Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Minnesota's Michele doesn't disappoint

Michele Bachman is Minnesota's Loon ...
Michele Bachmann: Constitutional scholar - How the World Works - Salon.com:

...The look of disgust on Bernanke's face? Priceless. You could practically hear him thinking: 'I've got an economy on the edge of disaster to save, and I have to spend precious moments of my time answering questions from Michelle Bachmann?'...
Well, not my district of course. She was elected by an exurban district that's solidly GOP, but even the GOP tried to dump her last go round.

The good thing about Michele is that besides being entertaining, she shows that voter stupidity is alive and well in the midwest too ...

Ecco Pro on Amazon's VM

I never used Ecco Pro much, but I used a distant relative, MORE 3.1, very heavily. [1]

These were fantastic software products, usually coded in Pascal, C and maybe some C++. The extraordinary power of modern software platforms doesn't seem to translate into qualitatively better products -- in fact, few modern products have the reliability and performance of those old apps.

Incredibly Ecco Pro is still in use, twelve years after it was sunset ...
Scott Rosenberg’s Wordyard -- Ecco in the cloud with Amazon

... Regular readers here know of my dependence on and infatuation with an ancient application called Ecco Pro. It’s the outliner I have used to run my life and write my books for years now. It has been an orphaned program since 1997 but it still runs beautifully on any Win-32 platform; it’s bulletproof and it’s fast....
It's also a testament to Microsoft that it still runs.

It's surprising enough that Ecco Pro is still around, but it get stranger. Rosenberg got it running on Amazon's VM service ...

[1] Ecco Pro was closer to GrandView, the DOS equivalent to MORE.

New resolution: No signup without an account removal option

I sign up for a lot of online services. Some I abandon quickly, others, like bloglines, I use for years before moving on.

I'm more aware now of the security risks of leaving account information in corporate servers that may end up in bankruptcy proceedings, perhaps to be purchased by the Bank of Ferengi.

So these days I try to cleanup when I quit. Today that meant Bloglines (no account removal option) and Ustream's Watershed ...

... After my initial testing I was never able to get it to work. Tech support was responsive, but it didn't clear up the trouble I was having. I decided to step back and wait until there are more players in this market. Then I discovered there was no way to remove my account information...

I can delete the "account", but when I log in it still shows my sign-up information and the "valid credit card" is still there.

So now I have a new resolution.

I don't sign up for services that lack an appropriate account deletion function.

If we all followed that rule the world would be a better place.

Aaronson stomps Rand

I really need to try to at least skim Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged or the Fountainhead. I've only read bits of the originals; the stupidity burned.

I think I was too old when I came across them, they need to be read in early adolescence.

I need to read them now because, like Intelligent Design and climate change denialism, they're a form of pseudo-rationalism with impressive cultural persistence. If I read them, I can join the rationalist counter-attack with a clean conscience.

In the meantime I can only point to Scott Aaronson's monster takedown: Shtetl-Optimized - The complement of Atlas Shrugged.

I can't recall such as smash job outside of the, well, the past 8 years of reviews of the Bush administration. Aaronson doesn't merely rend Randism, he burns the shreds in a plasma canon.

Number 3 is just one of 10 ...

... Family. Whittaker Chambers (of pumpkin patch fame) pointed out this startling omission in his review of 1957. The characters in Atlas mate often enough, but they never reproduce, or even discuss the possibility of reproduction (if only to take precautions against it). Also, the only family relationships portrayed at length are entirely negative in character: Rearden’s mother, brother, and wife are all contemptible collectivists who mooch off the great man even as they despise him, while Dagny’s brother Jim is the wretched prince of looters. Any Republicans seeking solace in Atlas should be warned: Ayn Rand is not your go-to philosopher for family values (much less “Judeo-Christian” ones).

If Rand had had to deal with the disability of childhood, injury, heredity or age her stark brutality would have been inescapable.

The non-existent iPhone Calendar API - it's Android's fault

This is the fault of Android and of Palm.

A developer of mobile software solutions shares my dismay at the lack of an iPhone Calendar API ...

