Some of the better pieces I write are not usually initially thought as rants or rambles and more as a normal reply to a message. In my current work I have been blessed with several peers (and one in particular) that are constantly feeding my too-easy-to-trigger rant-buttons. Sometimes I realize I have started yet another kilometric message after I hit the «Send» button and appreciate the recipients being patient with them. This is one such exchange. It was spawned by an article in marshasllbrain.com that talked about how, in 50 years, the world will be ruled by robots (humanoid robots, no less).

—–Original Messages—–
From: Eduo [mailto:email suppressed]

Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 2:56 PM
To: Bob [mailto:email suppressed]
Subject: Food for thought

http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm

(admittedly, some of the thoughts you’d be feeding would be cool, sci-fi ones, but I wouldn’t say that out loud, in fear of sounding pro-mech or anti-hum, to coin two phrases)

Eduo

———-
From: Bob [mailto:email suppressed]
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 3:25 PM
To: Eduo [mailto:email suppressed]
Subject: RE: Food for thought

I will probably be dead or at least retired by the dates he mentions, so I’m not quite as worried as I would be if I were younger. What I worry most about is that the upcoming generations will be able to provide me what I need when I’m old and feeble. :)

History has been full of people being overly pessimistic (as well as overly optimistic) about the effect of technological changes on society. I’m sure people were predicting gloom and doom as the Industrial Revolution got really going. What can happen is that as some types of jobs are eliminated other new ones are created.
(In italics above are the two messages preceding my rant below)

—–Original Message—–
From: Eduo [mailto:email suppressed]
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 4:05 PM
To: Bob [mailto:email suppressed]

Subject: Food for thought

Gloom and Doom may mean different things to different people. Back when the industrial revolution hit, those not willing to do anything else than what had done for twenty years were probably affected.

I see is as evolution, tho’. Nature’s selection of the fittest has adapted to new times, I guess, and «fittest» means other than having good birthing hips, being able to munch on stale meat instead of dying of food poisoning or having the longest hair to be pulled by horny cavemen (if we believe in cartoons).

I was thinking of sending an e-mail on my thoughts to this person, thinking of making both a «pro» and a «against» cases for his theories, the intent being that it’s easy to rationalize any future development. You don’t have anything to lose, if you’re not correct nobody will remember but if you are you’ll be recognized as a visionary.

I do believe that more and more things will be automated, because that is nothing new, it’s been an ongoing trend for years now and doesn’t look like it’s going to stop. I don’t believe humanoid robots would be used for anything else other than making people comfortable with non-humans being around. I don’t believe we would ever see robotic waiters in a fast-food joint for anything other than hipness or shock value, but I do believe you’d be able to go to the drive-in, punch what you want and have it waiting in a (n unmanned) window further down the lane. This to me makes sense. Having a robotic person doing the sale doesn’t. I don’t believe the two ends of the spectrum for food places (the mon’n pop coffee shop or the ultraexpensive french restaurants, for example) will ever disappear any more than I believe printed, non-computer-dependant books will be popular in the next twenty years (I do believe alternatives could crop up, like intelligent paper/ink or sintehtic replacements for wood pulp).

Also, there’s the fact that he fails to acknowledge 4/5ths of the world, where having someone to do the cleaning for you costs 10 bucks a day (that’s Mexico, and it’s expensive compared to India or South Africa or China), which means that a 10K robot would take 3 years to pay itself for the same work (more if, like me, you have someone come over twice a week instead of daily).

I believe that we’re going to see more proliferation of small, specific appliances, like we currently have. We like tools but we like to feel we control them. Like in Physically control them. An Aibo pet-dog is cute but most importantly is small and manageable, a roomba vacuum cleaner is a robot that vacuums the house, but I bet it wouldn’t be nearly as popular if it was the size of Robbie, the Robot. We like our washing machines, dishwashers, dryers, automatic cruise control in the car and autopilots in planes, home alarm systems and tie racks for the closets and they are exactly that, specialized robots. I feel appliances like Roomba would crop up more and more and instead of having a humanoid robot (which while being admittedly able to fit in a humanoid environment is far from being a perfect or even somewhat optimal shape). By the time we’re completely at ease among technology and robotics we won’t mind much them not being humanoid, in the same way we don’t expect a dishwasher machine to look like it’s rubbing plates and forks.

