- Philip Morris: 15
- Exxon: 13 (see link to #1)
- Goldman Sachs: 12
- Facebook: 12
- For profit health insurance companies: 11
- AT&T and Verizon (tied): 10
- Microsoft: 10
- Average publicly traded company: 8
- Google: 6 (revised up after the Google Buzz fiasco, then down when they showed some wisdom)
- Apple: 5
- CARE International: 1 (They're not a PTC, so this is merely a non-evil reference point)
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Gordon's scale of corporate evil - 1st edition
It's not AT&T's fault, it's the iPhone?
Digital Domain - AT&T Takes the Fall for the iPhone’s Glitches - NYTimes.comWhy do I find this persuasive, even though one of the sources gets AT&T money?
... When I set about looking for independent data, however, to confirm the superior performance of Verizon’s network, I was astonished to discover that I had managed to get things exactly wrong. Despite the well-publicized problems in New York and San Francisco, AT&T seems to have the superior network nationwide.
And the iPhone itself may not be so great after all. Its design is contributing to performance problems.
Roger Entner, senior vice president for telecommunications research at Nielsen, said the iPhone’s “air interface,” the electronics in the phone that connect it to the cell towers, had shortcomings that “affect both voice and data.” He said that in the eyes of the consumer, “the iPhone has the nimbus of infallibility, ergo, it’s AT&T’s fault.” AT&T does not publicly defend itself because it will not criticize Apple under any circumstances, he said. AT&T and Apple both declined to comment on Mr. Entner’s assessments.
Neither AT&T nor Verizon was willing to reveal its internal data on performance. But Global Wireless Solutions, one of the third-party services that run network tests for the major carriers, shared some of its current findings. The service dispatches drivers across the country with phones and laptops equipped with data cards. They have covered more than three million miles of roads this year, while running almost two million wireless data sessions and placing more than three million voice calls, said Paul Carter, the president.
The results place AT&T’s data network not just on top, but well ahead of everyone else. “AT&T’s data throughput is 40 to 50 percent higher than the competition, including Verizon,” Mr. Carter said. AT&T is a client and Verizon is not, he added.
- We only hear my fellow iPhone users screaming about AT&T quality.
- Remember Apple's rivals saying Apple didn't have the engineering background to make a quality cell phone? I suspect this is what they were talking about. Apple did amazingly well, but perfection is not human.
- Quality and reliability are not Apple's top priority (most recent example: my 2 day old flickering, stuttering, $2K iMac i5). It's not in their DNA.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
A really tough cop ...
In Holiday Crush, a Fatal Shootout in Times Sq. - NYTimes.com
... The video showed Mr. Martinez turning, the police said, but he moved out of camera range. Police officials, who did not immediately release the video, said it also showed the sergeant reaching for his weapon and raising it.
It also showed Sergeant Newsom, who has been on the force for 17 years, raising his left arm over his chest in hopes of protecting his heart. It is a defensive move rookies are taught in the Police Academy. Police officials were astonished that the sergeant, less than 15 feet from the stubby barrel of a semiautomatic weapon with no hope of taking cover, was cool-headed enough to remember to do so.--
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said Mr. Martinez fired first, getting off two shots. Then his gun jammed.
Mr. Kelly said the sergeant fired four shots. All four hit Mr. Martinez: in the chest, below the neck and in the left arm; he also suffered a graze wound to the right arm...
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Kurzweil and homeopathy: now crackpot certified
Amazon.com: Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever (9781605299563): Ray Kurzweil Ph.D., Terry Grossman M.D.: Books
According to futurist Kurzweil (The Singularity is Near) and homeopathic medical doctor Grossman (The Baby Boomer's Guide to Living Forever), medicine is transforming into an information technology, which by its nature advances at an exponential rate..
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The state of social networks: Facebook, Twitter and one other
I’ve interacted with three social network systems. Two get a lot of media attention, but the most interesting one is currently invisible. Here’s how they look to me in December 2009.
Facebook is currently useful, but worrisome. It's useful because it’s been a useful way for me to share family news that (very) close friends may enjoy seeing. Facebook is where I announce that my 12 yo scored a goal in a hockey game, and where my readers would understand that a goal is not always just a goal. Facebook is worrisome because their business model is currently based on exploiting the weakest members of a social graph, and then on selling information and marketing access to the entire graph. It’s remarkable how uninteresting Facebook’s ads are. That’s a bad sign, even thought it says something interesting about the limited predictive value of one's friendships.
