Now that Congress is considering legislation to address the perceived threat to our infrastructure posed by cybercrime, a lot of people are suggesting that the grassroots opposition to SOPA/PIPA will rise up against CISPA. (Note: when I refer to CISPA, I am speaking broadly about cybersecurity legislation, and not specifically about the House version carrying that acronym.)

If you expect online activism to save us from bad legislation in this case, you need to rethink your world view.  The difference between the two is quite simple, but makes the likelihood of passage almost certain, even in the face of opposition.

Cybersecurity legislation is likely to pass regardless because all the power and authority that stems from the bill will accrue to government.  SOPA/PIPA largely benefited private industry.  The content creators would get a great deal more from the legislation, but it would create a hedache for ISPs, content aggregators, and others.  Not even the inclusion of anticounterfeiting provisions could address the fact that this was largely MPAA’s bill. Even most of those urging passage were generally fairly tacit in their support.

CISPA is nothing like that.  Most of the ISPs don’t like it. Most of the web’s big players don’t like it. The people that are really excited about it are those that want more power to watch you – the Justice Department.

If you look at the provisions in the bill that concern people the most, they are the provisions most vague.  They also are the provisions that deal with your rights.

If you think that the same people who brought you the Patriot Act are going to cower in the face of opposition to usurping more of your rights, or turn to run from the challenge, you are mistaken.

Make no mistake, cybersecurity legislation will pass.  It will pass in a form that makes most sensible people nervous, and it will be misused by our guardians.  That’s the nature of this type of legislation, and no Internet blackout will stop it.

The many and assorted ways you can blend juices are fascinating to me.  Some result in concoctions that are actually quite good – even for vegetables.  Others make me want to vomit, but I can’t because there’s nothing left in my stomach. I suppose there is always dry heaves.

I was really expecting hunger pangs and moodiness, but that hasn’t happened.  Many of the personal accounts of fasting I have read indicate that the first few days are miserable.  It actually hasn’t been bad at all.

Of course, that may be because I had largely detoxed my diet before starting this.  While we were on vacation two weeks ago I went cold turkey on caffeine, I gave up sugar a year ago, and my biggest weakness was steak and pizza – which actually aren’t terribly bad – from a health perspective – if done in moderation.

I don’t drink, don’t smoke, and drugs are a young man’s game.  So there really wasn’t a lot to withdraw from.

In all, the three days have actually not been bad at all.  I could probably keep this going indefinitely – were it not for the vile and repulsive flavors of some of these juices.  That’s really the only thing that would nudge me off.  One more glass of something as horrid as “Gazpacho Juice” and I might throw in the towel.

I was interested in it simply because of the exceptionally graphic detail the author went into regarding the intestine cleansing effects.  In other words, you have a tendency, when you stop consuming solids, for your body to release the inner goop from your digestive tract.  In the author’s case, he dropped a marble in a bathroom visit that he specifically recalled swallowing as a chid.

After watching a documentary called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, I was particularly impressed by the health benefits portrayed, but still skeptical.  If juice fasting could help get the body recentered, great. At worst, I figured, it might help me develop a taste for the vegetables I have managed to avoid for most of my life.

So I have kicked off what is planned as a 10 day fast. April and I are doing it together (it was actually her idea, but I have always been keen to try it, so I went along easily.)

So far it hasn’t been bad, with the exception of a juice called “gazpacho juice”.  It’s a combination of plum tomatoes, cucumber, celery, red bell pepper. red onion, parsley and lime. While it sounds harmless enough, it’s actually some of the worst stuff I have ever put in my mouth.

I’ll keep posting over the next ten days with my thoughts and progress.

However, once you enable a longer (more secure) password, the method of entering it changes in an interesting way:

The problem, if you don’t se it immediately, is kind of subtle.  For purposes of making it clearer, let me give you an example of just about any other entry screen on the device:

Do you see it now?

That little blue button on the lower right is typically the button you hit to complete your entry.

Sometimes it says “Go”, sometimes it says “Search”, but it’s always the button you hit to make the magic happen.

When you hit that button on your passcode entry, however, you get a pop up that says “Are you sure you want to call the police you jackass?”

Ok, actually it pops up a dial pad so you can hit up 911, but the effect is the same.

Your first reaction is to say “WTF?  Where did that come from?”

Your second reaction is to hit the back button, re-enter your code, hit the blue button again, and only then realize that this is the one place that blue button doesn’t perform consistently.

It’s not clear, exactly, why Apple would choose to muck with its interface only in this one instance, but there it is.

Apple should really consider making that the “OK” button to complete your passcode and put the Emergency call button somewhere else.

