Google is the net

When Google is having technical problems (as in this morning) the net feels slow.

That's because, for me, Google is a lot of the net I use - search, Reader, Gmail, Apps, etc.

I'm not the only one (emphases mine):

Coding Horror: The Elephant in the Room: Google Monoculture

... Now that Stack Overflow has been chugging right along for almost six months, allow me to share the last month of our own data. Currently, 83% of our total traffic is from search engines, or rather, one particular search engine:

Search Engine
Visits

Google
3,417,919

Yahoo
9,779

Live
5,638

...

AltaVista
202

...

Those 6x and 8x numbers that Rich quoted two years ago seem awfully quaint now. Google delivers 350x the traffic to Stack Overflow that the next best so-called "search engine" does. Three hundred and fifty times!..

The shocking thing is that AltaVista still exists! They were the first truly useful search engine, and their fate should forever crush talk of "first mover advantage". I was an early adopter of AV, and I remember the day I gave them up for Google.

Consider this. For the the elite Geeks that visit CH ...

• Google/Live = 600
• Live/AltaVista = 30

I like Google. In terms of doing things that help me, the rank of software companies in my life is basically Google >>> Apple/Microsoft (tied, and Windows 7 might push Microsoft ahead). Still, a wee bit of competition would be good for everyone.

Why we may buy Kindle 2

Not for us, for my mother who has macular degeneration and limited vision ...

Amazon.com: Kindle 2: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation): Kindle Store...

... Kindle's high-resolution screen now boasts 16 shades of gray...

... Kindle has six adjustable font sizes to suit your reading preference. Now every book in your library can be large print.

... Kindle can read to you. With the new Text-to-Speech feature, Kindle can read every book, blog, magazine, and newspaper out loud to you. You can switch back and forth between reading and listening, and your spot is automatically saved. Pages automatically turn while the content is being read, so you can listen hands-free. You can choose from both male and female voices which can be sped up or slowed down to suit your preference...

They only have six adjustable font sizes, so I don't think that's different from Kindle 1. I was hoping they'd go to seven or eight sizes, but really I need to test with my mother.

Imagine: How and why Microsoft should pervert the iPhone

Imagine we lived in an alternate reality where Apple didn't forbid applications that competed with its iPhone suite. Yes, I know it's hard. History was very different in that universe. Maybe Jobs achieved true spiritual enlightenment a few years back, and the alternative-Apple's board wasn't able to fire him.

In that reality, like here, former Palm geeks were fed up with Apple's PIM/PDA services and current BlackBerry users snorted their coffee when contemplating the iPhone ...

Gordon's Notes: The straw that broke my iPhone love

... What makes this straw a back breaker is not simply that iPhone calendaring is pathetic, it's that Apple forbids alternatives. Even on OS X there are a few alternatives to Apple products, but on the iPhone only Apple can use the USB cable, and vendors are explicitly forbidden to distribute alternatives to Apple's core applications. On the iPhone it's Apple's Calendar.app, or it's nothing.

It's a bad story, and, short of a revolution in Apple's attitude, it's not going to get better. Astonishingly, the Apple iPhone and MobileMe have made me miss the old Microsoft.

So I've stopped recommending the iPhone to others anyone who needs at least PalmPilot 1994 functionality, and I won't be replacing my wife's (miserable) BlackBerry Pearl with an iPhone...

In this alternate reality, Dr Doom Microsoft can be a dark hero.

Microsoft Outlook is an ugly mongrel of ancient code, but it spanks iCal and Address Book. So imagine if Microsoft were to create an iPhone calendaring, task, contact and memo suite tied to Outlook, Entourage, Exchange Server and their newest incarnation of Windows Live.

Consider the advantages for Microsoft

• They'd have a great weapon against RIM (BlackBerry)
• They could charge $50 an iPhone app and make a bit of change
• They'd bind more customers to Windows Live, which they could leverage to provide streaming music and video services (remember, in this alternate reality the iPhone is open to Apple's competitors). Maybe they start charging for a bundled streaming media and data store service and generate revenue there.
  
• Microsoft's iPhone address book could be used to tie customers to their messaging solutions, from email to instant messaging
• They'd make it very easy for customers to switch to Microsoft's phones since they'd have a simple data migration solution
• They'd have several tools to pry people from Google's calendaring, email, contacts, identity, pending telephony/video (GrandCentral) and, eventually, search solutions
• An iPhone/iTouch platform could be a part of Microsoft's Netbook response strategy.
  

In that bizarre reality, I'd be singing the praises of Lex Luthor Steve Ballmer.

Wow. Rescued by Microsoft. That's weird. I'm almost grateful it can't happen here.

