For Emily - Google's "potentially harmful" flub

This morning Emily told me that every local site was displaying a security warning.

I was mildly concerned that her browser account had been successfully infected, and was thus providing nonsensical warnings.

Looking at the history records though, the problematic URL was a Google interstitial message. Looked to me like Google was having a bad hair day. It was, and it made world news ...

BBC NEWS | Technology | 'Human error' hits Google search

... Google's search service has been hit by technical problems, with users unable to access search results.

For a period on Saturday, all search results were flagged as potentially harmful, with users warned that the site 'may harm your computer'.

Users who clicked on their preferred search result were advised to pick another one...

When Google has a bad hair day, tens of millions of people worry. Maybe hundreds of millions.

Why we need a reformed GOP – protectionism in the Stimulus Package

At long last I can criticize my de facto home team. The “Buy American” protectionist measures in the Stimulus Package play to the weaknesses of the Dems – and populist Republicans.

Why are they so bad?

It’s not merely the hit on our economic productivity from our unilateral protectionism.

It’s not just the secondary effects of our trading partners playing the same suicidal game.

Those are bad, but they’re not the real problem with protectionism.

The real problem with a neo-protectionist global trade war is China.

Keeping China healthy, peaceful, prosperous, and engaged in a win-win world trading system is job one for any American administration. Forget pinworms like Al Qaeda, whack jobs like North Korea, Gazan plagues, and Putin’s follies – China is what matters*. If China goes down the tubes, and hundreds of millions of young brideless Chinese men become restless, our current problems will be small tubers.

Here’s what’s happening …

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: "Buy American": A Very Bad Move in the Stimulus Package

… Even economists who strongly support the stimulus package are dismayed by the protectionist measures contained within it.

"It looks like a very bad thing in the bill," said economist Brad DeLong, who worked on trade issues in the Clinton administration and teaches at University of California, Berkeley.

"Pressure from the Canadian government saying, 'Do you really want to do this?' is important."

Canadian officials have, in fact, been working behind the scenes to keep protectionist measures out of the economic stimulus package.

But they failed to stop the House version of the bill from including a provision banning the use of anything other than American-made iron and steel in projects funded by the stimulus package.

The Senate version of the bill would require that everything it funds use only American products.

The White House could try to convince the Democratic leadership to strip the anti-trade measures from the bill, both before it is voted on by the Senate and during the conference to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the bill.

If that fails, then Mr. Obama could issue what is called a signing statement saying the "buy American" provisions of the bill violate treaty obligations. That might effectively veto the measures

If there's little excess capacity in the U.S. steel industry--so that the price of steel is high enough to induce people to look outside for suppliers--then a stimulus won't be much needed. If there's a lot of excess capacity so that a stimulus is needed, then steel customers should be able to bargain prices down to marginal cost--in which case foreign producers will have an extremely difficult time competing on price given that steel is heavy and distances are great. "Buy American" seems mostly designed to allow the steel producers to collude and push their profits up--at the expense of American taxpayers.

Could Obama add a signing statement to the stimulus bill stating that the "Buy American" provisions conflict with our NAFTA and WTO treaty obligations and hence are void? I am not a trade lawyer, but my suspicion is no: neither NAFTA nor the WTO are self-executing, so any actions they call for or block are supposed to be implemented through duly passed acts of congress. Of course, NAFTA and the WTO are also treaties that are supposed to be kept.

If Obama did declare the "Buy America" provisions null and void in a signing statement, people could sue in U.S. courts to carry them out--and IMHO likely win. Then foreign governments could take the case to the NAFTA and WTO dispute-resolution forums--and IMHO certainly win. Better to strip the provisions from the bill now, or in conference.

A reformed GOP would be strongly against Protectionist suicide – and would listen to military advisers warning of the importance of a peaceful, prosperous China. Alas, the POL (Party of Limbaugh) is probably pushing this stupidity alongside the Dems.

* What about India? I have, maybe undeservedly, far more confidence in the resilience and health of India.

Human lifespan may not be easily extended

There’s been some guarded optimism among scientists that it might be possible to find drugs that slow human aging, and either extend lifespan (slow aging does not extend lifespan if you die young of cancer) or compress debility. A contrary opinion is that most humans operate near the limit of our biology, and that lifespan is largely randomly determined.

The reference for most of the drug studies are the known lifespan extending effects of caloric restriction. Known, that is, in worms, flies, some monkeys, and rodents.

