Bonjour

To my 3 loyal readers, sorry for the long delay in posting. I just returned from an 18-day holiday in France, driving around the countryside trying very hard to avoid getting killed by crazy French drivers.

As I mentioned previously, my daughter has been studying in Paris under the study abroad program so we decided to join her at the end of the semester and tour the countryside for a couple of weeks. I suppose I could have stolen a few hours here and there to write a brief post or two, but the reality is that there are very few places to get on the internet in rural France. We had a laptop with us but I barely had time late in the evening to upload and organize our digital pictures, given the way that my wife likes to organize vacations. Lets just say that she likes to “fill the day.”

So, now that I am back in the land of large cars and wide streets, I finally have some time to collect my thoughts. The first thing I noticed in France, even in Paris, was that except for business usage, the internet does not appear to be nearly as much a part of people’s lives as here in L.A. As I mentioned previously, the American University doesn’t require that students submit their reports or even get their assignments online. When they need to do research online, most students just use the shared workstations at school or go to an internet cafe. The latter is still very common for private e-mail or casual internet use. When they do have a computer at home, most use dial-up rather than broadband. We all got the strong impression that the French just don’t see the internet as being important in their personal lives. Here in Los Angeles, it is rare for people to not have a private e-mail account and internet cafe’s are fast becoming a thing of the past.

The second interesting part of my trip was getting around. We were lucky and got an upgraded car with a navigation system. Truth is, I hadn’t even thought about asking for one and was pleasantly surprised when I sat down in the car. In fact, when the screen first came to life with some sort of welcome notice in French, I first thought it was just a fancy audio system that was going to be difficult to translate. When I noticed GPS in the corner, I thought, wow, it”s going to be fun to see if this thing is really what people rave about.

Although in past blog posts I have made comments about GPS technology, this was the first time I had a chance to really test it out. It turned out to be extremely useful, especially in the circumstances we found ourselves in France. After picking up the car and navigating our way to our timeshare the old fashioned way, I sat down in the evening and studied the instruction book a bit. I then went out to the car while my wife and daughter were getting organized and worked my way though the commands to get the language changed to English. That took several minutes as the DVD uploaded and reset everything. Then this pleasant female voice with a British accent said hello and announced that the process was finished.

Over the next few days, we figured out how to use the various features with my wife entering in each destination, picking from among different routes offered, and trying the various settings for fastest route, shortest route, avoiding motorways, etc. The system also had data for tourist spots, gas stations, etc, but we didn’t find those to be very useful, opting to just enter in the city center and then finding our way around. Monique, as I decided to call her even though she had a British accent, was really quite smart. Although she didn’t always send us on routes that I would have picked, she always got us to our destination. Whether I picked shortest route or fastest route, she seemed to favor these tiny little rural roads that were barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other, some that forced one car partly off the road. This was pretty nerve racking for me given the speed that French people drive. There were many times I wondered if we would meet a big tour bus or truck around the next bend and that would be it for us. I’m sure that many people were cursing the fact that I was only driving the speed limit as they flew up behind me anxiously waiting to pass.

Of course, there were a number of mistakes in Monique’s database – things like one-way roads she tried to send us into, non-existent roundabout exits, telling us to turn into the middle of a wheatfield, even roads that were not on her map at all making it appear on her screen as if we were off-roading it. After several days we learned that we couldn’t just trust Monique implicitly. We had to do three things: listen to her voice instructions, glance at the on-screen map for clarification when a complex intersection was coming up, and pay attention to the signs. In Europe even with a GPS system, a good gut-level sense of direction is still an essential ingredient to successfully getting around.

When things went smoothly, I was feeling pretty good knowing that the person behind me hadn’t a clue that I was a tourist, navigating roundabouts and complex intersections quickly and confidently. I must say that there were very few times where we were stopped in an intersection arguing and frantically pointing this way or that way.

At one bed and breakfast we were staying at, the hosts commented about a bad experience they had with their first navigation systems. Apparently this one was pretty inaccurate, earning her the title “navi-bitch.” They said that they had to decommission her and get a replacement. For some odd reason, my first reaction was to come to Monique’s defense. After all, she hadn’t gotten us lost even once, and even amazed us at how well she led us through unmarked narrow streets in towns and villages and along country roads that we never would have tried.

Even though we had only been using it for about a week, we all came to the same conclusion: when renting a car in a foreign country, request a GPS system. With a little luck, the map data will be up to date and accurate and your travels will be greatly enhanced, Who knows, you may also develop a close personal relationship with him or her.

