O (b LOG N)

Shorpy: The 100 Year Old Photo Blog

I’ve been thinking how odd it is that I’m one of the very few 3rd generation Californians I know. My Great grand parents were Okies that came to California during the dust bowl and lived in the tent cities initially upon their arrival. So, when Sam Lawrence tweeted about Shorpy it was timely.

Here are some choice dust bowl photos.

November 1936. Arvin migratory farm workers’ camp in Kern County, California. “Tom Collins, manager of Kern migrant camp, with drought refugee family.”

“Children of Oklahoma drought refugee in migratory camp in California.” November 1936

“Destitute pea pickers living in tent in migrant camp. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two.” Nipomo, California. February 1936. Photograph by Dorothea Lange. The anonymous subject of this famous Depression-era portrait known as “Migrant Mother” came forward in the late 1970s and was revealed to be Florence Owens Thompson (interview). She died in 1983. Read more here.

Fantastic site. Thanks Sam!

Hulu

Hulu gave me butterflies in my belly, but will they last? I have my doubts.

Hulu means “cease” and “desist” in Swahili and in case you missed it, Hulu.com is a new site that’s a joint venture of NBC and News Corp. Here’s what the Hulu About page says:

Hulu’s ambitious and never-ending mission is to help you find and enjoy the world’s premium content when, where and how you want it. We hope to provide you with the web’s most comprehensive selection from more than 50 content providers including FOX, NBC, MGM, Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, and more to deliver premium programming across all genres and formats, television shows, feature films, and clips. Watch full-length episodes of current primetime TV shows such as The Simpsons and The Office the morning after they air, classics like Miami Vice and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and clips from Saturday Night Live, Nip/Tuck, and others. Hulu also offers full-length feature films like The Usual Suspects, Ice Age, Three Amigos!, and The Big Lebowski as well as clips from films such as Napoleon Dynamite, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Devil Wears Prada and many more. Hulu is free and ad-supported — available anytime in the U.S.

Hulu was founded in March 2007 and is a joint venture owned by NBC Universal and News Corp. In addition, Hulu has closed a $100 million investment from private equity firm Providence Equity Partners.

Hulu’s small, but growing team is headquartered in Los Angeles, California with a Research and Development team in Beijing, China.

Hulu launched publicly in the last week (or two). The site’s user interface is fantastic, the video quality is good enough for me, and the content is remarkably sparse. In fact, the lack of content is down right disappointing. When I heard of the site’s impending launch several months back I had high hopes. Tonight I visited the site for the first time hoping I could watch "Heroes"; unfortunately, only Season 2 is available. Another complaint: Why can’t I embed videos? They’re running ads periodically in the video, they’re getting their money. Why not allow me to embed videos?

Even with the disappointing lack of content the site got me excited. Maybe the TV networks are waking up. There can be no doubt the future of TV distribution is the Internet. I hope the networks embrace this sooner rather than later and provide us with the content we want, on our terms. Hulu hasn’t realized this, but it’s got promise. More than any other implementation, I’ve seen thus far.  I hope they don’t lose interest or steam, but I’m realistic about these things. Check it out yourself, it’s free if you don’t count the commercials every ~10 minutes.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Dick

Vice President Dick Cheney has asserted his office is not a part of the executive branch of the U.S. government, and therefore not bound by a presidential order governing the protection of classified information by government agencies, according to a new letter from Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to Cheney.

Bill Leonard, head of the government’s Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), told Waxman’s staff that Cheney’s office has refused to provide his staff with details regarding classified documents or submit to a routine inspection as required by presidential order, according to Waxman. - The Blotter

Throw these bastards’ corrupt asses out of office and try them for war crimes already! I am dead serious. Many of these people belong behind bars. The Dems aren’t any better. If they were they would have pushed for impeachment and fought the twice illegal seizure of the office of President. Any 2008 Presidential candidate that seriously pushes to impeach these pricks gets my vote. I guess this leaves Kucinich. He’s definitely one of the most intelligent candidates even if he is a tad liberal for my taste. Gooooo KUCINICH!!

Percolate!

Open Coffee is a weekly opportunity for the startup scene to… Percolate! Entrepreneurs, Developers, Designers, Artists, Investors… you’re all invited!

