The Bernie Sanders Plan: Pass It On!

One can only dream that we had a government that acted or the people instead of special and moneyed interests...

The following message was posted on the New Deal Information Service list-serv by Dr. Joseph Plaud. He is on the Board of Governors of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute.

Subject: [NDIS]: The Bernie Sanders Plan: Pass It On!

My favorite little socialist, Bernie Sanders, from neighboring Vermont (one of only two states that NEVER voted for FDR in four presidential elections, and now 70 years later one of the most liberal, go figure) has a plan. Sanders caucuses with the Democrats in the House, and he has a terrific plan for economic recovery, pass it on. Much better use of your little grey cells than watching that drama queen John McPain continue down the Rove/Bush path to utter chaos and destruction. Note how a cornerstone of Sanders' plan harkens back to the New Deal with a focus on repairing the American infrastructure (does CCC, WPA, PWA, CWA ring any bells?). Go Bernie...

1. Ensure that middle income and working families are not the ones who are paying for this bailout by
* Imposing a five-year, 10 percent surtax on income over $1 million a year for couples and over $500,000 for single taxpayers. That would raise more than $300 billion in revenue over five years;
* Ensuring that assets purchased from banks are realistically discounted so companies are not rewarded for their risky behavior and taxpayers can recover the amount they paid for them; and
* Requiring that taxpayers receive equity stakes in the bailed-out companies so that the taxpayers’ assumption of risk is rewarded when companies’ stock goes up.

Taken together these three provisions will substantially reduce the likelihood that this bailout will end up on the backs of average American taxpayers.

2. Include a major economic recovery package which puts Americans to work at decent wages. Among many other areas, we can create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and moving our country from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. Further, we must protect our must vulnerable families from the very difficult times they are experiencing.

3. Repeal the disastrous de-regulatory legislation that facilitated this crisis.

4. End the danger posed by companies that are "too big to fail," that is, companies whose failure would cause systemic harm to the U.S. economy. If a company is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. We need to determine which companies fall in this category and then break them up.

___________________________________________________________________
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Do you ever have nostalgia for the "Good Old Days"?

This list of the Good Old Days (in the US) has been move to:

http://hubpages.com/hub/Nostalgia-What-Was-It-Really-Like-in-the-Good-Old-Days

Thanks
Alan

Getting My Macs to Behave on a Non-Apple Router with OpenDNS

This is a follow-up to my earlier "Help, I Got a Mac!" blog entry.

Shortly after I got my MacBook Pro in December 2007, I went to Singapore on a sabbatical Fellowship. There I rented a couple of rooms in a house that came with an ethernet cable on a fiber optic network that was among the fastest (most of the time) and most stable that I have ever used -- much more than I get at home in Flagstaff.

Well, now I am back in Arizona and connecting my MBP to my home router, which also has four PCs and an older, and seldom used, Mac Mini attached to it. To my surprise, while the PCs were running fine on a relatively new D-Ling DIR-655 router, my MBP was having some problems. I frequently got the message that the Mac could not find the server for the web pages that I was trying to connect to. This included www.google.com. I would have to refresh the screen one to three or more times to connect, and a few times it would never connect. This was very frustrating! And it got even more so when my wife got a brand new MacBook and encountered the same problem.

I know that any Mac fanboy will recommend getting an Airport Extreme router (US$180), and I am sure that would probably fix the problem. However, the D-Link DIR-655 is considered one of the best routers available by several computer magazines, and it is supposed to work with Macs.

After searching online, I found this discussion on C-Net.com: http://www.esyurl.com/98o , in which someone had a similar problem, but even worse. They could basically not connect at all. The solution in that email was recommended by a Microsoft support person, who suggested specifically identifying the DNS (domain name server) on the Mac, instead of assuming that it will use a DNS supplied by the router. It went on to suggest copying a DNS address that is found on a PC on the network.

So I tried this. But instead of using a DNS from a PC, I instead used the OpenDNS service, which can be found here: http://www.opendns.com/ - which is a free and highly secure DNS service.

The results have been FANTASITIC! Firefox and Safari both now access websites incredibly fast -- at least compared to what the situations was before. Hopefully this information will help some others who are trying to connect their Macs to a non-Apple router. ... And thank you OpenDNS.

Things, Windows, Mac, Oh My!

