General

International Pol. / Military and defense — 2 Comments
19
Jul 06

4th Generation Warfare

The Israel-Lebanon Conflict has created tons of good discussion on geopolitics and warfare. This little nugget by William S. Lind caught my eye and indicates why states have so much trouble attacking terrorism and guerrilla warfare:

But his alternative, at least for a rollback force, includes privatizing the fighting function. The problem with this is that as the state privatizes security functions, for foreign wars or here at home, it strikes at its own reason for being and thus accelerates its crisis of legitimacy, which lies at the heart of 4GW. Once security is privatized, why have a state at all?

Conveniently, private armies have a long history of overthrowing states. There is good reason why the rising state of the 17th century abolished private armies and forcefully asserted a monopoly on violence.

asides — Comments Off on Untitled
19
Jul 06

Untitled

Now you’re thinking with portals. Awesome.

Get paid to post links and blog. “We will pay you $1,000 a month for your “social bookmarking” rights. Put in at least 150 stories a month and we’ll give you $12,000 a year. (note: most of these folks put in 250-400 stories a month, so that 150 baseline is just that–a baseline).” The beginning of the end?

Information wealth is no long monopolized by the West. ““You have to acknowledge the obvious — we’ve seen a new capability in striking the naval vessel and in the number of casualties that have been sustained from the Hezbollah missile attacks,” a Bush administration official said.

“In the past, we’d see three, four, maybe eight launches at any given time if Hezbollah was feeling feisty,” the official added. “Now we see them arriving in large clusters, and with a range and even certain accuracy we have not seen in the past.”

General — 4 Comments
16
Jul 06

My new…used car

my new used car - 1997 mustang gt

I took this with the timer. It was about 102 degrees outside.

General — 3 Comments
14
Jul 06

My cat, my roommate

When we moved up to Dallas, our cat, Clancey, moved with us. Then we found out about “pet rent”, which you pay in addition to the pet deposit. It is pretty common around here, and from the tenant’s point of view it’s bogus. Any damage caused by the pet should be covered by the pet deposit. That’s the reason for having it, right? And let’s be honest, have you ever tried to get a cat to pay rent? Hair balls are not yet an accepted form of payment.

As pets are unable to participate in the human economy, they cannot pay rent. The landlords should instead call this an “additional monthly fee for owning a pet”. The term “pet rent” is misleading. It sounds unrelated to the pet deposit. If you pay $10 a month in pet rent, you end up paying what amounts to a $120 unrefundable pet deposit on top of the potentially refundable pet deposit. I guess from the landlord’s perspective, pet rent makes up for dogs crapping all over the landscaping and assorted other damage and trouble.

If this is going to be a growing trend, we should institute added rents for other annoyances. I’d like to charge extra rent to people who cook food that smells up the hallways.

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asides — Comments Off on RIM Announces Hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Server
07
Jul 06

RIM Announces Hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Server

RIM Announces Hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Server: “In today’s fast-paced, competitive environment mobile connectivity is an essential business requirement, but many smaller organizations are looking for outsourced solutions,” said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at RIM. “Hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Server will allow providers to address the SMB market with BlackBerry, the industry standard in mobility.”

Society — Comments Off on You got to know when to hold ’em
07
Jul 06

You got to know when to hold ’em

Ever since my trip to Shreveport for a friend’s wedding, I’ve taken to small amounts of casino gambling. I’m not much of a gambler due to my unwillingness to get totally violated by the house odds, but it is an enjoyable pastime if you think of the money as already burned. When you lose, it’s gone. Just try not to lose too much. Sometimes you’ll win some, but the gambling bug will keep you playing until you lose that too. Let it ride.

I’ve been to casinos in Las Vegas, Shreveport, and Oklahoma, and the best thing I learned is: don’t blow your whole casino bonus check. Otherwise here are a couple other things.

  1. Casinos in Oklahoma suck. The Indian casinos have gotten their revenge on the white man by charging fifty cents ante per hand just to play. That means if you play $5 a hand Black Jack, you’ll also have to kick in fifty cents or 10% to the house for each hand. After ten hands, you’ve paid $5 just for the privilege of losing your chips. Not only does the house have the advantage, they also make easy money off each player each time the cards are dealt. Las Vegas and Shreveport do not do this.
  2. You can win with Black Jack and Poker. If you look at the odds, the only games where you can beat the house and make some money are Black Jack and Poker. This is because in each of these games, you can affect the outcome to a certain degree. For example, if you’re at a table where the dealer is dealing out of a six deck shoe and for several hands everything is low cards, you can be relatively certain there will be more high cards at the end of the shoe. Then you just bet accordingly. In Poker, you’re playing against other people. So, if you get some good hands and play against people worse than you, you can win there too. In almost every other game, it’s pure chance.
Psychology / Society — 1 Comment
05
Jul 06

Smart people are immature?

