Christmas through the windshield

Driving around my neighborhood looking at the holiday decorations.
A different kind of Christmas Card...

Seasons Greetings!

Why you don't get more YouTube Views...

As they say, Know your audience...Click the picture for larger view.

Yes, you're a troll

I suppose it's the depiction of a mythical being living under rocks and bearing ill will to all passersby that's made it such a popular term in Internet circles.  In the context of a chat room or forum it's easier to hurl barbs at an opposing viewpoint with that image in mind.

We all have an opinion and the right to express it, usually.

But for all the declarations of a free and open Internet the reality is that democracy is not universally embraced.  Chat rooms and forums have "moderators" whose job it is to keep the discourse civil.  Of course it's usually a volunteer position manned by something less than a degreed psychologist.  Personal biases, immaturity and abuse of power come into play and suddenly the free exchange of ideas becomes a study in censorship. 

If you're on the wrong side of the discussion expect to earn the label of the under bridge set.  The funny  thing is that the childhood retort of "takes one to know one" comes into play here.

Unless you're the type whose only purpose in life is to be disruptive it's likely you've been unfairly branded. With chat rooms less a democracy and more a fascist state there's not much you can do but find a more like minded group.

Keep in mind that "troll" is just a word tossed about as freely as words like "friend" or "gay" which bear little resemblance to their original meanings.  There was a time, for example, when calling someone "friend" meant more than a checkbox on Facebook and "gay" had nothing to do with your sexual orientation.

Words co-opted for more of a lyrical convenience than anything else. 

Since most people throw "troll" at even the hint of a contrary opinion it's almost amusing when you realize that they're guilty of their own charge.  If an Internet forum is ruled more by fascism than free speech then attacking anyone with an opposing viewpoint to the group is in fact being trolled. In effect, practicing what they preach or denounce depending on your point of view. 

There are still those whose only purpose is to disrupt and they're closer to the original spirit of the word.  Though, there's a host of other derogatory terms with less ambiguity that are a better fit for that crowd.

 So it seems it really does "take one to know one"  Use the term too freely and you're guilty of the charge you level. 

Best to not use it at all.

Taking the tech pundits to task

If you're at all like me you'll find yourself regularly sampling the tech podcast offerings from places like TWIT, Revision 3 and whatever strikes your fancy on YouTube.  Being interested in tech not to mention making a living from it, I'm an obvious part of the target audience. 

If you've read any of my previous articles it's likely I may seem a bit, "snarky" in my views.  It's not that I'm some disagreeable "troll" rather I'm just annoyed at the sheer volume of BS that comes out of the tech punditry.  It seems the Internet is a haven for insecure egomaniacs with just enough personality to attract a following.  There's so much of it that it's hard to separate real content from all the parroted noise and groundless opinion.

The worst offenders are in the tech "news" sphere.

It's good to keep abreast of new developments but I've learned to take tech news with a grain of salt.  Don't expect to find much objectivity in podcasts even if the presenters profess high minded, journalistic ideals.  They don't exist simply because they can't.  The topic of discussion won't allow it. 

Keep in mind that most tech journalism is based less on factual information than press releases and personal opinion.  The sad truth is that every tech podcast is little more than a poorly researched editorial.  The dearth of real information and an imagined "nanosecond" news cycle has prevented anything resembling journalism.

No matter how professional the delivery, the minute they start quoting some article from Ars Technica or The Verge it's no longer journalism but rather an op-ed piece.  Journalism requires tracking down real sources and verifying a story before reporting it.  Anything less is just parroting somebody else's information.

This is the trap many podcasters fall in to, especially the ones that make a good living at it.  Pick a tech news podcast and you'll undoubtedly find 3 or 4 pundits tossing topics around the set and playing journalist.  That's all they're doing by the way, playing.  Their opinion is no more valuable than the guy in the Blue shirt at Best Buy.  And why not? Their information comes from the same place, a carefully prepared marketing brief designed to be easily digested and regurgitated. 

It's not that an opinion is a bad thing so long as you have a foundation of knowledge from which to form it. 

Most pundits don't and it drives me nuts.  

I don't cut any slack to the so-called tech "veterans" either.  Just because you've been practicing a pseudo-journalistic binge and purge for decades doesn't make your information any more valuable.  If in the course of your reporting your viewpoint becomes the most critical component of the story, you're of no use to me.  Op-Ed pieces get a pass on this but you have to make it clear that's all it is right up front instead of passing it off as news.