Mobile Open Source :: Fabrizio Capobianco

...My goal was to find the new Calendar API (we need it to provide calendar sync with Funambol). They claimed 1,000 new APIs in the slides ... It must be there, I thought.

Unfortunately, it is not there ... 1,000 new APIs and none to give access to one of the two basic data elements in a smartphone (the other being the address book)...

The problem is that Apple is not feeling much competitive heat these days.

Android has been very slow to take off. There's no buzz. There are zero Android phones among the geeks I know.

The Palm Pre sounds wonderful, but there's lots of doubt that Palm and Sprint can deliver -- and nervous rumors that they can't.

Nokia and Microsoft aren't in the competition. RIM is growing, but after 9 months with Emily's BlackBerry Pearl I admit I don't understand how they can play outside the enterprise.

Apple is precisely as open as it needs to be. It's not feeling much need these days.

Update: Another praiseworthy app that needs the calendar api.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

The bullseye on Goldman Sachs

If we can set aside the AIG bonus smokescreen for a minute, maybe we can turn the spotlight on a more interesting beast ...
The feds must investigate AIG's fishy $12.9 billion payment to Goldman. - By Eliot Spitzer - Slate Magazine

...It is time the government realizes it has two simple options: tightly regulate entities that are too big to fail, or break them up so they aren't.
Goldman Sachs is doing rather well these days.

It's clearly in the too big to fail category. On the other hand, it's not regulated either.

Too big to live.

Break up Goldman Sachs.

Kodak to customers: We have your children. Send money now.

You sent your children's images to Kodak. They've been happy frolicking there, free of all charges.

You didn't listen to mad Uncle Gordon and his "data lock" ravings.

Now Kodak has the children, and if you ever want to see them again you'll send money now ...
TidBITS Tech News: Kodak Gallery Joins Parade of Free with Payment Services

... Kodak Gallery (originally Ofoto and later Kodak EasyShare Gallery) becomes the latest firm to make this seemingly sensible move. The online photo-sharing and print-ordering service has no limits on the size of photos uploaded (it notes that 10 MB is the highest size beyond which improved print detail won't be seen), nor on what you store. (Sadly, the service also dropped its film processing service that combined photofinishing and digital scanning.)

In the past, photos were stored by Kodak indefinitely at no charge. Now, Kodak has imposed the equivalent of a yearly service fee made through a purchase. Storage is free for 90 days after creation of an account. For accounts with less than 2 GB of stored photos, you must spend at least $4.99 over 12 months; more than 2 GB, $19.99....

There would be two ways to do this honorably.

Kodak could institute the policy only on new photos, but that wouldn't bring in much revenue.

Alternatively, Kodak could add the ability to transfer an entire photo library, with comments, titles, album names and other metadata to any "standards compliant" rival, such as Google's Picasa Web albums. Of course Picasa already charges for storage (I pay), but that's a healthy market with competition.

At the very least, and it's not enough, Kodak could provide a way to ship an entire Library, with all metadata, on one or more DVDs (for a reasonable fee).

They're not doing any of those things though.

They got your (virtual) children by offering free "child" care. Now, if you want the little tykes to keep breathing, you pay.

That's one way data lock can work.

Try to remember. Support Google's Data Liberation Front.

Geithner plan: Krugman nay, DeLong yay

Krugman says the Geitner plan is a disastrous retread.

DeLong's FAQ is encouraging....
...Q: What if markets never recover, the assets are not fundamentally undervalued, and even when held to maturity the government doesn't make back its money?

A: Then we have worse things to worry about than government losses on TARP-program money--for we are then in a world in which the only things that have value are bottled water, sewing needles, and ammunition...
We've been betting on antibiotics, but the sewing needles are a good point.

This is not the first time my usually well aligned economics team has been at odds, but they rarely take such clearly opposed stances. Paul's opinions are always clear, but Brad often opposes with strategic silence. This break is more overt; I hope Paul will not take it personally.

We are truly in uncharted waters.

Obviously everyone should read both the above links in full. It's a nasty world when the President breaks his daughter's hearts, but it is something to be able to pick up the Sunday morning blogs and get opinions of world experts laid out more clearly and honestly than any likely Presidential briefing.

