Word 2007 to Blogger

So I learned yesterday, thanks to my Uncle Henry, that Microsoft Word 2007 has the ability to publish to your blog for you. This is great because unless I'm writing a very basic blog post I like to use Word, for better formatting, spelling and grammar. All of which I certainly need help with.

The positives:

1. Real time grammar and spell check. Blogger has a spell check but it's after you write.
   
2. More writing space. You can have Word take your entire screen up for writing. Blogger has a small text window that is not resizable.
   
3. The text formatting is actually CLEAN. If you've every cut and paste Word text into Blogger before you know that all that wonderful Microsoft HTML is brought in with it. This tool appears to correctly strip down the formatting to regular HTML. (Note: I'm not convinced this will happen in each case and I will continue to test it.)
   

The negatives:

1. No pictures. It appears that unless you use Microsoft Live Spaces for your blog there is little support for other image hosting options. Granted this is a Microsoft product but if you are going to allow for posting to other blog hosting sites, give us the ability to upload to Picasa, Flickr, etc.
   
2. No keywords. I cannot speak for other blog hosts, but I like that Blogger has the ability to add keywords to the bottom of a blog post. It helps with organization as well as helps search engines crawl your blog.
   

Overall I think this is a great tool and worth using, especially if your blog posts are long and you want them to be somewhat professional. For quick and dirty blogs it's probably an unnecessary tool. Hopefully with Office 2010 some more image services are added. The keyword function I can live without, but no images is a pain. I like to add images to my blog. It adds interest and sometimes they are simply necessary. I'll have to manually add them every time with this Microsoft Word tool.

I give it 6.5 out of 10. The lack of better image hosting integration and the fact that some bloggers will never find the need to use this tool hurt it.

Internet Comment Ranking

There are a number of websites now have comment systems that allow other uses to rank other users comments. I used to get frustrated when a perfectly legitimate comment that I made would get voted down while illogical or factually incorrect comment would be voted up.

Not everyone thinks rationally about certain subjects. I'm sure I've ranted on a topic before only to later realize my comment was poorly thought out. This is what occurred to me. People see a subject and comment based on a variety of reasons. Some want give an opposing view. Some want to just be a cheerleader for the original topic. Some see the trend and follow suit. Some try to logically (or sometimes illogically) debate the issues brought up by the original topic or to others' comments.

The problem is that good comments can sometimes be voted down simply because the comment expresses views that another user doesn't want to read. It's not that they think the commenter was wrong as much as it is sticking their heads in the sand. This isn't always conscious either. Emotion frequently plays into commentary systems and skews perspective. I know I have voted down certain comments before that perhaps I shouldn't have.

There are plenty of comments that fully deserve to be voted up or down. The system itself is not broke. As frustrating as it can be at times it's actually a pretty decent mirror of human behavior. In person we might not make the same comments to each other, but we'd be thinking them.

CONSUME!

Our American lives (and likely those of other countries as well) are driven on consumption. Depending on your perspective, this can be a good or bad thing.

Life in general is about consumption. We live to eat, the most basic consumption. We work to get the things in life we think we need. When we are poor those needs are pretty basic. When we are wealthy are basic needs are met so we consume with 'discretion'. In other words, we consume other non-necessary goods to the extent that it does not interfere with our base needs.

I should define base needs as items such as food, shelter, and the items needed to obtain and keep those items.

After writing my last blog post about Social Security I did some more reading and found a study that discussed what would happen if Social Security was simply removed. It's major finding was that discretionary consumption would be reduced, both at retirement and leading up to it. Suggesting that though we'd pay less in taxes we'd have to put more into our personal retirement savings, since it was now solely our responsibility, that we'd ultimately spend less. Additionally it suggested we'd have less money at retirement, so we'd spend less then as well.

Since our economy is based on consumption, this model suggests doom and gloom for our economy. Less consumption, means less jobs, which means less money and more unemployment.

The problem I see, and it's reared it's ugly head twice now in the last decade, is that this creates market bubbles. Economic growth is only sustainable to a point. Things have to level off at some point. If everyone actually looked at their needs/wants, there are a lot more wants than needs. If everyone was happy with what they had then the markets would fail and businesses would drop off because of that. That's what we are seeing now. Unfortunately instead of saying, "Maybe the market isn't strong when we get to a certain height," we try to figure out how to tweak the system so as to get a bit more money out of it, even at the risk of society.