A friend recently turned me on to the GTD/To Do List program called Things (http://culturedcode.com/things/), which I absolutely love for keeping track of the many projects that I tend to pursue at one time. However, Things is only available on the Mac, with iPhone and iPod Touch versions coming n June. Thus I am in another Mac-Windows quandary (see my longer blog on this issue).

Things is the kind of program that I like to carry in my pocket -- on my phone, to be precise. I need to replace my Windows Mobile Verizon XV6800, which Things would not work on anyway. I could switch to AT+T and get an iPhone when my current Verizon contract ends in October (5 months from now). I could just get an iPod Touch and a cheap Verizon phone that I currently have. Or I could try to find a cross-platform or web/cloud-based GTD instead of Things.

Trying to figure this out, I tried the web-based Nozbe, which I did not like at all, and Remember the Milk, which I really like as a Gmail addon. Remember the Milk can also be accessed offline using Google Gears and syncs with Windows Mobile and Blackberry.

So currently, I am using Remember the Milk for short term, today and tomorrow, things to do. I use Things for more long term projects. And I am not going to think about my phone quandary until I get back to the US this next month.

Help, I got a Mac! - Frustrations moving from Vista to a Mac

First off, Help I Got a Mac! is the name of a podcast for people who have switched from MS Windows to a Mac, which you can find here. I bought my MacBook Pro last December, and have been using it for the past six months. I have yet to "drink the kool-aid" (i.e., I have not yet become a Mac fanboy). I sent a list of my initial frustrations to the Help I Got a Mac! podcast last January, which became the basis of their 14 January 2008 podcast (listen here - mp3 file).