“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the–if he–if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not–that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement….Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.”

The lengths to which DC politicos will go to hide from the public is truly astounding, and today has seen a whole new level reached.  Consider the ridiculous semantic gymnastics on display here.

Business Forward and a similar group, the Common Purpose Project, say the meetings don’t violate any rules and aren’t even lobbying in the traditional sense. But the companies funding Business Forward and the wealthy donors that subsidize CPP ’s operation are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year in large part because of what they offer: special access. …

“Common Purpose Project was founded to support the progressive movement, and our outreach efforts to the White House are designed to promote the progressive agenda,” said Smith, who also sits on Business Forward’s board. “When a legislative issue develops some urgency, we’re positioned to convene key progressive players to focus on that issue and invite the White House to participate in a dialogue.”

I’ve been in DC for 12 years now, and involved in politics for 20.  I’ve been watching politics, thanks to my folks, for about 40.  In all that time, I have never seen a line of semantic nonsense this deep.

The definition of lobbying is pretty clear:

a group of persons who work or conduct a campaign to influence members of a legislature to vote according to the group’s special interest; to try to influence the actions of (public officials, especially legislators); to urge or procure the passage of (a bill), by lobbying.

Now it seems pretty clear that a legislative issue typically develops urgency when its passage or failure is about to be determined through either a vote or by being scuttled.  Should you convene a dialogue to discuss the passage or failure of that legislative issue, and invite both public officials and special interests to participate, you are lobbying, dammit.

Lobbying, whether you approve of the practice or not, has been a part of our government since the beginning, and as long as we have underpaid and overworked staffers working for underinformed and overzealous legislators, we’re going to have people that want, and frankly need, to explain complex issues.  They are going to hear from people whose livelihood will be impacted by bad decisions in DC.

That’s a fact that all the denunciations of lobbying and all the effort to call it something else will never prevent.

Lobbyists are typically honest about their craft.  They understand their place in the world and the skills they have.  Think of Nick Naylor in Thank You For Smoking.

BF and CPP are right. We shouldn’t call them lobbyists.  To do so demeans the hard-working lobbyist. BF and CPP are a breed of animal that resides six levels deeper in the strata of prehistoric frog feces that is DC.

If lobbying is a game of whores and thieves, BF and CPP are little better than pimps who simply schedule the hotel rooms where the action takes place.  They willingly arrange “dates” between their upscale clientele and the low-dollar working girls (and boys) in Congress and the White House.

Shame on them for trying to hide what they are, and shame on the American people for continually letting people and groups like this foist blatant lies and verbal contortions upon them.

AT&T Data Plus 300MB: $20 for 300MB
AT&T Data Pro 3GB: $30 for 3GB (up from $25)
AT&T Data Pro 5GB: $50 for 5GB, with mobile hotspot / tethering

The lowest tier is $5 higher (33%) but comes with 300MB instead of 200MB (50% more).  The net effect is a reduction in the cost per 100MB from $7.5 to $6.66. If my math is right, that’s about an 11% decline.

The middle tier also rises $5 (20%) but comes with 3GB instead of 2GB (50% more).  So the cost per gigabyte actually dropped $2.50. A net reduction of 20% per GB.At the high end, the rate has actually dropped by $5 from $55 to $50 (see this price chart from PCMag just a few months ago). That’s a 9% decline.

Most of the coverage I have seen mentions the rate increase only in the lower and middle tier. I suspect the reason nobody is commenting on the higher tier in most of the coverage is because it contradicts the “rates are rising” storyline.  Why let facts get in the way of a good article, right?

The price drop for heavier users, and the fact that you are paying less for the equivalent amount of bandwidth, is largely unreported. I guess it just doesn’t fit with the established narrative that telecom companies are out to take more money but not improve service.

The Portal

Skylanders is based on series of character tokens that enter and exit the world via a power portal. Game characters are sold as action figure tokens – the dragon in the image below.  To select a character in game, you simply drop a new token on the portal.  The switch is instant, negating the need to change classes or restart chapters.  Simply swap out your token and a different character appears on screen.

The characters come in eight different series – air, earth, fire, water, life, undead, tech, and magic.  Each series has, at present, four different character tokens, for a total of 32 different playable characters.

As your characters progress in the game, their stats, powers, and equipment are stored locally on the token.  Take your favorite token to a friend’s house, drop it on his portal, and play with all the same characteristics you had on your own.

More importantly, however, you can drop your token onto his portal regardless of whether you have the same game system.  You play Xbox but your friend plays PlayStation?  Doesn’t matter.  You can play head to head or cooperatively with your tokens on the other platform.