The housing boom is a great example of that. I'm sure there were buyers who bought within their means and bought homes that met their needs, but there were also a large percentage of buyers who bought more house than they needed with the idea that they'd turn around and resell it in a few years and make a large profit. They assumed there would be people continuing to consume. The problem is that once the houses got to a certain point people stopped consuming because the prices were too high. The ones at the top of the heap suddenly couldn't sell their houses. They foreclosed because they couldn't afford the payments. And like a house of cards the market fell apart, because it was based on ever increasing consumption. It was also spurred by mortgage funny business. Chopping up bad mortgages and selling them on the market in 'creative' ways allowed the housing market to see more aggressive growth than would have been the case otherwise. It's not that the market was bad before, but consumption was not growing at the rates that people wanted, so an artificial mechanism was created to spur growth.

Looking back now consumers were duped by great marketing and greed. Though the creative marketing and finances by the banks is part to blame, the responsibility ultimately lays with the consumer who didn't know when to say when.

This is happening in China now too, at the cost of health and traditions. Individually we know what is right and wrong with consumption but as groups we make the same mistakes over and over. The herd is not very smart typically. Yet when individuals stand up against those poor choices they are often ridiculed.

I'm not saying I'm innocent of 'want' consumption. I have plenty I don't 'need'. That is partly why I do things for others now, because my needs are met. I also evaluate my consumption on want vs. need. I didn't always, but I do now. It's not an easy lesson to learn, but one more people should try to learn. I'm also not advocating that people can't have wants or that discretionary spending is a bad thing. I am saying that it needs to be balanced and reasonable. What that means will be different for each person. I'm sure there are some who would argue that they 'need' a yacht. I'd disagree with them but it's also their money.

The "consumption" economy may suffer a bit if we saved more and consumed less, especially at first, but society as a whole would be much better off.

Taxes and the Wealthy

While reading some comments in regard to this infographic, I was given an argument to consider.

The argument was centered around the fact that the wealthy pay less, by percentage of income, than the less wealthy, into Social Security. The arguement for keeping this inequity in place was, "The weathy are less likely to use it, so why should they pay into it? It's punishing the sucessful."

The last part of that is simply a political statement, meant to disarm any counter argument. If you argue against it that means you are against success! But that's just a debate tactic. Granted it works against most of the public.

The real argument is flawed. There are a LOT of programs that people's taxes pay for that they see no benefit or they do not use, yet we pay those taxes. We don't get to pick and choose where our tax dollars are spent. I don't have kids, but my tax dollars help pay for schools. Do I get mad about that? No. Those dollars are worth giving up for the benefit of society. I benefit through an educated society.

Oh but I can hear you saying, "Social Security is for retirement help. The wealthy don't need that, so where is the benefit for them?"

The thing is, when we start paying our Social Security taxes, most of us don't know that we may some day be wealthy and not need them. We pay into it hoping that we'll be able to use those dollars later. That said, anyone with high school social studies should have learned that what we are putting in today is going out today, to the current retiree base. We have basically given the government the role of taking care of our seniors. Something that used to be a family task. Now most people just ship off their elderly family members to homes and let the government pay for it, via Social Security.

Sorry, went on a separate rant there. The point is that when we pay Social Security, it's not like a 401k account. That money is not ours. It's taxes, plain and simple. Those tax dollars are being used to fund any number of government programs that even the wealthy may be using.

This is also not about 'punishing' the successful. I've been successful enough with my career that I can work from home. Because of that I don't drive very much at all any more. Does that entitle me to pay less taxes because I use the road infrastructure less than everyone else? No of course not. The same goes for the wealthy.

UPDATE: Here is an interesting counter point to my argument. Not sure I completely agree, but I'm always open to listening/reading a reasonable argument.

Net Neutrality Debate

The FCC has opened up an online blog and comment system (http://blog.openinternet.gov/?p=1) for debate on Net Neutrality, which I think is a good thing, whether you agree or not. The problem is that after reading a few pages of comments there are some bad/scary trends:

1. F.U.D. – Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. This is an old technique with a newish name. It’s people stating the sky will fall if something happens or doesn’t happen. There is rarely an argument even made. The statements are made to elicit an emotional reaction. The problem with this is that people who do not understand the topic at hand are whipped up into a froth and they get loud and visible. There is no debate, there is no reason. It doesn’t matter what you say to them at that point, they are ‘right’ and you are wrong, even if the opposite is true.
   
