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With our new laptop and wireless router, my wife and I decided it was time to move our DSL modem off of the floor and onto the desk with the router. Unfortunately, our AT&T issue line from the phone jack to the modem was justthisshort of making the mark. So, I bought a 25ft CAT-5 cable. Nope, that doesn’t work because while the cable is CAT-5, the connectors are regular phone connectors.

So, I did a mad search on the internet to find the name of the connectors. The AT&T/SBC websites were useless. I did manage to find that the connectors were typical RJ-11 (phone line) connectors, but I couldn’t find any CAT-5 cables with those connectors. Then I saw a posting in an online forum that made the light go on.

See, when they hooked up our DSL they didn’t rewire the house, did they? The lines are mostly copper from the main trunks to each house, right? So why wouldn’t a regular old phone cord work? We had an extra one from when we had our TiVo hooked up to the phone line, so we plugged it in. And ya know what? The speed is the same with the regular phone line as it was with the CAT-5 cable plugged in.

So, if you need a little extra line from your phone jack filter to the DSL modem, try a regular phone line before purchasing an expensive ethernet cord with phone hookups, I’ll bet you get the same answer.

Here in Missouri, we’re being bombarded with a campaign for the “Yes for Schools First!” initiative. It’s a great thing for all Missourians, I mean just look at the benefits.

• The Schools First Initiative, a measure proposed for the November 2008 state ballot, will provide new revenues for Missouri schools – without increasing our property taxes or state income taxes.
• Provides over $100 million per year in new revenues to schools by updating the state’s casino regulations and increasing the gaming tax casinos pay to 21%.
• Ensures that these casino tax revenues are used to increase funding for schools – and cannot be used to replace or supplant other education funds.
• Allows Missouri casinos to compete on a level playing field by eliminating outdated chip limit and patron tracking card regulations that do not exist in any other state.
• Limits the number of casinos in Missouri to those already built or under construction.
• Provides additional funding for veterans’ services and other public services from the $2 per visitor excursion fee paid by casinos.

But, there’s a huge elephant in the room that the website ignores. Who is paying for the initiative? Missouri’s casinos. Why? Look at the third “benefit” listed above. This initiative would lift Missouri’s current law that allows a gambler to “only” lose $500 every 2 hours. Oh, and it would limit the number of casinos in Missouri to those already built, which would guarantee no more competition for the casinos.

The gaming industry has been pushing for years to remove the loss limits. They have run into strong resistance from anti-gambling members of the legislature from Southern Missouri and they are hoping that they can bypass these members by going directly to the people of Missouri.

But, let’s do the math here. So, the casinos pay 20% of the gross receipts in taxes. That means that for every five dollars that you lose in a casino four goes to the casino and one goes to the State. Okay, this initiative is promising $130 million to the State in increased tax revenue. If the casinos get four dollars for every dollar the State receives, that means an additional $520 million in revenue for the casinos  ($130 * 4) on top of making sure that there will be no further competition in-state from other casinos.

I could go on and on, but really you get the point (though the FAQs are rather amusing from a cynical political perspective). It’s not that I am opposed to gambling or that I believe that the $500 loss limits should be kept. I think it’s wholly unfair and misleading for the casinos to be fronting a group that claims that the initiative will be nothing but roses and candy for everyone in Missouri with nary a mention of the benefits that the casinos receive.

The NY Times BITS blog has an interesting post today for anyone that subscribes to Charter Communications Internet services. They will begin spying on you to serve you ads based upon what you browse. But it’s good for you!

The five-paragraph letter positioned the monitoring program as an “an enhanced online experience that is more customized to your interests and activities.”

“As a result,’’ the letter said, “the advertising you typically see online will better reflect the interests you express through your web-surfing activity. You will not see more ads — just ads that are more relevant to you.”

As a publisher that runs ads, I’m less than enthusiastic as well. Read the last sentence again. The software basically takes my ads and puts Charter’s over them. So, if you click on an ad you aren’t supporting me, but your ISP whom you are already paying for the right to use the service. There are several smaller ISPs that do this but won’t talk about it. Charter is the first of the big ones to do so and I can’t imagine that AT&T, Time Warner, Verizon, and Comcast will be far behind. As a business, it’s great. I mean you get the revenue instead of the content producer that does nothing but suck up your bandwidth, right?

