Davbeck

Dear AT&T:

I haven’t been a fan of yours to say the least. Your DSL speeds are laughable, you phones drop calls and you continually spew marketing crap. But this isn’t about that.

Let me start by telling you a little bit about myself, as I am sure that in the 5 years I have been your customer you have learned nothing about me. I am 21 years old, and am no longer going to college. I didn’t so much drop out, as I got a much better offer. I now make well over the US average salary for college graduates. I have managed my money well, saving and always having an emergency fund. I keep track of my money and have never missed a bill, including the 57 I have paid to you.

Furthermore, I am debt free and have always been so, unlike nearly every person in the US including yourself, who has $60 billion in debt, compared to your $5 billion in cash. I have never had a car loan, because I saved up and bought a $1,500 beater. I don’t have credit card debt, because when I didn’t have money, I didn’t buy new things like iPhone’s or computers. I don’t have student loans because I worked while going to school and went to community college instead of an expensive university. My credit score is 0 (some companies report it as indeterminate) as in absolutely no history.

During our relationship together, I have paid you about $4,000. When you didn’t have a tethering plan, I went without. When you charged over the top fees for it, i paid them. When you limited your data, I paid the overages charges. You would think that would mean something between customer and company.

So imagine my surprise this morning when I decided to buy an iPad from you, and was met with a very rude notice that you would not sell it to me, because of my credit score. Now mind you, I have enough disposable income from this paycheck alone to buy the iPad, and 2 years of the $25 data plan (the largest for the iPad). Remember, the iPad is famous for not requiring a commitment to a data plan. You can use it without the data plan if you like. You make this claim on the product page.

So let me review your logic, I can’t buy something I can afford now, because I haven’t bought things that I can’t afford in the past.

Let’s say you decide to open a sandwich shop. You are afraid people will think that you stole your ideas from another sandwich shop, so you decide not to do any market research before starting.

You setup a standard sandwich shop, with an assembly line where the employees ask what kind of bread, meat, cheese etc. the customer wants on their sandwich and then makes their sandwich just in time to serve it to the customer. This is exactly how almost every sandwich shop does it in America.

Now, you work hard. You put in long hours, always make sure your customers are happy and eventually, you start to make a profit. You aren’t getting rich, but you are making enough to support your family with room to spare. This is known as “the good life”.

Pretty soon, you get a letter. Now it’s important to note, this letter isn’t from Subway, or Port of Subs or Mr. Pickles or any other sandwich shop you have ever heard of. Instead this letter is from Wheatbread LLC. Wheatbread LLC. has never sold a sandwich. They don’t do sandwich research. They aren’t working for a sandwich shop.

The letter is a cease and diciest. Wheatbread LLC. is claiming you are infringing on their patent. What is their patent for? It is for, “The assembly and preparation of food using wheat products and cold cut meats on demand.” What that means is, they are claiming they are the only ones that can make sandwiches as the customer orders them. Wheatbread LLC. wants you to pay them a royalty or they are going to sue you.

Your options are limited. If you go to court to defend yourself, you might win, but the cost to do so would eat up all your profits and the cost if you lost would be catastrophic. If you pay them, you let them win and while it may be cheaper, it will still put a strain on your business to continue to be profitable with added costs. You can’t just stop, because they will want back payment.

But what if you make the sandwiches beforehand. The customer would have to select from a handful of sandwiches, but you would be in the clear of this patent, right? Wrong. It just so happens that Wheatbread LLC’s subsidiary owns a patent for that too. And if you get rid of Wheatbread LLC, there will be someone else with a slightly different patent. You cannot make sandwiches without infringing someone’s patent.

You didn’t steal anyone’s idea’s. You just made sandwiches just like everyone else, including your mom, does.

But this is hypothetical. It would never happen, because no one issues patents for something as simple as how to assemble a sandwich. Unfortunately, this is the case with software patents. Billions of dollars are spent every year on software patents and the companies involved don’t sell anything. They are lawyers that have no idea how to program.