Again, all of this is speculation and while it’d be fun to see how it turns out being optimistic or pessimistic about it is as pointless as deciding which of them is worth investing in the future. Most of the technology leaps and changes in lifestyle were unexpected and unplanned, usually being a side effect of other intents (astronauts don’t like plain water, so we have Tang; two guys want to get as far from Dayton as possible, so we have supersonic planes now; somebody messes up a project for a new kind of glue and we can paste little yellow notes in a monitor; etc.) that trying to predict is like trying to hit a bullseye with a shotgun in a dark room while being blindfolded, upside down, hanging from a ceiling fan and being tickled… with boxing gloves: A fun exercise but of little actual value other than see how it turns out.

I’d keep on typing, seems kind of effortless today for some reason, but I better stop, as by now your eyes must be kind of glazed and fixed in some point between the glass and your nose, thumbing the page down button just to get to that blissful part where the window is blank..:)

Today, for the Nth time the topic in MacSlash has switched to GPS programs in OSX (or the lack thereof). For some weird reason I decided to reply to a post there and my comment ended up covering several things of the GPS status and future on the Mac. Not interesting, not groundbreak but hell, it’s not as if someone reads this anyway. You can find the actual post in MacSlash here and the original post is here and the MacSlash article sits here. The comment here is annotated and included URLs I was too lazy to include in the MacSlash post.

NOTE: This is one of the most exceptionally badly-written pieces I have made in a LONG time. It wanders between subjects, implies too much, leaves even more to the reader and has some run-on sentences in there that even Henry Miller would envy.

Text from Original post: GPSdrive works perfectly. you can fink it today.
«Perfect» is a little strong. «Acceptably» might be more accurate.

(Regarding GPSDrive)
In OSX there are conflicts with access to the GPS devices if you use Serial adapters, you have to know a little more than just the basics to set it up, runs under GTK under X11, so it doesn’t look or behave like a mac application (nor can it properly interact with other applications), has some problems with scaling of the maps downloaded, is a huge PITA to calibrate maps and they never are correct and buttons don’t work properly out-of-the-compile-box. It also doesn’t handle waypoints and routes adequately and doesn’t give any control to the user on zoom levels nor is it’s «moving map» feature worth a damn.

I use it and love it, by the way, but to each his own, and GPSDrive is no Street Atlas and while you will enjoy it if you download and use it without prejudice, you might not like it if you’re expecting a free Street Atlas.

Also, GPSDrive supports speech in Linux and Linux alone, in case that was a selling point. It’s Airport (WiFi, 802.11b, etc.) support (for wardriving) is pretty complicated and requires Kismet, which doesn’t work properly in OSX and doesn’t work with Airport Extreme at all.

Also, GPSDrive (and any other independent GPS program for that matter) only does basic GPS mapping, no street navigation of any sort. This is not a matter of, as some poster put it there, «just making it»; for as many OSX might there be that would use it you need to pay some HEFTY licenses to have a country’s navigation maps (street level with street numbers and street directions and UPDATED). So you get the possible public for such a program to the mac user in a specific country (that is, a fraction of the current 3% or so of computer users that currently run Macintosh OSes, of which 50% or less use OSX and of which less than 5% use or would pay to use GPS).

A GPS program is a great thing, but Apple needs to do something (and I say Apple because they are the ones with less to risk when releasing new functionality or programs for OSX) to revolutionize GPS usage in OSX. I have in the past considered (especially now that even the Woz is into GPS) that Apple should make an iMap or i’Mhere or iPlace or whatnot that gives OSX the support it requires for GPS programs to be easily developed. What would this be?

1.-GPSd-like daemon that supports NMEA and Garmin, that supports transfer of routes, waypoints, tracks, maps and anything else a modern GPS receiver might understand. Programs would be able to call this through the OS (something gpsd has, to some extent -although it hasn’t been updated in ages- done for Unix systems)

2.-A simple map program that connects and downloads maps (heck, use Sherlock and give it a much-needed boost with that, tie it up with the current search for movie theaters or addresses) by striking a deal with Mappoint or Mapblast or Mapquest (selecting a service that supports several countries would be a bonus, although Expedia’s support of satellite photos is COOL).

2.1.-Even better would be for Apple to purchase street-level maps of countries it has presence in (for example, those for which Web Apple Stores exist), but it’s even more unlikely than the rest of my already-too-long post.

