going to be well and truly fucked the first time they expect you to do real magic.

It gets worse when you have overlapping IT units with disparate responsibilities.  On two different occasions, I’ve worked at a place with no less than three distinct IT groups who only meet on the org chart at the CxO level – or higher; at my first job, the only place they intersected was in the President’s office.  Not coincidentally, that place had an IT environment that, in 1997, I could only compare to Vietnam (or maybe now to postwar Iraq).  The problem is, users left to their own devices and not educated properly WILL think of all tech support as fungible, and thus become bewildered at best and hostile at worst when told that you have neither access nor authority to address their problem.

The role of an IT manager is to set expectations with the user base.  The first expectation to set is this: there is no magic lamp to rub.  There is no genie that can fulfill all of your IT needs and expectations at no cost.  Indeed, there will be a direct correlation between the complexity of your needs and the costs and issues associated with supporting them.  You can run four versions of Mac OS X, two flavors of Windows, have three kinds of cellphone OS, multiple printers, and still have support for your software, encryption for your security and remote control for immediate support.  It’s also going to require a large permanent staff and a great deal of money.  You can also have an IT environment where very little breaks and there’s very little expense associated with support. You’ll also all have desktop iMacs only, Office 2011 only, OS X 10.7 only, and zero administrative access to the computer.

It never works like that, though.  There’s always a little too much to support and not quite enough manpower or money.  And then there’s always the toy-boy who can’t help tinkering and installing all kinds of unsupported nonsense, or the user whose husband “fixed” her laptop for her, or the one who emails asking how they can upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10. (Here’s a hint: look for a youngish guy in a tweed coat and a bow tie, preferably standing in front of a blue police box. Bow ties are cool.)

Again, I’m not asking for everyone to be able to do their own tech support.  I’m merely asking for the same expertise we’d expect of a driver: know which is the gas and the brake, know the difference between drive and reverse, know where the gas goes and what the red and yellow and green lights mean and that you don’t drive on the sidewalk.  Similarly: Know the difference between your computer’s password and your email password. If your email program isn’t working, check and see if webmail is working. If you can’t get on the network, see if the people around you can get on the network or if more people are down.  And when in doubt, yes, turn it off and on again and see if that fixes it.

And above all: if your technician sends you email, read it.  I mean, actually read it. Especially if it tells you what the fix it or who you need to contact for the fix. And if the tech’s name is right there in the sig file, don’t misspell it in the first line of your reply.  I mean, seriously, you may as well just open with “I’m not actually reading what you sent me.”

The tragic thing is that work’s actually going better than it did the first half of the year.

After looking through the extras on The Avengers (downloaded automagically via iTunes the instant it became available) and reading through the online directors’ commentary (found here for those who don’t have DVD), a couple of things jump to mind:

1) The only deleted scene I would have left in would be the Steve Rogers “Man Out of Time” sequence.  That extra couple of beats of him coping with the fact that almost everyone he knew is dead – that Howard Stark’s SON is dragging forty-five, that you’ve got a black President and Buck Rogers phones in everyone’s hand and all the best cars are Japanese or German…he’s truly lost without that costume and a battle to point at. I’m hoping that the forthcoming sequel delves into that more.

2) Apparently Tony Stark’s line about how the arc reactor was “a terrible privilege” was an ad-lib by RDJ, which just proves what a phenomenal actor the guy is. That might have been the most meaningful line in the picture for me, and he just tossed it out there on a whim.

3) The notes on Mark Ruffalo really make a good point of noting that in the end, there are two Hulks – the one Banner chooses to become, and the one he can’t help becoming. There’s a lot in there about breathtaking anger-management issues that bears contemplating…

4) It looks like they intended to do more with Agent Marla Hill, Nick Fury’s aide-de-camp, and a lot of it ended up on the cutting room floor.  As it is, she still feels slightly superfluous to me – unless she’s in there as a nod to future use in the same way Hawkeye was in Thor.

