Realist Cult

What would you do if you only had $25 and a knapsack of belongings to start off with, no place to stay and no job to speak of? And where would you be in a year?

These are some of the questions that author Adam Shepard set out to answer and write about. And that's ground zero of Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - the other side of life that so many live yet so few know about.

Taking a train ride from his hometown to a random location, the author made his own scratch beginning and somehow managed not to fall through the cracks of society. Instead, he harnessed his resources - a lesson that, given the current global economic situation, seems a lesson worth repeating. From a homeless shelter to a dwarven habitat built in an attic, from temporary work toward permanent work, the book documents one man's path through a scenic route of life of the invisible of the United States. The characters walk, saunter and even march (to the beat of their own drums, of course) off the pages even as successes and setbacks punctuate their progress - and the author's progress. The book is almost impossible to put down.

While the author may have originally set out to write a rebuttal to Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, it doesn't come across that way. There are too many differences between the authors to make it a rebuttal - instead, it helps to form a bit more of the picture of what low income America looks like. In the case of Scratch Beginnings, I find that the same spirit which sent the author on his journey is the same spirit that brought him back with a book. While the privileged go to Europe or other places to obtain 'culture', the author went into America's relatively undiscovered socioeconomic back yard - which for some is as separate a country as one whose name they cannot pronounce.

There are many ways to look at this book. Maybe it's social commentary, maybe it's gonzo journalism, maybe it's even a bit of anthropology. Ultimately, the reader decides - but what it is remains constant: a wonderful book with a positive theme. The profanity of some characters is balanced with an unquenchable thirst for success - for moving up the socioeconomic ladder toward stability. The author writes, simply, that it can be done - but that it is not easy and that it requires qualities that, perhaps, are not as apparent in society today as they were 50 years ago. This is not to say that those in unfortunate circumstance are there by choice; this is to say that there is hope.

As the story of open source licensing being upheld by copyright law bounces around the Internet, there's been quite a bit of commentary on it. Today, I came across yet another article which made a very important distinction. From How not to get sued by open source coders:

...Specifically, those policies should include a list of open source technologies in-house developers can use, a procedure for obtaining appropriate approvals for usage, and most importantly, a process for tracking the code. The latter – tracking how the code is used and modified – is often the root of the issue, said Abe, when a business wants to start selling its products.

But at the core of the court ruling, is the fact that the business had infringement on copyright – not just in breach of the license contract – by not following conditions imposed by the license agreement, like crediting the author, reference to copied files, a description of modifications to the original source, and where to find the original source...

I suppose that I've been using, writing and writing about Open Source and Free Software that I think that this is a no-brainer. That being said, it seems that at least a few organizations and companies are using open source code as Commercial Off The Shelf Software (COTS). And COTS is something that a lot of companies decide to use based on development and process tracking costs: if, for example, a company is trying to maintain a SEI level of 3 or better and they want to avoid having to track a project, they may plug in some COTS.

Perhaps because what I do tends to be as diverse as the DNA found on the planet, I don't really fit too awfully well on LinkedIn. If there is one thing I cannot do, it is to define what I do in a subset of some logic that a social networking site is programmed for. If you held my feet to the fire, I would admit to being tenuously linked somehow to the human race. Call me a chimpanzee. I'd probably think of that as a step up from homo sapien. In my formative years, a few people made the mistake of telling me that I could do whatever I wanted. And so I have. And that doesn't fit into any career rut other than 'Writer' or 'Consultant', both of which are accepted forms of addressing anyone from street bums or the real menaces, alleged experts.

I'm a beach bum. But I don't get to the beach as often as I would like.

All of that being said, I got a message today from someone who wanted to connect on LinkedIn. I have no idea who the person is, but the word 'Recruiter' leaps out at me. And, the mandatory part of the message: "Please don't say that you don't know me..."

BAM. I don't know you. There isn't even a picture of you around so I can see a picture of someone I don't know. Why do you want to know me? Because I might have a skillset that can be pawned off to a company looking for a pawn? No, no, that won't work. I did my time in the intellectual coal mines of corporate America. I'm not better, but I've been spoiled by 8 years of doing my own thing - and somehow managing to survive and get ahead.

Groklaw has an interesting story about a possible takeover attempt by Microsoft on the Open Document Format (ODF) standard. While I don't have the time or inclination to read and analyze all the gobbly-gook that is put out in the form of standards, Groklaw has, as usual, done a serious analysis after research. It certainly looks like the committee is stacked in Microsoft's favor, which should probably be no surprise.

Of course, to someone on the fringe of technoville, this seems a bridge too far to understand. What needs to be understood by everyone is that this is about the future of how documents are passed around and who they can be passed to. An open standard allows people to share their work more easily; a closed standard creates all manner of trouble - as Microsoft itself has exemplified.

