I keep on hearing more and more about how we need a bloody, glorious, revolution. We do not. I have paid attention to all that is going on, and Obama and his friends are doing a great job of losing themselves senate elections in 2010 and the presidential election of 2012. Isolated acts of violence will just make conservatives/Libertarians look like terrorists now, and people are jumping on the small government bandwagon, all the independents are beginning to turn to the right, as they see what the Democrats are doing as wrong. Now think, if we had someone who wanted to play Timothy McVeigh at this time, how all that work would have gone to hell in a handbasket.

The idea of taking life, no matter your religious persuasion, is wrong at the core unless it is absolutely necessary. When the government starts detaining people due to their opinions and torturing/killing, that is time. But not when they are bickering over healthcare currently, and Cap and Trade is on the backburner. The idea of going and shooting up a government office or bombing some place makes no sense; the people who work in those places are just trying to make a living, even if they are part of the machine. My mom works for the public schools in my area. Yes, government employees have families, too. The real people behind all of this are the politicians, and the only recourse is to keep the heat on them with letters and calls to tell them they will be voted out of office if they vote for X-legislation.

Other things that I believe about this is that Americans are Americans. It is not solely your area that is the only place that matters. I went on the National Catholic Youth Conference last weekend in Kansas City, Missouri (and I saw quite a lot of Conservative/Libertarian Catholic youth which made me really happy for the future of my Church). I met a lot of people from all over the country. An 18 year old from New Jersey was rather similar to me, partially due to religion, and partially due to the fact that we are both Americans. I don’t care someone’s political beliefs, killing my fellow citizens is especially something I don’t want to think about, unless they are coming after me.

I guess what it all comes down to is how crazy people are for already considering attacking government employees/politicians. Thomas Jefferson’s words have been applied to liberally. There are not foreign armies or hired guns marching down our street, no matter what those conspiratorial ones might say. We still have it pretty good as far as things are concerned. And most in the US military are not content with what Obama is doing, and assuming orders were given to control the people, servicemen would just ignore those orders.

Another thing to consider from history is that Lexington and Concord were due to the towns’ ammunition stores being burned and that “Shot Heard Round The World” that came either from a nervous Brit or a nervous militiaman.

While I believe we need change now, it does not come with a dead neighbor because they happened to vote for Obama or work for a certain politician. The change we need will come through more and more Tea-Parties, protests, and letter-writing and calling campaigns. What we have been doing is working! All Keith Olberman and MSNBC can do is insult us. They don’t know how to match up with honest American taxpayers from ALL WALKS OF LIFE! Yes, I saw an Arabic couple at the Indianapolis Tea Party.

The time is now, just keep the peaceful, non-violent pressure up. But at the same time, be ready in case the government might want to commit acts of violence against us, and in that case only attack who is responsible. A little bit of preparation never hurt anyone!

By James William Maier, of Homecroft Indiana (that’s by Indianapolis)

I first started turning angle brackets into dollar signs on a full time basis in the summer of 2002, a little over 6 years ago (I did contract work, internships, and worked part time before then).

Allow me to tell you a little bit about the ol’ interweb job back then.

The company I worked with was on the cutting edge… of backwards compatibility, that meant that in 2002 we were developing for 4.x browsers circa 1997, Today that would be like developing for IE 6 and Mozilla 1 (as a focus!) so it wasn’t really a big deal it just wasn’t exciting. Tables and spacer GIFs were the name of the game (GIFs were still patented back then you know!) We used Flash too, we tried to publish for Flash 3 or 4, and of course we offered non-flash, non-javascript, non-cookie versions of pretty much everything thing because a surprising number of users back then thought they were bad. Some clients (especially in the the government) were in offices where they used dial-up to connect to the Interwebs from their Windows 98 computers with 640×480 256 color screens, used IE 4 with no plug-ins, no scripts, no cookies… o and they still wanted nice websites. Boy howdy did we deliver! It’s amazing what you can do when you have to.

If you’re wondering just how much things have changed in the way of rich content access I just checked the stats for a couple of popular wide audiences websites I have access to and browsers with no-flash access make up only 1.5% of the the hits, including those from mobile devices. Just for comparison about 3.3% of people in North America are visually impaired, 0.4% are legally blind, 1% are functionally illiterate. How often do you develop with non-flash users in mind? How about the blind or even illiterate ones?

So where is the future?

I see the bulk of the skilled development work shifting from a) making pretty designs, b) marking up content the client wrote, and c) hammering out oodles of non-interactive sites to developing really interactive rich applications.

