Post Office continues to lose ground/profits to e-mail

Everyone knew that e-mail would have an impact on the Post Office, but after hundreds of years of adapting to technological change, it was hoped that the U.S. Mail would survive and thrive. Instead, it lost another $3.8 billion this year in addition to steady losses previous years.

The post office has been struggling to cope with a decline in mail volume caused by the shift to the Internet as well as the recession that resulted in a drop in advertising and other mail. Total mail volume was 177.1 billion pieces, compared to 202.7 billion pieces in 2008, a decline of almost 13 percent.
For the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 the agency had income of $68.1 billion, $6.8 billion less than in 2008. Expenditures were down $5.9 billion to $71.8 billion.

The Postmaster General has a number of plans to reduce costs in 2010, including closing facilities and possibly reducing or eliminating Saturday delivery.

(Not) Voting for John McCain

As I indicated, I have sent a letter to the RNC and John McCain's campaign on the reasons I do not plan to vote for him. I have done so, and thought I would enclose it here.

To whom it may concern at the Republican National Committee and the Campaign to elect John McCain,

After much soul-searching and observation of recent events, I have decided not to vote for Senator John McCain and the Republican ticket. Instead, I currently plan to vote for the Constitution Party Candidacy of Chuck Baldwin as a protest vote. I have been a faithful Republican voter since George H. W. Bush ran against Bill Clinton (my first election in which I could vote for president). But I find Senator McCain wanting as a presidential candidate, even though I also find myself unable to support Democratic candidate Barack Obama due to his views on abortion and consistently Left-wing voting record.

Rather than simply cast my vote in silence, which would be emotionally satisfying but ineffective, I thought it wise to send an e-mail in which I lay out my reasoning. This might be useful in guiding the Senator in reaching out to voters like me, or to the GOP in a post-election world.

First, let me start with the straw that broke the camel's back for me - the Bailout/Rescue Bill. This bill was concieved with little public scrutiny, rushed to two separate votes, and was passed with no real explanation beyond "We have to do something." While I was always skeptical of the Bill, I was waiting for the Senator or the President to lay out a clear and argued case for why these maeasures were the right ones to address our economic meltdown. Economics is complex, but the causes of the current crisis were not. The solution itself should be explainable and defendable, and the Senator had multiple opportunities to directly address this. He did not. Instead, we were told again last night that "We had to do something" and to trust the machinery of government to work it out. When the machine has already proven itself to be broken - hence the economic turmoil - you simply can not assume the same machine can fit itself. Proof needs to be offered. None was.

Second, the Senator has yet to enunciate a clear and specific philosophy for his campaign. Say what you will about President Bush, he had a fairly clear philosophy and guiding principles coming into each election. It was clear what he planned to do, how he planned to do it, and what his priorities were. Senator McCain is proud of being a "maverick who crossed party lines", but as often as not this has meant going against the apparent philosophical underpinnings of the Republican party. This means that I am never sure which principles are near and dear and which are negotiable. I do know what the Senator plans to do: work on earmarks, focus on reducing corruption, and work towards energy independence, among others. But I am unclear what his priorities are, and when push comes to shove what is his #1. That came across painfully last night in the debate.

Third, the Senator has yet to give a clear explanation of why this is his moment in history. Senator Obama may be inexperienced, but he has made a clear case for why he deserves to be in the White House: returning dignity and dliberation to the process, correcting the wrongs of slavery, and pulling us back from the excesses of Post-9/11 reactions. Senator McCain, on the other hand, has offered a good resume of skills for the office, but has never explained how history points to him being the next logical link in the chain of executive leadership. I strongly respect his record of wartime, his record of service in the Senate, and his record as a man in his personal life. But at the moment, I do not see why he deserves to be president aside from a sense that it is "his turn".

Please note, none of my concerns have to do with the vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. But I do not vote based on who is up for vice-president.

I hope you find this useful, or at least enlightening, in the day ahead.