Alas for the guarded optimists, caloric restriction may only work for humans who are fat (emphases mine) …

Restricting calories may not extend lifespan for everyone: Scientific American Blog

Scientists have long known that severely cutting food intake may lead to a longer life. But new research shows the phenom doesn't apply to everyone – or, should we say, to every mouse. A new study recently published in the online edition of the Journal of Nutrition found that reducing caloric intake only seems to prolong the lives of fat mice with low metabolisms.

"There has been this kind of settled paradigm that caloric restriction universally extends the life span of animals, [and] some have implied that it also applies to humans," says study lead author Rajindar Sohal, a pharmacologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angles. But he notes that he and his colleagues found that "extension of lifespan by food reduction will occur only if there is an energy imbalance [caused by a low metabolism]."

Scientists have known for more than 70 years that slashing caloric intake by an average of 30 percent to 40 percent extends the lives of animals as diverse as rodents and monkeys. But this effect is not seen across the board, according to Sohal. Some breeds of mice, for example, live 25 to 30 percent longer when their caloric intake is cut by 40 percent, while other breeds experience no benefit from shrinking calories.

Suspecting that metabolism (the speed at which calories are burned) might explain the discrepancy, the researchers compared the metabolic rates of two strains of mice: C57BL/6 mice, which are known to enjoy the life-extending effects of dieting, and DBA/2 mice, for whom dieting has been found to have no effect on life span. They found that C57BL/6 mice had much lower metabolisms than the DBA/2 mice, regardless of how much they consumed. C57BL/6 were also, on average, beefier. 

These findings suggest that calorie restriction does not have the same effect on every animal. In other words, going on diet won't prolong the lives of mice with high metabolisms (who are likely to be thin, anyway), but it could help obese mice with low metabolisms. Sohal speculates that humans will respond the same way, but notes that such studies aren't practical in people. "You can't put human [study subjects] on caloric restrictions all their lives," he says, but adds: "There is no reason why it couldn't apply to humans."

The next step is pinpointing the cause of these metabolic differences, Sohal says: "What I would like to know is, what are the specific genes that determine the difference in metabolic rate?"

Human obesity is associated with shortened life spans. So it may be that “beefy” humans will benefit from, say, Resveratrol, while skinny humans will not. One might even imagine that slow metabolizers who manage to stay thin will tend to age slowly and live longer.

Or not.

There’s a lot of marvelous science to be done, but investments in Sirtuin drugs remains highly speculative. Techo-optimists should not book their tickets to the 22nd century Singularity.

GOP hysteria featured on … “Guantanamo Baywatch”

Don’t cry for Colbert. Bush is gone, but the GOP POL (Party of Limbaugh) is still hysterically funny. They’re the highlight of Guantanamo Baywatch - The Final Season, gnashing teeth and rending garments at the thought of Killer Khalid busting out of an American Supermax.

To quote Colbert … “If they had mutant powers, we’d know it by now”.

Intel is in the OS business - with Netbooks

Ahh, remember the days that Intel and Microsoft were friends? The Wintel days?

Those days are over.

NetBooks: Intel Shows Off Moblin, Their Own Netbook-Optimized Linux OS

... We're hearing more and more about specific netbook-optimized operating systems, and Intel is joining in the game with an alpha release of Moblin, their netbook Linux OS optimized for Atom.

Moblin is based largely on Fedora, and it's still a work in progress, but its main goal is to optimize performance for Atom and Core 2 processors running on smaller machines. The alpha Intel just released alread has an innovative network connection manager and fast optimized boot times, and it's confirmed to work well with Dell's Mini 9, the Acer Aspire One, and the Eee PC 901 (although right now wi-fi on the Eee is iffy).

... Right now Moblin is using the Xfce desktop, which is pretty bread and butter. Later in the development they'll switch to a more gussied up UI based on Clutter, which Intel owns...

In related news Dell was briefly selling a refurbished Netbook Inspiron Mini today for $177, Samsung has clobbered the price of RAM modules, and India is promising a $20 Netbook, and Gizmodo has a Netbook thread with feed that gives you all this stuff in one place.

I guess I was being about right when I predicted Netbook-induced mayhem for 2009. Maybe Mattel needs to accelerate production of the Barbie B-Smart Netbook in time for Christmas 2010.

Update: Oh, and this one too. Intel Android netbooks.

Dear Canon Camera - are you listening now?