This might actually mean fewer web designers, and developers over all; but let’s face it, at one time a lot of people made a lot of money by “thinking in fortran” and punching cards, those people didn’t die when the technology changed. We just need to be ready for the changes. A lot of the really dull repetitive, wheel re-inventing jobs will be eliminated, and the people who aren’t capable of moving on will certainly be forced to find new jobs, some of the jobs may move to emerging markets, but don’t expect “basic” web jobs to be sticking around here all that much longer. At-least not very many of them.

CMSs are getting pretty good, rich editors are almost decent and if IE gets it’s act together the lumps with that will smooth out pretty quickly. I’ve even seen a fairly convincing demo of a product that cuts up PSDs into XHTML and CSS automatically.

By 2019 I see development of the typical small business website going a bit like this (and I’m being very conservative here). A designer makes a layout (probably based on something from a library of wireframe designs), perhaps even in a tool which transparently works directly with XML, CSS and SVG (Or whatever code we’re using by then!) bypassing Photoshop (or whatever the big tool is by then) all together (in most cases). That design is point and click marked up for use with a template system and is then plugged into a CMS. The client will fill out the content, which I’m sure will still be difficult to cause to happen, even in 2019.

It’s already pretty close to being the case, all we’re really losing is the skilled work of turning designs into code and plugging them into a CMS, and don’t expect to be doing a lot of work writing CMS software either. How many people are writing new word processors these days? At one time that was the product of the future, Now you have three, Office, OpenOffice and Pages, and you can almost ignore the last two, actually most businesses do. I’m expecting an end to end Adobe solution that actually works, right now they don’t have that, but Adobe isn’t stupid, they’re just slow.

That means Joey McCodemonkey isn’t going to be able to eek out a living turning PSDs into HTML anymore; so what will he do? Well that means Joey is going to have to do what all those programmers who were writing desktop publishing software back in the ’90s had to do when that dried up. He’ll have to get a job doing something else, and for a lot that’s going to be outside of programming. Technology careers have a tendency to chew people up and spit them out. How many programmers do you know? How many who have been doing it for more than 5,10,15,20 years? Those numbers shrink pretty fast don’t they. It’s not like people were not programmers in 1989, sure there might have been fewer but they did exist, and probably in greater number than you’d think.

So what will the Joeys who can adapt be doing?

Well they’re going to be writing apps, web apps but we’re not really going to consider them that because it’s all going to be “web” apps, and you can drop the web because that’s not going to be important. You can call them, internet hosted applications or something if you like. The line between desktop and web apps is already under attack, heck Microsoft tried it with the whole HTA fiasco back in the day. More recently Microsoft, Apple and Google have all been playing around with web based office suites.

So what does it come down to?

Rich, unskilled-human friendly interfaces to important and interesting data, just like desktop apps today, just like desktop apps in 1999. Our idea of what good usable software means changes all the time. In 1989 color terminal based software was the bee’s knees in usable computer software. In 1999 it was rich GUI desktop applications. In 2009 it’s rich web apps. In 2019 it’s going to be rich interfaces delivered over the Internet. What will rich mean? Well I suspect it’s going to be ever more interactive and ever more social. Indeed John Gage was a genius when he came up with the one time Sun Microsystem’s slogan of “The Network Is The Computer”. It’s been lauded as an idea before it’s time, and it only gets more true with time.

When it comes to income, median is better. That’s because very rich, and very poor people individual effect the mean a lot, so one billionaire makes it look like we can all afford more. Or a well off city with a large retired population will look much poorer if they’re counted as zero income

However median income is just the value which splits the pack down the middle. 50% of the population has more, 50% less. That makes it very good for looking at actual experience, especially over time because it reflects a fixed percentage of the population. Let’s say we have a very small town with the following hourly incomes:

1. Kelly the teacher at $8
2. Morgan the tutor at $9
3. Renee the ranch hand at $12
4. Sam the shop keeper at $13
5. Sandy the contractor $35
6. Terry the veterinarian at $50

In our little town the mean (average) rate is $21.17, sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? So perhaps you decide to charge $21.17 to mow someone’s lawns. You figure you’d like to make some extra cash and you probably can only do one house per hour including drive time and that price sounds good to you because most people would figure that it’ll save them nearly an hour anyways. There’s a problem with that you see, only one person in our town of six can actually afford it. At-least with the rational of being able to say “Well that’s less than an hour’s wage!” So say Terry does hire you. You’ll make $21.17 with your little Saturday business. But if you charge the median of $12.50 you’ll get $37.50 for your Saturday’s labor, 77% more. Of course this model gets even more important in populations with millions and a individuals worth billions

In 2006 the median US household income was $58,407 the mean income was 32% higher at $77,315, that can cause you a serious issue. To further illustrate this, in 1947 the median was $3,031 and the mean was $3,546 only 14.5% higher. So when you’re comparing affordability over time, it’s even more critical.