Twitter would be more interesting if I had an archaic cell phone with unlimited text messaging, or if I had an interest in the domestic disturbances of celebrities. Twitter’s usage is on the same track as Friendster and MySpace. I don’t think it will last very much longer.
The most interesting social network I know of, however, is one that has very few members, no media coverage, no books, little documentation, no clear strategy, and mysterious privacy and revenue models. This is the Google Reader share and comment graph including the (currently) “like-based” discovery model.
Through the Google Reader (GR) “like” link I’ve identified about six English-language writers around the world who share an interest in topics I want to know about. When I find one who is sharing interesting items I don’t see or know about, I add them to my GR graph. They may choose to follow me or not – that’s not relevant to me. The value is that I can follow what they do.
I add one such meta-feed to my knowledge stream every few weeks. The stream volume does not increase much, because I can in turn drop direct reads of streams my experts cover. Given the uber-geekiness of the GR graph membership the quality of shared items is currently very high, but I don’t see why this approach won’t scale even in the event that the GR graph gets market attention.
The primary risk to this model, of course, is that Google will lose interest. I suspect, however, that this experiment will provide Google with interesting ways to explore and classify the world’s information stream – a mission very dear to their revenue model.
Google’s machine translation is improving every month – I’m looking for my first Chinese-language source. That will be interesting.
The GR graph means Google wins and I win. Maybe, if this increases the value of the world’s knowledge stream, we all win.
I like that model.
See also
- Gordon's Notes- Google reader “like” and the shared discovery process
- Gordon's Tech- Google Reader- Experiments with notes, following and sharing
- Gordon's Notes- Google reader micro-blogging and changes to Gordon Notes
- Gordon's Tech- More of me- My Google Reader Shared Item Feed’
- Official Google Reader Blog- Share anything. Anytime. Anywhere
Friday, December 04, 2009
Financial Times – the feeds and the Fail
I’ve finally given in to DeLong’s imprecations and added some Financial Times sources to my feeds. The FT sources ought to complement my much appreciated Guardian feeds.
I do get one feed from the Murdoch paper – the WSJ’s Health blog is actually pretty good. Otherwise, unlike Brad who seems unable to stay away, I ignore the WSJ.
Here’s the set I’m starting with, I’ll tweak it up and down over time.
- Markets main
- Africa
- World main
- Global Economy
- Asia-Pacific
- Comment main
- FT Editor’s blog
- Tech blog
- Science blog
- China main
- India main
- Personal Finance main
So what will I drop? Probably some of the Economist’s feeds – that mag seems to be continuing its downward course. I expect Murdoch to buy it any time now.
PS. Google Reader's "Add to Folder" select menu doesn't scale. At least give it a scroll bar! As an interim measure I've deleted all my "Google Reader" tags. The Reader team really messed up the folder/tag metaphor.
Update 12/5/09: Ok, that was a Fail. The FT allows only a small number of free article views a month and the subscription fees I was shown when registering was about $200 a year - for electronic access alone. That was bad, but I might have considered it -- except a feed link takes me to a view that's incompatible with a mobile client. Delete all.
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Singular fun with Fermi
Comment by Augustine 11/29/09
... I don't trust predictions that are based on extrapolations from current rates of growth. These predictions are, and will be, correct, but only for limited time frames. Extend them out too far and they become absurd. Moore's Law works fine, and will continue to work fine for a while I’m sure, but basing predictions on ever accelerating computing power is about as useful as imagining accelerating a given mass to the speed of light.There's more to the post, but I'll stick with these two questions. The "limits to exponential growth" argument is even stronger than stated here since, in fact, Moore's Law itself has already failed. We have some more doublings to go, but each one is taking longer than the last.
The greater problem, however, with the argument lies in the fact that we are at best imperfect predictors ... You cannot accurately infer a future singularity when you cannot know what will change the game before it happens, if you get my drift...
So maybe we'll never have the technology to make a super-human AI. I think we'll make at least a human-class AI, if only because we've made billions of human-level DI (DNA-Intelligences). Even if computers only get five more doublings in, I think we'll figure a way to cobble something together that merits legal protection, a vote, and universal healthcare. (Ok, so the AI will come sooner than universal healthcare.)
The siege of Munster – Yikes.
