An essay on adoption and stories

A good one for our family, and for all families with mysterious origins ...

Ellen Ullman - My Secret Life - NYTimes.com

I AM not adopted; I have mysterious origins...

Apple's Netbook past - the Newton eMate

After I wrote of the long deferred but now impending crash of laptop prices, and then updated it with a post on Netbooks running AndroidOS/Linux, I experienced an itchy feeling of Deja Vu.

Sure enough, I'd written about this a year ago, referring to a 2006 Dan's Data article that mentioned the PalmOS Dana laptop. I think, though I don't trust my memory on this, Palm even showed their own laptop before they died in the late 90s. (The current company is a zombie remnant.)

Of course there were also WinCE devices back then that blurred the boundary between PDA and laptop.

Dan's 2006 article mentioned the Newton eMate -- which was sort of a proto-Netbook (I was in an EMR startup building a web-based medical record back then ... so there was a proto-Cloud...). Emphases mine.

eMate 300 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

... The eMate 300 was a personal digital assistant designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer to the education market as a low-cost laptop running the Newton operating system. The eMate was introduced March 7, 1997, for US$800 and was discontinued along with the Apple Newton product line and its operating system on February 27, 1998.

The eMate 300 featured a 480x320 resolution 16-shade grayscale display with a backlight, a stylus pen, a full-sized keyboard, an infrared port, and standard Macintosh serial/LocalTalk ports. Power came from built-in rechargeable batteries, which lasted up to 28 hours on full charge... The eMate used a 25 MHz ARM 710a RISC processor...

In those days wireless LANs were crude, slow, unreliable, proprietary, power sucking, and expensive. So the eMate wasn't really a Netbook (maybe we should call them Cloudbooks?), but it was certainly a proto-Netbook.

Cheap wireless LANs were a big missing link in the evolution of the Netbook/Cloudbook.

Apple will do a true Netbook equivalent this year. They really don't have a bleedin' choice.

Squeezed 2009: Netbooks, Android and Microsoft

One of the few advantages of increasing entropy is I remember my first electronic calculator.

It weighed about 10 pounds, needed 120V, and could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. I think it could store one intermediate result. It cost the equivalent of about $150 in today's money. That was a breakthrough, because a year or so before the same machine cost about $500.

That was the end of my slide rule.

Within a year or two vastly smaller and simpler calculators cost about $50, and a few years after that they were essentially free. [1]

Now that was disruptive technology.

We've never seen anything like that in the world of the personal computer. Today's personal computers have been, in most meaningful ways, no more affordable than the Commodore 64 ($135 to produce in 1982).

Yes, after twenty-seven years we have at least a million times the storage and maybe five times the display capabilities at perhaps half the inflation adjusted retail price, but in terms of tasks like writing this post the cost/value equation of the personal computer is closer to the car than the calculator.

Why is that? I think it's partly because calculators, for most people, delivered 90% of their value very quickly. They were commoditized at birth. They were also born before intellectual property protection was fully developed -- in a sense they were "open source" from the start.

By contrast the early development of the personal computer clobbered products like the Data General Eagle, but then a relatively slow change in the value equation built the mother of all profit generating corporations -- Microsoft.

That's about to change. The Market can't solve problems like global climate change or the problem of the weak, but, eventually, when the driving pressures are big enough and with a bit of antitrust help, it will find an out.

The squeeze is coming now. It's coming from China and India, from Google's Chromestellation and Google's Android, from open source and the Target Trutech netbook. Oh, yeah, and from the Great Recession as well.

After all, what's a Netbook running Chrome and Linux but a calculator in drag? It's fundamentally complete. It's built entirely of plastic, silicon (sand) and a tiny amount of rare metals. All the technology development costs have been fully realized, and there's no vendor with true monopoly control. IP attacks won't work if China and India decide not to cooperate.

It's not just the Netbook. Android is open source as well. Stick an Android phone in a cradle with a 1024 display and a keyboard and you have a computing platform at hundred thousand times more powerful than the Commodore 64.