Look,  nobody cares about your opinion on the merits of replaceable CPU's on Intel motherboards if your experience with CPU's is limited to reading copy off your MacBook Air.  I'd also rather not hear about "value" from someone with a six figure income.  I'm sorry but whether you spend your vacation in Paris or Greece for the holidays is not a dilemma your viewers would identify with. 

I understand why this happens, though.

Let's face it, most people in the technology industry (no pundits allowed here) have the personalities of a brick.  That doesn't make for an interesting podcast unless you're in dire need of a cure for insomnia.

It's the same on the cable news networks where we suffer the glittering "personalities" fronting seriously named news "programming" like "The Situation Room" or "On the record".  Devotees undoubtedly care more about the presenter's Facebook page than the veracity of the "news" being reported on any given day.

In a world that tolerates an ever decreasing attention span it's really no surprise.  30 second sound bites are even too long now, unless we can use part of it as a ringtone.

They drone on and on and the longer they're in the "biz" the more convinced they become of their legitimacy.  When they finally reach the exalted ranks of "the punditry" their egos begin to trump the value of their reporting.  They are the geek equivalent of rock stars living the in the bubble of their hipster fantasy, drunk on their own popularity. 

Oh but when they fall...

And they will. 

Cronkite, Murrow and Winchell are the standard by which journalistic integrity will be measured for at least the next century.  Nobody will ever hold up Leeza Gibbons in the same light.

Yes, you've likely already guessed where I'm going with this. I am in fact saying that most tech podcasters are no more relevant than Leeza Gibbons.  You're not as attractive either.  When the fickle tastes of the Internet no longer have use for you, your day if not your "career" is over.

Perhaps it's wiser to be more Cronkite than Felicia Day.  At least reserve your "enlightened" opinion for those topics in which you're really enlightened.

If you do a podcast on social networking and you actually use it, your information is relevant.  If, however, you do the same podcast and offer "expert" commentary on the merits of fuel injection over carburetion you're just polluting the topic. 

Remember the basic tenet of any presentation, consider your audience first.  We're a fickle bunch...

More fun with an I.T. Job Search

I've been going through sent emails again...

You know, the ones that I send to recruiters who shotgun phony job descriptions hoping to pad their stack of "candidates."

I suppose they get their training in outbound sales making cold calls.  Just like Spam and junk email the perpetrators figure it's worth it for the 1 in 100,000,000 odds of actually cashing in.  What I hate is the laziness. 

These bottom feeders don't even want to cultivate their own leads.  Instead they send out spam and stick a "If you know anyone forward this to them" tag line at the end.  

This one was for a spam job posting  from an outsourced Indian recruiting sweatshop.  They demanded I answer a list of questions for them before they even got my first response so I obliged.  

By the way,  I don't dismiss "opportunities" easily but when the email is addressed to: "Undisclosed Recipients", well they're just asking for it...


Top Technical skills: Windows System Administration, networking, Hardware

Strengths: Troubleshooting, planning, communication, attention to detail

Years of Experience: In what? That's a very personal question....

Industry experience: Legal, Computer Software, Pharmaceutical, others

Education/Certificates: BS/BIS, AA/Electronics, MCP, CCNA, PHD in BS

Currently employed (contract/full time): Not Full Time currently

Current Location : United States

Here's where it gets fun...

Why looking: Because it’s such a joy.

Open to contract, contract to hire or direct hire: Contract 1st others considered

What do you like about your current/last position? That it’s over

What do you dislike about you current/last position? That it went on so long.

The above questions about likes and dislikes are meaningless, You’ll never get a truthful answer and have little to nothing to do with placement of a candidate and you’re fully aware of it.

Work authorization: Citizen

Third party info: I didn’t have the first or second party yet.

Current salary/rate: Guess.

Desired salary/rate: No less than $60K/day

Availability: Available but I'm not a cheap date

Vacations planned: I could use one but can’t afford it

Drug and background check: No issues but you may cause that to change

Travel: None, I don’t travel for a job unless the booze is free.

Communication Skills: Speak Write English, obviously better than you...

Any Special Circumstances: Low tolerance for BS, like your SPAM emails

Linkedin check: As though I’d put anything I didn't want you to see, come on now...

Pain and Suffering

I'm convinced there's a bit of masochist in all of us...

It's not that I have a low opinion of humanity I think it's just human nature if not biology to need a bit a suffering to validate our accomplishments.  Think about it.  Without pain we can't know pleasure.  Without a challenge, victory isn't so sweet now is it. 

That's not to say that wanton suffering is a good thing.  Suffering for no good reason is the definition of masochism.  If there's a goal to reach, however, it's perfectly reasonable to endure a bit of pain.