American corruption and Obama's challenge

I usually discount predictions of American outrage. As near as I can tell, America has been seriously stoned for at least 8 years.

On the other hand, I feared Obama was another lost cause and that he would need to adopt the GOP's deceits to contend.

So maybe Rich has something here. He gets credit for smacking the media meme that Daschle's problem was taxes (emphases mine) ...

Frank Rich - Slumdogs Unite! - NYTimes.com

... In reality, Daschle’s tax shortfall, an apparently honest mistake, was only a red flag for the larger syndrome that much of Washington still doesn’t get. It was the source, not the amount, of his unreported income that did him in. The car and driver advertised his post-Senate immersion in the greedy bipartisan culture of entitlement and crony capitalism that both helped create our economic meltdown (on Wall Street) and failed to police it (in Washington). Daschle might well have been the best choice to lead health-care reform. But his honorable public record was instantly vaporized by tales of his cozy, lucrative relationships with the very companies he’d have to adjudicate as health czar.

Few articulate this ethical morass better than Obama, who has repeatedly vowed to “close the revolving door” between business and government and end our “two sets of standards, one for powerful people and one for ordinary folks.” But his tough new restrictions on lobbyists (already compromised by inexplicable exceptions) and porous plan for salary caps on bailed-out bankers are only a down payment on this promise, even if they are strictly enforced.

The new president who vowed to change Washington’s culture will have to fight much harder to keep from being co-opted by it instead. There are simply too many major players in the Obama team who are either alumni of the financial bubble’s insiders’ club or of the somnambulant governmental establishment that presided over the catastrophe...

Rich's reminds us that Geithner and Rubin are deeply embedded in the history of Citigroup and Goldman Sachs; and that the banking connections run deep in Obama's organization. On the other hand, American history has many examples of insiders turning against tribe - with the the advantage of knowing where the skeletons are.

I hope Reich is write about a populist anger at America's high tide corruption though. We can't eliminate corruption in human government, but we can push it back to the lower range of history. To do that we'll need Senators like Al Franken rather than Norm Coleman, and we'll need an angry public to stay loud.

Krugman on the GOP's latest blow

The deal with the GOP "centrists", per Krugman:

What the centrists have wrought - Paul Krugman

...The real question now is whether Obama will be able to come back for more once it’s clear that the plan is way inadequate. My guess is no. This is really, really bad...

The Party of Limbaugh strikes.

Oh, and the GOP's DeMint (South Carolina) wants to block any stimulus money going to walking and bicycle paths.

The POL is just bad to the bone.

Dyer - 5 new articles

Five more from Dyer (apologies for formatting):

The Cuban Revolution at Fifty

Thieves' Quarrel

Israeli Tail, American Dog (2)

SWISH, Obama and the Terrorists

Multi-racial Britain

AT&T sends more SMS Spam, locusts infest exec underwear

The phone chirped notice of an incoming text message. We don't have an SMS plan, so that's unusual. Was it an urgent message from my wife?

I struggled to pull the phone from my pocket. Oops, drifting in my lane a bit. A sharp correction ... too sharp on black ice. The van spins into the path of the oncoming oil tanker.

It's all so fast. The crunch and shattering glass, the crushing pain, then the searing fireball. The last thing I see is the message ...

"AT&T FREE MSG: Share your love ... Add a Line for your Valentine! Visit an AT&T Store .."

Lungs searing, I gasp out my Death Wish.

A plague of locusts infests the underwear of the AT&T executive team -- and that's just the beginning ...

Apparently, AT&T was not discouraged by the reaction to their American Idol spam ...

Gordon's Notes: Annals of idiocy - AT&T spams customers about a TV show

... lunacy like AT&T's recent bonehead move deserves at least a whimper or two (emphases mine) ...

AT and T Sends Customers ‘Idol’ Ads - NYTimes.com

Some AT&T Wireless customers have voted an emphatic no on a promotion for “American Idol” that popped up on their phones this week.

AT&T, a sponsor of the show, said it sent text messages to a “significant number” of its 75 million customers, urging them to tune in to the season premiere on Tuesday night...

... Mark Siegel, a spokesman for AT&T Wireless, said the message was meant as a friendly reminder. “We want people to watch the show and participate,” Mr. Siegel said. He added, “It makes perfect sense to use texting to tell people about a show built on texting.”

... Mr. Siegel said the message went to subscribers who had voted for “Idol” singers in the past, and other “heavy texters.” He said the message could not be classified as spam because it was free and because it allowed people to decline future missives...

... Richard Cox, the chief information officer for Spamhaus, a nonprofit antispam organization based in Britain, countered: “It’s absolutely spam. It’s an unsolicited text message. People who received it didn’t ask for it. That’s the universal definition of spam.”..