Half-Life of a Gizmo

In the human body, the half-life of most tissues is around two weeks. That is, it takes about two weeks for half of the molecules of a particular kind to be replaced. Some last longer, like calcium in bones, some much shorter. For instance, three million red blood cells die and are replaced every second. So naturally, being an engineer, I started wondering what is the half-life of an electronic gizmo? How much time will pass before half of the iPods sold today get replaced or made obsolete by something better?

For some things, the turnover rate is extremely short. Cellphones are in that phase now, as providers consolidate and upgrade their systems, and new features pop up every few months. Digital cameras are changing very fast as well, with prices on the decrease and features rapidly improving. Home computers continue to improve steadily, but they seem to have stabilized quite a bit, now that processor speed and storage space is no longer a big deal for most people. For some other things, like stereo components and TVs, prices have stayed about the same and the rate of change hasn’t been very fast. That will pick up though when the cost of plasma and LCD screens comes within reach of middle class consumers and the production numbers really take off.

So if you’re not a tech-obsessed “early adopter” and you’re comfortable waiting for the second or third generation of a product to come out, how do you judge when it’s time to buy? What I recommend is to pay attention to where the product is in it’s development cycle.

By development cycle, I don’t just mean the part of product development that occurs before an item starts manufacturing. I like to extend it out to include the first couple of product generations after a new item is introduced. New products come out all the time that have been rushed into production with little or no real-life testing by regular people. Awkward keyboards, poorly thought-out menus, buttons too small; all these things tell me that a product was designed in a hurry and is not ready for prime time. When you buy it, you are volunteering to be part of the development team, at your own expense.

If the gadget you are salivating over has been out for a while and gone through at least one major upgrade, or if it is the second or third entry into the market, you will usually get better value for your money than if you had purchased the first off the assembly line.

But here’s the catch. The downside to being a late adopter is that you have to contend with the obsolescence factor. Just as they get the bugs worked out and the ergonomics improved, out comes some totally new gizmo that changes the playing field once again. My guess is that the half-life of innovative new stuff is no more than 2-3 years. Not counting the tech addicts who upgrade their stuff every 9 months or less, most people will try to get several years of use out of their phone or laptop or mp2 player.

So, what does all this mean? It means that whole truckloads of not-so-old technology are being retired every day. Perfectly good phones, appliances, calculators, CPUs and CRTs are being put out of service. It’s a shame really.

What happens to all those gizmos that have been marginalized, rendered obsolete, disenfranchised? Some get recycled on E-Bay, many get trashed. Others are given to undeserving relatives, or more often end up in the basement. Pitifully few of these things get donated to organizations that pass them on to people in need. Instead they end up in your own personal technology museum, otherwise called your “basement” or “attic.”

What’s in your basement whose half-life could be extended in the home of a needy child?

Headline: "Google Transforms Into Hal"

The following dyslectic paragraph appeared in my e-mail today:

“I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.”

I don’t know what kind of stroke results in the above, but I hope it doesn’t happen to me. I’ve noticed that my typing is getting a little worse, especially when I’m tired. I find myself occasionally transposing the two center letters in a four letter wrod, but I don’t think I ahve eevr tolltay scrweed up a logner wrod like smoe of toshe abvoe.

Thankfully my mind hasn’t devolved to that point yet, although it does appear to be heading that way. I suppose if I wanted to keep track of the slow demise of brain cells I could turn off “spell check as you type” and just activate it at the end of a page. That way I could keep tabs on how many words I misspell and gauge my mental acuity on a weekly basis. Forget it. Too much self awareness can be a bad thing.

You have to admit, it is amazing how the brain adapts – how you can actually read that first paragraph without that much trouble. The human brain is still an awesome bit of engineering any way you look at it. It’s also not likely to be upstaged anytime soon; certainly not by a pitiful little appliance like the one I’m typing on.

So, I’m thinking, what is the state of computing power today? Aren’t we getting close to duplicating the power of a human mind in silicon? No? What if you took the entire internet of connected computers and they could somehow communicate with each other independent of their human operators? Wouldn’t that be something if it didn’t self-destruct? You could even call it Hal. Maybe then you would have an entity that approaches the computing power and intrepretive genius of the homo-sapien brain.

Yesterday I happened upon a blog post that explained very clearly how to put your pants on. I found this both humorous and informative. If such a simple explanation for virtually everything that we need to do on a daily basis were available somewhere on the internet, then heck, Hal could conceivably rule the world!

You would just need some sort of incredible indexing system and probably some way to decide what is worthwhile and what is crap. That last bit is going to be the hardest, given the preponderance of crap out there.

No dobut Golgoe has sotimenhg in the wroks - of cruose wtih a mroe clveer nmae tahn Hal.

White Knights Riding Trojan Horses

I guess I don’t get an overwhelming amount of junk mail by today’s standards, certainly not as much as my wife does. I think it might be her affinity for online shopping since many of these places tend to “share” e-mail addresses with their “business partners” (i.e. trade their list through a broker).