   
2. Censorship/Government control – This was mixed in with the FUD. What the FCC proposes are rules that govern all Internet providers (ISPs), big or small. It makes sure that no one uses their power to restrict or censor Internet traffic. The rules are specifically designed to minimize interference, not create it. It doesn’t give the government special access to the Internet to censor information they don’t want the people to see, as some of the commenter’s suggested. We geeks keep a pretty close watch on the pulse of the Internet and any kind of censorship like that would be detected and called out immediately. That is the greatness of the Internet.
   
   
3. It’s not broke, so don’t fix it! – Sorry folks but it IS broke. Things change; it’s the way of the world. The record industry finally figured that out. They didn’t want it to change, but it did anyway. This is the case with ISPs. There are some real problems with our current system. Only because of past intervention by the FCC and the vocalizations of many geeks have we remained OK. Sure most end users don’t see this, but the battles have already been happening.
   
   
4. Innovation and Investment will be stifled – I can see these things being stifled perhaps for the large ISP companies, but certainly not for the Internet as a whole. If Comcast (as an example) decided to throttle or block sites like Hulu or Netflix because they wanted to promote the usage of their own ‘on-demand’ product, how is that good for innovation or investment? Oh sure it’s good for Comcast’s share holders, but it’s certainly not innovative. They just took what was working for someone else and used their network to give their product an unfair advantage. That’s not competition. That’s not a fair market. That’s what Net Neutrality is about. Make sure the playing field is level. If Comcast’s product is superior on its own merits then great, it deserves that market share it takes from Hulu and/or Netflix. If not Comcast shouldn’t be able to artificially weaken its competitors.
   
   (UPDATE- 10/23) It needs to be clarified that there is an important distinction between Internet Providers and Content Providers. Without the content providers the Internet is just an empty network. It wasn't build like the phone networks with one task in mind. It was specifically designed to allow for the innovations and businesses that we currently see (as content providers). The ISPs (the Internet providers) want a piece of that lucrative pie, which is fair and reasonable. However without regulation what prevents them from abusing their advantage (owning the networks) over the established content providers?
   
   
5. Ignorance – This is forgivable. This is a complex subject and there is a lot of misinformation. Below I’ll cover some important details that everyone who wants to participate in this debate should know.

For consumers frustrated with higher cable rates, there are not many direct alternatives. 95 percent of American homes have only one cable company, while the 5 percent who have choice between two cable companies that compete head-to-head pay about 17 percent less on average. [i]

While that quote is referring to Cable television pricing the point is still valid in this argument. If 95% of the country does not have access to a competitive market for their Internet what power do we as consumers have? The whole point of a market is supply and demand. If our supply is artificially limited (as ISPs would like to do under certain situations) and there is no other supplier that we can call on, we have no choice.

The cable companies have a monopoly on our local markets, so open them up! Not so quick.

"The theory of natural monopoly holds that "because of structural conditions that exist in certain industries, competition between firms cannot endure; and whenever these conditions exist, it is inevitable that only one firm will survive." "Thus, regulation is necessary to dilute the ill-effects of the monopoly." "Those who assert that cable television is a natural monopoly focus on its economies of scale; that is, its large fixed costs whose duplication by multiple companies would be inefficient and wasteful." "Thus, competitive entry into the market should be proscribed because it is bound to be destructive." [ii]

While I don’t particularly like this situation as a consumer, I can understand it. If there were two or three more cable companies in town they’d either have to lease access from the incumbent cable provider or go through out town burying their own cable. Neither of which would be cheap or necessarily a slam dunk win for consumers.

If ISPs, cable or otherwise, strictly provided Internet access, much like a utility, this would not really be a problem. That is not the way our ISPs are structured today. When we all had dial-up there were lots of competitors to the market because they could piggy-back on the phone lines without the phone company being directly involved. Dial-up modem traffic over phone lines is just audio noise. Those squeeks and squacks when a connection was made continued until you disconnected.

While there are still a great many individuals on dial-up still, who frankly will not be affected much by Net Neutrality one way or the other, those of us using DSL or Cable Internet do so through our local cable or phone monopoly. These are the same companies that are seeing their phone and cable TV subscriptions drop in number because consumers are finding better and cheaper alternatives on the Internet. Phone and TV makes these companies a lot more money than Internet access, so they are trying to find ways to keep making money, to reduce their attrition rates.