That's one of the reasons I hate cheaters in multiplayer games.  They add needless suffering for their own selfish ends.  It may be fun to dominate everyone else for a few hours but after awhile it just gets boring.  Unless that's your idea of fun.  In which case you'd be exhibiting some sociopathic tendencies. 

In which case, I'm keeping an eye on the kiddies when you're around...

There was a line I remember from the movie "The Matrix" and I think of it often.  Agent Smith was interrogating Morpheus and made the following commentary on humanity.

"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery"

Agent Smith's premise was good but he paints with a bit of a wide brush.  If we weren't meant to endure some pain we wouldn't have any nerve endings.  We'd just aimlessly walk around stumbling into traffic and occasionally ending up in wood chippers without a care in the world.  We wouldn't have as clear a grasp on consequences either and I'm fairly certain the human race would have been nothing more than a fossil record by now.  In Star Trek 5, Kirk said it best...

"Damn it, Bones, you're a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!"

We're programmed to value our victories more when they aren't so easy to obtain.  We've all wished at some point that we were rich or got paid to do nothing.  The reality is that most of us wouldn't be idle for long.  It's more likely you'd find something to challenge you even if you didn't have to worry about paying the bills anymore.

In the case of Bernie Madoff, his challenge was to not get caught, hence my earlier sociopath example...

Hopefully your motives would be more pure but it ultimately comes down to the same thing.  We're just  not happy unless we're striving for something.  It could be your career, a favorite project, a game or even just surviving to a ripe old age.  All of it involves a challenge and like it or not challenge and pain are synonymous terms.

Nothing has value to us unless we "pay the price."  So long as it's a fair price there's no problem just be sure it's worthwhile.  Otherwise we end up being martyrs and masochists which is just unnecessary pain.

Sour Grapes and the Folly of Secession

Article first published as Sour Grapes and the Folly of Secession on Technorati.

Arizona is certainly a trendsetter, unfortunately for all the wrong reasons...

This week, hot on the heels of President Barack Obama's second term the local news reports that over 14,000 Arizona residents have signed a petition to ask "permission" to secede from the union.  The petition was started by the mysterious Nicholas M. of Gilbert, Az. 

Using the White House's We the People website a petition submitted by our Mr. "M" states...

 "The citizens of the great state of Arizona have the right to stand for their principles,” and  “That man is granted unalienable rights, which are not the dispensations of the government, but find their beginnings in God and come from God alone. These are the principles that our forefathers stood for, the principles upon which our Constitution is based, and those in which we firmly place our belief and resolve"

I'm not sure which constitution he's talking about. 

To hold up the U.S. Constitution won't work since it governs the body you're trying to leave.  To hold up a  state constitution is folly since the last state to have anything resembling a secession clause was Texas.  In fact one of the conditions of statehood is to specifically remove any secession language from the constitution of the prospective state.

Arizona isn't alone in its activism and apparently all  50 states have similar petitions in the wake of the election with some more successful than others.   

In Texas an equally mysterious character in the person of Micah H. has managed to collect over 100,000 signatures for his Texas secession petition. 

Strange how all these mysterious characters are suddenly starting petitions.  It's almost as though there was some type of organized effort.  Perhaps by a conservative group pre-occupied with politics and hot caffeinated beverages?

Petitions require only 25,000 signatures to receive an "official" response which upon meeting that threshold is likely to go something like this, "Thanks for your petition, we value your opinion but No"

Even Arizona's fiery state's rights advocate, Gov. Jan Brewer, has publicly stated she did not support the idea of secession.  Of course she doesn't.  Her distaste for the federal government may be obvious but no state can afford to lose its share of the Federal dole.

Unfortunately for the secessionists, they're not likely to find much support from other state governors either.  Setting aside the legal ramifications, state governments are far too dependent on federal funding to seriously entertain the idea of secession. 

When the South lost the Civil War (a secessionist movement)  it was due to a failing economy and flawed economic construct.   Perhaps it is the best example of the dangers of an extreme ideology overruling reason.   Apparently history has few lessons for a secessionist. 

So much for the bloodless revolution.

The YouTube monetization follies

I've been waiting....

Waiting for YouTube's vaunted "content ID" system to screw up and it finally did, big time...

On my other blog, Midagedgamer.blogspot.com I do a weekly gaming news wrap-up that generally includes a video of me reporting on the week's events.