The squeeze has been coming, but in 2009 it's going to be obvious. The price of the personal computer has been doing a Wile E. Coyote -- running on air for 27 years.

This year, gravity is going to kick in. Within another two years we'll see very crappy netbook equivalents being sold for under $75. Maybe they'll be today's netbook, maybe they'll be an iTouch with external display and bluetooth keyboard, maybe they'll be subsidized Chromestellation machines -- but it's going to happen.

This isn't all bad for Intel. The computing must be done. They can sell cheap chips to the netbooks and the phones, and lots of chips to the Cloud.

It's tough for Apple, but they can sell a bundled set of fully integrated and relatively trouble free goods and services alongside new consumer goods. Still, it will hurt. They're going to have to introduce a sub-$500 general computing device in 2009. Remember that when Jobs disses a market he's usually lashing his engineers to come up with a solution.

Ahh, but then there's Microsoft and Dell.

For them, this is very bad.

It will be very interesting to see what they try to do about it.

[1] Today, because they're so exotic, engineering and finance calculators cost more than they cost in the pre-PC 1980s. Or, if you have an iPhone/iTouch, you can run a superb emulator for a pittance.

Update: I left something out of the equation.

Update 1/1/09: This post on Netbooks running Android must have been written at about the same time as my post.

Update 1/2/09: I previously praised a 2007 Dan's Data review of low cost Linux laptops and connected it to the Newton eMate. In a f/u comment on the eMate I note the missing element of the proto-Netbook world of the 1990s (1980s if you count Tandy's famous proto-laptop) -- cheap wireless LANs. I'm still thinking about the Comcast role -- Netbooks aren't necessarily cheaper than laptops if you account for network access costs. That's why the Obama administration's position on public wireless service is such a big deal. It's probably the most important technology policty they will make-- one way or the other.

Update 1/8/09: This Chinese pseudo-x86 "Godson" chip development project is more than slightly relevant.

Update 1/22/09: Microsoft agrees. They're not stupid.

Exercise is brain food - slowly, a theory of why

Years ago I was skeptical of research claiming that exercise was not only associated with better memory and perhaps better cognition, but that it also improved memory and cognition.

The results keep coming though, including some interesting animal models. So, I'm starting to believe. The case for building one's life around exercise is stronger than ever.

It would be helpful, though, to have some plausible mechanism for why exercise should help memory. Hand waving about sloshing blood is not persuasive. This is more interesting ...

Exercise and your brain: Why working out may help memory: Scientific American Blog

A new study shows that sugar may not be so sweet for the brain – and may lead to memory problems.

Researchers from four universities report in the Annals of Neurology that people who absorb glucose more slowly than those who metabolize it quickly are more forgetful and are more likely to have a faulty dentate gyrus, a pocket in the hippocampus section of the brain. The hippocampus is involved with learning and memory formation....

... Glucose metabolism naturally slows with age, and memory begins to decline in our 30s, says co-author Scott Small, an associate professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. The new study suggests a possible association between the two, because elevated blood sugar appears to damage the dentate gyrus, Small says.

The dentate gyrus's exact function is unknown. But it's one of several circuits in the hippocampus that, if disrupted, impairs memory, such as a person's ability to learn the names of new people or to remember where they parked their car.

The possible connection between its dysfunction and poor glucose regulation may explain earlier observations that exercise benefits the dentate gyrus, Small says. Until now, scientists believed that physical activity reduced the risk of age-related memory loss by allowing glucose to be absorbed more quickly into muscle cells, but were not sure why. This indicates, Small says, that the dentate gyrus could be the missing link...

Obviously these are incremental results that, in isolation, don't merit a news article. The key is that they're part of a trend focusing on the effects of exercise on glucose update, and how that may alter performance of flaky brain components that are long past their warranty period.

So how do we build our lives around exercise? It's not like there are open slots to fill in -- our family gave up on watching TV in the last century and we really can't do less household work. So other good things have to go - sleep (bad idea), social time, family time, home maintenance, reading, study, work ...

