Tao Effect

What this film does in 104 minutes is simply magical.

The Union: The Business Behind Getting High

And you can watch it, right now, for free on Google Video.

Apple’s iPad may turn out to be more of a security risk than a useful tool for some, especially for those who, prior to yesterday’s launch, speculated that the iPad would be a God-send to the health care system, and possibly other sectors like businesses.

According to Steve, however, the iPad is designed primarily for the following activities:

For some, even that may be something of a stretch.

As many have pointed out, the iPad is more of an oversized iPod Touch than an undersized MacBook Air, or as Daniel Tenner so aptly put it: “The uncomputer for the masses”.

When you send someone an email, you expect it to fall into the hands of its intended recipient, not someone who happened to get a hold of their device. I would never download all of my email onto an iPad because I can neither encrypt nor password protected it. Apple’s lockdown of the OS means third-party developers cannot intervene and remedy this situation because they’re not allowed to touch certain parts of the system.

Businesses and hospitals won’t be thrilled with employees and nurses running around with an easily swipeable device containing unprotected company secrets, client data, and patient information. Thanks to the “duplicating functionality” clause of the SDK TOS, developers can’t even write their own encrypted versions of Mail or the iWork suite.

If you want a secure iPad, you’ll either have to hope Apple implements it, or depend on each individual developer to properly secure their application’s data—a situation that nobody should be thrilled with.

Warning: This blog post is an opinion piece by Greg Slepak (while he searches for an appropriate medium), and has nothing to do with Tao Effect news.

This weekend I saw Michael Moore’s latest film Capitalism: A Love Story. Like most of his films, this one should come with a disclaimer: for the duration of the film you’ll be looking at the world through the eyes of Michael Moore and those who reflect his views. Don’t expect to see or hear any conflicting views or arguments.

For those that hate Moore’s films, there’s plenty in the film to nit-pick about. There’s a scene where he does his best to convince you that all Christian priests hate Capitalism and consider it an evil. Some have argued that he’s misusing the word “capitalism” altogether and should instead say “corporatism”. He also tends to group various corporate entities into a single-group. AIG, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, etc. All of these are placed in the group of “evil rich people bent on screwing over the lower-classes while having cocktail parties on corporate yachts.” In some cases, there is actual truth to that notion, but of course for those looking to put down Michael and nit-pick, he leaves plenty of room in his films to accommodate you.

However, despite the flaws, I enjoy watching Moore’s films precisely because of how rare their kind is.

It has been my general experience in life that many of the people that I encounter are perfectly satisfied to watch the latest action blockbuster out of hollywood, and when a movie like Capitalism rolls out they do two things: they pass up the ticket to see it for another action blockbuster, and then proceed to lambaste his films with a level of ignorance that far exceeds anything that I’ve heard Michael Moore say.

What further amazes me is how successful Moore has been at getting his films to play at major theaters. There are many many other films out there that do a much better job of espousing upon the insanities of our society and yet hardly ever make it into major theaters. Documentaries like Food Inc., Jesus Camp, The Century of Self (video link), Who Killed the Electric Car, and many others only find home to a handful of theaters across the country. These important films have been kicked out of mainstream society, to be replaced by the latest blow-em-up out of Hollywood that has sold out several times over.

That scenario never ceases to amaze me. How such a large amount of people, often the group that stands to benefit most from seeing movies like The Century of Self, who often live quite miserable lives because of their complete ignorance of their surroundings, can constantly, repeatedly purchase tickets to the same exact action script that Hollywood modifies slightly on a bi-monthly basis.

Ironically, it may in fact be because of the overly narrow viewpoint espoused in Capitalism, and its heavy use of emotional content, that he is able to get it distributed so widely. I say that’s better than nothing.

Further, while there are many imperfections in his films, they nevertheless tend to bring up worthy causes and viewpoints into the mainstream for discussion.

I also have to credit Capitalism for making me consider a thought that I hadn’t thought of before, namely,

Why do we allow corporate lobbyists and advisers at all?

It seems to me that just as we supposedly have the separation of church and state, we should institute the separation of the state from all other entities other than, of course, “the people.”