Numerous cities and municipalities throughout the country have tried to implement local wireless Internet access, for ‘free’, only to run into ‘bought’ politicians and legislation designed to protect the existing ISPs.

I understand protecting a business from being put out by government, but when the people of the city want that service and when that service is frequently less robust than competitive products, where is the problem? If the people of a town vote to have free wireless broadband and are willing to pay the extra taxes to cover the cost, why should the state or federal government have the OK to step in and say, “No, you can’t do that because you are taking money away from X Internet provider.” Why doesn’t that provider just step up and compete instead of crying to their lobbyists? In large part because these local ISPs are all part of the larger ISP oligopoly. We all know the names; Time Warner Cable, Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Charter, Cox, and a few others. They know very well that if one small town does it, others will follow. They don’t want that to be a trend. In some cases they have competed and rolled out new/better infrastructure, but they had to be forced to do that through competition. We the People had to force that competition by using our government. This is why we have a government in the first place; to protect the people. That doesn’t preclude protecting business, but the government should be protecting people first and foremost.

Ultimately the ISPs are trying to maintain existing business models any way they can.

• AT&T recently has been fighting to keep Google Voice off the iPhone. They claim it’s Apple that is stopping it but at the end of the day what does Google Voice do? It allows users to use the Internet to make phone calls among other related tasks. This takes AT&T out of the loop for services. They only provide the Internet access and that’s it. If a user has WiFi they don’t even need AT&T for Internet! Their conflict of services vs. Internet access is clear. Stop Google Voice and keep users on their networks and on their services.
  
  This plays into the Net Neutrality debate because one of the proposed rules is that a product/service should not be denied access to the network unless it is harmful to the network (not to the business, to the network).
  
  
• Comcast blocking bit-torrent traffic. Bit-Torrent is frequently associated with online piracy and while it can be used for legitimate purposes it has gained its notoriety fairly. That doesn’t mean Comcast or any other ISP should be able to block Internet traffic. Packet sniffing and QOS (Quality of Service) is important to corporate networks to ensure that internal productivity is not diminished. In the public Internet that only leads to censorship. Bit-Torrent is deemed ‘bad’ so it’s blocked. Do they block You Tube next because it has videos that may be copyrighted or there may be videos of illegal activities on there? Who decides? The copyright holder, the content provider, the ISP? Net Neutrality rules state no one does because the traffic shouldn’t be blocked in the first place. ISPs should be conduits for our data, nothing more nothing less.

One area that I do agree with the ISPs on is pricing. One of the common complaints is that users are using more and more bandwidth for streaming video and other such high utilization services and products. The problem is that ISPs have been selling access based on speed not utilization. One of the problems that still occurs is that ISPs are claiming Unlimited Access when in fact there is a cap. So ISPs have suggested tiered pricing, where heavy users pay more than low utilization users. The problem is that we run into that conflict of interest issue again. Heavy utilization users are going to be the ones doing online video streaming. If as a user, I dropped cable TV for Hulu and Netflix, then suddenly I could lose the incentive if the price of my Internet access jumped. The cable company doesn’t want me to go to streaming, they’d rather I stay on their normal TV service. If they make the price prohibitively high then suddenly their cable TV plan doesn’t look so bad any more.

To be fair Comcast, who was piloting such a program in Texas, has backed away from it after consumer protest. Additionally they are now looking to compete with their own streaming video service. I not 100% on the details but as I understand it you have to be a cable TV customer to gain access though, which kind of defeats the purpose.

This conflict of interest is something these companies have to address. A pure ISP is a non-growth market. Profits are funneled back into the Infrastructure. My question is, why is this a bad thing? Why must a business show large returns every quarter to be a healthy one?

Where is the incentive to enter the market or invest in such a company you ask? Consumer demand for faster Internet access is there. It doesn’t require digging lines or running another wire on a utility pole these days. Wireless is getting better and better and could certainly supplement and even replace cable and DSL Internet in a decade or two. Traditional (analog) methods of moving data around on wire is not going to just disappear, but the barrier to entry that it creates will diminish, only if rules are made and adjusted to allow for it rather than allowing the artificial propping up of dying business models.