So now they're back, advertising AT&T services.

I replied "STOP" to the message. I suspect I'll be dinged 20 cents for that one. There will be more.

I wonder how they know not to send these things to, say US Senators? They must have some way to avoid infuriating people who might hurt them with something more material than imaginary locusts.

Maybe AT&T has forgotten that it's not the Bush era any more. Betty McCollum is our US Senator, and soon, if we're lucky, Al Franken will join her. He's not there yet, so let's see if Betty is interested in sending AT&T some Minnesota love ...

See also: AT&T's rebate scam. I wonder if they've had any serious accounting audits lately; corporations who play these sorts of games tend to play other games too ...

The straw that broke my iPhone love

It is a small thing, by itself.

Unfortunately, it is just one more bit of nasty among so many more, and it's such a quintessential bit of Apple nasty.

The maximal interval for an iPhone Calendar alert is 2 days.

This is a problem. I need to be alerted of upcoming birthdays and certain other events at least 2 weeks ahead of time. That has been possible with all the calendaring software I've used over the past fifteen years -- except for the iPhone Calendar.app.

Now here's what makes this so perfectly Apple. The iPhone development team had dozens of examples to draw from, not least the original PalmPilot. They must have consciously decided to omit this feature. I imagine the team was proud of dropping a feature few people would use, proud of their minimalist aesthetic.

Ok, bad enough, but I'm used to that. I'm way off in the extreme tail of software users. There's very little I'm really happy with (Windows Live Writer, Gmail, and Google Reader come to mind). Apple's desktop iCal software reaks about as much as their iPhone app.

What makes this straw a back breaker is not simply that iPhone calendaring is pathetic, it's that Apple forbids alternatives. Even on OS X there are a few alternatives to Apple products, but on the iPhone only Apple can use the USB cable, and vendors are explicitly forbidden to distribute alternatives to Apple's core applications. On the iPhone it's Apple's Calendar.app, or it's nothing.

It's a bad story, and, short of a revolution in Apple's attitude, it's not going to get better. Astonishingly, the Apple iPhone and MobileMe have made me miss the old Microsoft.

So I've stopped recommending the iPhone to others anyone who needs at least PalmPilot 1994 functionality, and I won't be replacing my wife's BlackBerry Pearl with an iPhone.

Which brings me to the obvious next question. If the iPhone is a dead end, is their anything better?

Not yet, but I'm going to be watching the Android even more closely, and, I've got my fingers crossed that the Palm Pre will beat very long odds, and I'm watching for the jailbreak team to add a Calendar replacement that runs against Google Calendar.

Update 2/9/09: Google to the rescue? I feel for Nuevasync. The iPhone calendar app still sucks, but I can use the WebKit interface to Google Calendar to make changes.

Update 2/14/09: Saved by Google.

White house blog blows a rabbit ears post

Geez. This stuff really isn't so hard.

The headline on the White House Blog post today is: "A few more months of rabbit ears".

Problem is, they're talking about the analog to digital broadcast conversion. That's not a problem for those rabbit ear antennae. My 40 yo (design) rabbit ears work great with my digital to analog converter.

No wonder the American public is confused. Even the White House gets it wrong.

Long live the rabbit ears!

A shameful secret shared

A shameful secret ...

Was Kevin Costner's Waterworld an ahead-of-its-time eco-parable? - By David Zax - Slate Magazine

...  I might as well come out and say it: I liked Waterworld in 1995, and I like it now...

I liked it too.

Now you know.

Natural selection and executive compensation

Imagine a world of sterile herbivores.

No predators, no reproduction.

Some are better at running, some are better at calculus, and some are better at gathering food.

Now imagine we rank the herbivores by food gathering capacity and call the top herbivore the CEO.

In the curious ecosystem of modern capitalism, do we select for executives who's primary skill is the ability to gather money to themselves?

Ok, it sounds silly, but wait a minute.

We usually define the CEO by their alleged job function -- that is, to lead, etc. They need to get the most money because ... well, they're the ... you know ... the alpha.

What if we have it backwards?

What if the primary skill of the modern CEO is "money gathering" -- the ability to, by various means, gather the most money to themselves? Since we organize corporate income distribution by corporate hierarchy, what if it's primarily the money gathering skill of an individual that determines their corporate stature?

In this case, the best "money gatherer" would, almost be definition, become the CEO.

Trust me, there's something here.

Of course it's not that simple. "Money gathering" is a complex skill, and it's associated with other skills that are relevant to the role of "leadership". On the other hand, it's also associated with traits that are perhaps not so good for leadership, judgment and direction.