For the Week of November 16th I took great pains to not run afoul of anything that would deny me the 26 cents of revenue I could potentially make from viewings.  (I'm not that popular on YouTube)

I had run afoul of the arbitrary copyright enforcement processes that YouTube employs before but in each case I was never clear on exactly what the issue was.  As such I usually hold my breath on every upload till my video clears all of YouTube's legal hurdles.

Knowing that I'm not going to make a living off YouTube I primarily do the videos as a convenience to my Blog readers.  It's also a decent way of getting some cross-pollination between the blogs and the YouTube channel.

Back to my latest YouTube adventure...

After 24 hours of waiting for my monetization request to be approved I finally got the dreaded,
"We need proof of commercial use rights to monetize" email.  I knew it was coming.  Monetization is usually instantaneous unless the video gestapos think there's a problem....

At this time, we are unable to approve your video(s) because we do not have sufficient information regarding your commercial use rights. We may consider your video(s) for further review provided you verify that you are authorized to commercially use all of the elements of your content. This includes all video, images, music, video game footage, and any other audio or visual elements. Learn more Please note that YouTube reserves the right to make the final decision whether to monetize a video, and we may disable monetization for partners who repeatedly submit ineligible videos. All videos are subject to our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines, and may be removed from the site if they do not meet those standards. Please submit your additional information below: "Black ops 2, THQ, AMD, & Sinofsky in the news" Remember that a variety of factors, such as video performance, may affect review time. We may not be able to process every submission, but we continually monitor these factors and prioritize accordingly. Thanks, The YouTube Team

Proof of what? That I have the right to use my own face, voice and content?  Let's not forget that I'm fully cognizant of the gestapo tactics of YouTube's copyright policing so I do everything I can to make sure I don't have to deal with them. 

My reply was simple...

After clicking the "Contains only my own original content" option from the drop down menu under the video's monetization tab I wrote...

Details?  Here they are.  Nothing in this video violates any copyright or requires a release from any party but me.  There are no background noises, radio broadcasts or reflections of a television broadcast in my glasses or anything else that could cause any issue with copyrights not held by me personally.

All the content contained in the video is 100% original and of my own creation.  I challenge you to prove otherwise as I'm confident your efforts will be unsuccessful.

In short, it's my ugly face, crappy voice, bad editing and original content.  The fish has signed a release as well and there is no content that wasn't created and controlled by me in the video. (I usually have my aquarium in the shot in case you wondered) 

To satisfy your request for proof of ownership I make the following statement...

I hereby authorize myself to use whatever content I may produce without restriction.  All content claimed by me is under my direct control.  No copyrighted or derivative works appear in the subject video and I certify that all the content is owned and created by me with all associated copyrights at my disposal.

So now I wait.  In the meantime the few views I have gotten haven't netted me a dime (which would be 1/2 my revenue! )  while I go through the process.

UPDATE:  As of Nov. 27th YouTube still hasn't monetized the video but had no problem with the prior or following videos...

Advertising to your affliction

Commercials annoy me.

"Yeah so what", you're likely saying to yourself right now...

If you have time on your hands like I do, you get to see a lot of ads pitching everything from luxury automobiles to breakfast cereal.  Of course the later the hour the more egregious the commercials become. 

Male enhancement and impotence cures show up the most frequently followed closely by well dressed lawyers pitching resolution via litigation.

All of those are the standard fare.  Even those products that promise to rectify men's...shortcomings. 

Most disgusting of all, however, are the ads from the pharmaceutical companies.  Regardless of how you feel about modern medicine, hawking prescription drugs like feminine hygiene products is something just short of criminal. 

"Ask your doctor" and "You don't have to suffer anymore" are common pitches.  Since when is it acceptable to create a demand for a controlled substance?  Is it wise to blithely wander into your doctor's office requesting medication without being sure of the affliction?  The commercials would make you think so.

How arrogant is that? The pharmaceuticals industry does the diagnosis making your doctor just another middleman.  I'd hope that rampant capitalism hasn't done the medical profession what it's done to our eating habits but I wouldn't hold your breath.  The practice of kickbacks and promotions given to physicians to favor one treatment option over another isn't as rare as we'd like it to be. 

With the advent of the Internet it seems self-diagnosis with a website as attending physician  has turned us all into hypochondriacs.  Every pain or discomfort is sure to have a miracle pill and all we have to do is make an appointment and ask for it.

Of course all the ads mention, "Ask your Doctor". 

Why?

If my doctor knows my physical condition and I don't have any medical training shouldn't he be the one prescribing treatments?  Who cares what a commercial says?  Why is it so important that I be aware of the names of prescription drugs and why do the drug companies feel the need to give them catchy names? 

