Month: October 2012

A bias for trust

A bias for trust:

Instead of seeking and amplifying the sharp edges, consider focusing on the dignity and goodwill of the people you’re working with.

Sure, there are people out there who will disappoint you. But expecting to be ripped off poisons all your interactions instead of saving you from a few dead ends.

An open mind and an open heart usually lead to precisely that in those that you are about to deal with. Perhaps we should give people a chance to live up to our trust instead of looking for the gotcha.

[Apply this outside of the context of business as well please.]

Source: Seth’s Blog

Travis Shrugged: The creepy, dangerous ideology behind Silicon Valley’s Cult of Disruption

Travis Shrugged: The creepy, dangerous ideology behind Silicon Valley’s Cult of Disruption | PandoDaily:

The truth is, what Silicon Valley still calls “Disruption” has evolved into something very sinister indeed. Or perhaps “evolved” is the wrong word: The underlying ideology — that all government intervention is bad, that the free market is the only protection the public needs, and that if weaker people get trampled underfoot in the process then, well, fuck ‘em — increasingly recalls one that has been around for decades. Almost seven decades in fact, since Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” first put her on the radar of every spoiled trust fund brat looking for an excuse to embrace his or her inner asshole. (For a delightful essay on that subject, I recommend Jason Heller’s “I Was A Teenage Randroid.”)

[Sinister indeed.]

Cycling’s Doping Problem: A Clean Athlete’s Persepective | MomsTeam

Cycling’s Doping Problem: A Clean Athlete’s Persepective | MomsTeam:

I also got to the point where I knew that I couldn’t get any further without doping. After years of dealing with suspected dopers internationally, I finally had to deal with it at a national level. I, however, never felt like I didn’t have a choice. I knew I wouldn’t dope, so I made the tough decision: I quit. Yes, I’m sometimes bitter, but I have never regretted my decision. I can look back at my entire cycling career and know that everything I accomplished was clean, and I’m proud of that. That means more than any title or medal.

[A different perspective. I was thinking about the “give back the money to sponsors” part and disagree. The sponsors received the value they expected. And they all know the risks when they go down the endorsement road. But I know how she feels.]

Outlawed by Amazon DRM

Outlawed by Amazon DRM:

This is becoming my hobby horse, but it bears repeating: this is the real “walled garden” effect we need to worry about. What I need to have and keep open are my data formats. I don’t need the source code for the applications that I run; I don’t need warm fuzzies from the thought that I can swap out my operating system for Ubuntu “Rabid Ratel.” Those are ways that those of sufficient nerd studliness can keep their data open, but for 99% of humanity they’re not practical ways. Open or even de facto standards like RTF, MP3, MP4 and EPUB—when kept free from DRM—are what we need to be strongly advocating for. The music industry has mostly given up on DRM; it’s time for the publishing and video industries to follow their lead. (You’d think that merely knowing the RIAA was, in any way, more progressive than you are would be enough to shame you into action, but sadly not.) Some DRM is worse than others—Apple’s tends to be better at staying out of your way than most and, as far as I know, wouldn’t let Apple do what Amazon did here even if they wanted to—but fundamentally, you need to be able to control your own data, even if that control makes the people who sold you that data twitchy.

[Here’s the original problem Outlawed by Amazon DRM. I thought only Google was this bad at this.]

Source: Coyote Tracks

Friendship

It will last for years, include bad jokes, dark humor, pre-dawn meetings in parking lots, post-dusk rides back into parking lots, pain, sweating, suffering, freezing, whining, complaining, smiling, laughing, getting lost, headwinds, and talking about how fun it all was later.

And that’s just for starters…

Enjoying the Ride: Weighing In

Enjoying the Ride: Weighing In:

And how about these half-assed confessions? “I only took EPO a few times and never consistently”, “Johan made me do it”, “Lance is a big, scary, 150 lb bully”, “I took PEDs but I didn’t inhale” (I paraphrase). It all smells to me. Self-preservation is the name of the game. There was nothing altruistic in these half-truth confessions. Tell me Hincapie, Vande Velde, Danielson, Zabriskie, and Leipheimer: if you chose to cheat and lie through your Postal years and then continue to lie a further 6 years later, why should we believe you when you say that you’ve been racing clean since 2005/2006 (or that you weren’t cheating before your Postal days)? I have a really hard time believing that. I hope it’s true but if the risk of being caught continued to be low and the lure of results, money, and adulation continued to be high, it would have to be quite the sudden alignment of their respective moral compasses. Okay, so say that everyone one of the confessors stopped taking PEDs in 2006 as they claim, what about the residual effects of drugs? Their level of training and racing on PEDs was so much higher than what they could achieve sans that the benefits of that could last for years, right? There are no studies about this that I know of but I have to believe that the Grand Tours, training, etc. that they did on the juice had to be beneficial to the body for years to come. Not to mention the confidence and other mental aspects gained while riding/racing better than you’re capable of naturally. In all, it seems like a pretty sweet deal for these guys.

[There’s always another side.]

Shouting

Shouting:

It’s far less important how one author feels about the iPhone 5 than the alarming fact that Slate let this author publish a 1,200-word essay about a device he hadn’t used, nearly three months before it shipped. Why? Because shouting creates pageviews and clicks, and…well, there’s nothing more to say: shouting sells. If this author or another wants to be in the game, sooner than later, he or she will have to start shouting, louder and louder.
[snip -ed.]

The un-digital camp is far from relinquishing their power. Models that can replace them aren’t here. Advertising online has been corruptive of user privacy and editorial integrity. I’m afraid it’ll be a miracle if the shouting subsides anytime soon.

[It’s a problem for sure. But it is rarely as stark as the images at the top of this article.]

Source: counternotions

CURL: Crowley skews hard for Obama in disastrous presidential debate – Washington Times

CURL: Crowley skews hard for Obama in disastrous presidential debate – Washington Times:

Then Ms. Crowley jumped in to do her own fact-check, on the spot. “It — it — it — he did in fact, sir. … He did call it an act of terror.”

The truth is, he didn’t. The day after the attack, he said only this: “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.” It took another two weeks before the White House would label the attack an act of terror.

[I thought it was tough job until I learned that she controlled the questions as well… what a mess these dabates are. So phony. How is it (according to CNN) that the Democrats have had more speaking time in each debate? 8% in the first Presidential debate, 11% in the this one. Biden got 3% more time. Just an edge given to anyone in office? I can’t find numbers… pathetic.]

Portrait of a young boy and wheels made of clay

Portrait of a young boy and wheels made of clay | Political Insider:

For all those reasons, Douglas intends to keep those three autographed photos of himself as a flag-draped kid. As for the one in my office, it is important to note what happened after that moment was frozen in time.

Not in Armstrong’s world, but the world of Samuel Douglas.

That photo marked him, but did not make him. Since then, his father has taken him and his brothers — he is the oldest of the trio — on charity missions to Honduras and Africa. His mother has insisted that the brothers engage in public service at home. Meals on Wheels, in particular.

Samuel Douglas is an Eagle Scout, and he’s now headed for med school. To become a pediatrician, perhaps. We need more in Georgia.

So that photo will remain in the office, in its place next to Sarah Palin. It still contains heroic possibilities — just not from the man clipped into the pedals. Samuel Douglas has promised to sign it next time he’s in town.

[It’s easy to be cynical. It’s easy to hate. And then there’s folks like Samuel Douglas.]