The key is a regular place and a regular time - it’s not important who comes along, some days it might be no one - just that people know if they want to meet, this is the time and this is the place.

The point is to to create some density for people — a few places where people know they can meet or bump into others.

In this spirit I’m announcing that Fridays at 11AM-1PM, It’s A Grind in Little Italy (free wifi) will be the location of the downtown San Diego OpenCoffee. 

1601 India St. San Diego, CA 92101

If you need parking there are visitor spots at MindTouch’s office, which is located at:

555 West Beech St #501 San Diego, CA 92101

If anyone asks you about parking tell them you’re meeting with MindTouch and they should leave you alone.  

See Also:

• The post that started it all
• OpenCoffeeClub.org - Ning Social Network
• Eventful
  

Morgan Hill, CA

I grew up in Morgan Hill, CA. It’s just south of San Jose. When I was a kid Morgan Hill was mostly orchards and fields. My family's home was nestled at the base of the Santa Cruz mountains just north of town. There were lots of plum orchards, grape vines, lettuce fields, and other agriculture. I just came across the following Morgan Hill public service announcement from 1938 that played at the old Granada movie theater.  Watch the video. It's about local businesses. The only business I think that's still in operation today is Guntner Brothers feed store. The business that stood out most to me was "Morgan Hill Sanitary Bakery". If I recall this put out of business  the "Morgan Hill Contaminated Bakery".

The last time I was in a theater with my father was at the Granada. It was "Ground Hog Day". Great movie. That was also the year I graduated from high school. Cool movie. Thanks a bunch to the dude who posted this on YouTube. Also, thanks a bunch to Stephen Musgrave & Tim Roach who are the two dudes who run the Live Oak Alumni Network, which is how I indirectly learned of this video.

California’s Open-Document Bill: AB 1668

Groklaw

I have an email apparently originating from Microsoft asking people to support their opposition to California A.B. 1668 - Open Document Format, Open Source. by writing to the California Assemblymen involved in this bill. This email has contact information for the Assemblymen involved, and a lot of information about their position regarding ODF.

Is this for real? A little background first. The bill in question, AB 1668, says this (in part):

Great. This bill is common sense. This will be in the best interest of any organization, any industry, and technology in general. Massachusetts has already passed a similar bill. The great state of Minnesota attempted a similar bill previously. Now Minnesota is trying again and Texas plans to attempt a similar open standards bill. No one in their right mind would object to any of these bills. Allow me a moment to explain why this is common sense.

Interoperability. This is about content/data being reusable by any application. Your content should be able to be consumed and understood by a variety of systems and applications. This insists that content created and used by the state of California be stored in a format that other systems can understand. This is important for automating things and making content search-able, discover-able, and reusable. Imagine writing an essay in a language only you and five of your college buddies could understand. This is great if it’s some type of secret document. Perhaps the by-laws to your secret society. But this is useless if your essay is content intended to be communicated or collaborated on. This bill asks that our tax dollars not be trapped in a format only a minority of applications can read and operate on.

Royalty free. Why should you pay a royalty on the content you create? You own it. In this case, why should the government be forced to make annual payments to access and edit their data? It makes no sense. Imagine, again, writing an essay. This is the equivalent of you being forced to pay money every time you wanted to read your essay. Also, any time you wished another person to read your essay they too would have to pay to read it. Always, forever. You’re not getting the money. It’s your essay. Where’s the money going? To the company that made the paper and pen you used to write the essay. Absurd, I know. If you have a proprietary format, let’s say Microsoft Word (.doc), you are required to own that application to create, edit, or view content in that format. It is well known in software that users pay, on average, an annual 20% maintenance fee. You don’t just buy Microsoft Office once. In 1989 Microsoft Word 1.0 was released on Microsoft Windows 3.0 and sold for $500. Can you read the files you created using that software? It’s not likely you’re running a Windows 3.0 computer anymore. It’s unlikely you could use Word 1.0 if you wanted to. In order to read the files you created you would have had to have purchased additional versions of Microsoft Word. You are paying royalties on your content right now! It’s absurd. You’re not even paying for support. You’re just paying a royalty to access and edit your content. And so is everyone you share your content with.