Sir Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett, the brilliant satirist and writer, is now Sir Terry ...

Terry Pratchett knighted in Queen's new year honours list | The Australian

... Pratchett, 60, best known for his satirical Discworld fantasy series, becomes a knight, one of the queen's most important honours, and will now be addressed as a 'Sir'.

'There are times when phrases such as 'totally astonished' just don't do the job,' he said. 'I am of course delighted and honoured and needless to say, flabbergasted.'

In December 2007 Pratchett announced he had a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's disease, and earlier this year he donated $725,000 to research into the disorder...

Discworld news has the best coverage.

Tonight, if we ever get the children to bed, Emily and I will watch the second half of Hogfather (buy DVD signed by Pratchett) in honor of the season. Re-reading the book and watching the movie is our new holiday tradition. Death makes a very satisfying Santa. (The movie, incidentally, tracks the book too closely to work as cinema, but it's a joy for fans.)

I've read about between 35 to 37 of Terry Pratchett's books (including all 33 of the Discworld Series) - including those allegedly written for children. There's not a one that I didn't enjoy, or that I wouldn't read again and again. He is a genius and a gentleman.

Welcome to the Year of the Pensive Hare Sir Terry!

A thorough review of DRM 2008 - Gizmodo Australia

I came across this Gizmodo Australia review of DRM because it happened to link to a Gordon's Tech post I'd done on DRM issues with downloaded apps for the Wii, and a query turned up the connection.

It's an good reference review; we've come a long way since the days of products that allowed one to duplicated "copy-protected" floppy (yes, in those days they were floppy - 5.25") disks. I think oen product was called something like "Copy II PC"?

DRM is the reason that video games went form desktop machines to consoles. So DRM isn't fundamentally bad, but it becomes malign when too much power accrues to copyright owners. The key to a reasonably use of DRM technology is a healthy political process of negotiation and compromise ...

Price fixing investigations of SMS texting: also ask about instant messaging

In reign of the Dark Lord antitrust enforcement languished. The Marketarian religion did not admit to imperfections requiring government attention.

In the recovery new light is being cast where dark things have grown ...

Digital Domain - What Carriers Aren’t Eager to Tell You About Texting

... Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin and the chairman of the Senate antitrust subcommittee, wanted to look behind the curtain. He was curious about the doubling of prices for text messages charged by the major American carriers from 2005 to 2008, during a time when the industry consolidated from six major companies to four...

A lot of things changed when the Democrats took the senate. (Thank you, thank you, Senator Tim Johnson). This was one of them.

I hope Senator Kohl will look beyond the price fixing of SMS messages into the more interesting questions of conspiracy to block instant messaging alternatives.

In particular, I think it will be interesting to ask Apple's management to discuss what happened to the Push notification that was supposed to come to the iPhone in August of 2008. That service would have enabled effective iPhone instant messaging, which would have devastated the iPhone SMS revenue that goes to both AT&T and Apple. Once slated for the OS 2.2 Push notification vanished without explanation.

Anyone have an in to Senator Kohl? I would really love to hear the answers to those questions ...

Amazon MP3 - how did they make such a mess of it?

I earned a $5 Amazon MP3 credit, so I figured I'd give their DRM free music a try.

The first artist I tried, a Jazz vocalist, had only a few albums available on Amazon.

So I figured I'd try the Dixie chicks.

Sure enough, Amazon had some tunes, but the layout is a mess and browsing is a slow and awkward experience. A piece of the left side of the screen is given over to advertising.

Huh? An ad next to the music listings? I thought they were trying to sell music.

It smells like they've given up. Well, at least prior purchases are DRM-free. Nothing will disappear when Amazon exits this business.

Update 1/6/09: iTunes music is almost all DRM free now. Amazon's experiment is done.

WaMu and the problem with index funds

Like everyone else, we've been wondering what we did wrong. What can we learn from the WaMu story?