Dear Canon,

I don't think you were listening last January when I told you that I don't give a flying damn about your megapixels.

I want ISO. Screw the pixels. Give me light sensitivity and I'll buy another Digital Rebel.

Otherwise, you know, this isn't a bad time to save money.

Maybe you're listening now?

Cameras Too Expensive For Christmas This Year: Canon's Profits Down 91% (CAJ)

Japanese high-tech giant Canon Inc. warned Wednesday the economic crisis would drive down profits by two-thirds in 2009...

... Canon logged a net profit of 11.62 billion yen (130 million dollars) in the fourth quarter of 2008, well short of the previous year's 127.85 billion. Operating profit fell 81 percent to 35.83 billion yen...

... "The rapid deterioration in the economic environment since the autumn has triggered a global slump in individual consumption. This has caused damage to the digital camera market beyond our expectation," [Canon managing director Masahiro Osawa] told reporters...

I'll bet Nikon's profits didn't fall by 81%.

Give me reasonable sensor noise at ISO 1,200 for $550 and we'll talk some more.

Yours,

A currently thrifty former customer.

PS. While you're in a listening mood, your computer division needs to fire the outsourced operation that develops the OS X device drivers for your scanners and printers.

The $125 Barbie B-Smart Netbook of 2011

Our 6 yo is still using the Barbie B-Smart Learning Laptop she wanted for the Solstice (ok, Christmas).

I thought it was a silly gift even by toy standards, but Emily knew better. It's on the wane, but two months isn't bad for something that's almost pure junk.

Almost junk, because there's a surprising amount of educational software stuck into the tiny black and white display of the "laptop", and the touch pad and mouse really do, sort of, work.

It cost $70, batteries not included.

So what's next for Mattel? Well, it's not hard to imagine some interesting possibilities. By 2011 the cost of manufacturing a battery-free Chromestellation Netbook should fall beneath $100.

Mattel could sell the Barbie B-Smart Netbook for $125 in 2011. There'd be no margin on the sale, but there would be a big margin from bonded online community services, marketing to susceptible minds, and DRMd Chromestellation products.

Big time disruption is on the way.

Microsoft is in big trouble -- unless they decide to go for the jugular.

Hang on.

Vanguard fears money market losses, closes funds

Vanguard's is taking defensive action ...

Vanguard − Vanguard's Treasury money market funds are closed to new accounts as yields tumble

Vanguard has closed Vanguard Admiral Treasury Money Market Fund and Vanguard Treasury Money Market Fund to new accounts effective 4 p.m., Eastern time, on Monday, January 26, 2009. The decision was made to protect the interests of current fund shareholders in an environment in which yields on short-term Treasury securities have reached historic lows.

Current shareholders of the two funds who invest directly through Vanguard may continue to invest up to an additional $50,000 per day, per fund account. ..

and by email the legal notice (emphases mine)

... Although a money market fund seeks to preserve the value of your investment at $1 per share, it is possible to lose money by investing in such a fund.
Notwithstanding the preceding statements, the funds are participating in the U.S. Treasury's Temporary Guarantee Program for Money Market Funds. The Program generally does not guarantee any new investments in the funds made after September 19, 2008, and is scheduled to expire on April 30, 2009..

Were you aware that the Guarantee program doesn't apply to investments made after 9/19/08 and that it may expire in a few months? I confess, I wasn't aware.

Vanguard should simply have explained that they had to close the fund because it was running at a loss; overhead and expenses mean Vanguard is having to shovel funds in to avoid breaking the buck. They want to cut their losses.

It also sounds like people were using it to transiently park a lot of money -- which increased expenses and losses.

Vanguard is recommending bank CDs as places to park cash. I'm getting the feeling they wouldn't mind some withdrawals before the April Guarantee program expiration.

Merrill Lynch and bailouts to bonuses - It's bankruptcy time

It's time to bankrupt and break-up the finance companies.

David Krasne - Money for Nothing - NYTimes.com

... Merrill Lynch is not the only irresponsible institution out there. Despite a year of record losses, despite all the taxpayer money being injected into our financial institutions, bonuses for 2008 were, in some cases, down less than 50 percent from those the previous year...

Let's look for the companies that cut out their bonuses. They can be funded to do the taking over.

Merrill Lynch can pound sand.

Update 1/28/09: Occasionally Maureen Dowd is right.

It's not 1982, it's not 1929. We need not fear fear, we need fear fearlessness.