Why this Game is Important

There are several factors at play that mark this game as a critical marker in video game evolution.  For some time now, the concept of downloadable content has been seen as the great future of gaming.  The console would simply be a storage platform for games and future releases and expansion packs would be delivered via the Internet.  That model is flipped on its head by Skylanders, but it is also complemented by it.

The downloadable content model simply continues two inherent flaws in the console model.  The restrictive nature of consoles is such that you can only play with friends on the same console. I can’t play Call of Duty with my nephew because he has a PS3 while I prefer Xbox.

If we play split screen on his system, none of my achievements carry over to my own console.  Making my character portable, as Skylanders has done, divorces my game play from the console.

In addition, Skylanders has created expansion packs as tokens as well.  For instance, the Pirate Seas expansion (below) includes a pirate ship token that unlocks additional playable content.  Like the character tokens, those expansion worlds exist separately from the console.

If I take my token to a friends machine, we can play the expansion even if he hasn’t purchased it.  When I take it home, the expansion goes with me.

The folks at Activision have made great efforts toward solving the digital rights management issue by making your content token based.

The Big Problems With Gaming

The main flaws in the gaming experience today are the lack of console interoperability, the lack of character portability, and the means by which content creators can protect their product.  With Skylanders, Activision has addressed all three.

The ability to keep chatracters separate from the game, to unlock expansions with a token rather than the console, and to move both freely between platforms will be a model more game manufacturers adopt.

While making great strides in addressig these flaws, Activision has also created fairly attractive game collectibles.  As long as they maintain support for previous generations of character, as the develop additional Skylander games, these collectibles can become a lasting investment in the games you own.  I just wish my character from the the first Fable could have been carried forward into future Fable frachise games.

In addition, the tokens are relatively attractive figures in their own right, making your collection equally interesting as a long term collectible.

It’s not often that I am truly impressed by game innovation.  I find most experiments of this nature to be fairly uninspired.  In this case, however, I think Activision may have scored a big win.  I expect to see other games employing the same mechanics – likely in the very near future.

Why that Scares the Hell Out of Me

While I am very impressed with the game and the token system, I am also a bit nervous about it.

As I mentioned, there are 32 playable characters across the Skylanders universe, a handful of “special” character exclusives only available at some retailers, and two expansion packs.  Each character token costs about seven bucks.  Buy the game starter kit (with the portal, disk and three characters) and you’re out $60.  Many in-game items require accessing locked areas that can only be opened by characters from a particular series.  The minimum investment to have enough characters to open all areas is another 5 tokens or $35-40.  To collect all the characters, you would be north of $200.

That’s probably not a big deal when you consider the typical cycle of a game, the expansion packs, and other DLC.

A token scenario for a game like Call of Duty could look significantly less complex.  For instance, having a token that could carry a single custom loadout would allow you to port your best class to a friend’s console.  That could also allow you to carry the experience and weapons you gain back from that console to your own.  It would still allow Activision to sell additional classes as tokens, however.

If token based characters and content catch on, and I think they likely will, it could make gaming a more expensive proposition for the hardcore gamer or collector.

The amount of student debt in the US is massive; over a trillion dollars currently.  Americans currently owe more in student loan debt than they do on credit cards.  The Stafford Loan, for instance, allows students to borrow up to $57,500 as an independent (with no parental support).  Students often compound commercial and federal loans into enormous sums of money – often under the assumption that they’ll be able to find work upon graduation.

Now before you suggest that’s the problem, look again.  The Labor Department for September of 2011 shows an unemployment rate of only 4.5% for those with a college degree.  So an inability to find jobs doesn’t seem to be the norm for graduates.

So we have people investing in their education, and rightly finding work after graduation.  Should be no problem, right?

No.  The problem is two-fold.  The average student debt for 2011 graduates is $22,900.  Since many graduates will have less or even no debt, the numbers among those who took loans is likely significantly higher.

The average salary of 2011 graduates entering the workforce is only $36,866.  Payscale.com provides a handy list of the average annual salary by degree.  It shows the salary for history, sociology, anthropology and others typically starting in the mid-30s and topping out ‘mid-career’ around $60,000.  Based on regional differences, in reality, you have students graduating who may have more debt that they can possibly make – even at Payscale’s “mid-career” salary level.

If we’re going to make changes to how that debt is repaid, we should also make changes to how it is accumulated.  The entire practice of student loans should be reformed in two significant ways.

Capping Student Loans

First, student loans should be subject to the same earnings litmus test that applies to other credit, but more strictly.