One thing that I’ve been astonished to learn from some of these films (Moore’s and others), is how incredibly entrenched major corporations are in the decision making of our government.

I considered the opposing viewpoint, that perhaps “because they represent the interests of a large amount of people and jobs” they should therefore have a strong say in policy making.

However, this is simply not true. Corporate interests do not include various idealized notions such as the right to a trial by jury, and even more idealized, yet worthy, concepts such as the rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Corporate interests are much simpler than that, they just want to “make a lot of money.”

Worse, they have demonstrated unequivocally that the way they’ll go about getting this money will often be by screwing over their workers, and quite often, their customers as well.

So, it seems to me that such entities should have no place whatsoever in any policy making that affects the lives of people outside of their corporation (and in some cases even inside of their corporation). Their advice is usually, simply put: bad. And in the rare instances where it’s not, we certainly did not need them for it. Instead of dictating policy to our representatives, they can call in like the rest of us. Respected scientists, nutritionists, farmers and various other in-field experts make good advisers to the FDA and USDA, not the board members of Kellogg’s and Monsanto.

Government, people often forget, should be owned by the people to serve the interests of the people. When corporations get in the picture, the people are no longer represented, instead the interests of a very small minority is represented, usually at the expense of all the others.

This is what has happened to our government. Although this situation is not anything new, it’s nevertheless messed up and it’s certainly worth changing.

A good way to upset the status quo is simply through the spread of information and the systematic removal of ignorance. Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, though certainly flawed, helps to serve this purpose by bringing some of these issues to the forefront of America’s consciousness, and for that reason, I recommend you see it.

What if you could get refills for all of the products that you buy that come in containers?

We’ve become accustomed to the notion that every product must come in its own packaging, that this is “obvious” and that it’s the only way things can be done.

Every day I use a variety of container-based products (CBPs for short): shampoo, face-wash, toothpaste, liquid soap, orange juice, etc. etc. The list of CBPs goes on. This causes a huge strain on the environment. Companies use giant factories across the world to manufacture hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions of CBPs. For each CBP resources and energy are used to create the container, then all of these little containers are shipped all over the world in an inefficient manner.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could get rid of most of them? I think such a world is possible.

This brings up several questions: Could this cause difficulties for brands to compete? After all, you recognize that this particular brand of sugar-water belongs to Pepsi because it comes in a CBP that has the Pepsi logo on it. And how are you to know what’s in your shampoo if it doesn’t have a container to list the ingredients?

Imagine the following:

A Different World

A consumer walks into a local grocery store in search of body wash. He grabs a sleek bottle of Product 5eX promising to make him more attractive to the opposite sex. Except, this isn’t a CBP, in fact, while the store’s isles are packed with various bottled products much as they are today, there’s not a single CBP to be found, what our gullible protagonist holds in his hands is actually an RBP—a refill-based-product.

After weeks of usage and several unsuccessful attempts at attracting a mate, our friend runs out of Product 5eX and decides that perhaps he hasn’t used it long enough and so drives back to the grocery store in search of more. However, instead of going back to the isle where he originally found it, he places the empty container, along with empty containers of toothpaste, face-wash, and 9-liter bottle of cola on a conveyor belt at the front of the store while swiping his credit card. After shopping around for various food products inside he’s ready to checkout, and so are his RBPs.

In such a world there are many possibilities. Perhaps you could use a generic container and simply use the product’s unique ID number to refill it. There could be a huge online database that matches product IDs with detailed information about each product such as nutrition facts, ingredients, etc. All with the latest information on each ingredient and links to further information.

Not So Different

In fact the concept of an RBP is not so foreign. Recently my local OfficeMax began offering refills for all ink cartridges. Refills have existed at restaurants as long as I’ve known.

While many of today’s containers are recyclable, recycling is not nearly as good as reusing and reducing. Recycling takes energy, and many of the things that you put into your recycling bin don’t actually get recycled for one reason or another. It does not really tackle the core issue.

Instead of creating and shipping millions of little bottles, companies could send entire vats of refillable goop all over the world. The RBP model is not just a giant win for the planet, it’s a boon for consumers and producers alike, as it would drive down the cost of production and therefore the cost of products.