3.-Number 2 could also include the ability for OSX to be able to pull driving information from said services and to pull maps freely without limitation (see my NOTE below). Such an agreement would allow a program in OSX to download maps freely (or up to a specific «X» amount based on the .mac account)

4.-If the connections were easy other developers would find it easier to make native programs for Map location and GPS support (instead of half-baked OSX programs, VPC solutions or Classic applications) in the same way that now lots of programs can take advantage of the addressbook or iCal or iTunes.

5.-This would bring Apple into a realm not yet touched by Windows (GPS support natively implemented into the OS) and would also make OSX inherently compatible with WOZ’s new venture (GPS tracking devices for people and things) where a Powerbook could work as a soft-client behaving in the same way their current chips are supposed to behave in the future (Airport/WiFi and GPS together) or as a sort of central-node for such a network.

As you can see I would REALLY want something like this to happen and have even thought on doing so myself, but the learning curve to Cocoa from scratch is a hard and unforgiving path, and my knees are already scrapped. The kind of application I would make and have envisioned would look like one of the iApps and would NOT be like MacGPSPro or GPSy, which with all the greatness they have and hard work put into them, are uncanningly difficult to use and understand and have a learning curve that is almost surreal. It would look like a simple program, yet provide a lot of behind-the-scenes functionality (like currently AddressBook does), and it would also meld naturally with .mac technologies and with the Digital Hub direction of Apple.

I will stop now. Thank you. Mod me down accordingly, so others don’t have to see all this drivel..:)

Eduo

NOTE: A problem with most independant GPS programs is that they rely in Map Web Pages which are always trying to limit the access to them, as direct download of the maps means a possible loss of revenue when ads are skipped. This also means batch-downloading of maps (the only reasonable function of internet downloading of maps for on-the-road GPS machines, as you can’t easily connect when hiking to download a new map) has made several servers in the past change their formats and protocols (for them is a no-win situation, as they serve maps, waste tons of bandwidth and processor-cycles yet receive no input at all by use of ads or the connections for hotels and other amenities)

NOTE2: Obviously the main problem with GPS is that it doesn’t work indoors easily, which limits it’s usefulness when considering its integration with a desktop OS like OSX, although alternatives could exist (Create a hardware wireless antenna that connects through Airport or Bluetooth, create a PDA with GPS support, officially support a third-party PDA like Palm, etc.)

SPL has posted a Soapbox entry in his website in Haxial about the benchmarks Apple is using to tout the G5 as the «fastest desktop computer in the world» and this simple article has generated a flurry of messages and flames completely out of proportion. I post here the personal reply I sent to him on the article.

NOTE: Text has not been changed from original, so it’s addressed to him directly.

Hello.

I guess all the mail about this entry in the soapbox is actually being taken from the MacNN forums but, since I have no desire to participate in them I thought I could post a reply here. Probably one of hundreds and probably one that won’t be paid much attention.

Still, I thought I had to pitch in to try and balance the barrage of message from fanatic zealots out there.

First of all I’d like to know if you’ve received any «challenge mail» and if you were thinking of putting that up as well (as bigoted hate mail is an easy target to which you aren’t obliged to answer rationally). A serious and rational exchange may ensue with the «other» mails.

Second: Although I agree with your comments and think that you are correct in all that you wrote about the benchmarks I also have to mention that anyone that purchases solely based on benchmarks deserves to find unpleasant surprises. Benchmarks should only be an important factor when all other things in a comparison are equal (which clearly is not the case when pitting PC’s with either Windows or a flavor of Unix-type OSes like Linux against Macintosh computers with MacOS X, hence referred as «Macs»). I have seen benchmarks (specially those generated by private companies, even using third-party entities) to be always biased, and this applies to AMD, Intel, Motorola, IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Linux and even Google.

Third: I agree that Apple should either prove there is a stronger foundation behind their claims of benchmarks or their claim to the «title» of «the fastest computer in the world» (paraphrased, exact wording not important as we all know what was actually stated) or at least extend their explanation to «according to a private benchmark conducted under Apple Instructions by Veritest under special controlled circumstances» or something, which is common in the industry as a disclaimer against any complaints and would make the whole thing at least a little more true.