So what's the point? 

Why does a company that makes drugs have a retail profit motive?  Need should dictate sales in medicine, not the other way around.  Commercials are explicitly designed to create a desire for a product.  In the case of prescription drugs that's a potentially unhealthy goal to say the least.

It's disgusting and highlights one of the primary flaws with the healthcare industry in the United States.  Personally, I don't believe healing should have a profit motive.  When you corrupt healthcare with greed both health and care are compromised.  There is no profit without sales and the ultimate goal of the salesman is to sell as much product as they can.  It's a goal inconsistent with medicine. 

Medicine should be more like the Red Cross than General Motors.  After all GM may charge you for antenna wax but the Red Cross will never charge you for a cot and a blanket when you need one. 

The worst part comes when we see our friends in the legal industry show up on late night TV again.  This time, however, it's not an auto accident or denied disability claim.  It's a class action against the pharmaceutical companies for injuries caused by their wares. 

Medicine isn't M&M's and shouldn't be marketed as such.  Pharmaceutical companies rush products to market often with inadequate testing and lax safeguards.  Competition may be the core of capitalism but it can be lethal to the unlucky patient receiving a recalled prescription.  Profit motives in business is fine, profit motives in healthcare at any level is a perversion.

Why the Conservative Media got it wrong

Article first published as Why the Conservative Media Got it Wrong on Technorati.

If there was any question as to whether there is such a thing as a conservative media it was settled in the run-up to  the Presidential election.  From Forbes to the WashingtonTimes,  right-leaning  media outlets predicted a close but decisive win for Mitt Romney.

Their assertions were based almost entirely on the Romney campaign platform which focused on perceived weaknesses in the Obama presidency. Let's take a look at a few of them...

The weak Economy...

"Obama and congressional Democrats are clearly to blame for the dismal economy." said Policymic.com...

The argument ignores basic economics if not the calendar. 

For one thing, Economists of any stripe agree that it's impossible to completely recover from a worldwide economic recession (near depression) in less than four years.  It also ignores Wall Street, a favorite economic indicator of the media.

Speaking of Wall Street...

Throughout the Romney campaign President Obama was accused of being "Bad for Business"

Obamaand the belligerent anti-business cartel running Congress have created anincreasingly hostile environment for businesses to operate in. from the Weekly Standard...

On January 20th 2009 (Obama's Inauguration) the Dow Jones industrial average closed at 8279.63.  Election day 2012  found the close at 13245.68.

We all know that Wall Street isn't main street  but the media treats the securities markets as an economic barometer.  A 5000 point spread is hard to ignore.  A number conspicuously absent from the Republican campaigns.

Let's try another one...

Legislative gridlock that could only be resolved with a Romney presidency...

"Obamahas needlessly created political enemies among the electorate.", again from Policymic.com

This one is pure fabrication unless the mere existence of the man is reason enough to despise him.  Remember Republican Senator Mitch McConnell's quote?

"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

For the two years since the quote to the National Journal, McConnell has insisted he was taken out of context.  Considering the almost intractable ideologies we've seen in congress throughout the President's first term I'm not sure what other context would apply. 

Both parties were aware of the frustration of the electorate with approval ratings leading up to the election hovering at 17%, an historic low.  "My way or the highway" isn't compromise and even a casually informed voter knows that the President can only propose not write legislation.  After that he has to wait for something to come to his desk  to sign.  Misdirection and the fallacy of the straw man. 

Finally, the straw that was to break the back of any hope of  the President's reelection.

 Democratsare not as motivated as they were in 2008. thanks again Policymic.com...

This one was more wishful thinking than calculated advantage...

Even in the face of reduced voting hours and recent challenges to early voting laws Obama voters turned out in force.   In many cases standing hours in line to cast their ballot.  Chants of "Let Us Vote" still ringing in the electorate's ears from the weekend before the election.

Whether or not voter suppression was going on, the suggestion alone was enough of a motivation to engage the ambivalent.

So how could conservative media get it so wrong? 

"MittRomney will win big tonight.  His popular vote margin will be between 3 –5%.  He will win the Electoral College I believe by a vote of 321 to217,"  Steve Forbes, Nov 6, 2012

Three possible scenarios come to mind. 

·    The people writing this stuff are just pandering to their readers who are comprised largely of well heeled conservatives. 

·    They based their assumptions on campaign rhetoric without any fact checking.  The second Presidential debate should have discouraged that route.

·    They're just the media arm of the Republican party.