I hope that helps.

I was watching a video about the Ruger 10/22 rifle and the price was mentioned, and how it was priced now, as well as what people have paid for it. That got my wheel turning, and I thought I would do some calculations.

Using the current 10/22-RB model, which I understand is the closest to the original (although no expert) and working backwards from today with the official US inflation data (not the Cost of Living Index) we get some interesting numbers.

Working backwards
2009 $269
2004 $234.68
1994 $184.12
1984 $129.08
1974 $61.25
1964 $38.51

Working forward (using the original MSRP)
1964 $54.50
1974 $86.67
1984 $182.99
1994 $260.55
2004 $332.10
2009 $373.59

That’s a 39% more than you’d pay now! Or you could look at it as paying 28% less than you might expect.

That’s very interesting, however official inflation data is seldom realistic (in my opinion). That’s probably because it comes from governments with a vested interest in making it seem lower than it really is. So on to something more realistic.

In 1964 50% of American households had an income of $6,957 or greater (median*), a 10/22 was 0.78% of that.
In 2008 the median household income was $52,163, and currently a a 10/22-RB is $269 or 0.51%

Thus (by my calculations,) it’s now 35% more affordable than when it was new.

If you wanted to do a better comparison of what the actual economic experience would be like, comparing CLI adjusted percentage of disposable income in the target demographic would probably be better, but I just don’t have the data.

* I’m going to make another simple post explaining why I use median incomes when I do this sort of thing rather than mean incomes.

Details

• It’s starting at Jill’s Parent’s House for snacks and fun at 2:00pm (map)
• At 7:30pm the party leaves for the theater to line up at 8:00pm. The show starts at 10:10pm however we have to line up at 8:00pm! Theater rules mean Jill can not saving you a spot in line! We’ll have games, if you don’t line up you’ll be sitting by yourself, or standing.
• It will be at South Edmonton Common (map)
• The cost: $9.50 this covers the ticket, taxes, and the hidden transaction fees. You do not need a PayPal account to pay, a credit card will do.
• Please remember to enter your name and cellphone number so Jill can contact you!
• If you have to buy multiple tickets you must do this multiple times, sorry.

THIS APPLIES TO YOU! Please enter your name and cellphone number so we know who made the payments and so Jill can contact you day-of so you’ll know what’s going on.

Your Name

Cellphone Number

Sorry there will NO REFUNDS.

Canon Lens Lineup

1. EF 100-300mm f/4.5-5.6 USM
2. EF 100-300mm f/5.6 L
3. EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
4. EF 100mm f/2 USM
5. EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro / Macro USM
6. EF 1200mm f/5.6L USM
7. EF 135mm f/2.8 w/ Softfocus
8. EF 135mm f/2L USM
9. EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM
10. EF 14mm f/2.8L USM
11. EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye
12. EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM
13. EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM
14. EF 17-35mm f/2.8L USM
15. EF 17-40mm f/4L USM
16. EF 180mm f/3.5L Macro USM
17. EF 20-35mm f/2.8 USM
18. EF 20-35mm f/3.5-4.5 USM
19. EF 200mm f/1.8L USM
20. EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM / USM
21. EF 200mm f/2L IS USM
22. EF 20mm f/2.8 USM
23. EF 22-55mm f/4-5.6 USM
24. EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM
25. EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM
26. EF 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 USM
27. EF 24mm f/1.4L USM
28. EF 24mm f/2.8
29. EF 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 II USM / USM
30. EF 28-105mm f/4-5.6 USM
31. EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
32. EF 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6 USM
33. EF 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6L IS USM
34. EF 28-70mm f/2.8 L USM
35. EF 28-70mm f/3.5-4.5
36. EF 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6
37. EF 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 III/ II
38. EF 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 IV USM/ V USM
39. EF 28-90mm f/4-5.6 III / II USM
40. EF 28-90mm f/4-5.6 USM
41. EF 28mm f/1.8 USM
42. EF 28mm f/2.8
43. EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM / USM
44. EF 300mm f/4L IS USM / USM
45. EF 35-135mm f/4-5.6 USM
46. EF 35-350mm f/3.5-5.6L USM
47. EF 35-80mm f/4-5.6 III/ II / USM
48. EF 35mm f/1.4L USM
49. EF 35mm f/2
50. EF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM/II USM†/USM
51. EF 400mm f/4 DO IS USM
52. EF 400mm f/5.6L USM
53. EF 500mm f/4.5L USM
54. EF 500mm f/4L IS USM
55. EF 50mm f/1.0L USM
56. EF 50mm f/1.2L USM
57. EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
58. EF 50mm f/1.8
59. EF 50mm f/1.8 II
60. EF 50mm f/2.5 Compact Macro
61. EF 55-200mm f/4.5-5.6 II USM/ USM
62. EF 600mm f/4L IS USM / USM
63. EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM/ USM
64. EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM
65. EF 70-200mm f/4L USM
66. EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM
67. EF 70-300mm f/4–5.6 IS USM
68. EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III USM/III/II USM
69. EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 USM
70. EF 75-300mm f/4–5.6 IS USM
71. EF 80-200mm f/2.8L
72. EF 80-200mm f/4.5-5.6 II/ USM
73. EF 800mm f/5.6L IS USM
74. EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM / USM
75. EF 85mm f/1.8 USM
76. EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM
77. EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM
78. EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM
79. EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
80. EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
81. EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 USM
82. EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS
83. EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM
84. Extender EF 1.4x II
85. Extender EF 2x II
86. Extenders
87. LifeSizeConverterEF***Tilt-Shift
88. MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro Photo
89. TS-E 24mm f/3.5L
90. TS-E 45mm f/2.8
91. TS-E 90mm f/2.8