As expected, opposition to aggressive action on the economy is building. One meme is "1982 was worse"; the implication is that since we survived 1982 without aggressive government action that we don't need to do anything differently this time.

This drives Krugman batty, since he repeatedly points out that you can't make interest rates subzero. Still, the 1982ers keep singing the "la-la" song.

Today, writing for Britannica, Jon Talton goes into more detail on how 2008 is not 1982 (emphases mine) ...

Today's Recession Is Different From Those of the 1980s - Jon Talton - Britannica Blog

... Yet having lived through the 1980-82 recession(s) as an adult, it’s also important that we understand how today’s economic disruption is different and dangerous. It’s not all in our heads, as some critics of the media might have it..

1. China was barely a blip on the world economy in 1982. .. China and America are locked in an unsustainable and reckless “debt-for-stuff” relationship. Were it to deflate suddenly, it could make the popping of the housing bubble look small by comparison. In addition, China has become the world’s factory .. Now unrest is growing and could prove destabilizing.

2. Peak oil. The United States was only a few years past its peak in oil production in 1982, and world production remained ahead of demand... World peak is happening or near and the nations of this petroleum-addicted world are far from making the necessary adjustments to make the transition to a future of much more expensive energy. This is another recipe not only for economic disruption but also for geopolitical conflict.

3. Global warming. In 1982, it was a rarefied theory. Now it’s a clear and present danger... It will impose huge economic and social costs in the decades ahead. Also, more than 2 billion people have been added to the world population since 1982, severely stressing the planet’s carrying capacity.

4. The housing bubble. The housing crash of 1982 was part of a broad, cyclical downturn, made worse by the 1979 oil shock and the Federal Reserve’s war on inflation. Today’s housing crash is the result of a speculative bubble the size of which has few precedents. It will take years for this sector to come back and, for a variety of factors, the old suburban sprawl model is dying or dead. So it’s pointless to hope for a return to the 2005 go-go era. The housing crash this time has made Americans poorer, decapitated several major job sectors and helped bring on…

5. The banking crisis. Nearly every recession has an accompanying banking crisis. It could be contained in 1982 for several reasons, especially better regulation and smaller banks. ..Today’s banking system is a highly concentrated creature whose innards have metabolized far beyond traditional banking...

7. Human capital. Americans have seen their earnings stagnate for years — their only consolation the housing bubble which has now exploded. Their 401(k) nest eggs have lost as much as half their pre-crash value. Income inequality is at a high not seen since the eve of the Depression, stifling, among other things, economic mobility. Perhaps a million or more illegal immigrants are consigned to the shadow economy, kept out of mainstream advancement and creating a costly underclass. In 1982, the middle class was still strong, with relatively secure jobs, benefits and pensions. The health insurance system still worked. It was a very different country, whatever the temporary pain. In addition, today the skill gap has grown substantially. A tech-savvy “creative class,” as Richard Florida calls it, will create value in the future. Yet millions are left out, without the ladder up once provided by skilled, union, blue-collar jobs...

He missed a few key items and his monetary policy explanation skirted the fundamental zero-problem, but it's a good list.

The 80s were bad, but we know how to fix that class of problem. We don't know how to fix this problem.

The problem with a need for aggressive action is that there's a lot of political appeal to sitting calmly while the "chickens" run about squawking. Sometimes that's (only in retrospect) the right thing to do -- I was very concerned about SARS, but it (somewhat mysteriously) went away. My SARS experience made me a bit more cautious about the 2004 Avian Influenza report.

Sometimes it doesn't work. A lot of people were complacent about pre-WW II Japan, or the economic situation of 1929, or strength of the Maginot line, or the expansionary power of early euro-americans, or, for that matter, CO2 levels.

This time we don't need to fear "fear itself". We need to fear complacency.

NYT tracks the Netbook revolution

The NYT has done a great job of tracking the collapse of the personal computer industries business model, a topic I most recently discusses this morning.

Today Stone and Vance are drilling down on the impact of the $200 price point. It's not the best article in the recent series since they mix the true disruption ($100 netbooks) with various business-oriented cloud outsourcing measures. They also fail to mention Chrome, a rather big omission.

Still, worth a scan to see where the memes are going ...

$200 Laptops Break a Business Model - Stone and Vance- NYTimes.com

... Microsoft’s valuable Windows franchise appears vulnerable after two decades of dominance. Revenue for the company’s Windows operating system fell for the first time in history in the last quarter of 2008. The popularity of Linux, a free operating system installed on many netbooks instead of Windows, forced Microsoft to lower the prices on its operating system to compete...