But I do get a certain amount of unsolicited garbage, as do most people. One offers to sell me Microsoft Office for $69 or Photoshop for $99, which is obviously bogus – not just from the unprofessional appearance of the e-mail, but also because I traced the URL to somewhere in Russia. Others pitch their porn websites or offer to sell Viagra and other such drugs without a prescription.

I hate to think how many people fall for these scams, sending in their money and never hearing from the scammer again. Even if they’re willing to admit to some consumer advocate or government agency that they got scammed trying to buy illegal software or drugs, what do you think is going to happen? Nothing. They will just get their name and e-mail address put on another list. That money is gone.

And then there are all those online scam businesses that sell regular stuff – things that you need like batteries or water filters or office supplies. There are plenty of those who have put together a very professional website with absolutely no intention of shipping anything. They just collect orders for a while and then take down the site and put up another one. When I think about all the money that is stolen this way, it makes me want to reach through the internet pipeline and grab those crooks by the throat.

So I started to think, why isn’t there a way to do just that, figuratively. While there are more than enough twisted minds willing to spend a great deal of effort to construct viruses that create havoc just for the fun of it, aren’t there also some people with the same genius directed towards a more socially beneficial pursuit?

I’d be willing to pay good money for a program that intercepts scam e-mails and replies with a Trojan Horse that takes down the website. If not that, then something that creates havoc with the ISP who facilitates their mass e-mailing enterprise.

Yes I know, you’re going to say that if it were legal to do that, then all sorts of online wars would break out between legitimate businesses who are unscrupulously competitive. That’s probably true unfortunately. But I still think it is an idea worth considering. I bought a $25 program for my wife’s computer that filters out spam at the local level, according to her judgment, not someone at Earthlink or Google. It seems to work pretty well, diverting stuff to the “suspected spam” folder that she has previously identified as such. When something goes in there that she wants to read, she tags it as “good” and it is left alone thereafter.

I don’t necessarily want to encourage White Knight vigilantes on the internet like the sort of folks patrolling the Arizona border this month, but I wouldn’t shed a tear if some “anti-bacterial” software accidentally got loose on the internet and started to eat away at scammers and phishers around the globe.

If you also have some thoughts on what the Engineers and Inventors of the world should be working on, check out my other project: Inspiration 2025.

Mental Illness?

It’s always sad to see some animated person standing on a street corner waving and hollering to passing cars. You instantly recognize them as having some sort of mental handicap that has gone untreated, a reminder of the thousands of the people in this world who are in serious need of psychological help but cannot afford it.

But these days, this condition seems to be infecting people in all walks of life, not just the poor and homeless. Last week I witnessed a well-dressed woman walking through our local shopping mall alone, gesturing and talking loudly to no one in particular. Then yesterday while in line at Starbucks, a nice looking young man in front of me was carrying on an entire conversation with his imaginary friend. He even interrupted his conversation to order his coffee, and then continued on with it as he waited for them to prepare it. It was fascinating that this guy could switch so easily between two worlds, able to interact with the Starbucks clerk very appropriately, and then immediately switching back into his fantasy world to resume his conversation with himself.

Of course you know what happened next, he turned around revealing alien Bluetooth hardware growing out of his left ear. Some would say that this makes the whole thing ok, since he was actually talking to his girlfriend on his cellphone and not his inner demons. But is it really ok?

If everyone wore this Borg prosthesis on the side of their faces, how unnerving would that be? Lets say you’re talking to a friend and all of a sudden they wave you off and start a conversation with someone a hundred miles away. No ringing cellphone, nothing; he just stops listening to you. How rude is that?

It's akin to the situation where you’re paying for something at a store when the phone rings and the clerk spends several minutes answering the caller’s question instead of finishing with your transaction. Why does the person on the phone get to jump to the front of the line? Why should a cellphone conversation take priority over a real-life face-to-face conversation? Or maybe you’re sitting in the car talking and you realize that your friend hasn’t been listening to a word you’ve been saying; he’s been checking his voice mail!

Cellphones can be a wonderful adjunct to our daily lives, but common courtesy seems to have been lost in the process. People need to be reminded that a ringing telephone is not a national emergency and that the fact that they have been called in the middle of lunch doesn’t necessarily make them important. As these Bluetooth headsets get smaller and smaller to the point where they become nearly invisible, a whole new social protocol will need to be developed; in fact it’s overdue.

As wireless technology insinuates itself into every aspect of our lives, the person standing outside alone talking and gesturing into space is going to become a common sight, causing no one to notice. This doesn’t bode well for the poor guy yelling on the street corner who has no cellphone but thinks he does.
How is he going to get noticed?