Credit cards, home loans, and other consumer debt limits are typically predicated on your ability to repay that debt.  Amex doesn’t hand out black cards to college kids with no income for good reason – they have little ability to repay.  Home loans, at least in theory if not in practice, require you to prove income before you can qualify for more home than you can afford.

Student loans have none of that. Student loans rarely take into account the potential future earnings of the student.  As mentioned, students frequently compound loans.  The problem is it becomes very easy to accumulate more debt than your future earnings will accommodate.

Student loans should be capped at no more than the average annual salary for a student with that degree.  If a student is likely to make no more than $32,000 with a degree in social work, they shouldn’t be allowed to accumulate loans of $57,500 or more.  By capping total student loans for that degree at $32,000 (combining both direct federal and commercial) and applying the administration’s 10% annual limit for repayment, most student loans should be paid off in significantly less than the twenty years proposed for forgiveness (low-interest rates being assumed).

It is inexcusable that students are allowed to graduate carrying debt nearly as high as, or higher than, their ‘mid-career’ earnings.

Restrictions on Student Loan Usage

Often students take out more loan than they need for tuition and books in order to cover living expenses and other incidentals.  Any credit expert will tell you that putting meals and perishables on a credit card is a terrible idea as the interest increases the cost of those items many times over by the time it is paid off.  Student loans have no such restrictions, and unless things have changed dramatically, there are no caveats against using loans this way.

Stafford Loans, as just one example, carry restrictions that the money is too be used for tuition, books, room, board, or “other education related expenses.”  So what qualifies, exactly?  It’s hard to say.  A search for “Stafford Loan Eligible Expenses” turns up absolutely nothing from the Department of Education on the subject, and the FAQs many schools host have that vague “other” language.  Apparently a used car is an education related expense, as are sneakers, iPods, or anything else.

Since the schools typically hand you a check or direct deposit the funds, there is really no telling what those expenses might be.

If we want to help students who are looking at debt based on future earnings, the least we should do is bring these restrictions in line with sound financial advice.  Allowing students to rack up debt on things Big Macs and tennis shoes is ridiculous.  The education system should limit the way these funds are expended so they cover actual school expenses.  The school should not be in the business of doling out excess funds to 18 year-olds for discretionary spending.

Just recalling my own college experience, I can tell you the day loan excess was disbursed was like a Roman orgy.  The only thing “school related” about the spending were the excuses for why you couldn’t make it to that 8 a.m. class the next morning.

By making these two simple changes, student loan debt might actually be used in accordance with the goal of getting an education.  It would, at the very least, ensure that degree in social work doesn’t come with a debt you’ll never be able to repay.

I found a number of references to adding international keyboards, but those weren’t doing the trick for my outdated 3GS.

I did, however, discover the trick.  Here’s the easy way to override your dictionary on even the oldest phones.

First, choose Settings -> General -> Keyboard:

Below “International Keyboards,” you will see “Shortcutss”:

Hit “Add New Shortcut”:

Now enter the word you find iPhone continually correcting as both the phrase and the shortcut:

(iPhone changes “hell” to “he’ll”, which I find highly annoying.)

Hit save, and iOS will never correct that word again.

That’s it.  No international keyboards. No hoops.

A la carte for video games! Why should I have to buy the storyline just to get the multiplayer?

Since then, it occurred to me that there is a larger point to be made from that idea.  Everyone agrees that a disk based video game industry is on the way out.  As next generation consoles include more drive capacity, broadband speeds continue to rise; and optical drives fall aside in favor of downloadable content, the idea of a straight download model makes sense.

As delivery changes, the options for sales grow.  Services like OnLive, Steam and the Xbox Live Arcade clearly illustrates that streaming or direct to drive game delivery are models that work.  Given the removal of physical constraints that accompany disks, there is little reason game companies couldn’t provide three versions of a game – multiplayer, storyline, and a combo pack.

If they did, people like me would never buy the storyline again.  I simply don’t find the storyline game all that interesting.  Linear games are boring affairs and open-world can get just as tedious.  Multiplayer is infinitely variable depending on the opposition.  Campers (those cowardly rat bastards) aside, human players make a more interesting game.

If I could buy just the multiplayer for half the cost of the combo pack, I’d buy a lot more games.  My total contribution to the industry wouldn’t drop, but it would be spread out across a wider array of companies.  I suspect a lot of people would do the same.

The possibility of owning a larger library of games I would play (multiplayer) and keeping my drive from being all crudded  up with storyline crap, appeals to me.  I hope the game developers will realize the options available to them and consider breaking up the product.

That said, I’m not about to demand FCC acton to regulate game companies to make that happen.