Author: Shawn K. Quinn

The only constant is change

And now, a few brief words about other efforts of mine, which I have not yet brought to the forefront here. I try not to do this often; in fact, I think this is the first time I’ve made a post like this here, ever.

For those of you who do not follow what I do all around cyberspace, I started a local (Houston, TX, area) events blog about two months ago now called Quinn’s Big City (referred to as QBC for brevity). I’m going to explain a bit about QBC, how it relates to what I do on this blog, and what both mean for the future. And yes, as much as I talk about QBC in this post, this post itself belongs here, not on QBC, for the simple reason of preserving the latter’s intended role.

I was hesitant to post about QBC here at least prior to the official wide launch, scheduled carefully after the soft-launch so as to give me time to “get in my groove” and realize the full potential of what I had started. I meant to make this post here at least a week ago, partly to explain why my posting volume here fell off, partly to introduce the few people who haven’t already heard about QBC somewhere.

And I know what you are probably asking already. Yes, QBC is a large part of the reason I don’t post here as often. I’m not going to do what one other local blogger did and flat out shut down this blog. However, you will notice the content and character of my posts here change. Yes, the day finally came that even I got tired of my posting style. I hope I’m not pushing the rest of you away by saying it’s time for change; I do treasure the fact I have the readership I have given that the quantity of my postings has slowed down as much as it has.

Make no mistake about it: QBC was and is a rather big undertaking; big enough to have both its own Twitter account and Facebook page. I have not set up Facebook pages for either this blog/site, or my other blog Iced Tea and Ramen. Part of that, is I’m not sure where either of them fit in long term; I’ll get back to this later.

Some detractors may say “we don’t need QBC, there are other blogs/sites like it in Houston, the last thing we need is another one.” I disagree. There’s room for QBC alongside similar efforts already in place for Houston. Heck, there is room for another five, ten, twenty, even a hundred other blogs/sites like it, just for Houston. This is a huge city, and QBC being subjective on purpose will pretty much by definition not be for everyone. If you took a look at QBC and found out it’s not your speed, by all means, start your own. (Now, I assume if you already have your own, that defines what is your speed more than QBC or any other similar blog/site ever could, and you’d only be looking elsewhere out of curiosity.)

As if that weren’t enough, there’s another piece of news I may as well go ahead and break. I plan to move the blog currently hosted here to another domain, redirecting the previous URLs from here to the new domain. I need to use this domain for something else, probably more of a personal portal/clearinghouse which points to all of my other blogs/online sites. I haven’t decided what, exactly, but it needs to be something more representative and worthy of my future personal brand. I need a personal soapbox, but long term, it won’t be here.

That, by the way, is another reason I haven’t bothered yet with a custom style for this blog. I didn’t like what the new Ahimsa did, so I quietly went back to the WordPress default. I’m assuming nobody minded the change. I know it’s only temporary, otherwise I’d have gone hunting a new theme. The eventual goal is my own custom designs on all of my blogs/sites; QBC is just the first, and for reasons I won’t go into here, it had to be the first.

The posts I have made here will remain intact and online, somewhere. If it’s not here, the URLs here will redirect to where they’ve went. I do that on purpose; I believe cool URLs don’t change. And maybe I’m that weird 0.01% that actually cares about such things. That’s me; I will always just be myself, and I endeavor to be as transparent and honest as possible.

Okay, enough already, I lack the ego to make this post much longer. Questions, concerns, comments? Comment here on this post, or send me something via the feedback form if it’s not intended for publication.

A tasteless energy drink marketing move

I’m sure Pepsi (who owns the AMP energy drink brand) really wants this one back. And yes, I know I’m late to the party on this a bit; I have a good reason for that, which I’ll explain in a future post.

Mashable reports on AMP’s new iPhone app “Before You Score” that was apparently released with one of two assumptions: AMP is only bought and consumed by men, or the women that learn of this marketing gaffe would be willing to look the other way and buy Pepsi’s products despite it.

I don’t know what Pepsi could have been thinking. I have never been that big of a fan of most Pepsi products; this does not help.

Not only is this a marketing blunder, it’s likely the women will be able to memorize the lame pick-up lines this thing spits out, so the men who rely on this get a really bum deal in the process. Shame on you, Pepsi; why not resurrect the Pepsi Challenge and see if you can get Coke to change their formula again? It can’t go any worse than this disaster.

Dogs on film

Okay, so not really on film, probably more like videotape or DVD, but the pun on the old song title was just hanging out there.

A recent story reported by Fastcompany.com, NPR, and ABC News tells the story of Robert Stevens. Robert is an independent filmmaker who compiled films of pit bull dogfights made in jurisdictions where dogfighting is legal, most notably Japan. He sold the films commercially to promote the proper care of pit bulls. For this, he received a jail sentence of 37 months, under a federal law that prohibits “knowingly selling depictions of animal cruelty, with the intention of placing them in interstate commerce” which was passed in 1999.