We were, after all, WaMu investors, albeit indirectly. We own index funds that, at one time or another, probably owned shares of WaMu. The track record of the low expense index funds has been very good since John Bogle, an honorable man, pioneered them at Vanguard. The thesis has been that money managers, when their salaries and other overheads are included, can't beat index funds. Of course, there have been exceptions.

Hmm. Maybe any money manager who beats index funds should be immediately investigated by the SEC.

But I digress.

The problem with index funds is that they're only as smart as the market, and only as good as publicly traded companies. If the market's regulatory frameworks are broken, if corruption is on a historically seasonal upswing, if the world is too complex to detect theft, then index funds are just a way to get taken.

The problem is, obviously, that index funds are only as good as the publicly traded company.

So are there any alternatives to index funds for the retail investor?

See also:

1. Complexity collapse
2. Disintermediating Wall Street
3. The future of the publicly traded company
4. The role of the deadbeats
5. Firewalls and separation of powers
   
6. Marked!
   

Life imitates art - the WaMu story

Well, not exactly. Cliches are much more common in life than in art ...

The Reckoning - WaMu Built an Empire on Bad Loans - Series - NYTimes.com

...While Mr. Parsons, whose incarceration is not related to his work for WaMu, oversaw a team screening mortgage applications, he was snorting methamphetamine daily, he said.

“In our world, it was tolerated,” said Sherri Zaback, who worked for Mr. Parsons and recalls seeing drug paraphernalia on his desk. “Everybody said, ‘He gets the job done.’ ”

At WaMu, getting the job done meant lending money to nearly anyone who asked for it — the force behind the bank’s meteoric rise and its precipitous collapse this year in the biggest bank failure in American history...

We really need to try a different sentient species. Personally I like dogs.

This was novel though ...

...WaMu turned real estate agents into a pipeline for loan applications by enabling them to collect “referral fees” for clients who became WaMu borrowers...

Dark humor aside, there's one interesting question about all this.

Why are we reading about this now?

It's not as though WaMu was subtle.

I would really like to know the story about why there was no story.

Update: Thinking more about why there was no story. A hypothesis -- that business journalists interact with the wrong level of a corporation. They interact with senior management, who are more fun and who can provide favors, tips, and ad revenue. The real story is further down the value chain, hence invisible.

Provigil enthusiam: I bet on accelerated aging

Judith Warner makes the case for putting Provigil in the water.

Synchronously, the NYT writes about the odd relationship between sleeplessness and heart disease, one of series of studies over the past few years showing relationships between limited sleep and disorders associated with aging.

Free lunches are exquisitely rare.

There's no way any studies done to date would be sensitive enough to detect a 10-20% acceleration of aging associated with long-term Provigil (modafinil) use. Animal models might show the relationship, but they'd have to use animals with a relatively long lifespan.

I bet we'll learn that regular Provigil use that reducing an individual's sleep needs from 8 to 6 hours a night also significantly accelerates aging.

Just a hunch.

Living well with less energy - lessons from tobacco

If we had the right price signals, we could live well with far less energy that we use now.

Consider the passively heated home. It's a marvel of efficient engineering and, in some climates, can operate without a dedicated furnace.

Of course we can't rebuild all our homes this way, but it's easy to imagine that, over the next twenty-five years, per capita US energy consumption could fall by 3-5% a year even as GDP rises.

Of course that won't happen with oil company ads urging energy conservation. Those remind me of tobacco ads urging health lifestyles. You know, the ads the tobacco companies ran when they were trying to fend off cigarette taxes.

The tobacco taxes came, and, shock, twenty years later public smoking is rare in Minnesota.

It's very hard to stop smoking, but people did it. It's easier never to start smoking, and people did that too. The campaign against smoking is a blueprint for transforming America's energy habit.

The campaign needs to start with price signals. Without them we're just pretending. Regulations are a feeble substitute for a serious carbon tax.

Today the NYT Editorial page called for a gasoline tax offset by other tax reductions. This is only the beginning of what will be a long and terrible political process that will need support from every friend of reason.