None are good options and all call into question the standards of the publication.  Popular media is no longer under any type of fairness doctrine, however,  short of libel.  That's allowed media outlets to safely engage in a political bias.    Nobody would confuse Fox News with Mother Jones for example. 

In the end I offer no cautionary admonition against such gaffs.  If anything this is simply an  example of media consumption (or creation) based on individual biases.  Most bias is usually based on at least some factual information even if it's of our own creation .

Politics as Product

Article first published as Politics as Product on Technorati.

Never has there been such a splendid example that we as a society are severely afflicted with Attention Deficit Disorder.  This flavor of ADD  is far from the inattentive child nervously fidgeting in his classroom, however.  

No, this is an affliction of the first world dominated by the churn of  consumerism.   It expresses itself in everything from fad to fashion and increasingly to critical thinking as well.

We in the first world have become so conditioned to reacting to a marketing message that we require no further information to make a decision.  We make the choice based on the promotion we most easily identify with.  No further deliberation is entertained. 

We've come to expect all of our information to be packaged in this way.  Politics enjoy no immunity.

Our impatience is reflected in the flood of campaign ads that have plagued our airwaves for the past year.  Probably the most obvious example is the current U.S. presidential race.  To date, both candidates for president have raised over 2 Billion dollars for their campaigns with approximately 1.5 billion of that spent thus far. 

Half truths, errors of omission and inflated context are the tools of political persuasion and they easily translate to the world of marketing.  Politics promotes the image by obscuring the product. 

FedEx Office Print Online Large order 20% Discount

We choose our leaders with less care than our favorite sports team.  That's by design and the reason why political positions are largely parroted from political propaganda.  Politicians know voters have a low tolerance for long-winded technical arguments.  Instead they choose a popular position with their base and relentlessly repeat the same message regardless of its veracity.

Remember the Go-Daddy commercials?  In 30 seconds we knew who they were but only because we were constantly exposed to scantily clad models that appealed to a core demographic.   How many of us tried them based on a subconscious reaction to those ads instead of their reputation?

It works just as well for politics as it does for web hosting.   Think about where you get your political news.  Is it C-Span or are you more interested in the packaged offerings of Fox News or MSNBC?

Let's look at a current hot button political issue as an example...

Is it really the fault of a sitting president that the worst economic downturn since the depression of 1929 is still affecting the economy?

It is if you ignore the boring technical argument that it took a decade and a world war to bring the U.S. out of the great depression.   

Unfortunately, our short attention spans won't allow the retort.  We crave instant gratification and sway toward the product that promises it.  Ironically, If challenged we frequently justify our position based on that same marketing construct.  It's circular logic which dovetails nicely with our distaste for depth.

Perhaps it's time to examine how informed we really are.  

The New Ipad Mini is coming!

My golden pin to poke the Apple hype balloon...

Enjoy!

Music credit:

Sneeuwland (Oskar Schuster) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

New Apple products but where's the revolution?

Article first published as New Apple Products But Where's the Revolution? on Technorati.

So today the buzz in Apple land was the announcementof the new smaller IPad, the completely redesigned IMac and Retina display on a 13 inch laptop.   Oh yeah, and your "New" Ipad is now old because the 4th Generation IPAD was announced.   The 4th gen IPad boasts a more powerful A6X processor and available LTE connectivity.  Hope you got your offer from Gazelle.com locked in before today!

Tim Cook was front and center hyping all the "innovations" of his new products.  At one point even comparing the new IPAD mini to the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.  Cook even went so far as to drag out the "sold more IPad's than PC's" argument  from last year which still holds as much relevance as the number of paper clips consumed by the average office.

Undoubtedly there'll be hundreds of articles about the announcement and it's not my intent to rehash that information.  I'm sure there'll be 100 blog posts in the next 24 hours to take care of that.

What was striking was how little innovation there was to be had. 

Sure, ever since the introduction of Samsung's Galaxy note last year then the Nexus this year Apple fans have been hoping for a smaller version of the IPad,

Today they got it but it's hard to understand what's so great about it.  It amounts to little more than Apple late to a market already dominated by a competitor.

The new IMac  has a thinner profile and is available with the "new" fusion drive which is little more than an SSD accelerated hard disk.   That's technology that's been available since the introduction of the Intel Z77 chipset.   Unless you view your IMac as an objet d'art instead of a computer there's nothing revolutionary about it.

In short, today's Apple announcement boiled down to a refresh of the current Ipad, a smaller Ipad with a $329 entry level price point and a prettier IMac in 21.5 and 27" screen sizes. 