However it works out, one has to wonder what Microsoft's interest in ODF extends to. Microsoft's interest in ODF isn't sufficient to sentence Microsoft; many people (including myself) have often pointed out that Microsoft's lack of support for standards other than it's own seems like an extension of it's monopolistic practices. Before we start arming the villagers with torches and pitchforks, we might want to consider the motive of Microsoft. Historically, Microsoft's involvement could be seen as an attempt at sabotage of the open standard since Microsoft has a tendency to do this with private companies. Will it do it with an open standard? It's hard to say, but I must admit a bit of suspicion.

Even so, if Microsoft were to see my optimistic side, I could see how Microsoft could add value to ODF - like permitting royalty free use of it's patents to assure compatibility of ODF with it's own standards.

I came across a copy of the September 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review a few weeks ago, and have had it in the pickup for emergency reading. I'd never read the magazine before, probably because it is almost never seen in Trinidad, so despite the exotic price of TT $149.99 (US $23) I picked it up. It's always good to read what others are writing, and reading broadly is something I do as a reflex.

Within the magazine were some interesting articles, yet the one that bothered me the most was Don't Try This Offshore (HBR Case Study and Commentary). I couldn't quite put my finger on why - the article is well written, funny and a little controversial for American businesses. I re-read it, as well as the commentary, and re-read it again. I thought about it for days. Then it struck me: the premise of the article is what disturbed me.

To summarize the article in one paragraph, the article is about a fictional business in the United States - 'management-metaphor boutique Serendipity Associates (SA)' - is suddenly challenged by a competitor with a lower price tag, and that lower price tag is linked to outsourcing creative work. This comes as a surprise in the story to Serendipity Associates. And that, you see, is what I found disturbing. That people even thought in this way - that creativity is geocentric or, in the Internet era, business-centric. Is this the way that people really think? That an accident of geography or hiring creates the perfect creative business? I don't think like that, but the article's premise clearly demonstrates that at least some people think like that.

There's a lot being written of the present economic crisis. Frankly, if it weren't for Alex Rollin and his Facebook updates (he hasn't blogged on his site), I wouldn't have thought as much about it. It seems surreal, especially from my own context.

After getting the turbo gaskets replaced on the Mazda B2500 Turbodiesel, I ended up visiting an Uncle who - true to form - was watching the BBC because he has a tendency to know when to turn on Aunt Beeb. He and I sat there and watched the $700 million bailout bill pushed by George W. Bush fail, and he asked me what I thought. I basically said that I didn't know what to think. The word 'socialist' kept getting used in conjunction with the bill, and I honestly don't think that the Bill itself was socialist as much as it was a Third World answer to a First World problem. My gut told me that the response to the bill, demonstrated by the vote which turned it away (228 nay, 205 yeah as I recall), was a democratic surge of socialism itself. 'The meek shall inherit the earth', but who wants a blue marble so deeply in debt?

The tongues of Aunt Beeb's analysts danced across the screen, discussing why the bill failed. They spread their net and found a few folk who had a few interesting things to say. One man said that (paraphrased), 'everyone wanted the bill but no one wanted to vote for it'. In essence, everyone wanted to get rid of this debt but no one wanted to bail out the people who created the problem in the first place.

Over the last few months, off and on, I've tried ordering MP3s through Amazon.com. When I do this, it invariably asks me to change my address... or, more properly, forces me to have to try to change my address. This I do not understand, so I go to Amazon.com's help.

When I go there, I try to email a customer representative because the problem does not appear in the FAQ. However, I can't even email a customer representative without... an order number.

So if you can't order through Amazon.com, the answer is that you don't get help in making an order? Silly me. I can't understand that. I'd have thought that Amazon.com would be interested in any problems I have ordering things.

Silly me.

Without any way to actually speak with anyone at Amazon.com, I'll just toss this into the ether and get my music somewhere else. Sabe?

When I read 'Should we tackle the digital divide or live with it?', I intended an immediate response - one that would agree with it to a large extent, yet I stayed my hand because of the depth of agreement which I have. And that depth comes from personal experience, as most agreement or disagreement does.

When Michael Grimes wrote:

...At three o’clock this morning I finished a frantic flurry of blog posts and Twitter tweets, and tried to sleep. Instead I began to panic.

When this happens – and it happens a lot these days – I feel that I’m on an irreversible and rapid ascent to the peak of my sanity, at which point I shall burn-out: not from work but from trying to keep abreast with technology (and currently with today’s hot potato of ’social media’). I feel like I’m constantly trying to catch-up, desparate not to fall behind. The world is changing incredibly fast; I already feel as though it’s running away and I no longer have the energy to keep up...