Multiple vendors. Buyers will always pay more when they have available only a single supplier for a given product. Users will always be subjected to an inferior product when there exists only a single supplier. This is a kind of innovation tax. It exists because the supplier has no incentive to improve the product beyond incremental improvements to justify a release in order to be able to sell an upgrade. Case in point, Firefox, an open source Internet browser, forced Microsoft to improve Internet Explorer. If it weren’t for Firefox who knows how long we would have had to wait for multi-tab browsing. Without Firefox, Microsoft would have no incentive to improve their product. If there exists multiple vendors the rate of innovation will be superior and thereby the products. Also, the competition will drive down prices.

Open standards. This makes all of the above possible.

Is Microsoft seriously attempting a campaign to kill AB 1668? This would be outrageous! Not only would it be counter to common sense, but the bill doesn’t preclude the use of Microsoft applications anyway. It would just mean that Microsoft would have to use a file format that meets some common sense requirements. Microsoft is currently lobbying for acceptance of its Office Open XML (OOXML) format. ECMA approved this and it’s now before ISO/IEC. The OOXML spec is an unprecedented 6000 pages and is ridiculously contradictory to openness and standards as is evidenced (in part) by:

OOXML does not conform to ISO 8601:2004 "Representation of Dates and Times."  Instead, OOXML section 3.17.4.1, "Date Representation," on page 3305, requires that implementations replicate a Microsoft bug that dictates that 1900 is a leap year, which in fact it isn’t.  Similarly, in order to comply with OOXML, your product would be required to use the WEEKDAY() spreadsheet function, and therefore assign incorrect dates to some days of the week, and also miscalculate the number of days between certain dates.

Similarly, 6.2.3.17 "Embedded Object Alternate Image Requests Types (page 5679) and section 6.4.3.1 "Clipboard Format Types" (page 5738) refer back to Windows Metafiles or Enhanced Metafiles – each of which are proprietary formats that have hard-coded dependencies on the Windows operating system itself.  OOXML should instead have referenced ISO/IEC 8632 "Computer Graphics Metafile" – a platform neutral standard.

Taking the external reference issue further, I’m told that parts of OOXML can’t be implemented by your typical programmer at all without technical assistance from Microsoft, as they refer not only to proprietary Microsoft products, but to undocumented parts of them as well – which violates the General Principles of ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2. 

- Standards Blog

Is this a joke? Why would anyone other than Microsoft want OOXML anyway when we have ODF? I don’t know.

Call to Action:

Contact your state representatives and demand AB 1668 be passed. If you are not a resident of California, Minnesota, or Texas, contact your state representative and demand a similar bill be adopted. Stop this needless waste of our tax dollars. If you live in California, you can use this site to determine your representative by zip code. Every state has a similar website.

Act now! Hearing on AB 1668 in the Assembly Committee on Jobs, Economic Development and the Economy is set for April 17th, presumably in Sacramento.

I sent an email to my two reps and congressman in matter of minutes. For zip 92101, these were:

Senators

Member                 District Number and Office        Capitol Office

Kehoe, Christine       39  2445 Fifth Avenue             State Capitol
                           Suite 200                     Room 4040
                           San Diego, CA 92101           Sacramento, CA 95814
                           (619) 645-3133                (916) 651-4039 

Assembly Members

Member                     District Number and Office     Capitol Office

Salas, Mary            79  678 Third Avenue               State Capitol
                           Suite 105                      Room 2137
                           Chula Vista, CA 91910          Sacramento, Ca
                           (619) 409-7979                 94249-0079
                                                          (916) 319-2079

Saldana, Lori          76  1557 Columbia Street            State Capitol
                           San Diego, CA 92101            Room 5150
                           (619) 645-3090                 Sacramento, Ca
                                                          94249-0076
                                                          (916) 319-2076

I’ll surely post any responses I get here.

External Resources:

• California AB 1668
• California State Assembly Member Mark Leno website
  • He’s also interested in introducing a Net Neutrality bill
  • He’s a supporter of the Sunshine Initiative
• A brief analysis of the
• "Why OOXML will ultimately fail"
• "Openness in Microsoft’s OOXML"
• C|Net: "California may adopt OpenDocument"