... Many consumers appear ready to abandon the costly desktop computer altogether. Analysts expect PC sales to fall in 2009 for just the second time in the last two decades, with desktops falling even faster than they did in 2007 or 2008.

The only bright spot in the PC industry is netbooks. Analysts at the Gartner research company said shipments rose to 4.4 million devices in the third quarter of 2008, from 500,000 units in the first quarter of last year. Analysts say sales could double this year despite a deep worldwide recession.

Two lumbering giants, Hewlett-Packard and Dell, missed the first wave of these tiny, stripped-down machines, allowing Acer of Taiwan to grab market share. Acer pushed Apple out of the No. 3 spot behind H.P. and Dell as sales soared 55 percent. Dell and H.P. are making the devices now...

... “Companies like Intel, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments that make chips for these devices are hiring Linux talent as quick as they can,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the nonprofit Linux Foundation. “They know the future is netbooks and mobile Internet devices...

How Microsoft can win the Netbook wars

Microsoft rules the computing world. Still. The King is old, decrepit, decadent -- but his treasury overflows.

The flow is going to slow ...

Gordon's Notes: Squeezed 2009: Netbooks, Android and Microsoft

... 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...

... 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...

... but then there's Microsoft and Dell.

For them, this is very bad...

The King could go gently into the night, but he's not acting that way.

So what can Microsoft do?

They can do this:

1. Buy the pipes, which at this time probably means building cheap to free wireless broadband networks in key markets.
2. Give away XP. Charge $5 a copy for Netbook manufacturers.
3. Buy a slice of Dell and start making Microsoft brand netbooks.
4. Create a version of Windows 7 for the Netbook (they've probably already done this) that's tied to Windows Live.
5. Become a bank.
6. Build a retail/transaction service across 1-5.
   

It's a low margin business, but they'll own it end-to-end. They ought to be able to soak up an average of $100/year/user from 2 billion users.

That's not a bad business, but it means gutting their existing franchise. That's bloody hard to do.

Bloody hard, but the King is bloody handed ...

Update 1/27/09: I remember where I'd seen the latter part of this business strategy before. It was back in the days when Microsoft Wallet was a part of Windows 3, and MSN was the pre-Internet transaction network.

How to tell Netflix is having money problems

Here's how to tell when Netflix is having money trouble.

Measure the scratch density on children's DVDs.

It costs money to replace scratched and old DVDs. Since scratched disks often work this is one of the first things Netflix will scrimp on.

We're seeing a lot of scratches ...

Update 2/24/09: And a lot of broken DVDs too - maybe 1 in 5. I wonder if Blockbuster is any better. It's time to look at alternatives.

Palm Pre has search, iPhone doesn't

Yeah, and the Pre has cut, copy paste as well ...

Palm Pre: The Definitive FAQ

... The entire contents of your phone are searchable. Whether it's contacts, old conversations, appointments, media file, etc., you can easily find what you need on your phone with all the results provided in a single screen...

Whoa! Smackdown Pre.

The Pre also has background multitasking and background notification.

Did we mention cut, copy, paste?

Eat that iPhone.

My Nano qualified for a $25 class action settlement

I think I got $50 back from a flaky battery in my original iPod in the form of an Apple Store coupon [1], now I'm getting (maybe, some day) $25 for Nano scratches.

Original iPod nano owners benefit from scratch settlement - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

... Thanks to a now-settled class action lawsuit, nano owners who experienced the scratchies can apply for a refund of $15 (if the iPod shipped with a slip case, as later ones did) or $25 (for no-case shipments)."

It was a pain to enter the serial number at the settlement website, I found it easier to read on the internal 'about' screen than on the back of the phone. Between re-entering the serial number and re-entering the Captcha [2] it took me five tries.

You then get a printed form you have to mail in.

It's a lot of bother, and I wouldn't do it if I didn't feel that Apple has a nasty tendency to skimp on quality control. This seems to be the only way to keep them semi-honest.

[1] Much less useful than you'd imagine. It didn't work online. I think I squandered it on a 2nd generation iPod shuffle, which was (and is) a waste of money.
[2] Captchas are getting to the end of their useful lifespan; spammer neural network software is now better than humans at deciphering them. In fact, I'm soon going to have to start using that software to support my own (legitimate) Captcha entering.