Challenges

There are certainly many questions that need to be addressed for such a world to become a reality. For example, the question of sanitation. How can you guarantee that a refilled product will be as fresh as a brand new one if the container has been opened? I’m sure that through various techniques and technologies such challenges can be overcome. Perhaps each major reseller can have its own mini-sanitizing doo-hickey that cleans the insides of containers. Like all engineering problems, the solutions are out there as long as someone is willing to put in the effort.

Think it’s a good idea? Pass it on.

Yesterday the President made the extraordinary step of asking citizens to submit questions to him. He promised to answer the most popular ones, and he did.

This isn’t the first time this administration has invited questions. They’ve done this before, and each time one of the most pressing questions has been the issue of legalization.

About the only respectable thing I can say today about this man is that he finally gave the public a direct answer:

I have to say that there was one question that ranked fairly high, and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy [pause], and uh… [laughs], ah.. I don’t know what this says about the online audience [crowd laughs], but.. haha… but I just want uh.. I don’t want people to think uh.. this was a fairly popular question we wanted to make sure that it was answered, the answer is no, I don’t think that is a good strategy to grow our economy. [crowd claps]

Perhaps I’m naive, but I was shocked when I saw this.

Whether or not you agree with it, how can you laugh at an issue like that?

You were not put there by the people to laugh at their serious concerns. This particular issue has been the source of decades of fighting, murders, imprisonments, and millions of lives ruined. And this… politician, behaves exactly as so many cynics have said he would. This is not the change that we were told about, this is idiocy-as-usual.

I thought hard about posting this, as this post has nothing to do with Tao Effect or Espionage, or anything tech-related. But then I realized that in my position this is the most I could do, that this is what “being patriotic” is about, and on an issue like this I would be embarrassed and ashamed of myself if I didn’t speak out.

You’re laughing at peoples lives and their freedom Mister President. Wipe that smirk off your face.

Further Reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs#Criticism
The History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States
Bullshit: The War on Drugs part 1 of 3

I think most people have encountered this strange phenomenon. That is, quite often, whenever one creates a complex artwork, one often finds themselves in the position least likely to directly benefit from it.

Consider, for example, a musician. My good friend Ryan Brown (developer of CocoaCollider) has created many electronic songs, but more often than not he’ll begin a project only to drop it a few days later.

Or a choreographer, like the voice behind the screencasts for Espionage, Lizzy Snow. While working on a dance for a while she becomes disenchanted with it—the movements that were so brilliant a second ago become dull and uninteresting.

The same applies to programmers. Those humans who have taken up this method of self-expression, can work enthusiastically for hours on end, completely motionless aside from a flurry of hand-movement and the occasional outburst, only to discover that, oddly enough, the more code they write for a project, the uglier and more unwieldy it becomes¹.

But many artists today don’t have the luxury of dilly-dallying about until they can achieve, what in their minds is called, perfection. There’s often some sort of a dead-line associated with their work, and more importantly, it’s how they make their living. So they persist, and eventually reveal to the world the fruits of their labor.

Herein lies the artist’s dilemma², for while everyone else can enjoy their work, they themselves cannot. The magician knows how it’s done, the choreographer has performed it countless times, the musician has listened to the same 3-second loop for over an hour, and they can all see with unmatched clarity, the various flaws in each of their respective performances.

I created Espionage because I wanted to encrypt my email without encrypting everything in my home directory. Yet to this day, it remains unencrypted. Why? Because I’m constantly working on Espionage, constantly testing it, installing it, uninstalling it, improving it in various ways, and I work on the same machine that I use for everything else³ (wouldn’t have it any other way).

Thus, I suffer.

¹That’s not to say that Espionage is full of ugly code (I wouldn’t be able to work on it if it was), or that I’m indifferent to the issue. Complexity naturally arises in large projects, especially those written in C.
²I make no claims of originality in using this term, which has been used by many different people to refer to various things.
³Espionage is always tested on multiple machines before it’s released, not just mine. ^_^
⁴Apparently I like footnotes.