5) Along those lines, I find it interesting that only Captain America and, to a lesser extent, the Hulk actually go by their super-heroic names.  Hawkeye and Black Widow are almost universally “Barton” and “Romanov” and Tony Stark, being publicly known as Iron Man, almost always gets called by name.  Only Captain America – who has probably been known that way for seventy years – has something distinct from his real name.  Thor is, well, Thor, and you can pretty clearly tell which is Bruce Banner and which is the Hulk.  Interesting to think about when most people follow the traditional superhero trope that superheroes always have a secret identity and that the hero is the “real” version of them, something Marvel worked on subverting from the beginning.

 

Now I just wonder if the Academy will acknowledge anything besides the CGI…

The die is cast. Management at work is ordering my new iPhone 5 with service on the company dime…on Verizon. Thus severing a relationship with AT&T going back to 1998, interrupted only by a year on T-Mobile in 2004.  So why now, when Verizon has clearly been the top provider in the Bay Area for a decade?

Couple of reasons:

1) LTE.  There’s no beating around the bush: Verizon’s LTE deployment is miles and years ahead of AT&T’s.  It’s been damn near bulletproof on my iPad, which was the big test.  Add to that, this: the Verizon iPhone 5 supports five different LTE bands, including some abroad and some that could conceivably be redeployed in the US.  Which is significant because…

2) Verizon’s iPhones are shipping unlocked.  You can pop a SIM in them and get service with another carrier – and with either AT&T or T-Mobile, I could get the exact same service currently available on my iPhone 4S, never mind what I might find roaming internationally with my Virgin Mobile SIM.  For the first time, I can get a Verizon phone that can not only be used abroad, but with a carrier right here in the US at need.  No hardware lock-in makes for a much more convincing case. Plus I can now use the same phone internationally, which means I don’t even have to retain my unlocked 4S for travel abroad.

3) With the proliferation of Wi-Fi on public transit, it’s now possible for me to have some form of Wi-Fi connection all the way to work except for the portions on foot or on Caltrain.  This takes away a lot of the disadvantage of CDMA at being unable to do voice and data simultaneously. (And since that advantage is technically nonexistent on LTE, I expect that to cease to be a problem as Verizon shifts more and more of its network to LTE.)  Hell, there’s free Wi-Fi at the mall, at every coffee shop, at the airport (and about !-ing time), all over Googleburg – no reason not to use it.

4) Apple has supposedly beaten the longstanding issues with battery life on CDMA devices – to all accounts, the iPhone 5 is an all-day device.  How true that will be with my usage patterns remains to be seen, but for the time being there’s no reason to think I won’t be able to get by with the new gadget. Even on my existing 4S on AT&T, the battery performance under iOS 6 seems to have improved.

But the biggest criterion of all:

5) I’m not paying for it. Whatever the merits of VZW’s plans or data provision or what have you – it’s somebody else’s problem now. My subsidy will go away but I’ll still be a net $40 a month to the good as a result of finally taking the work phone.

Now I just have to wait for company approvals and for the thing to actually ship.  Which by my calculations means I’ll have it just in time for Thanksgiving…

Anyone not trapped under something heavy knows what went down with last night’s Monday Night Football – the avalanche of botched calls ending with the complete clusterfuck in the end zone at the end, which to all the world looks like a missed decision that flipped the outcome of the game. Golden Tate apparently committed offensive pass interference and then failed to gain simultaneous possession of the ball from M. D. Jennings, who for all the world appeared to have the pick (which one official signaled before evidently being overruled). And Seattle got a measure of revenge for Super Bowl XL, when shaky officiating probably cost them a trophy.

Golden Tate is making no apology for how things came out, and is catching abuse for it in some quarters. Horseshit. There are people responsible for calling fouls against Golden Tate, and they are not one of them named Golden Tate. If players flagged their own fouls, we wouldn’t have officials at all. We’d be playing out on the sandlot after church on Sunday afternoon. Hell, don’t forget Seattle luck-boxed into a home playoff game at 7-9 because nobody took into account that a team with a losing record might get home field over one with 11 wins, and they didn’t rush to bail out of the playoffs or give back their win over the Saints. We have officials, like we have government, because we need higher authority than our own judgement.