This software has the possibility to be game changing to bloggers and others that rely on advertising to provide content. If all the ISPs begin superimposing their ads over mine, how do I get paid? I actually lose money on this site now, but it’s nice to at least be able to recoup some of my costs and possibly make a small profit as I grow. With this technology, I won’t be able to.

If I was a Charter customer, I’d be pissed. I already pay them to be able to use the Internet, why should they be able to hijack websites? For that instance, if they can hijack ads why can’t they hijack all sorts of other content? I’m not a huge fan of slippery slope arguments, but many ISP CEOs have long argued that it is their pipes and they should use them how they see fit. What’s to stop them from superimposing Google results to their own content?

I’m sure this won’t be the last we hear of this. While Charter argues that you can opt out, you have to opt out via cookie. Which means if you clear cookies, you have to go and re-opt out every time you do so. Oh, and you have to do it in every browser every time you do so. Of course, if they made it more convenient more people would do it and that would mean less revenue for Charter.

It’s a brave new world for the Internet. Can we just go back to the ethos of 1995? Please?

I promised a post on my thoughts about our MacBook, but the last few weeks have been a blur so I’m just now getting around to it.

My first impression is that I’m amazed that everything just works. It’s part of having the hardware and software built to work together from the beginning. Apple doesn’t have to worry that the OS has to work with every piece of hardware and software that its partners can dream up 10 years from now and has dreamt up in the past 20 years. It’s a closed system, which does have negative effects (find a game changing improvement to the Apple OS, I’ll wait).

So, what do I mean by everything just works? I’ll give you a few examples.

When I’m done working, I close the lid on the laptop. I’m ready to work again, I open the laptop lid and within 10 seconds my desktop comes up exactly as it was before. On my wife’s work Dell laptop, if you close the lid (even accidentally for a moment) the computer freaks out and enters the twilight zone where it’s not quite asleep and not quite awake. To get the laptop back alive, you have to hard restart the laptop. That can’t be good on the OS.

For most programs you simply drag an application to the “applications” folder to install it. While it took me a few tries to figure out what to do, that’s incredibly better than the fifteen screens and options it takes to install Windows programs. Want to uninstall? Drag the icon from the applications folder to the trash and it’s done. All of the files for the program are contained in a folder that looks like the icon. You won’t end up with thousands of orphan .dll files because you aren’t absolutely sure that they are not used by any other applications.

Worried about spyware? The OS won’t install anything without asking you first, which is simply amazing if you think about it. I haven’t logged into the Admin account since first setting up the laptop. Why? Because unlike Windows’ “Run As…” dialog, installing items is really possible from the limited accounts. The OS asks you for the administrator username and password and that’s it. You can run the program from any of the limited users without issue (which I found wasn’t often the case with Windows).

The last nicety really only affects notebooks. I love the two finger scrolling technique. Want to scroll a webpage or document? Simply flick down on the trackpad with two fingers. When I heard about it, I thought it would be awkward. When I was on a Windows laptop, it drove me nuts that I had to use two hands to scroll (hold button and flick).

So, what don’t I like? Well, some of the issues I had with Windows with user rights isn’t fixed with OS/X. The “shared” user really isn’t shared among users and you still have to be in the same user that created the document in order to edit it. I ran into this all the time with Windows. Even things in “Shared Documents” required the Administrator account to edit.

That’s not to say that an Apple is for everyone. While I found the transition easy enough (with a little help of David Pogue’s book) my wife called it a “whole different universe”. Even she’s appreciative of the little touches, like the scrolling and right clicking with two fingers and she has a hard time going back to her Dell laptop without those features.

Overall, I love my Macbook. I do miss Microsoft Money and have yet to find a replacement, but I’m doing okay with OpenOffice and Mint as replacements. I doubt we’ll ever buy a Windows product again. Thanks Vista!

I know this will come as a shock to a lot of people, but it seems that certain members of the Missouri Legislature have repeatedly pushed for ethanol incentives and mandates while reaping the very tax credits and profits that they pushed for. One member in particular, John Quinn (R-Chillicothe), has reaped over $200,000 in tax credits since 2000 (he was elected in 2001).

