Month: April 2004

Work is for chumps, I suppose

It was an episode of “Behind Closed Doors with Joan Lunden” in 2002 that first acquainted me with the now infamous President’s Daily Brief, or PDB. It’s a summary of all intelligence collected by the FBI and CIA for the past 24 hours. Agents work throughout the night to compile the most relevant data they believe should be brought to the Commander in Chief’s attention. In the morning, they head over to the White House to deliver their written reports before going home to bed. The first thing that the President sees in the morning are the PDBs.

The big news right now is that President Bush Jr. had received a PDB on August 6th, 2001 that suggested that terrorists were planning to hijack aircraft and attack buildings in New York and Washington. What perturbs people is that it appears that these warnings were ignored. (Aside: What perturbs people even more is that the next day, Bush went on a 30-day vacation. Slide4.jpgApparently, he’s spent 40% of his presidency on vacation. A curious way to run a country where many Americans work overtime due to downsizing.)

Airbag’s Greg Storey suggests that the information disconnect could have been rectified if the PDBs didn’t look like book reports you typed out in elementary school. Slate’s Daniel Radosh playfully suggests that PDBs should be done in PowerPoint instead and offers a sizzling glimpse into his vision. Slide 4 is to your right.

Alas, their efforts are all for naught. According to The Guardian, Bush doesn’t even read the PDBs. He gets George Tenet, the director of the CIA, to summarize it even further, in his own words. Out loud.

Said by the Guardian’s Sidney Blumenthal:

“I know he doesn’t read,” one former Bush national security council staffer told me…It seems highly unlikely that he read the national intelligence estimate on WMD…Nor is there any evidence that he read the state department’s 17-volume report, The Future of Iraq…

And that is what perturbs me. The leader of the mightiest nation on earth, a nuclear superpower and financial powerhouse, doesn’t like to read.

We live in the Information Age, where knowledge is power. Knowledge breeds intelligence and wisdom. The pursuit of knowledge is why you’re reading this blog now – because you want to learn something. You may disagree with my views, but that’s fine – the whole point in attempting to fully understand something is to obtain as many perspectives as possible.

But Bush apparently isn’t even interested in other people’s opinions; in fact, he doesn’t even read newspapers, a fact pointed out by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

In my company, we have all been directed to read. Our VP has helpfully assembled a library of recommended books that cover a variety of topics, including effective leadership, telecommunication fundamentals, and business dynamics. When people argued that they don’t have time in their busy schedules to hunker down and read a book, he strongly suggested they start taking books home with them if they wanted to stay in the loop. Learning is a lifelong process.

Good technology

I’ve never heard of Stephen Downes, but he’s awfully clever. Robin Good posts an excerpt from his unpublished book, “The Learning Marketplace: Meaning, Metadata and Content Syndication in the Learning Object Economy” the Nine Rules for Good Technology – and damn fine good ones at that.

Good technology:

  1. Is always available. Availability strongly depends on price, but not overly so. Example: ATMs.
  2. Is always on, or can be turned on with a single command. Examples: Telephones, broadband internet access.
  3. Is always connected. And will transfer data to where it is needed, automatically. Example: GPS.
  4. Is standardized. Standardization guarantees interoperability. Example: W3C’s HTML spec allows anyone in the world with a web-enabled device to see your website.
  5. Is simple. When he talks about simple tech, he means it’s intuitive. Example: An insulin pen is simpler to use than a syringe; a diabetic just unscrews the cap and jabs.
  6. Does not require parts. “Perhaps even good technologies, such as portable stereos that require CD-ROMs, need parts. But a portable stereo that does not need CD-ROMs because it can download MP3s from the Internet would be better.”
  7. Is personalized. Technology should customize itself to fit your needs. Example: adjustable foot pedals on the Ford Taurus.
  8. Is modular. Technology should consist of independent entities that can be arranged into a desired configuration with minimal effort. Example: The Linux kernel allows it to be the brains inside TiVo players and Volvo automobiles alike.
  9. Does What You Want It To Do. Good technology is idiot-proof, robust and just damn works.