If we're lucky carbon and gas taxes will be a core campaign issue in 2008. It will be a tough campaign of course, we know the GOP will continue their war against civilization and reason, we know the GOP will do everything possible to leave the human world a smoldering ruin*.

I hope you've enjoyed your pre-inaugural rest, but that's over now.

* Which makes the GOP, ironically, a sort of Green party -- but that's another story.

12/28/08: Uh-Oh. Friedman agrees. Which reminds me that gasoline and carbon taxes are quite different. A gasoline tax that leads to electric cards powered by coal-fueled plants would be an absolute disaster. The primary argument for a gasoline tax is to reduce dependency on Saudi Arabia, but I suspect that's a misguided mission. The carbon tax is what we need; a gasoline tax is secondary.

Get ready to refinance your mortgage?

Krugman points out that there are relatively easy and benign ways for the treastury to lower mortgage interest rates. They are currently anomalously high compared to treasury interest rates (less than 0% currently).

For many people the safest investment these days is accelerating mortgage payments. Alas, that doesn't provide a lot of economic oomph; it's one of the reasons tax cuts don't yield much stimulus. People just use the tax cut to pay down their mortgages. That's what we'd do.

On the other hand, if we are able to refinance at a significantly lower rate, we have less incentive to pay down our mortgage and we have more cash to spend or invest. (It has to be pretty damned low though, our current rates are pretty low already.)

So this sounds like something an Obama administration might push. I'll watch for a refinancing opportunity come February.

Weather wimps of Minnesota

Humans are adaptable …

Welcome to the Coldest Town on Earth: Scientific American

… Oymyakon's natives have learned to adapt to the freezing conditions: the town's only school closes only when temperatures sink below minus 61.6 degrees Fahrenheit…

They’re looking forward to a –90 F day soon. That’s without the “wind chill”.

We Minnesotans get all worked up over –40 F.

We’re wimps.

Quick reminder: GDP and money turnover

Easy for the non-economist to forget. This comes from the Bush I administration ...

Bruce Bartlett - How to Get the Money Moving - NYTimes.com

... When everyone in the economy suddenly stops spending, the number of times that money turns over falls. Since the gross domestic product equals the money supply times its rate of turnover — something economists call velocity — this means that if the money supply is unchanged then G.D.P. must fall.

Theoretically, the Federal Reserve can compensate for a decline in velocity by increasing the money supply. But in times like these it is very hard for it to do so because of something economists call a liquidity trap. When this occurs, the Fed cannot inject liquidity into the economy because its normal means of doing so no longer works. In a liquidity trap, trying to expand the money supply is like trying to push on a string.

Normally the Fed expands the money supply by buying Treasury bills and paying for them by creating money out of thin air. When it wants to contract the money supply it does the reverse, putting Treasury bills from its portfolio on the market and drawing money out of the economy when financial institutions pay for them.

But when interest rates on Treasury bills fall to zero this process doesn’t work because money is essentially nothing but a perpetual government bond that pays no interest. If the Fed creates money to buy a Treasury bill that pays zero interest, it accomplishes nothing, economically. All it does is trade one government security for another that is virtually identical. There is no net increase in liquidity.

Under these circumstances, when the normal rules don’t apply, the government must find more creative ways to ease credit conditions and get the economy moving again.

First, it needs to increase the budget deficit. This expands the amount of Treasury bills in circulation and is the same as expanding the money supply, which is necessary to keep G.D.P. from shrinking due to a fall in velocity.

Second, the Fed needs to revise its operating procedures. Instead of buying only T-bills it needs to buy securities with positive interest rates. These include longer-term Treasury bonds and securities issued by government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae. If necessary, the Fed could also buy corporate bonds, state and local government bonds, or even bonds issued by foreign governments.

Third, the government must try to raise velocity by stimulating aggregate spending in the economy. This is harder than it sounds. Buying bonds and securities may expand liquidity, but it doesn’t increase spending. And we know from experience that tax rebates don’t work because people save them...

Sounds Krugmanesque.