Interesting surface discussion about “psychological neoteny“:

“By contrast, many modern adults fail to attain this maturity, and such failure is common and indeed characteristic of highly educated and, on the whole, effective and socially valuable people,” he said.

“People such as academics, teachers, scientists and many other professionals are often strikingly immature outside of their strictly specialist competence in the sense of being unpredictable, unbalanced in priorities, and tending to overreact.”

Software / Internet / Technology — Comments Off on Considerations for ecommerce software
19
Jun 06

Considerations for ecommerce software

I’ve had to locate good ecommerce software (online shopping carts, etc.) a few times for various projects. Each time the details of the project are different, which often requires using something entirely different. Here are some of the things you need to consider when shopping around.

  • Try to pick the right product for the right platform. What server platform are you using? Pick the ecommerce application that fits in with everything else you’re doing and it will be a lot easier to integrate and maintain. If most of your site is running on Windows 2003 Server using ASP .NET and MS SQL, go with an ecommerce application that uses that. If on the other hand you’re running on Linux with PHP / MySQL pick something that fits in. Most popular cart apps are written in either PHP or ASP. I generally avoid anything that is written in its own proprietary scripting language. While it may be more secure and flexible it usually just ends up more difficult to maintain. It’s just easier to do everything with a common language since you might find yourself pulling in data from the cart in other places around your site. Also, applications written in common scripting languages often have larger communities dedicated to using and extending the product.
  • Consider the software license. Examine the license agreement. What kind of license do you get? What are you allowed to do? How many times can you install the application? What are the limitations? Many popular ecommerce solutions like OsCommerce are open source, which means that not only is it free to download, but you can do whatever you like with it. Some will allow you to install multiple times if you buy one license, others will only let you install and use once. I had a situation recently where we purchased a license for an application we’re using and later found out the license only allows for one install, even on the same domain, so we couldn’t install it twice on the same site even for non-public use. This was annoying, especially considering it was not an inexpensive product.
  • What payment types are supported? How will you be accepting payment? Paypal, credit cards, egold, etc.? If you plan to take credit cards, you’ll need some sort of online payment processing gateway usually provided by companies like Authorize.net. Most ecommerce applications support Authorize.net and Paypal, but you should make sure you know two things: how you will be accepting payment, and are your desired forms of payment supported by the ecommerce application.
  • How easy is it to template or reskin? This is a big one unless you don’t mind having a storefront with that looks like everyone else’s. One of the things you’ll notice about many of the ecommerce packages is that the end result always looks very similar. This is particularly true of many of the cheap and free alternatives like OsCommerce. You may have a different banner or background colors, but otherwise one OsCommerce site looks pretty much like another. Do some research on how easy it is to reskin or re-template the application output, especially if you want the storefront to be integrated into the look and feel of your website. When I’m looking at different products, I basically look for something that can spit a product listing into my overall site design. I stay away from stuff that has too many modules and extras because this tends to get in the way of reskinning. It also helps to visit sites that are using the product to see what they’ve done with it.
  • What support is available? This is one of those things that is highly variable, but generally what kind of support will you get with the product. If it’s a free product, don’t be expecting any hand holding. Raise your expectation level as the price goes up. For any product, you’ll need to read the documentation. Look for good documentation and an active community when working with a free product. For more expensive products, do your research on what type of support is provided by the vendor. Many vendors will offer free installation or other services that will help you out. On the flip side, some companies specialize in nickel and diming you to death. They’ll sell you the base product for next to nothing, but the necessary payment modules and normally included functions will cost you 50-100% extra. If you want software upgrades and customer support you’ll need to pony up another 50-100%. Support can be a big deal and an added headache if it sucks.
General — Comments Off on Everything depends on your point of view
14
Jun 06

Everything depends on your point of view

Even though I’m religiously devoted to his linkblog, every once in a while, Andy Baio makes a casual remark that rubs me the wrong way. For example:

“Coke and FedEx seem desperate to kill grassroots love of their
product because it “doesn’t fit with the brand personality”

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