A VC points out a interview with Clay Shirky where Clay sums this up by stating that good technology is that which gives its users freedom of choice. “Microsoft gears up the global publicity machine its launch of Windows 98,” Clay says, “and at the same time a 19 year old kid procrastinating on his CS homework invents a way to trade MP3 files. Guess which software spread faster, and changed people’s lives more?”

Which is the core benefit of open source software – users are given autonomy from vendors and are empowered to choose, share and alter their software as they see fit.

Aside: Be sure to read that interview at the Gothamist. Clay is one of the most endearing and fascinating interview subjects I’ve ever read about.

In the end, good technology is so good, using it is second nature: “I was coming home in a cab from LGA in the pouring rain a few months ago, and sliding through a pool of water, we rear-ended the cab ahead of us. Both drivers got out, furious, and, before saying a word to one another, took out their phones and photographed each other’s license plates.”

There’s art, and then there’s masterworks

Some works of art separates the boys from the men. This entry is dedicated to the demigods whose work has no equal.

rc_sunset0000.jpg pno0001.jpg

.kkrieger, chapter I
.theprodukkt is a talented demoscene group that have released their first FPS game. It has bumpmapping, particle effects, realtime shadows and dynamic lighting and supports DirectX’s pixel shader 1.3 effects. Oh, and it’s also only 96 KB. That’s right, they’ve crammed an AI, 3D rendering engine, soundtrack and textures in a file that’s smaller than this screenshot. You can strafe, and have access to five weapons. It is quite the memory hog, however – I had to turn off my AA and AF on my Radeon 9800 Pro to get an acceptable framerate – but that was a small price to pay to play an FPS that’s as small as Tetris.

HL-Rally Beta 1.0
And finally, one of the most anticipated and ambitious Half-Life modifications has finally landed, and thy name is HL-Rally. Five years ago, the HL-Rally team had the crazy notion to build a racing game with the Half-Life engine. In an engine designed for a first-person shooter, they’ve designed giant winding tracks with breathtaking vistas. Sure, the graphics are dated and there’s a lot of bugs, but you can’t just help but love it for its sheer spunk. You can even make your little car drift around corners, and the built-in music player lets you burn rubber to your MP3s, or even Internet radio.

illusorysidebox.jpg

A bit of urban art: incredibly decorated utility boxes. They look like JWIs (Junction Wire Interfaces), aka telephone crossboxes, to me.

The killer app

Having come from hearing the Senior VP of Technology speak to us a few days ago, it hit me; in the IP world, voice is just an application.

People crow how VoIP first-movers such as Vonage and Primus TalkBroadband are going to be the “Bell killers”. That isn’t the point.

The thinking has always been that a POTS customer is a more profitable one. Wrong. If you don’t provide a more valuable service, you will lose your customers. POTS and long distance were great cash cows, but they’ve become commoditized. The real money lies in providing enhanced services via the IP infrastructure.

Salon’s article, Triumph of the telcos, is just stating the obvious. At least the telcos in Canada are not standing idly by; they’ve spent the last five years developing QoS-enabled IP networks to support a variety of IP applications – and in real-time if needed. In Bell Canada, for example, is harnessing Cisco’s MPLS technology and Nortel’s softswitch expertise for their Next Generation Network initiative.

This is a serious ocean-boiling maneuvre. Remember, it’s not a disruptive technology if everyone’s in on it. Bell will still be making money, both on the wholesale and retail sides.

Om Malik downplays the telco’s mettle, stating a price war is imminent. That’s true: The first-movers currently offer a crude VoIP over broadband arrangement that offers no guarantee of service, nor service during blackouts. They have decided to compete on price instead; Primus’s offering is a roughly $3 to $5 less per month than the ol’ trusty rusty PSTN.

But voice is just an ever-shrinking piece of the pie. Can you imagine checking your home voicemail from a wireless PDA, or receiving Caller ID on your television? How about having phone, Internet and TV services streamed to your home from a single Ethernet jack? That is the future. That is what Canadian telcos are striving for.