Fourth: Apple doesn’t have misleading prices. Misleading prices would mean that there were hidden costs or that the price is not accurate. It IS accurate, to all of our knowledge. If they say it’ll cost $2999 then it’ll cost as much. This is also not apple’s fault. Most sites when selling bundled equipment (doesn’t apply in BTO places, as it’s not controllable, depending on the options chosen) or single parts do this. It’s a common practice widely thought to give the impression of the price being cheaper. This is still not misleading pricing in the same way two identical machines in which one of them has a cool design and the other is a plain beige box is not a proof that the former has a misleading design. Also: I have yet to hear somebody mention a $2999 price as either «Two thousand dollars» or «two-thousand, nine-hundred and ninety-nine dollars». EVERYONE I know would say «three thousand dollars», as the rounding has become commonplace everywhere in the world nowadays (and we tend to shorten prices to the closest number naturally).

Fifth: I personally find it in very poor taste (even as you mention in your soapbox index, you’re exercising your «freedom of speech») that you attacked a Mac user for being happy or excited about a new machine. This user is not a company or testing entity that can be questioned on what he or she believes is a cool product. What makes a product excellent and what makes it crappy is, for the most part, a subjective concept and it may very well be that for him this G5 machine was «WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY» beyond expectations. That’s a subjective statement that, although can be questioned, substracts professionalism from your whole article (which, for the most part, was indeed rational and professional). The fact that this very same user would probably become afterwards a flamer and send hate mail written hastily and with poor grammar doesn’t deter that he shouldn’t be attacked for what he subjectively believes (answering to hate mail is OK, tho’, as it’s a directed attack to the «hated» and, thus, makes it deserving of an answer, hopefully with better arguments thant «you wrote ‘their’ incorrectly», but I digress).

Sixth: I do recognize that you are indeed a Mac user (if not exclusively) and although I personally hate your interfaces for your programs (a direct result of the graphics kit you use) I do admit that your products are cool and useful, I just wish you’d use the native widgets and graphic elements of each platform, as the things currently stand out horribly against my other programs, in Windows and MacOS (I do acknowledge the standard widgets in both platforms may be lacking certain elements you do use frequently, like window-specific contextual menus). I just wanted to make it clear I don’t think you’re a PC bigot slandering Macs or antyhing. Anyone that browsed around your website (even if they had never even read the «haxial» name anywhere, which is difficult if you do move within the Mac world) could’ve found that, so the posts about you not even using a mac are kind of moot.

Seventh: The actual point of my post, which has been probably stated before either to you directly or through the posts in MacNN’s forum: Mac users have never used benchmarks as their reason for picking up macs. Macs have never been the fastest machines in the world and they probably won’t. Trying to make it, all of a sudden, a relevant factor is stupid and, to me, is actually detrimental to the true reasons any current Mac user has chosen a mac in the past. Truth is most mac users have different reasons for choosing a mac, not the least is «having something different to set myself apart from the rest» (which is probably a lame reason and the same most «out-of-the-norm» groups exist. The worst too) but a lot of them chose macs because they were either easier to use, prettier to look at or prone to be bragged about, friendlier, better integrated, more reliable hardware from a brand-name computer (opposed to a self-built computer), greater lifespan and less need to get «in the guts» of the computer, both in hardware and in the OS, as well as less prone to attacks of different kinds (virus, malicious users, etc.). All of these are valid reasons and, to me, way more important than Benchmarks. Apple may be at fault for bringin benchmarks, which have never been their forté, to the spotlight, but mac users (and all other users who should know better) wouldn’t be being smart if they also took it as the most important factor to consider (or not) macs. They have never been a reason, making them a reason now is completely pointless. Apple may be at fault here, but I do blame the users for letting themselves be carried by this (which is probably a byproduct of we mac users never having been able to brag about speed in the past and having «arguments» to do so now, forgetting we always said «speed isn’t everything»).

This is more a rant than a specific opinion on a specific point in your article. I think it could be summed up in:

1.-Don’t only show hate mail. You must SURELY be getting rational mail you can also answer with something other than a witty retort.

2.-Don’t attack personal subjective opiniones, attack objective/stated facts that could be practically challenged. (challenging Apple is OK, challenging a user who just happens to be too effussive or too sentimental is a cheap shot that indirectly is aimed at all the other users who may not share his/her opinion.