Where's the real innovation? Where's the world changing product that has set the standard for consumer electronics?  Instead of changing the way we interact with technology like the first Macintosh PC or the Iphone, Apple seems content to react to market trends instead of setting them.

One thing that hasn't changed is the price point.  Apple still demands a premium price for largely garden variety hardware in an attractive shell. 

Living in the Silicon bubble, the Sequel

I would dearly love to live in the world of tech commercials.  I'd never see a landscape that wasn't a scenic vista. Every city street would be a model of urban renewal with stylishly clad inhabitants happily dancing through the day with their Smartphones and tablets at the ready.

Business professionals would conduct high level meetings in their Speedos comfortably reclined on some sunny tropical beach.   The view only temporarily obscured by perfectly toned examples of the human form interrupting the crashing waves.

This is the world promoted by tech pundits.  Pseudo journalists who often forget that they're living the dream that few of their followers could ever enjoy.

Oh! what horror it must be to cover a Smartphone launch or have to spend a week in Vegas covering a tech toys convention.  

So when a recent Saturday night Live skit shone a light on the tech punditry by mocking their surreal point of view, the punditry could only chuckle nervously.  If you missed it the skit focused on a fictional panel discussion with three tech pundits airing grievances about the shortcoming of the Iphone 5.  Later 3 Chinese factory workers countered with sarcastic responses citing inhumane working conditions

We'll leave alone the hypocrisy of the stereotypical Uber humanitarian Iphone Devotee embracing a product whose very creation advocates abject slavery for Chinese workers on the line.    Oops,  I guess I didn't leave it alone ah well, moving on...

Response from the punditry ranged from tepid amusement to complaints that the pundits in SNL's skit looked like "they were out of the 80's" and not consistent with the "real" punditry.  Actually, the depictions were fairly accurate if you watch enough tech podcasts. 

That's the problem with living in a bubble, you start to lose touch with how the rest of the world sees you. 

Perhaps, like many others, I'm making more of the SNL skit than it deserves but I think it was a perfect depiction of the techie mindset.  Gross consumerism and perpetual upgrade cycles trump ordinary reason.  Only the device matters. The next killer app is always just around the corner promising to let you do absolutely nothing with greater speed and utility. 

Who cares if the factory that made it employed abject slavery to make it, your world view is safe right?  Worse, who cares if the mechanisms to produce the next killer device were devastating the economy of those not so blessed to be in the tech punditry.  Hey there are plenty of jobs at Starbucks and Amazon warehouses right?

I've noticed a new wave of complaints from the punditry lately.  Suddenly they feel unfairly trolled and will go so far as to call the Internet "mean".  

I'll clue you in punditry, the Internet isn't "mean" it's just worried about its next paycheck.  It's growing incredulous at your denial of reality.   Tech toys are expensive for the rest of us but you seem to be oblivious to that fact and prefer instead  to cite your distorted reality as the de facto norm.   

I thank the pundits for their input and appreciate the information.   What I don't appreciate is the assertion that their lifestyle in any way reflects that of their audience.  It doesn't.  Perhaps when you realize that you'll be able to graduate from podcasting to actual journalism.

Not Blogging for fun and profit

Blah, blah, blah, recruiters, blah, blah, Windows 8, blah, blah politics.  Insert a few philosophical musings and the occasional commentary on a Podcast and you have most of the content  found within the Digital Dynamic blog. 

I never claimed this blog was interesting and true to its credo it is a bit rambling.

Still, after doing it for over a year and resisting the urge to regurgitate a largely uninspiring life's experiences onto the page I thought I'd be doing a little better by now.

So I set out on a journey of discovery in search of SEO optimization and higher page hits.

It doesn't take long to find sage advice about successful blogging from the SEO marketing crowd. 

They admonish me to...

Provide value! (subjective term)

Focus your content!  (oops..)

Don't be boring! (VERY Subjective term)

Too much text is bad! (People like pictures)

Be consistent!  (That I can do...)

Don't be wishy-washy...

but don't offend anyone either.  (Like that's possible)

After sifting through hundreds of "How-to" articles and videos  I come to the same conclusion I had when I started my little trip through self-help a la' Google.

It's all crap...

I feel simultaneously enlightened and hollow at the same time.  The presentation, always dazzling yet the value debatable.  Strange, since that breaks the guru's first rule of not having crap content.  Worse it's all the same information which breaks another rule of successful blogging.  That is, don't do what's already been done.

Read down the page and you're sure to find glowing accolades in the comments from dozens who've seemingly experienced an epiphany in 250 words.