Pretention in pretense

Checked out ROM’s new Eternal Egypt exhibit on Friday. It was mostly statues and ornamental slabs, but at least there wasn’t a pot shard to be seen. I still wish that the British Museum (where these pieces were loaned from) allowed guests to take pictures. Visitors aren’t even allowed to draw sketches on paper.

Speaking of information access, Silverlotus noted that while the pharaohs were regarded as living gods while they were still alive, in death their tombs were pragmatically robbed by thieves and their names strickened from public records by political rivals. This is why pharaohs had their names carved in so many places; hopefully, the thieves and politicians would miss a spot.

A visit to the ROM goes hand in hand with a stop at Greg’s Ice Cream, a small hole in the wall that serves outstanding ice cream. For me, it was a Roasted Marshmellow and Root Beer float. For the lady, a Banana Toffee ice cream and a Strawberry and Coke float.

On Saturday, we went over to the Cheese Boutique to pick up some jalepeno-studded Havarti and aged Jarlsberg Norvegian (a Baby-Swiss). Also tried two kinds of Quebec Artisan cheese, hand made from raw milk. Apparently they squeeze the rinds daily, making a creamy cheese that tastes virtually like butter.

Had to hurry and finish up most of the cheese for dinner; the Jarlsberg was starting to harden. In the modern world of perservative-added freeze-dried food, we totally didn’t realize the fresh cheese would go bad so soon.

A little gourmet never hurt anyone. On the other hand, Epicurious featured a delightful article on getting into the ritziest restaurants in New York. It’s this quote that does it for me:

“I was clearly in another league of exclusivity. Lay eaters wouldn’t dream of trying to enter a restaurant where if you order verbena tea they bring the plant to your table and a white-gloved waiter snips the leaves with silver shears.”

Now THAT’s prententious! :rambo:

A nice ring to it

Thanks to cellphones with polyphonic sound processors, the world has re-embraced the MIDI. The problem is, most songs sound appalling in MIDI form – although this doesn’t stop people from sticking it on their cellphones.

MIDIs have a limited range, which is why I believe people should stick to polyphonic tones of the following two music genres – techno and Super Nintendo music. Let’s be honest, no one wants to hear Beethoven’s Ninth squawking on your phone in 16-bit beeps and bleeps.

What’s on my phone:
With Caller ID: Final Fantasy – Prelude (aka “the crystal cave music”)
No Caller ID: Chrono Trigger – Fragment of a Dream

I’ve never actually played any of these games, but the tones sound nice as MIDIs. No overly high pitched notes, and no aggressive melodies.

You take a block from the bottom

I can’t figure out why it’s called Fruit at the Bottom yogurt. The fruit (such as it is) is at the bottom because of gravity and lousy emulsion technique. Why advertise that fact? Do you see anyone advertising salad dressing as “Oil at the Top”?

Your weekly dose of net.couture: Super Mario Reloaded where Mario does the Burly Man, and the Penny Arcade Japanese Remix, where Penny Arcade comic strips are mutated by Japanese highschool students. Fiction truly is stranger than fact.

Moore’s Law 2 Turbo

Just another brainwave regarding my last post: Since the IC market is suffering from performance oversupply at this point, chipmakers will fortunately embrace this 4th axis.

Why? Because the market now demands it. For a long time, consumers just wanted faster chips, efficiency be damned. This is why Intel was such a big backer of multimedia with their WebOutfitter program and digital cameras back in the mid-’90s; multimedia require computers with beefy microprocessors.

Now, the desktop computer market is experiencing a lull. My mom has a Duron 800, and she’s perfectly happy with it. The market has reached performance oversupply. Now the IC manufacturers will have to increase system efficiency in their attempts to differentiate their products from each other, as well as to gain traction in the one value market that is still growing: embedded portable devices. Now you can see why Intel is touting Centrino’s power saving and wireless features and canning their MHz nomenclature.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.

– Albert Einstein