Thank you for your time.

Alright, folks. Go ahead and tear it apart. And if you have also decided to go third party, I encourage you to compose, send, and post your own letter. This way, at least the major candidates have a chance to respond before the election.

If I recieve a non-form-letter response, I will post it here.

Governor Palin's e-mail hacked

Where do you draw the line between public and private for government officials. Political candidates have long accepted that the press will invade privacy into areas of family and friendships that no private individual has to worry about. But even there, generally people have shown restraint in putting every aspect of an official's life under the microscope. Yesterday, however, an activist group which previously had targetted scientology revealed that they had hacked Covernor Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail and were publishing the results to the world on the website Wikileaks.

This action is unacceptable (and probably illegal). While it was unwise of Governor Palin to do any business on an unsecured server, there is no justification for hacking into the private communications of another person without court order and no logical rationale for making them public record.

Suddenly, I am guessing McCain's people are glad he doesn't know how to use a computer.

If you wondered why Obama is doing so well...

...it may be because he truly understands the internet generation. Exhibit A: this commentary-laden response to a Clinton campaign e-mail. Clearly, Obama gets it, while Clinton sees e-mail as an extension of the junk-mail process.

So the late deciders -- those making up their minds in the last days before the election -- have been shifting to Hillary Clinton. Among those who made their decision in the last three days, Obama won 55% in Virginia and 53% in Wisconsin, but only 43% in Mississippi, 40% in Ohio, 39% in Texas and 37% in Rhode Island.

[If only there were enough late deciders for the Clinton campaign to actually be ahead, they would really be on to something.]

If Barack Obama cannot reverse his downward spiral with a big win in Pennsylvania, he cannot possibly be competitive against John McCain in November.

[If they are defining downward spiral as a series of events in which the Clinton campaign has lost more votes, lost more contests and lost more delegates to us ... I guess we will have to suffer this horribly painful slide all the way to the nomination and then on to the White House.]

Sometimes e-mail is all you need to surf the Web

I have always loved Flickr's e-mail upload process for photos, as it is the way I can upload my gas prices pictures from the road. This article reminds us that Flickr is not the only one who provides an e-mail tool to eliminate the need for web access.

10. pdf@koolwire.com - You have an Office document or a picture on your computer or mobile phone that you wish to convert into a PDF file. Just email that file an email attachment to the above address and it will soon return to your Inbox as a PDF file.
...
1. wsmith@wordsmith.org - Get the dictionary definition and synonyms of any word by sending a blank email to this email address. Make the subject line as: define myword

Click on thru for the full set. You can be sure a number of these will be added to MY iPhone address book!

Sigh. Now 10 Million E-mails Missing from White House Backups

This is a disgrace. Originally, it was believed that 5 million e-mails were removed from White House servers and backups, despite accountability laws requiring all executive branch e-mails be saved. Now, we have learned that it was on the order of 10 million e-mails instead.

OK, it is time for an automated backup of all e-mails in realtime to a secure write-once-read-many domain where the backups can only be destroyed by physical means by order of the President. Then, at least, someone will be accountable for such massive violations.

Pay Per E-Mail

One of the reasons that spam and e-mail scams are profitable is because of the low overhead cost. The number of responses needed for a return on investment is less than 1%. (Somewhere I seem to remember it's around 0.01%.) Wired has up an article about a company named Goodmail that for a quarter of a cent per message will verify the message allowing it to bypass ISPs filters. (This requires the ISP to be using the Goodmail technology). For a broadcast of 5,000,000 e-mails, it will cost the sender $12,500. Using the 0.01% response rate, that means that out of 5,000,000 e-mails, there will be 500 responses for a cost of $25 per responder. Will this stop spam or scams? I doubt it. I'm guessing most spammers and all scammers will make at least $25 off of a responders. Supposedly, if a company hasn't been in business over a year or they have a number of spam complaints, Goodmail will not take their money, but I suspect that spammers and scammers will find ways around it.