I thought Melvyn was pushing a bit hard during In Our Time’s program on The Siege of Münster, but by the end I could see how much he had to cover. This 16th century nightmare is a cross between the “Killing Fields” and Jim Jones Kool-Aid in Guyana with the “Tailor King”, Jan (Bockelson) van Leyden, in the starring role as a brutal theocratic polygamist*.
In the early 20th century van Leyden was considered a precursor to Hitler, and although IOT’s academic rejected the comparison I find it more persuasive. There are even some similarities in the reaction. The Munster horror made the Anabaptists radical pacifists and made some common cause between European Catholics and Protestants. The Holocaust made post-war Germany a peaceful state, and led to the creation of the European Union.
van Leyden introduced polygamy into his besieged cult. I wonder if memories of Munster played a role in the early 19th century response to Joseph Smith, then mayor of Nauvoo, and his polygamous theocracy.
It’s horrifically fascinating, and overdue for a cinematic interpretation.
* There are curious attempts to sanitize van Leyden, including, at this time, the wikipedia article I link to. I’d go with the trio of IOT’s academic historians over the Wikipedia article on this one; he was a Monster in a monstrous time.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
It's not over. The rise of second generation spam.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Climategate: Gordon Speaks
I've been reading my always excellent blog sources, so I'm ready to comment on Climategate ....
Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident - Wikipedia
... Unidentified persons allegedly hacked a server used by the Climatic Research Unit, posting online copies of e-mails and documents that they found.[5] The incident is being investigated by Norfolk police[18] and involved the theft of more than 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 other documents,[9] consisting of 160 MB of data in total.[12] ...For my own record, here's my take:
- UK researchers have a very innocent approach to email. In the corporate world we write email the way I used to write my medical notes -- to be read in a courtroom. Remember Lomasney chaps.
- If the released emails are the worst the hackers found, there's not much of a story here.
- I'd make a solid wager that five years from now the climate consensus will not have materially changed. The science will stand. (I would love to be able to invest in a Climate Futures Market. I hope we get one.)
- Scientific fraud is not rare. So it must always be considered. There is, however, stronger evidence of fraud among the solar forcing research community and among the denialist astroturfers.
- Research data is money, power, tenure, fame, grants, hot babes (ok, 5/6) -- it is the currency of science. I sympathize with scientists who want to hold on to their data, though not with the Journals that may impede open sharing. In this case, however, we are talking about research with inestimable implications. In the case of Climate Science, we must insist on an unusual degree of access to research data. There's already progress but sharing is not natural for most scientists. Encouragement will be needed.
- I'm looking forward to learning who the hackers are, and what their motivations were.
- There's room for rational disagreement about the risks and approaches to global climate change. The denialist community is making it hard to engage in that dialog. That may be one of the more pernicious effects of their quest for fame.
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Complexity attack – the illustrated version
Synchronicity? Probably not*.
Dilbert experiences a complexity attack (click through for full strip) …
See also:
- Gordon's Notes- Left Behind- Ludd, Beck and the non-tribal roots of tea party rage
- Gordon's Notes- Health insurance- we're defeated by a complexity attack
- Gordon's Notes- The Empire Strikes Back- complexity, mobile phone plans, and Apple defeated
- Gordon's Notes- The hidden inflation of low quality
*No, it’s not that Scott Adams reads Gordon’s Notes. I’m really not that delusional. He’s very good at the zeitgeist, and I think people are catching on how complexity is being used as a commercial weapon.
In Our Time - Siege of Vienna seems familiar
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Sunday, November 29, 2009
The Family Telescope: Orion Dobsonian or Edmund Scientific Astroscan … or Orion StarBlast?
- Orion SkyQuest XT6 Classic Dobsonian Telescope (Or the smaller and lighter XT 4.5)
- Edmund Scientific Astroscan Plus (the famous Dans Data review)
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Bad web sites, genetic fitness, and choosing a service provider
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Saturday, November 28, 2009
Fermi Paradox review article - 2005
The essay is a good summary of the Drake Equation and its relationship to the Fermi Paradox. The author is clearly an optimist, he imagines a benign super-civilization blocking aggressive expansionism. That was the theme of a famous 1970s-era science fiction series, except the interventions were not benign.
It's a pleasant thought, but it seems unnecessarily complex. A simpler explanation is that all technological civilizations run into singularities long before they can attempt serious star flight. Whatever happens thereafter, it doesn't involve any wandering we could see. (Charlie Stross included a clever variant in a book - he speculated the post-singular civilization couldn't abide the poor connectivity of wilderness living.)
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