Nikon Lens Lineup

1. AF DC-NIKKOR 105mm f/2D
2. AF DC-NIKKOR 135mm f/2D
3. AF DX Fisheye-NIKKOR 10.5mm f/2.8G ED
4. AF Fisheye-NIKKOR 16mm f/2.8D
5. AF Micro-NIKKOR 200mm f/4D IF-ED
6. AF Micro-NIKKOR 60mm f/2.8D
7. AF NIKKOR 14mm f/2.8D ED
8. AF NIKKOR 180mm f/2.8D IF-ED
9. AF NIKKOR 20mm f/2.8D
10. AF NIKKOR 24mm f/2.8D
11. AF NIKKOR 28mm f/2.8D
12. AF NIKKOR 35mm f/2D
13. AF NIKKOR 50mm f/1.4D
14. AF NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8D
15. AF NIKKOR 85mm f/1.4D IF
16. AF NIKKOR 85mm f/1.8D
17. AF VR Zoom-NIKKOR 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D ED
18. AF Zoom-NIKKOR 18-35mm f/3.5-4.5D IF-ED
19. AF Zoom-NIKKOR 24-85mm f/2.8-4D IF
20. AF Zoom-NIKKOR 70-300mm f/4-5.6G
21. AF Zoom-NIKKOR 80-200mm f/2.8D ED
22. AF-S DX Micro NIKKOR 85mm f/3.5G ED VR
23. AF-S DX NIKKOR 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G ED
24. AF-S DX NIKKOR 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR
25. AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR
26. AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II
27. AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR
28. AF-S DX NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G
29. AF-S DX VR Zoom-NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED
30. AF-S DX VR Zoom-NIKKOR 55-200mm f/4-5.6G IF-ED
31. AF-S DX Zoom-NIKKOR 12-24mm f/4G IF-ED
32. AF-S DX Zoom-NIKKOR 17-55mm f/2.8G IF-ED
33. AF-S DX Zoom-NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II
34. AF-S DX Zoom-NIKKOR 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G IF-ED
35. AF-S DX Zoom-NIKKOR 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED
36. AF-S Micro NIKKOR 60mm f/2.8G ED
37. AF-S NIKKOR 14-24mm f/2.8G ED
38. AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED
39. AF-S NIKKOR 300mm f/4D IF-ED
40. AF-S NIKKOR 400mm f/2.8G ED VR
41. AF-S NIKKOR 500mm f/4G ED VR
42. AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.4G
43. AF-S NIKKOR 600mm f/4G ED VR
44. AF-S NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II
45. AF-S Teleconverter TC-14E II
46. AF-S Teleconverter TC-17E II
47. AF-S Teleconverter TC-20E II
48. AF-S VR Micro-NIKKOR 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED
49. AF-S VR NIKKOR 200mm f/2G IF-ED
50. AF-S VR NIKKOR 300mm f/2.8G IF-ED
51. AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 200-400mm f/4G IF-ED
52. AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED
53. AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED
54. AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED
55. AF-S Zoom-NIKKOR 17-35mm f/2.8D IF-ED
56. Micro-NIKKOR 105mm f/2.8
57. Micro-NIKKOR 55mm f/2.8
58. NIKKOR 20mm f/2.8
59. NIKKOR 24mm f/2.8
60. NIKKOR 28mm f/2.8
61. NIKKOR 35mm f/1.4
62. NIKKOR 50mm f/1.2
63. NIKKOR 50mm f/1.4
64. PC-E Micro NIKKOR 45mm f/2.8D ED
65. PC-E Micro NIKKOR 85mm f/2.8D
66. PC-E NIKKOR 24mm f/3.5D ED

And yet I still picked the Nikon.