What’s surprising is the stance that the Legislature has no stance on voting for bills in which the member has a direct personal interest. The House allows, but does not mandate, members to excuse themselves on such bills. The Senate has no rules on conflicting interests. The members don’t even have to disclose the amount of tax credits that they have received on their personal finance disclosure forms.

The executive departments in Missouri have a soft, unpublished rule that no credits will be given to legislators if they own more than 10% of the project. However, one person has managed to take a stand.

Sarah Steelman, current state Treasurer who is running an uphill battle for Governor, refuses to give any project incentives if even a single investor is related to an elected state official or department director. Hooray for her! I’ve said before that Steelman is the one Republican that I have voted for in my young life and it is because of reasons like this.

As an idealist, I simply can’t believe that members would repeatedly vote for bills in which they have a financial interest (Quinn has approved $80m in ethanol incentives, including bills benefiting himself according to the AP story). As someone that watches the process, I’m not surprised but I wish I was closer to my idealist self.

This week I have been traveling for work. I have a Jeep Commander and let’s say that I’m less than impressed with the vehicle.

First, it rides like a Jeep. It’s fun if you’re in Wrangler, not so much in a 7 passenger monster truck. I can’t imagine this selling very well after riding or driving Yukons and Expeditions that simply blow this vehicle away in terms of ride comfort.

Second, this car’s MSRP starts north of $27,000. You think for that they could throw in automatic headlights, or at least headlights that turn themselves off when the car goes off. My 2001 Elantra, which I paid $13,000 in 2001, had automatic headlights. This is simply unacceptable and was a surprise when I pulled out of the garage and had to fumble to find the headlights. I certainly didn’t expect it in a “luxury” SUV.

Third, this car has the autostick feature that allows you to pretend you have a manual. My mom’s BMW had this feature and you had to move the stick over away from the “D” gear to activate it. Not in the Commander. A simple flick is all it takes to downshift the car and throw it into autostick mode. I’ve done it twice in the 20 miles that I’ve driven the car when reaching up to change the radio. And there does not appear to turn off the autostick mode without shifting into neutral and back down into drive. The first time I did it at 70 mph in the dark and suddenly the car shifted into 3rd gear. Not cool.

Finally, the key isn’t one. It’s the plasticky stick that you stick into a slot to start the car. See the picture. Is this really better? Again, fumbling in the dark for the slot is a lot less impressive than simply finding the key slot.

With vehicles designed like this I’m not surprised that Chrysler’s sales are down 18% and they are trying a gas gimmick to move vehicles. I’m not a fan of monster trucks, but most of the time I can at least see the reason that people want them. Not in this case. I’m wholly unimpressed with this vehicle (and I like the Wrangler). Maybe it’s because I haven’t driven a Chrysler since my parents’ Lebaron Convertible, but none of the controls seemed intuitive as the GM, Hyundai/Kia, or Hondas that I’ve driven lately.

Throw in the atrocious fuel economy and the only positives are seven person seating and a decent stereo, and you can get those easy enough without the other negatives.

Just as I suspected, the Bombardier Benefit Act of 2008 sailed through the Senate. In order to win Senate passage, the subsidy was lowered to $320 million from $880 million. Also, the Senate made some changes to “guarantee” that the state gets the money back with interest.

But it gets better. See, I thought that Bombardier actually had to build the plant. Oh, no. The City of Kansas City is building the plant and Bombardier is agreeing to lease it.  That means that Bombardier won’t have to pay property taxes on the $300 million facility either. Sweet.

Oh, and what happens if the company goes bankrupt or decides to pull out of Kansas City? Well, nothing apparently. Except that Kansas City will be left with a large empty factory and a pile of debt to pay on it. I’m sure that a facility that builds airplanes has nothing to worry about though.

Just yesterday I posted about Bombardier’s attempt at getting Missouri to pay them more than twice the cost of a new factory in Kansas City and I mentioned Edward Jones’ tax breaks. I look in the St. Louis Business Journal and once again, EJ comes hat-in-hand looking for more tax abatements.