4.-Don’t manipulate concepts. «Misleading» is not the same as «Making something look more attractive». The former is a step away from an (illegal, BTW) outright lie, while the latter is just simple (and legal) marketing.

3.-You attack Apple’s benchmarks (with facts, I also should mention) yet you’re a mac user. It would be interesting to see your perspective in this as a mac user. Why do you use Macs? Would you use something else if you could? What would you advocate in the platform you use? This is not directly related to your Benchmark article, but more related to the reason you still choose a Mac to work on (if not exclusively).

Eduo

Note: I use PC as a synonym for Intel-based or Intel-Compatible, IBM-Compatible Personal Computer based in the x86 chipset. As PC is shorter and widely used. A Mac is of course a PC, and is actually a PC from a company widely regarded as the creator of the PC concept with the Apple I (although this is debatable as well, still I’m using common concepts)

Eduo

PD: Please excuse my poor english. It’s not my native language and I sometimes make awful mistakes. Try and look past them if you do answer. I do appreciate corrections and welcome them, but not as the only possible reply to a message.

I have no idea if I read this somewhere or I made it myself. I do like it, tho:

«If I were a U.S. citizen I’d rather have a president that gets a hard-on from women -tastes aside- than from nuclear missiles thrown to third-world countries».

I may be missing a point or two there. I don’t care much either. If the worst you can complain about a president is that he smoked pot in high-school or college and that he likes to frolic in the oval office with interns I’d be happy. If this are such big deals I also wonder, as a non-US citizen, why then is all the love there for JFK? The man was known for being a wild partyman and even wilder ladies’ man. Double standards or moron-standards? You choose. Nobody reads this so I couldn’t care less about opinions..:)

De acuerdo a todos los consejos de mis amigos, lo mejor que puedo hacer antes de viajar a España es sacar mi nacionalidad Española desde México, para aprovechar las ventajas y facilidades que la madre patria puede darme para re-emigrar. Esto suena muy simple y fácil, pero… Aquí un rápido recuento de lo que se necesita para sacar dicho pasaporte, incluyendo perros en las azoteas, mariscos a la mantequilla y 100 kilómetros de carretera… (Ah, y MUCHA lluvia!)
Continuar

La gente busca e intenta tomar las decisiones correctas en los momentos que considera importantes en su vida, considera la universidad a la que va, la edad correcta de casarse, el vecindario en el que va a vivir, el lugar donde quiere trabajar. Todo esto es importante, si, pero lamentablemente la gente olvida que docenas de decisiones se toman, todos los días, durante todo el día y que, como la mariposa de las teorías del caos, estas pequeñas decisiones son las que, a la larga, realmente dan forma al camino que se sigue años despues…

Es gracioso, uno piensa que la vida es algo que se puede planear. Que se puede decidir como va a salir y que va a ser. Uno coloca sus cartas y va jugando, esperando estar haciendo lo correcto.
Lo interesante, y es algo que poca gente se pone a pensar en su vida, algo que sólo sucede si se tiene una vida un poco más movida que el promedio (mas de una ciudad o país en los que se ha vivido, por ejemplo), es que por más que la vida se intente planear, y se tomen decisiones grandes e importantes son las decisiones pequeñas, las que en el momento parecen inocentes y sin consecuencias, las que realmente hacen los cambios más grandes:

-Un día decides acompañar a un amigo a su ciudad y visitar a sus amigos porque no querías quedarte sin hacer nada el fin de semana, 5 años después estás casado con la chica que conociste ese día.
-Tu novia es muy celosa, así que en vez de salir con amigos y amigas te pasas 12 horas al día en un salón de informática. Lo siquiente que sabes es que 7 años después te dedicas a computadores en vez de bioquímica.
-Un día tomas el teléfono de una amiga, para ayudarla a distraer a otra mientras la primera trabaja, bromeas y te ríes y lo siguiente que sabes es que has encontrado a la mujer de tu vida y todo tu mundo cambia y te cuestionas todo lo que antes pensabas eran tus ideas básicas sobre tu vida y tu futuro.

Mucha gente se mortifica sobre las decisiones grandes de su vida, pensando que puede dirigir voluntariamente hacia donde se mueve moviendo solo ciertos nodos, ciertos puntos. «Si elijo la universidad adecuada», «si espero a la persona adecuada», «si me caso antes de los 25». La gran ironía es que nada de esto importa. Las decisiones importantes de la vida si lo son, pero no más que las que pasan desapercibidas.