Of course it's all very generic which makes me wonder if there's some bulk commentary wholesaler out there where you can buy warm fuzzies by the score.  I swear I've seen the same comments spread across dozens of blogs.  Are people really that unimaginative?  Explains why their blogs aren't doing so well I suppose...

 Just like those late night infomercials with B-list celebrities hawking the promise of easy millions from becoming a slumlord, I'm convinced the only people enjoying success are the guru's themselves.   

Technically they're not lying, they got me to look at their stuff but just because I watch a commercial doesn't mean I'm buying the product.

In this day of website paywalls  standing between you and the last sentence of a newspaper article it seems information, useful or not, is another commodity to be traded. 

I'd like to think that I provided content people were interested in but my numbers say otherwise.  How could I possibly compete with paid reviews of the latest gizmo or celebrity gossip. 

I may be boring but at least I try to be honest with the handful of readers who frequent my work.

Maybe someday if the masses tire of the deluge diatribe they'll go looking for something different.  I just hope I have the right SEO in place when it happens!

Messages to a resume stacker

I get a lot of email messages.

Since I'm in the job market I get most of them from recruiters.
In this economy you'd think that was a good thing but it isn't always.

I work with a few decent recruiters who know better than to waste my time but it seems they are in the minority.  What I get most of the time is fly by night operators usually a day late and a dollar short making empty promises.

These are the "Resume Stackers"  or recuriters that collect a large quantity of resumes to try to fool a potential employer into thinking they're offering something they don't really have.  Most just scan monster.com job listings for promising openings and dig up the phone number to HR.

The first tip-off to a "stacker" is jobs that don't match your background and that nobody in their right mind would even consider you for.  They usually have a tag line at the end that says something like:

"If you or someone you know would be a good fit please send us your information"

That means they didn't pay the recuriter fee to be able to access candiate information for DICE, Monster or Careerbuilder, They have no idea who you are as they can only see publicly accessible information likely provided to them in the same manner as those services that provide sales leads for specific zip codes.

I suppose it could be fun to be submitted for a CEO's job if you were a landscaper but not likely to be productive.  That and your chances would be better by just sending your resume on your own.

It's the reason why you see so many job listings that say "No agency referrals"  That means they've been buried by the "Stackers" and got sick of it.

I've taken to doing more than just adding them to my junk email filter.  I encourage them to seek alternate career paths.  Here's a recent email response to a job I had absolutely no qualification for...

Feel free to use my response at the end as a form email response, just replace Resume Stacker with the stacker's name. It's constructed as a form email for both candidate and employer use.

Excerpt of Email I received:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi,

My name is "Resume Stacker" and I'm a Staffing Specialist at Resume Stacker Intl., a Global IT Services & Staffing Company. We are constantly on the lookout for professionals to fulfil the staffing needs of our clients, and we currently have an Opportunity that I thought may interest you. Enclosed below are the details:

Client: We really don't care inc.

Job Title: MS Infrastructure Manager

Location: Somewhere at least 1000 miles from where we are.

Type: Direct Placement

Job Description

SUMMARY STATEMENT:

As a member of the Enterprise Infrastructure leadership team, the Manager, Windows Administration/Engineering plays an important role in helping to define the direction for the team and enabling the technology demands of the business. Drives and manages platform and/or service lifecycles in alignment with We really don't care inc. vision and strategy with a service-oriented, solutions-focused, and progressive approach. Manages the development, deployment and management of enterprise-level Windows operating systems.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My Response:

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Resume Stacker, you sir/madam are what we in the consulting business call a resume stacker. What that means is that you collect dozens of resumes after getting wind of a possible opening somewhere then shotgun them at the HR department of your target company. The most contact you have with the client is an email and you could give a damn less about the people you submit.

I can prove that from this very email. You've simply scraped my resume/job listing off Monster.com looking for keywords without even reviewing my qualifications/reruirements. In short, you're not qualified to represent me or anyone else to this company/candidate. By the way, this very job was posted a month ago, I watch job listings too. It’s old information and I really don't appreciate being lied to. Yes Resume Stacker, even a half truth makes one a liar.

In fact, Resume Stacker,  I get so many email messages like yours every week seeking to waste my time that I think I should go into the recruiting business myself. It’s apparent that there are far too many unqualified individuals like yourself out there further complicating an already complicated process.

Now I'm going to add you to my junk email filter confident that the only thing I'm missing out on by ignoring any further communication from you is disappointment and rage focused in your general direction.

Try to have a good day, Resume Stacker and please consider another career, you're not helping anyone in this one.