Note that some of my questions to the Help I Got a Mac guys were misunderstood - mostly my own fault as a newby. The list of Pet Peeves that I sent them is below, along with comments on how I have learned to overcome them in the past few months.

~~~~~~
Hi Cliff -

I got a Macbook Pro about a month ago, which I also run XP through VMWare Fusion. This is not the first Mac in my house, but it is the first that I have used regularly as my primary computer, prompted by Vista problems this past year on an under-powered laptop. Here is my current list of pet peeves in using the Mac. I would like to know if there are utilities or other ways to do these tasks. - Thanks, Alan

FILE + FOLDER MANAGEMENT

- Move files from one folder to another – finder only copies files, which I then need to move to trash.
[To address this pet peeve, I recently broke down and purchased Path Finder from Cocoatech.com which now runs in place of Finder most of the time on my Mac - cost: $34.95. Path Finder is a very powerful file manager that not only matches what I could do on my PC, but well surpasses those capabilities.]

- Moving or Copying a file into a folder where another file with the same name already exists – does not tell me which of the two copies is newer or larger - I need to open both folders and compare the files -- what a hassle!
[Clarification: This is when copying a file to a folder where a file with the same filename is present. They might be the same file, or one might be newer than the other. Windows gives me this information so I can decide which file to keep and which to delete. The Mac give no information other than the file names. I still have no resolution to this -- Any Suggestions?.]

- the Finder Window sometimes gets too long below the bottom of the screen – I cannot grab the lower right corner to resize because it is below the screen – in general, I keep wishing I could grab other corners or the sides [Clicking the green (+) button fixes this. However, if the top bar is hidden behind a menu or is off the top of the screen I am stuck as there is no way to access it at all. There is a shareware program that allows you to grab anywhere on a Mac app window/box and drag it, but I believe that it currently only works on Tiger, not Leopard.]

- Can not change File Names, Delete Files, Copy or Move files when in an "Open File" screen – can not access non-openable files from an Open File screen - I often see files that need fixing while in an Open Files menu, which I can easily address in Windows. [I have been using the trial version of Default Folder X from St. Clair Software for this. I am not yet convinced that it is worth the $35 they charge for it.] [UPDATE 7May08: I used Default Folder X several times today so I decided to go ahead and pay for it.]

PHOTO PREVIEW

- Cannot Zoom photos and images to full size in Preview - can zoom larger, but cannot tell if I am zoomed to full size - because of this, I still use Windows Preview on XP in VMWare to browse and delete my recently taken photos.
[I have three comments related to this:
(1) The reason for this pet peeve is that I take many hundreds of photos when I travel, which I use for teaching. I need to skim through these as fast as possible to decide which to keep and which to toss.

(2) This question was a new user mistake on my part. I confused Cover Flow for Preview. Yes, what I want to do can be done in Preview, but not in Cover Flow, which I was using. I have since learned about Preview and it works well for previewing photos. I was also quite excited to learn that Preview had basic photo editing tools, like crop, color correction, and sharpen - which I use regularly on my many photos - available on flickr.

(3) HOWEVER, I was shocked to find Preview destroying some of my photos when I saved them after editing them. So far, I have been able to crop and save without a problem. But when I color correct and then save, occasionally Preview will save a mostly, but not entirely, black image. Because the image overwrites the original upon saving, the photo is destroyed! This happened about six time before I figured out what was going on. I now only edit color in Photoshop, which I have in Windows XP - and which really works much better than Preview anyway.
Update: I installed Gimp, a free photo editing program from sourceforge.net, using the Wilber loves Apple website and my initial reaction is very positive. I can see myself using this instead of Photoshop.]

- Preview - can not "Move to Trash" when a photo is enlarged to almost full screen – photo covers edit icon where the Trash command is found – Again I use XP's Preview instead because of this. [Again, this is a Cover Flow problem, not a Preview problem - my mistake. Cocoatech's Path Finder has scalable thumbnails, which work much faster for quick previews than the more flashy Cover Flow, which I no longer use.]

- Can not Flip a photo in iPhoto; Can not show a photo Full Size in iPhoto [I use Photoshop Elements in Windows XP, instead]

OTHER ISSUES

- After sleeping a couple of times the keyboard stops working, requiring a restart [I only sleep my Mac if there are only a couple of programs running - this seems to resolve the problem.]

- Can not view images in MS Word – need to open/edit the images to see them - these are probably on files that were created on a Windows computer [There is probably a fix for this out there somewhere, but I have not yet looked for it.]

- One feature that I loved and used often in Vista was the clock. The new Vista clock allowed you to create 2 or 3 different clocks for different time zone. All I had to do was click on the clock on the task bar and I would see these different clocks -- it was great for skyping with friends around the world! [As the podcast guys said, the Widgets Screen can do this by pressing on the + button in the lower left. I did not know was there prior to the Help I Got a Mac podcast. I have since highly customized my widget screen with additional utilities.]

BTW - I agree with you on iPhoto encapsuation – I hate it – I want to be able to access to my photos from a variety of different programs – I want to know where the files are so I can move them, copy them, edit them, upload them, and download them. [I use Photoshop Elements for Windows -- someday I will probably breakdown and get a Mac version of Photoshop.]

Thanks, Alan
***************

Some additional comments:

I like the speed of my MacBook Pro (15 inch). It is the most powerful and capable laptop I have ever owned -- comparable to my desktop PC at home. Unlike that PC, however, my Mac starts up and shuts down almost instantly -- which is very cool.