Natural selection, remember, isn't about being handsome, smart, or fast. It's the statistical process of finding a local minima. In the peculiar world of modern capitalism, and given the rule that the CEO makes the most money, it may also be true that the person who makes the most money is the CEO.

So maybe we do "select", above all, for money gathering capacity -- much to the detriment of other skills.

That would explain quite a bit, wouldn't it?

Update 2/11/09: A similar post of mine from 2004.

Death of a hero - Anastasia Baburova, a Russian journalist

I hope there is some comfort for this young woman's grieving friends and family in the Economist's obituary ...

Anastasia Baburova, a Russian journalist |The Economist

... In Turgenev’s poem “The Threshold”, a young woman stands before a door. A voice asks whether she is prepared to endure cold, hunger, mockery, prison and death, all of which await her on the other side. She says “Yes” to everything, and steps over. “A fool,” cries a voice from behind her. “A saint,” suggests another.

Fascism is alive and growing under the tyrant Putin.

As if the world, and Russia, didn't have enough to worry about.

The world needs a healthy and happy China ...

Unsurprising - the Party of Limbaugh doesn't want a stimulus package

This is not surprising ...

Talking Points Memo | Neanderthal Party

... 36 out of 41 Republican senators who voted to scrap all spending in the Stimulus Bill. All of it...

Including McCain.

Since Obama can't count on every Democratic Senator to be reality-based, he has a very tough road ahead. It's good he's good, but the odds are long.

Why am I not surprised?

The Party of Limbaugh has been denying reality for years. It wasn't just Bush who lived in another world, that has become the culture of his party. The POL is anti-science, anti-empiricism, pro-belief and devoutly Marketarian.

They don't reason, they believe.

Obama will do his best, but too much of a America is still the Nation of Limbaugh. That didn't end with his election.

Daschle and my pen collection

When Emily and I were residents, we thoroughly enjoyed our drug company dinners. Great company, great food, and, even then, the knowledge of a guilty pleasure.

It was wrong of course, and we went straight when we were in practice. Over time the primary care academies clamped down on the practice (though not on the "speakers fees" scam), and now even the pens and mugs are gone. It took years to run through all the pens we got in residency, but there's not much left of those days.

So I really had to laugh when I read of Daschle's life ...

Editorial - The Travails of Tom Daschle - NYTimes.com

... Like many former power players in Washington, Mr. Daschle cashed in on his political savvy and influence to earn $5 million in recent years, including more than $2 million from Alston & Bird, a law and lobbying firm; more than $2 million from the private equity firm, InterMedia Advisors, which provided the car and driver; and hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches to interest groups, including those representing health insurance plans, medical equipment distributors and pharmacy boards.

Although Mr. Daschle was not a registered lobbyist, he offered policy advice to the UnitedHealth Group, a huge insurance conglomerate...

The worst part is I'm sure Daschle feels he's incorruptible. Sure, feeble-minded family docs can be bought for the price of a pen, but Senators are made of sterner stuff.

I wish I was more confident that his replacement will be a real improvement. I don't think Obama is going to go for Howard Dean.

Update 9/15/09: Irony, sadness, and ambiguity.

The Obama-era CDC reaches out on the Salmonella infested peanut butter problem

I'm on some CDC lists, so I got this email today:

CDC - Social Media Tools for Consumers and Partners - Peanut Product Recall related to Salmonella Infections

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are working together to provide important information about the recall of certain peanut butter and peanut-containing products that are associated with the recent Salmonella Typhimurium outbreaks.

The latest resource is the new HHS, FDA and CDC social media Web page at http://www.cdc.gov/socialmedia/, which provides many helpful tools in order to reach as many people as possible.

The social media site makes it easy to obtain automatically updated information on the outbreak and the product recall.  The site provides resources for both consumers and partners, including:

• Salmonella Typhimurium Outbreak Map widget
• FDA products recall database widget
• Updated mobile site content
• CDC Podcasts
• FDA Dos and Don'ts During the Peanut Salmonella Outbreak Video
• CDC Health-e-Cards
• And more!

Many of these resources are available in both English and Spanish.

Sign up to receive email updates when new information is added to the Social Media Tools page.

Information about the Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak and the product recall is also available at:

• www.hhs.gov
• www.fda.gov/salmonella
• www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/peanutbutterrecall/index.cfm
• www.cdc.gov/salmonella/typhimurium

Call 1-800-CDC-INFO (1-800-232-4636), 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for up-to-date information about the recalls and hundreds of other health and safety topics.

We're in the Obama era now. It reminds me pleasantly of the days when Gore was reinventing government, and Federal sites were actually useful.

The FDA has been in desperate trouble for years; another gift from the Party of Limbaugh. The only bright spot in our latest food debacle is that the FDA is now receiving intensive therapeutic attention.