Letter Never Sent

This is interesting. A Sitepoint survey reveals four web developer “types”:

• The “Guru” is strongly motivated toward technical excellence, actively tracks new technological trends, and is interested in learning how to use them to improve the quality and functionality of web sites.
• The “Entrepreneur” is strongly motivated toward building and retaining an audience, and is less interested in using technologies just because they’re new.
• The “Designer” is strongly motivated toward the timely delivery of visually appealing web sites that meet the business requirements of clients.
• The “Corporate” is strongly motivated toward reliable, stable performance; the “Corporate works in a larger organization, and faces the unique mixture of constraints and opportunities that the corporate environment offers.

This sounds about right to me. I’m definitely more of the Entrepreneur type by nature, but also because I currently work for a small company that is focused on marketing to its prospective customers. You just can’t specialize and expect to be as effective when you have a team of one to two people tasked with achieving all projects that need to be online. However, it helps to be able to slip into the other modes when necessary. It’s all about maintaining the flexibility needed to meet the overall strategic goals. In other words, creating a visually stunning design or implementing an amazing CMS should not supercede the need to make the phone ring and get the information out to your customers if that’s what needs to happen. In larger corporate settings where you’re one of many in amongst an array of departments, you can worry about version control, documentation, or overall content management. Likewise, if you’re running a design house, you can spend time obsessing over every visual detail to support one of your client’s online ad campaigns. But, if you design / build in-house for a small company, you just have to get stuff done.

Creepy, but riveting. What did we do before the Internet?

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As you may have noticed, I’m working on a new theme/skin for this web log. If you notice any weirdness in your browser please leave me a comment so I can fix it and make everything look nice. 

I downloaded the latest version of Skype and connected with my Bluetooth headset. I noticed a new tab for the Skypecasts service, which is a way to have group conversations in Skype. In theory this sounds like a good idea. I sorted and found a channel called “Happy Talk” with 8 other people and intruded. As I lurked and listened, a few non-english speakers were attempting to communicate with each other. It was an audio car wreck. Thick Chinese and Indian accents talking over one another, the echo of feedback, and crappy sound quality. Finally, it resorted to a good-natured game of “Shut up” / “No, you shut up.”

By Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld:

54.—The contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to guard themselves against the degradation of poverty, it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinction which they could not gain by riches.

122.—If we conquer our passions it is more from their weakness than from our strength.

I spent a fruitless week searching for a few books that have proven either too popular or too unpopular to buy due to the apparent lack of copies anywhere in Dallas. After stopping at the mother of all Half-Price Books stores and two Barnes & Nobles I decided to try the massive, 9-story Dallas Public Library. While at the library I did find some of the books I wanted, but it turned out that most of them were located in Humanities on the third floor, which was closed off for renovations. Undaunted, I continued on to SMU’s charming and ratty old library with my TexShare card and located the books again, but when I tried to check out they told me I could only keep them for three days due to my not being a student. Screw that.

Why is it impossible to find certain small books for sale when all manner of other crap is available? As much as I hate waiting for packages, I may have to start book shopping online.

Apparently, a piece of legislation passed the House making it illegal for credit card companies and banks within the United States to take payments for online gambling operations. This effectively shuts down online gambling’s most lucrative market. The legislation in question, H.R. 4954, is a bill dealing ostensibly with ports security. The two biggest supporters of the gambling legislation, John Kyl (AZ) and Jim Leach (IA), are both from states with legalized riverboat and Indian casino gambling. Prospective Republican candidate and Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, is also a major supporter. (When he runs for president it would be worth researching his campaign donations to see if any tribal money made it in there.) The legislation is also supported by diverse interests like the National Football League, but more speculation on that shortly. If I were a cynical person, I would suggest that this shutdown is simply a precursor to legal online gambling, which will work out in the following steps:

Step 1: Shut down all illegal online gambling in the United States. This is complete as of this week, provided it gets signed into law. If online gambling companies cannot take bets from within the United States they will lose tens of billions of dollars. Gamblers have no way to pay the sites because the sites can no longer legally process their bank or credit cards directly. Brick and mortar casinos are the winners here as they have been extremely unhappy about the competition from the online market where they were prohibited from operating due to existing laws. They have been shoveling buckets of money into the war chests of their distinguished representatives in Congress for over ten years.

Step 2: Brick and mortar casinos ghost-write and support legislation for the regulation of legalized Internet gambling. Shortly after online gambling is outlawed. It will return in a legal form. Essentially, the casinos will make deals with the state and federal governments to accept regulation in return for significant tax revenues, cooperation with money-laundering investigations, etc. I imagine the casinos might try for concessions tying online customers to the physical casino through various mechanisms. For example, requiring customers to create accounts in person (presumably for age verification), storing funds in casino accounts, or even making online gamblers play online only in approved gambling facilities. This would allow the casino business to open up legal online gambling terminals in bars, truck stops, airports, etc. Las Vegas will then be available across the country 24/7 and the state governments will be guaranteed their piece of the action. It may sound outlandish, but the gambling interests are very serious and long-range thinkers.

What stake does the NFL have in this? Their support may be a result of their desire to keep sports betting from negatively affecting their all-American image, however what if American society has grown more tolerant of gambling? What if the NFL ran its own online book-making operation? The odds could be determined by the marketplace, and the NFL could take a cut of all the bets made all while providing an open and authoritative eBay-style book-making marketplace.