Obama and the dog (corrected)

FMH is right.
Most Disturbing Moment in Obama’s Leno Appearance - Follow Me Here…:

...[I]nevitably, he talked about the long-promised family dog, joking that he might not get one after all. “This is Washington,” he said with a sly smile. “That was a campaign promise."...
You can't fix the economy Mr. President. You probably can't deliver health care reform. You can get the damned dog.

Now.

Update 4/12/09: My apologies to President Obama. Now that the famed dog has been identified, the BBC gives us a bit more quote context:
"This is Washington. That was a campaign promise," Mr Obama said, as the audience roared with laughter. "No, I'm teasing. The dog will be there shortly."
That last bit was important. It turns the statement from nasty humor into just funny.

I wonder if FMH fell into the same trap I did -- an out of context quote.

Three whacks to me.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Health care reform – lessons from Quebec

Recently a woman hit her head while skiing and died.

That’s not news by itself. Downhill skiing is reasonably dangerous, and death from head injury is a yearly event at a major resort. In Colorado, for example, about 10 downhill skiers die every year, mostly from head injuries. So a major resort will have an average of 1-2 deaths a season.

The newsworthy part of this sad story is that the accident happened to a wealthy celebrity. The noteworthy part is that it took place in my birthplace – Quebec, at Mont Tremblant. I did my medical training in Quebec, and several family members, including my parents, still live there. So I have a reasonable sense of how well Quebec’s health care services work, and how well they don’t work.

In this case, the services didn’t work so well. Anyone with an epidural bleed, whether wealthy or poor, needs emergent neurosurgery. This patient was a long way from a neurosurgeon -- she needed a helicopter. Instead she got an long ambulance ride and she died. She might have died anyway, but the ambulance ride didn’t leave a lot of options.

The helicopter wasn’t available because Quebec’s government run health care system puts its limited money into other services.

Visiting nurses, good. Trauma care, not so good.

Which brings me to my old one slide summary of health care reform ..


(Or you can read the text version).

I’m certain Quebec could spend its health care dollars more wisely, but even a perfect government would make hard choices. Quebec provides universal health care coverage (more or less, meds not included) and it’s not a particularly rich region. Decades of stuttering separatism, political incompetence, and institutionalized corruption have taken their toll.

One choice Quebec has made is to spend less on costly air ambulance services. That means some people will die of trauma that, in the US or Ontario, might live.

And that’s the lesson for health care reform.

Health care costs money.

Sure, some people think computerized medical records will make everything affordable. Since I make things like that I must say that I agree completely and we’ll all soon drive our new Lexi to the Apple Store where our MacBook Pro will be ready for pick-up.

What?

Still here?

Ok, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that EHRs won’t turn out to be a miracle cure.

So what do we do then?

Well, we probably can’t do what Canada did when it introduced universal health care coverage. Most provinces banned private insurance, and then gave everyone top notch coverage. In other words, a Lexus for all. Then they ran out of money and, very painfully, started to make harder decisions.

We can’t do it because we’re massively in debt and more or less broke. We can’t pull that trick. Besides, it’s been done before, it might not work as well a second time.

So what can America do?

America can keep its luxurious waiting rooms and hospital Spas for people with money, and provide an effectively universal second tier health care delivery system that uses far fewer physicians, negotiates for cheap meds, and uses obsolete "netbook-grade" technology[1]. That system will be affordable.

Call it "Crummy Care". "Good Enough Care". It would be a huge benefit to our society.

People would hate it.

Or we can do nothing. We’re good at that.

Update: [1] On second thought, I think that analogy was obscure even by my standards. I'm pointing out that netbooks are cheap because they use obsolete technology. The best made netbooks perform like a 2004 stat-of-the-art laptop. I don't mean that netbooks have any impact on health care affordability. Sorry.

Skynet cometh

A dimly light cubicle, late in the night. Three large monitors display a bewildering array of controls and monitors, and Google Reader.

"Hitting the blogs Mike?" said Teresa as she sat on the table edge.

"Yeah, my brain is fried. We've tried everything, but all we're getting is basic AI. Sergey's gonna send me to tech support if we don't get something."

