billgreen

billgreen

11p

7 comments posted · 0 followers · following 0

13 years ago @ billgreen.me - Gratitude · 0 replies · +1 points

Thanks Tracy, virtual hug back!

13 years ago @ billgreen.me - Stop shoulding all ove... · 0 replies · +1 points

Thanks Lisa! Check out my post on Gratitude. There is a shout out to you in there.

13 years ago @ billgreen.me - Dear America, You’re... · 0 replies · +1 points

Response from Ken Gordon, via e-mail:

Let me ask you a question. I want you to make a choice. Gas can cost either $2.50 a gallon or $4.75 a gallon. In order to have gas cost the lower amount, it costs 5601 American military deaths in the Middle East, and 39,991 wounded.

Are you willing to pay this fee for lower gas costs? Did any of your elected officials ever ask you the question in this way?

Let me ask you another question. You can have the government services that you are accustomed to. These include prisons, the interstate highway system, Medicare, Social Security, schools and the largest military in the world. In order to have these things, you need to pay more in taxes.
Are you willing to pay increased taxes? If not, what do you want to cut?
If you think that it is someone else’s job to answer these questions than you have missed the essence of what it means to be a citizen in a democracy.

We blame politicians for being dishonest, and many, though not all, of them are. They tell you what polls tell them you want to hear. The reason they do this is because we don’t vote for candidates who honestly tell us bad news.
Politicians ask us to engage in magical thinking. Their numbers don’t add up. But we ususally don’t choose the reality of voting for the candidates whose numbers do add up. We would have to act like adults.
John Boehner, the minority leader in Congress, just announced the Republican “Pledge to America.” It says that they are for lower taxes, smaller government, a balanced budget and continued levels of services in Social Security, Medicare, and military spending. Even conservatives are pointing out that this is impossible.
Boehner is making a cynical bet that voters won’t look logically at what he is saying. His experience leads him to believe that he is likely to win this bet.

Huge money: Huge campaign money is destroying our democracy.

The Supreme Court has distorted the First Amendment by first ruling that money is speech, Bucklely v. Valeo, and then ruling that corporations have individual rights, Citizens United v. FEC. They did this on behalf of “freedom.” But it is a strange kind of freedom which allows wealth to rule the country for its own benefit. It is the kind of freedom that a powerful predator enjoys in the jungle. The lion can do whatever it wants, but everyone else is a potential meal.

Money isn’t the same thing as speech. If it is, then the wealthy have enhanced freedom of speech, because their speech makes everyone else’s unhearable. It isn’t an accident that the Justices who have twisted the Bill of Rights to benefit the wealth of this country were chosen by conservative Presidents who have also benefitted by that wealth.

In many instances our political system has become a con game. Public relations consultants create television ads that make a candidate appear to care about your welfare, and fund them with money from the wealthy interests whose welfare the candidate actually has to care about.

Although not as sympathetic, the system works on the same principle as Tinkerbell. It only works if you believe in it. They need you to absorb the positive and negative images that come from television. It won’t work if you don’t buy the con.

Only people who see through the public relations to the reality can hope to change this. That would be you.
Now would be a good time.

I hope you are well. As always do not hesitate to write back with comments or questions and please feel free to forward this email or reprint it in any other format.
Sincerely,
Ken Gordon

13 years ago @ Feld Thoughts - Introducing Do More Fa... · 1 reply · +1 points

Awesome! When does the audio book come out?

13 years ago @ Feld Thoughts - The Mac Won Me Over · 0 replies · +1 points

Go introduce yourself to OmniFocus. Seamless integration across iPhone, iPad and Mac. It's awesome.

14 years ago @ all hail the shag - Droid *almost* does... · 0 replies · +1 points

In general I agree with everything said with a few exceptions, which I will get to. On the whole, Ari nailed it, "The Droid *Almost* Does ..."

I switched from Verizon to T-Mobile three years ago because I needed more bang for my buck and I could get a heap of minutes and unlimited text and data for less than Verizon was charging for 400 minutes and nothing else. After some time with a BlackBerry Pearl (which is a great phone for what it is) I switched to an iPhone while keeping the same plan. My interest in the Droid had more to do with my desire to be on Verizon than any failings of the iPhone (though I have had several call-related issues that I can’t determine whether they are T-Mobile or the iPhone, and since I am on an “un-supported phone,” TMO won’t help).

I have been an Apple devotee since the first Mac shipped in ‘84 (we couldn’t afford a Lisa), but I am far from a fanboy. As much as I like the iPhone, it has a lot of shortcomings that I hoped the Droid would address. One of my primary interests in the Droid was full integration with Google mail, calendar and apps. Imagine my complete shock when I found out that the seamless integration I have between my iPhone and Google is not possible on the Droid. The Gmail app is clunky at best and I can’t receive e-mail into my main box, but send with different addresses. Are you kidding me? Granted it took until OS 3.0 on the iPhone, but it works perfectly now.

While I am more than happy to beta test software I rely on for a company I believe in, there is no way that I am paying $200 + $80/month to beta test the Droid for two years. Anyone thinking this isn’t a beta product hasn’t actually used it yet -- it is half-backed and very unfinished.

Without going on a diatribe, here is my short pro/con list:

Pro:
- Verizon coverage and call quality. I had no idea how much I missed this.
- The Droid is simply the best GPS device I have used and most of the GPS apps are free and very high quality. Garmin should take note.
- Google Contacts integration is exceptional.
- User-upgradeable storage - buy a new SD card, not a new phone.
- Much more open development platform for apps.
- Extremely customizable ... sort of.
- Awesome screen resolution.
- Physical keyboard means you can type and still have the entire screen available.

Con:
- Unnecessarily complex and very unintuitive.
- Unusable in bright sunlight.
- General interface is an abomination.
- Screen colors are way off
- Everything works intermittently
- Good news: it has a physical keyboard. Bad news: it is the worst keyboard I have ever seen on a phone.
- Good news: it include an amazing GPS. Bad news: GPS can drain the battery from 80% to 10% in just under an hour.
- Apps are hit and miss, but most work intermittently and seem unfinished.
- Did I say that the UI and UX are an abomination?

I could go on, but I think Ari already hit the main points. The phone is close enough to an iPhone that I hope it will push Apple to improve the iPhone, but I struggle to see the Droid as being anything more than a very solid proof of concept. The Droid addressed nearly every shortcoming of the iPhone, but left out all the things that make the iPhone great.

What’s next for me? Right now I am about 10-days into my 30-day trial and trying really hard to hold out for the full period hoping that something will turn me into a true Droid convert. I may send the Droid back because part of me thinks it could be defective since sometimes things work and sometimes they don’t, particularly the touch screen. Benefit of the doubt, right?

14 years ago @ billgreen.me - How to break the shack... · 0 replies · +1 points

Thanks Colonel, mighty high praise from you. We need to catch up sometime.