But the NFL, in its infinite wisdom, has declared that officials are fungible and are going with the absolute dregs of the football officiating world, all for the sake of a sum well south of a million dollars per year per team. One estimate pegged the amount of money that would represent complete capitulation to the original refs as roughly fifty cents per game ticket. Which is literally a rounding error on the daily take of an NFL franchise. So why? Why on Earth would a multi-billion-dollar business risk the health of its players and the integrity of its competition for money that could be found in the couch cushions?

Part of it is about breaking the refs’ union, to be sure – ironic as hell that Wisconsin governor Scott Walker was agitating on Twitter for the return of the real refs – but in no small part, it’s because they can. As Steve Young famously raged, demand for pro football is inelastic. The contracts are signed, the TV rights sold, the season tickets already paid for. As long as people keep watching, the NFL has no incentive whatsoever to back down. Meanwhile, at this point, if I were leading the union for the refs? I would pull all my current proposals and concessions off the table and say “Fuck you, pay me.” After all, this is not a strike. The refs didn’t walk out, just as the players didn’t walk out last year. Once again, the NFL is flexing its muscle as the 800 pound gorilla of American sport and demanding its own way simply because it can. And its owners have bought into the Randian myth wholesale: they are the elite, the job creators, and we should count ourselves blessed to walk in their shadow and question them not.

Fuck. That.

The NFL is what it has always been: bloated, arrogant, hidebound, a league of assholes operated by assholes, a garbage organization with human garbage at its helm. The one good thing to come of this fiasco is that now the emperor’s clothes are in a flaming pile in an end zone at Quest Field, and everyone knows it.

It’s the big story of iOS 6, apparently, drowning out everything else: the maps suck. Apple’s new built-in mapping application, using a mishmash of data and its own 3D rendering, appears to be sorely wanting in comparison to the Google-based Maps app it replaced. And the usual suspects are crowing about Apple’s hubris in kicking Google off the platform.

Which to me sounds like horseshit. Look, Tim Cook (despite his Auburn pedigree) is no idiot. Neither are Phil or Scott or Jonny. They know they’ve got to sell a 1.0 product and they’re putting the best face on it, but like so much of iOS 6, this is a change that had to happen and they’ve made the decision to take the bullet now, while the stock is still at $700 and the market share is dominant and the court’s decision is still against Samsung.

Why did it have to happen? Because Google wanted it this way too. Look: Gmail is still in the automatic config options for Mail/Contact/Calendars on the iPhone. Every iOS device at the Apple Store tonight was still set for Google as the default Safari search engine. The YouTube standalone app was approved in the Apple Store before iOS 6 was even released. Apple – who OEMs a lot of chips from Samsung – is more than willing to do the frenemy thing with the Beast of Mountain View. They’d be idiots not to.

And yet – Maps hasn’t materially changed since iOS 2, when it got GPS support and traffic view. The much-vaunted turn-by-turn navigation in Android’s Maps app never made it to the iOS version, and you’d be a moron to expect it ever would. Similarly, the YouTube app – originally meant to obviate the need for Flash on the world’s hottest video site – hasn’t been updated, well, ever. And critically for Google, it doesn’t serve up ads.

If I had to guess, there was a contract with Google for licensing Maps and YouTube, and once it expired everybody was content to go their separate ways. By doing their own thing, Apple can finally offer native turn-by-turn (and for all the howling, a superior 3D rendering experience overall to the iOS version of Google Earth), and by breaking off separate, Google can go its usual route n monetization with YouTube and make Maps a party piece for Android – and, for now, a clearly superior offering on their platform exclusively. I’m sure we’ll be getting Google Maps for iOS beyond the web app, but I suspect they’ll be content out on Shoreline Boulevard to watch the Colossus of Cupertino twist in the wind for a little while.

This is a bet by Apple – that by lumping all the transitions together, they can get over the hump and back to normal service quickly. If they guessed wrong, though, this could be the point where they make the stumble that lets Android catch up – and lets Microsoft back into the game. Much depends on the iPhone 5’s battery and LTE performance, and how quickly iOS 6.01 and later can improve Maps. Will Apple get it sorted? Sure. Quickly enough? Maybe not.