I respect that there are others out there that are against regulations and are against an ever enlarging government. This is one case where I believe something has to be done. This regulation, success or failure will light the path of the Internet in the USA for the foreseeable future. The threat of regulation has kept the ISPs in check. A failure of this proposal will grant them the courage to abuse consumers for their profits.

[i] AS CABLE RATES RISE AGAIN, CONSUMER GROUPS SAY COMPANIES ARE USING MONOPOLY POWER TO UNFAIR ADVANTAGE, Wednesday, January 8, 2003, Consumers Union, http://www.consumersunion.org/telecom/cable103.htm

[ii] Cable Television: An Unnatural Monopoly, March 13, 1984, CATO Institute, http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa034.html

UPDATE: 10/22/09 The FCC has released their NOTICE OF PROPOSED RULEMAKING (PDF) document. This is a valuable document to read and understand regardless of your opinion of Net Neutrality.

UPDATE 2: 10/22/09 Senator McCain introduces Internet Freedom Act of 2009, "that will keep the Internet free from government control and regulation." This is in direct opposition to what the FCC is attempting to do as well as against Net Neutrality.

Review: Where the Wild Things Are

Here is my quick review of Where the Wild Things Are.

First and most importantly, it is NOT a kids movie. The story and themes surround emotions and not simple ones. Lots of kids were in the theatre around me and I heard a lot of questions being asked through out the movie. Additionally it's very REAL. A monster or scary part in an illustrated book is one thing, but there are moments when it gets very real and very scary. In the book a threat to be eaten by one of the monsters is easily dismissed. Not so much in this movie. Additionally the movie paints the place as a real location, not something in his imagination.

For adults it has depth. Max is identifiable for many because many of us went through similar things as a kid. That's where this movie shines. There is an innocence to it but also realness. That realness that would confuse or scare children is also there for adults, but adults can understand it and relate it.

Buy your young children the book and go to the movie yourself first. If you feel they are up for it, take them then.

I know I've already beaten this drum a bit, but the 'realness' also applies to the effects. The monsters and their home look and feel very real. I was taken out a couple times. A dog and some owls didn't look as polished as the rest, but for the most part it was very well done. Good for Spike Jones using monster suits instead of CG.

Fancy Flight or Flight of Fancy?

Having just recently had to deal with air travel I can safely say there is room for competition. My thought isn't fight the current crowd of typical airlines, like Delta, United, American. Nor do I think it's a good idea to go up against the budget airlines like Southwest or JetBlue. Why not a new segment?

Many travelers are happy to travel first class, but lets face it, first class today is not the first class of yesterday. You might get a nicer seat and more leg room. Perhaps a premium snack instead of peanuts, but what else are you getting? You still have to hear the baby crying in the back and you might be sitting next to someone who for various reasons, had a coach seat and is now sitting next to you.

I'm not saying people who fly coach are bad. I'm 99% of the time one of those people. I have gotten at the gate upgrades due to over booking before, I've never personally paid for first class.

That said, there are many who would happily pay for the luxury. So why isn't there a luxury airline? Sure there are private jets and the like, but are they enough to make this market non-viable?

Imagine a jet with only nice plush seats, plenty of leg room. Internet, individual movies, good food, etc, all inclusive to the price of the ticket? The current airlines have to nickel and dime us to death because they are trying to compete with the discount airlines who seem to have figured out how to do things well and on a budget. A luxury airline would be immune to that market pressure because it offers something those other airlines do not. Look at Southwest and United. What difference is there in actual product? Not much really. They have to compete.

Having an all inclusive ticket might be a bit more pricey but as the traveler the experience becomes so much more pleasurable. The airports themselves might be a drag still but once on the plane, it could be relaxing and enjoyable instead of stressful.

Flight availability would be less of an issue for a luxury airline as well. If you are going to pay a premimum are you likely to use that airline for a short commuter flight for business? No, of course not. It would be silly therefor for the airline to even offer such a flight.

Seasonal flights from New York City to Denver for skiing or from Miami to Boston for Autumn leaves, and other such travels, where they are truly vacations.

Reservations would be completely different for this type of airline. Because there would be fewer flights you wouldn't be going to Expedia to book your trip. Fewer trips and fewer seats creates demand.

There would be a certain amount of exclusivity of course, but isn't that the point of a luxury brand?

UPDATE: Since writing this article I've found that there are a number of trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific airlines that do provide many of the luxuries I was thinking of above, between $4000 and $5000. But why not specialized domestic flight?