The result is the cost of software goes up, and some companies go completely out of business.

This affects everyone. Large companies spend millions if not billions on patents. They hire lawyers that develop strategies to defend themselves. It affects small companies who most often just pay to avoid the crushing pressure of court.

Make no mistake, these patent trolls are the modern mob. They force people to pay for “protection”.

Sign this petition, get the government to stop this insanity. They started it, they need to end it.

These are my predictions for the iPhone

There will be another iPhone

It will be slightly thinner than the current iPhone

It will be faster than the current iPhone

It will have a camera, my sources indicate it will be better than the current one

It will have parts

I will buy it

A cliche is the end and summation of a thought. The problem with a cliche is that people use them to try and pull others up to their level of understanding in order to show them the steps that got them there. Instead, you should use the steps to gently guide others to what you now understand fully.

A few months ago when I decided not to come back to school this semester, I told people that I was betting that I would be better off devoting myself to my career immediately rather than waiting 6 more years to complete a degree, but that only time would tell if I made the right decision. Sitting here in New York, working at a job I not only enjoy but also get paid well to do, I’m pretty sure I made the right decision.

To all my friends starting school today, good luck. I hope it works out better for you than it did me. If you are just now starting, hit it hard and hit it fast. Keep the end in sight and always be moving forward. But above all, figure out what you need to do, to do what you love and do that.

Think with me for just a second

Back to 10 years ago

If you saw someone who talked to themselves

If they told you they had followers

You would think they were crazy

Today you might think differently

With all that has changed since then

You might assume they had bluetooth

And they would of course be referring to Twitter

You might even do this yourself

Crazy people are from the future

Mac OS Lion is scheduled to release this July and so I thought I might share some of my thoughts about the next operating system by Apple. I haven’t had the chance to use the beta yet, so this is coming from screenshots, videos, programming documents and a general sense of Apple’s style.

What is it?

Mac OS X Lion, or simply Lion, is the next version of the operating system for Macs. The current version is Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, but don’t expect Apple to refer to Lion as 10.7; right as Microsoft has decided to go to numbering for OS names, Apple has decided to leave it behind. Apple releases a new version of OS X about every 2 years.

What will it cost?

Traditionally, OS X has cost $129. With Snow Leopard, they dropped that down to an incredible $29 (Windows consistently sells for $200). At the time, this was because Snow Leopard was a somewhat minor performance update to Leopard (I see what they did there). However, Apple has announced that they will keep the $29 price tag for Lion.

Snow Leopard also had a family pack for $50 that let you install on up to 5 computers. That won’t be happening for Lion, mostly because of the following.

How do I get it?

When Lion is released, it will only be available by downloading from the Mac App Store, emphasis on the only. You will not be able to buy a DVD. You will not be able to buy a box. You will have to download it. Even volume license customers will have to download it, although they are given the option to copy it to disc so they only have to download it once. That leaves a lot of questions to be answered, I know. I don’t have those answers, but I bet Apple knows exactly what they are doing.

Will I buy it when it comes out? Should I?

Personally, I will buy it the day it comes out. I do not recommend you do the same. The reason is that every release of OS X has been followed 2 weeks later by a maintenance release to fix a bunch of bugs. Also, waiting a few weeks will let you know if your software will be compatible or not. When Snow Leopard released, there was a pretty good size list of software that was not compatible, some of which you eventually ended up paying for an update that was. This isn’t nearly as big of an issue on Mac as Windows, but if you wait a few weeks, the smart people at the genius store will know exactly how to fix your problem because they will have seen it a few times.

That being said, you should upgrade within 2 months. Let me repeat that, you should upgrade very soon after Lion is released. It’s $30 and has some cool new features, but more importantly, it won’t be long before software becomes Lion only. There are a lot of very interesting new features for developers in Lion, and they are only going to wait so long. Upgrade. Upgrade. Upgrade.