Robert appealed his case, and won on First Amendment grounds. The government compares these videos to obscenity, or “patently offensive conduct that appeals only to the basest instincts.” And so the case winds up in the US Supreme Court, where it is still being considered as of this writing as far as I can tell.

What I find disturbing here is that Robert’s sentence exceeds Michael Vick’s sentence for actually running a dogfighting ring. This is in effect saying that selling videos of legally conducted dogfights is a worse crime than actually running an illegal dogfighting ring. That, and I fail to see why Robert’s actions should be illegal. I do side with the appeals court here.

This does not change my viewpoint on dogfighting, however. I believe wanton animal cruelty such as staged dogfighting is despicable, which has been my view for the entirety of my adult life. I could go on and on about how I’ve always been an animal lover (I prefer cats to dogs). Suffice it to say, there are certain places such as Japan where it’s legal to stage dogfights, and it is equally their right to make the law what it is there as it is mine to condemn it.

Take off? Take a leak first

Apologies in advance to the easily offended… but this story was just begging for a few really bad jokes to be made.

The London newspaper Metro reports on a Japanese airline’s very strange new policy, which may already have some passengers a bit pissed off.

All Nippon Airways is desparate to reduce their carbon emissions, and is thus requiring passengers to urinate prior to boarding. This policy was put in place for a trial period of four weeks beginning on October 1.

Personally, I think ANA’s management is just peeing into the wind here. This is probably going to lose them quite a few customers, and probably for longer than a month. Customers tend to remember bad experiences longer than good ones. Put another way, ill will lingers longer than goodwill. Case in point: anyone remember ValuJet? (They are still around, but shed the old name with near-zero or possibly even negative goodwill when buying up a smaller carrier named AirTran.)

Astroturf a la Redmond: Windows 7 Parties

While cleaning out the draft posts queue, I found this. The original article is a bit old, but the parties haven’t happened yet.

A recent TechFlash article discusses a Microsoft initiative for the upcoming Windows 7 release, describing it as a “Tupperware-style twist.” The idea is to encourage users, partners, and of course Microsoft employees to throw parties to show off Windows 7.

I see, as the title implies, what is essentially astroturfing at its worst. If Windows 7 were that great of an operating system, Microsoft would have people volunteering, or even paying Microsoft, to have these launch parties.

As far as my personal PCs go, I haven’t really looked back since the spring of 2002 (I didn’t write down the exact date, unfortunately) when I reformatted two different Windows 98 PCs and installed, at the time, the GNU/Linux distribution maintained by Red Hat on one (today’s equivalent would be the community-supported Fedora Project), and FreeBSD on the other. (Both of those PCs eventually wound up running Debian GNU/Linux years later.)

I do use a Windows XP laptop PC, which still has what I deem to be an unacceptable crash rate. By unacceptable, I mean it crashes at least five to ten times as often as the Debian GNU/Linux PC next to it which is at least most of a decade old. No, that’s not a mistake. Simply put, even with less than half the CPU and a fourth of the RAM, I get much better stability, even with the obvious reduction in performance. Put simply, Centerpoint Energy (our local electric utility) and the forces of nature responsible for thunderstorms force reboots of the Debian PC more often than any technical problems with Debian itself.

(Why haven’t I bought Apple’s products instead? Regular readers should know this, but I’ll provide a starting point for the new readers.)

Microsoft has still done next to zilch with regard to helping ensure the freedom of its customers. In fact, Microsoft has pretty much made itself the sworn enemy of the free software movement, with apparently no shame or regret. While Microsoft has made token efforts to contribute to the open source movement, it is very important to note that the ideals of the open source movement only encourage access to the source code for convenience and open source licenses do not always protect all the essential freedoms of users and programmers of the software released under them. It is also important to note that without the work of Richard Stallman and the FSF on the free software movement, there would be no free software movement for the open source movement to have splintered from.

Those readers unfamiliar with what I discuss above are encouraged to read some of Stallman’s essays, most notably these two: “Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software” and an earlier version “Why ‘Free Software’ is better than ‘Open Source'”.

Several of Microsoft’s licenses appear to have been intentionally worded to provide the illusion of freedom while in reality providing just the opposite. Most notably, these are the Limited Public License (Ms-LPL) and Limited Reciprocal License (Ms-LRL). Both of these licenses require that any modified versions of the original code must run on Microsoft’s Windows operating system. To those who value freedom on their own terms, not those of a large corporation with no particular incentive to be nice, this type of restriction is abhorrent.

In summary, my view is rather simple. Windows 7: same song, seventh verse, even bigger and even worse.