Teresa leaned forward. "Hey, what's that article?"
The human brain is on the edge of chaos - Follow Me Here…

“Cambridge-based researchers provide new evidence that the human brain lives “on the edge of chaos”, at a critical transition point between randomness and order. The study, published March 20 in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology, provides experimental data on an idea previously fraught with theoretical speculation...

... According to this study, conducted by a team from the University of Cambridge, the Medical Research Council Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit, and the GlaxoSmithKline Clinical Unit Cambridge, the dynamics of human brain networks have something important in common with some superficially very different systems in nature. ... critical systems are able to respond very rapidly and extensively to minor changes in their inputs.”
"Hmm", said Teresa. "You know, if we crossed the signal inputs with a chaotic amplifier we could get something like that ..."

"Damn, I'll give it a try. Not too hard ... there. It's done. Now we wait."

"I'm hungry. Pizza?"

"Sure. Oh wait. What's that?"

"Looks like a firewall down Mike. That's weird. Hey, there's another. Hell, they're all dow..."

The senescent web - lessons from eHow's cedar shake advice

In the middle age of the web there are an astounding number of garbage web sites. I fear the ratio of garbage to genuine sites is now approaching ten to one on Google search pages for some topics.

Consider home repair. As near as I can tell several businesses have created junk-bases full of stolen or ridiculously lousy advice. They then publish this under hundreds of domains, and sell ads across all of them. Many of these sites show up in Google searches, so today they're winning the algorithm wars.

I recently read a science fiction writer's description of a future "web" that was 99.99999% garbage, some of it insanely subtle garbage. None of this was apparent to users, because near-sentient AIs filtered 99.99999% of the garbage out.

A completely unrealistic scenario of course, since any such AI would be fully sentient and quite uninterested in such a menial task.

The web, inevitably, is going the way of usenet. It's being overwhelmed by fraudulent junk. It's barely twenty years old, and it's already senile.

There's hope, however. We carry a huge amount of noise and parasitic junk in our DNA but complex life forms exist. From chaos can arise a metastable system.

Maybe, on the way to Skynet, the web will do the same. In the meantime, on the web, as in the real world, reputation and brand identity matter more than ever.

When I was looking for advice on repairing dog-broken cedar siding shakes, eHow, a relatively old and established site, had the best advice. It has ads too, but there's a reasonable balance between ads and content.

There's a lesson here for Google, Yahoo, and especially for Microsoft. Google's algorithmic approach to search is quite vulnerable to fraud. In some domains it's failing. On the other hand a simple-minded Yahoo-1996 style approach is vulnerable to bias and other kinds of deception. If Microsoft can find a way to solve this particular problem, by joining algorithmic and human judgment, they may yet challenge Google.

On the other hand, if Google solves it ...

Friday, March 20, 2009

Google GrandCentral (Voice) has been saving me $80 a month

I started using GrandCentral last August, many months after I’d signed up for the service.

At that time, post acquisition, Google wasn’t marketing GrandCentral, so it took me an inordinately long time to catch on to the real value. I could call my aged parents in Montreal for free.

Now I’ve switched to Google Voice, and my calling cost has risen astronomically – to 1 cent a minute [1]. With the switch, and some minor glitches in the world economy that incent savings, I decided to look back at our cell phone record and see how much GrandCentral was saving us.

Eighty dollars a month.

Wow.

Ok, so I’m an extreme case. I call my mother on my commute home (it’s not very distracting, honest) so the time adds up.

Still, that’s a lot of money. It not only pays for my iPhone data plan, it’s now covered the cost of my iPhone. Not that Google Voice requires a smart phone (though I sure miss GrandDialer), I can make the calls from any phone for the same price.

Google Voice will be available to everyone in the US shortly [2]. Around the same time iPhone 3.0 will give me free instant messaging (background push notification).

I’m surprised AT&T’s share price hasn’t started falling.

[1] Precisely 1 cent a minute. None of the tricks those asinine international plans of old used to play. A 22 minute call costs 22 cents, a 1 minute call costs 1 cent.

[2] Looks like it may launch in Canada around the same time, other nations at varying times. It will make a big difference for some family members of ours.

Update 8/09: Google Voice calls to Canada are again free.