I push my Mac to the limit though, with all the program I often have running at the same time -- and yes, programs do crash and I do need to reboot the Mac from time to time. I will upgrade to 4gb ram soon, which I expect to help with this. A new Vista computer with appropriate hardware probably runs just as well as my Mac. I think, though, that a Vista computer would slow down over time much sooner than the Mac will -- we'll see. I wish MS Office 7 was available for the Mac, as I use it at work and absolutely love it!

Occasionally I think about just running in XP all the time, mostly because of three programs that I currently have only in Windows versions: Photoshop [though Gimp on the Mac may allow me to uninstall Photoshop], Dreamweaver [I may be able to get a Mac version from my workplace] and Roboform [unfortunately there is no Mac version of Roboform].

I also wish my MBPro had an SD card reader, though that will be fixable with an Expresscard adapter that I hope to buy soon.

I may be a bit of a ludite, as I still miss features in Wordperfect that I loved, but was forced to leave behind many years ago as MS Word overwhelmed my workplace. I will update this blog post as I continue to sip the kool-aid in the coming months.

Cheers
Alan

Toward an Office Anywhere Work Environment: Weaning Myself Off Outlook

Mike Smith on the the Mike Tech Show podcast recently talked about his efforts to break away from relying on Microsoft Outlook. I have been thinking about this myself, mostly due to a desire to be able to create an Office-Anywhere / Ubiquitous Computing work environment.

Where I Am Coming From

After many years of using Netscape and the early generations of Thunderbird for my email, and Sony Clie/Palm Desktop for my calendar and contacts, I made the move to Outlook for both about three or four years ago. I made the move because Thunderbird was not able to handle the large number of emails that I had stored in it. In fact, it was excruciatingly slow, and I had read on a blog somewhere that this was due to Thunderbird's poor database structure. At about the same time, I had purchased my first Windows Mobile PDA/Phone (and Audiovox 6600) after Sony had pulled out of the U.S. PDA market -- I had no interest in Palm devices, which I considered physically ugly.

So, for the past several years my life has been organized by Outlook (2002 at first, then 2003). I ran Outlook off my laptop computers, which had served me well as my principal work stations -- carrying them between home and work (I now mostly work at home) and on the several long trips I take every year.

The problem with this scenario is that even the 100GB/7200RPM hard drive that I put into my last tablet PC did not offer enough space and speed for it to serve as my principal work computer. What I want is to be able to go anywhere at anytime, and without limitations to my calendar, email and documents.

What I am Currently Experimenting With

- A new Fujitsu P1610, 2.2 lb, 8.9" screen, tablet PC - mostly for traveling, taking to meetings, and syncing my PDA with Outlook and Airset (see below).

- My PDA Phone - I have the Verizon Audiovox XV6700 with Windows Mobile 5. I do not have EVDO -- I tried that in the past and found that I am seldom in situations where I needed it, and when I am it is easier to just pay for Internet access. I do use the Wifi feature when I can access a wireless router.

- I use Airset.com for online access to my calendar and contacts, which I sync with Outlook on my tablet PC. The tablet PC is then synced with my PDA phone. I originally tried using Google Calendar, which has a nicer look and feel to it than Airset, but I could not get it to sync properly with Outlook, and Airset also syncs my contacts, which Google Calendar does not do. (To sync to Google Calendar I tried CompanionLink and GMobileSync - both of which caused significant problems, though none that I could not fix with some time and effort. I just came across GooSync, which I might try.)

- I use Google Mail as my primary email reader. I forward email from several different accounts into a single GMail account for this. I also have Gmail set up to send mail using my work email address (a great feature!), which is necessary for the many listserves that I am on and manage.

I download my email into Outlook for backup and to use Outlook's better sorting and searching tools, when I need them. By using Pop3 (no IMAP) I can access the email offline, when I need to.

This has been a real challenge. I get at least 50 emails a day that I need to read and most of which I store for future reference. Changing from storing them in folders in Outlook to organizing them by tags in Gmail takes quite a mental shift.

[Addendum: I just discovered a very useful feature in Outlook. The Archive button removes messages from the Inbox without deleting them. You can see the whole "messy" Inbox by clicking the All Mail link. So by tagging and then moving emails out of the Inbox, this comes pretty close to using Folders in Outlook.]

I am not yet convinced that tags are better than folders -- but I am still forcing myself to try and adjust to this approach. Google Mail is very fast, which helps a lot! And of course the more emails that I have tagged, the less I am going to want to spend time reorganizing them again into Outlook folders.

- Foldershare is a free online utility (purchased by Microsoft) that allows me to sync folders between my home computer, work computer, and tablet PC (and any other computers that I allow), and search and download the files on any of those from any Internet connected computer. Foldershare works really fast and is quite amazing for a free utility. While I would love to have something with the functionality of GotoMyPC, I just can't justify spending that much money -- at least not yet.

So that is my Office-Anywhere / Ubiquitous Computing setup. In addition, I run the Juice (podcatcher) on my tablet PC, and sync the podcast folder with my office and home PCs. I originally tried to run Juice on two computers and sync the folders, hoping that files in one folder would cancel the other when they are downloaded by both computers . But I mostly ended up with two copies of podcast episodes, which quickly became a hassle.

One other utility that I use is Cabonite for backing up my main home computer where all my documents reside. I also back up periodically to an external hard drive.

What I like about this arrangement is that it is keeping things that I do not need off of my tablet PC, and even off of my office computer, which I only use a couple of times a week.

Is It a Perfect Setup?

It is working so far, but I am also still getting used to it -- putting it through its paces for my work style. I have not yet tried it on a long trip (I have one coming up soon), and it may prove especially challenging on an overseas trip. However, I think I can manage that if I can anticipate what documents I need before I leave town. I will find out this summer!!!