Lo unico que queda: Hacer lo mejor posible en cada situacion sin que el que sea una gran decision o no tenga que ver. Todas son grandes al final del dia.

Hace unos 10 meses decidí que había llegado el tiempo de regresar a mi país, despues de pasar 15 años en México. Esta decisión llegó un poco de la nada, sin tener que ver con ningún tipo de problema. Uno de esos momentos en la vida en los que te das cuenta de que el momento ha llegado de seguir adelante con lo que sigue. Todo se veia muy fácil y claro.
…

Entonces llegó Itzel…

Verás. Hace poco menos de un año algo, no puedo decir qué, sucedió en mi vida -probablemente la suma de muchos factores diferentes- que hicieron que finalmente decidiera regresar al país donde nací, del que salí hace 25 años y en el que vive toda mi familia.
Mi vida tenía de nuevo una dirección, una decisión que llevaba masticando en la cabeza por 10 años por fin tenía una fecha límite y empecé a intentar ir hacia ese camino. Hablé con mi jefe en el trabajo, hablé con mi familia y amigos, todo parecía estar decidido. Todo parecía estar, increíblemente, bajo control.

Entonces un día, sin ningún tipo de capacidad para predecir el futuro, tomé el teléfono de Esther, una amiga, y me puse a conversar con una amiga suya, sin mayor intención de pasar el rato mientras Esther terminaba unos reportes del trabajo.
Debería, en este punto, dejar claro que aunque quienquiera que lea esto puede ver a kilómetros lo que podría suceder, la realidad es que ni yo ni Itzel -que éste es el nombre del ángel en cuestión- veíamos venir lo que finalmente sería la razón de que yo esté escribiendo esto ahora.
Por supuesto, empezamos a salir como amigos. Todos los días. Saliamos a cenar, al cine, nos enviábamos mensajes de celular.
Poco a poco, a lo largo de tres mes, fuimos contándonos toda nuestra vida. Eramos amigos, así que podíamos contarnos todo, lo bueno y lo malo, sin preocuparnos mucho por guardar las apariencias (porque esta es una de las únicas ventajas que las amistades tienen sobre la mayoría de las parejas, se es más real y se aceptan más las diferencias entre los involucrados).

El resto de la historia es parte de otro episodio…

Fabuloso. Acaban de robarme mi móvil celular. No se dónde, no se quién, no se cuando, pero acabo de darme cuenta. Llame a mi número y contestaron, pero al explicar quien era me colgaron. Así que por supuesto fui a cancelar el número. En la compañía celular me dijeron, cortésmente que claro, pero que tendría que pagar la reposición del teléfono de 2 mil pesos porque no pagué el seguro que costaba 30. Obviamente no sabía ni siquiera que tenia que pagar el seguro (que la forma para pagarlo me la explicaron y es obscura y desconocida, y después de una rápida encuesta entre amigos por aquí totalmente desconocida para todos, tampoco encontré información en el sitio de información de la compañía al respecto), pensando que estaba incluído en el ya bastante oneroso plan por minutos que tenía. Irónicamente si contratara una línea nueva el teléfono no tendría costo, sería gratis… E incluiría una cámara digital. Gracias, TELCEL, por ser una compañía que considera los intereses de sus clientes, incluso de aquellos que solamente llevamos 7 años utilizando sus servicios!… Diablos.

I just lost my celphone. I’m guessing I left it somewhere. When I realized I called the number and I had it answered and when I identified myself whoever had the phone hung up on me. Now the phone is off. I just called the celphone company and they said that since I hadn’t paid the 3 bucks insurance costs (which I didn’t even know I had to pay) I’d be charged 160 dollares for a replacement. I vocalized the comment that new celphone plans include this very same phone (Ericsson T68i) for free but they said that if I wanted to keep the number I’d have to pay for the replacement. Don’t you love this all?

I have wondered in the past. Bloggers seem to have a dilemma when posting to their blogs. They don’t know if to make short, concise, quotable posts or long-winded diatribes. When people make both they usually make the former sound like forced witticisms and the latter like attempts at tuppence literature.

Usually most blog-ers master one of the two styles and dabble in the other from time to time. Me? I’m bad at both.