What are some of these neat features you keep talking about?

Lion is one of the biggest updates to the OS yet. There are some long awaited UI improvements, better security features, but mostly it is a merger of features from iOS.

Spaces was first introduced in Leopard. They are a very nice feature if you have never used them (see system preferences) but they had some funky behavior sometimes, especially with some, let’s say special, software. Also, full screen has played with on the mac, but never really taken advantage of or easy. Both have been revitalized. Moving fullscreen in apps give them their own space and you can move between spaces with a swipe on a trackpad.

Another big feature is autosave. This requires some work on the developers side, but once implemented will mean that you never have to worry about losing a document you have been working on for hours. It means that you don’t have to deal with annoying alert dialogs. This also extends further beyond documents. Now you can hit restart and when you turn your computer back on all of your apps and windows will be exactly where you left them, even down to highlighted text.

Will I like it?

Possibly not. I will tell you this much, if you are on a desktop, you will want one of Apple’s Magic Trackpads. Everything in Lion is multitouch now. If you have a distaste for the track pad, you may have to adjust a little.

Also, Lion is going towards more usable, less bare bones. For instance, file saving is done automatically. The Library folder is hidden by default. You won’t install software like you used to; for the most part it will be downloaded and automatically installed from the App Store.

In short, if you tend to have trouble going with change, Lion will take some time to warm up to.

I like Thursdays. Not that any day of the week is at all special in and of itself, or identical to any other day of any other week. After all, the days of the week are mostly arbitrary, chosen centuries upon centuries ago maybe only corresponding with natural work cycles by happenstance. I could just as easily have a 6 day week, where I worked 34.2857143 hours and not much would change.

But I digress. Thursdays tend to be more enjoyable on average, to me. When I wake up and remember the day, I can feel myself get a little less tense. My outlook is more positive, and in contrast, a little less positive when it is over.

Saturday is devoted to rest, which puts it at risk for boredom. Sunday is busy with church things, or if you are not of the holy persuasion, way too much sleep. Wednesday is that awful middle of the week often refereed to “hump day” which has a lot less to do with humping and a lot more to do with misery. Monday is daunting, being the start of the work week. The only thing people think about on Friday is the weekend and inso doing make themselves miserable with today. Tuesday you are still trying to recover from the shock of being thrown into work on Monday.

But not Thursday. Nobody ever plans anything for Thursday. Why would they, it’s such an odd day. It even sounds odd. Nobody cares about Thursday, so it gets left alone. Alone to be peaceful. On Thursday, there is nothing to look back on, nothing to look forward to, just Thursday.

I wish every day could be like Thursday. I think there would be less anxious people, fewer depressed people and more work done. But then there would be some smart ass who would start to say we shouldn’t work so much and would start taking every 7th Thursday off and before you know it, I would be writing about my love for fifth Thursday.

Today I went to deliver some equipment for work to the Siena and was having a little bit of trouble finding my way to the offices. I ran into a very kind cleaning lady, who, while she could barely understand english, could very clearly see that I was lost. Through broken english and a very big smile she guided me right to where I needed to go. She was so kind and so eager to help that she made my day.

I am really bad at remembering people’s faces. When I meet someone new, I can remember their hair, their birthday and other minute details about them, but it’s all for not because the next time I see them I will have no way of tying them to all that information. I have even gone so far as to introduce myself to the same person within 1 hour. The result is that I tend to ignore people or not introduce myself out of fear that I might have met them before and don’t recognize them.

Today, I came to a harsh realization. Computers are better at facial recognition than I am. Even a video game like the Kinect can identify people reliably enough to log them in based on it.

That was when I got a great, although pathetic idea. Mount a small camera to my person, say on my collar, connect it to a pocket computer, say an iPod Touch, and set it to continuously capture images and run facial recognition on them. Then I would place a bluetooth headset in my ear and when the iPod recognized someone I had met before, it would whisper their name and a fact about them into my ear.