This time, it’s $17.8 million for a project that has already started in Des Peres, a suburb of St. Louis. That’s right, we’re not even bothering with the whole “I’ll move, I swear I will” song and dance this time. This project was approved and has been started, but the County Executive (Charlie Dooley) says that we should give them a break anyway. Just ’cause.

Look, I dislike corporate incentives (and I think I’ve made that clear) but this is ridiculous. They’re going to do the project anyway! This is free money given to a highly profitable company for no reason other than we feel like it. Why do I care? Because everyone not named Edward Jones, including myself, pays higher taxes when one person gets special breaks.

Instead of doing this, St. Louis County should be using the money to lower everyone’s property taxes and promoting the fact that property taxes are much lower than in neighboring cities (*cough* Chicago *cough*). I’m not for making evil businesses pay higher taxes just ’cause either (and I’ve made that clear), but to simply give them $17.8 million of taxpayer money because they are nice guys seems a little over the top to me.

Okay, so the real score is probably Lobbyists 7,565,545,312,212 Good Tax Policy 1, but in this case the Missouri Senate did the right thing.

See, Bombardier is thinking about building a plant in Kansas City adjacent to the airport. But first, they want to milk the State of Missouri for all it’s got before committing to do so. The Missouri House passed the proposal but a Senate Committee decided that it was too rich even for them and voted it down.

The subsidies would be up to $40 million per year for 22 years. That’s $880 million for Bombardier from the State of Missouri. The plant itself would only cost $375 million, so the company is making over 2:1 on their money with little risk as the enabling legislation only says that a “reasonable” repayment plan be in place before the credits are issued. If Bombardier doesn’t meet the required payroll for the given year they will simply forfeit the credits for that year, not be required to pay back any of the credit previously earned (hey, for Missouri that’s a step in the right direction).

I loathe incentives such as these. Most of them go to taxpayers for doing what they would have done anyway without the subsidies. Of course, Bombardier has to certify that another city or country is in the running and they would only locate in Missouri if they get the credits *wink, wink*.

The legislation is here if you want to read it (why would you?). I don’t expect it to be down long, though. The Missouri Lege is known for handing out incentives like hotcakes (Edward Jones, you hear that?) and the lobbyists will be hard at work in the last 12 days to swing the two GOP Senators back to the yes column.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I upgraded to WordPress 2.5 and that I wasn’t sure about the new interface. Raj Dash at Performancing shortly thereafter put up a post “Why I hate WordPress 2.5“. While hate is a strong word, I definitely agree with a lot of his points.

One of the big problems that I’ve had is future posting doesn’t seem to work. Before, there were big numbers on the right hand side that you changed and the system saved the post with that timestamp. If it was before that timestamp the post didn’t appear. Now, there is a little link that says “Publish immediately” and you have to manually edit that way, that is if it works. There are a lot of reports that future posts get published immediately, even if you want it in the future.

The admin panel is not good. They have changed several of the most important links and put less focus on important links like “Settings” and “Plugins” which are in a much smaller font away from the rest of the links. I could maybe understand that those are “meta” items that only administrators will deal with, but then why put “Design” (the old “Theme” category) next to Manage? Writers won’t deal with the design aspect either.

I understand that the folks at Automattic want new people to use the software and that it’s mainly focused on the WordPress.com folks that actually make money for them, but as someone that has used the software for a couple of years, I shouldn’t have to relearn how to use the admin panel. This is one of the reasons I bought a Macbook rather than a Vista laptop, if I have to relearn a software, I might as well go with the best solution rather than what I am familiar with. When I installed WordPress for the first time, I was absolutely wowed (coming from Movable Type when they began charging for everything). I don’t think that I would get the same impression today. I’m half tempted to throw up a MT installation to see how they’ve changed and evaluate the two next to each other.

I probably won’t go that far, but I’m not impressed with the new version. If you’re still at 2.3.3, I’d stay there. I’d definitely check your plugins as I had one (Semiologic’s Related Posts) that is no longer supported and caused a fatal error when I tried to upgrade my sandbox version to 2.5. I had to delete the install and reinstall the new version (I guess that’s why I have a sandbox).

Does anybody else have blogging software they really, really like? I would have been in the WordPress camp until two weeks ago.