Book Review 68: Rapture of the Geeks

This book is about the future of technology and the evolution, coevolution, and possible merger of humans and computers. Some futurists and AI (artificial intelligence) experts argue that this merger is imminent, and that we'll be raising Borg children (augmented humans) by the year 2030. Others predict that supercomputers will equal and then quickly surpass human intelligence as early as 2015. We are accustomed to using computers as powerful tools, and we resist any invitation to think of them as sentient beings—and with good reason: Computers, even computers as powerful as Firefly, still just kind of sit there, patiently humming, waiting for instructions from programs written by humans.

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Rapture for the Geeks: When AI Outsmarts IQ by Richard Dooling is a disappointing book.  I had high hopes for a book about the singularity and the powerful role technology has for our future as a species. What I read was more of a rambling introduction of the singularity, punctuated by pointless and inaccurate Microsoft rants, and a narrative that appears designed to show us just how clever the author is. It’s the only book I’ve read in the last 10-years that I seriously considered abandoning half way through. I don’t recommend it.

There are some interesting observations in the book. It’s all focused around the idea of the Singularity, popularized by futurist Ray Kurzweil.  The Singularity is the point at which computer processing power surpasses cerebral processing power and what the means for the human race. If a desktop computer can process data as fast as the human mind, does that mean computers are finally smarter than people? Can we then download our selves into computers and live forever?  These questions are more than just philosophical; they are likely to be serious, practical ones in a few years due to the advances in the computing power and the decline in computing cost.

If futurist Ray Kurzweil is right, by 2020 a computer with the computational capacity of a human brain will cost $1,000 and will be sitting on your desk. "

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This will raise the question of when do we stop being human and become a machine. At what point does a person become a Cyborg? Is it when they wear a Bluetooth head set? Is it when the have a prosthetic limb? Is it when they can control that limb with their neurons? Is it when they stop remembering things and instead rely on Google or their smart phone? The border between human and robot narrows each day.

The ancient Greeks used to ask, "How many grains of sand make a heap?" Start with one. Add another. And another. Is it a heap yet? We'll soon be asking the same thing about brain components. We have no problem thinking that someone with a hearing aid, cochlear implant, or a pacemaker is still human, but Steven Pinker takes it to the next level with a hypothetical that poses questions we may face within ten years:

"Surgeons replace one of your neurons with a microchip that duplicates its input-output functions. You feel and behave exactly as before. Then they replace a second one, and a third one, and so on, until more and more of your brain becomes silicon. Since each microchip does exactly what the neuron did, your behavior and memory never change. Do you even notice the difference? Does it feel like like dying? Is some other conscious entity moving in with you?''

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There is also an interesting and brief discussion about whether or not AI even makes sense. There’s and advantage to using people instead of machines.  

IBM has the scratch to pursue silicon brain making, but most governments and corporations probably would not spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to duplicate a human brain. As roboticist Hans Moravec put it, "Why tie up a rare twenty-million-dollar asset to develop one ersatz human, when millions of inexpensive original model humans are available?"'' Or as rocket scientist Wernher von Braun put it in a different context: "Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor."

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For all the interesting discussions that sneak into the text, there are other passages where the author starts to raise an interesting point and then squanders it in excessive snarkiness. Here’s one example about the nature of idleness.

Several hundred years before the first click on the first hyperlink, Pascal wrote: "All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room." Little did he know at the time, but he had already built a primitive fossil of a machine (his calculator), which would one day lead to the mighty PC, which in turn would make it possible for us to sit still in a room for weeks, playing Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, drinking Mountain Dew Game Fuel, and eating Snickers bars.

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The silly gamer commentary doesn’t do anything to further his point.

Some of those types of comments seem mildly entertaining, but there are so many of them, they lose impact.  Here’s another example where his point gets lost in the silliness.

When you're in a panic to make an appointment and you can't find your car keys or your billfold or purse, do you instinctively begin formulating search terms you might use if the real world came with Google Desktop Search or a command-line interface? Whoever created the infinite miracle we glibly call "the Universe" Is surely at least as smart as the guys at Bell Labs and U.C. Berkeley who made UNIX. The UNIX creators wisely included a program "called Find, which enables you to instantly find any file on your system, especially any file in your "home" directory. Another command-line utility, Grep, enables you to find any line of text in any file on your entire system.' Mac OS X uses Spotlight to do essentially the same thing with spiffy visuals, and even Microsoft finally included "Instant Search" in Vista. So why can't the creator of the universe come up with a decent search box? Why can't you summon a command line and search your real-world home for "Honda car keys," and specify rooms in your house to search instead of folders or paths in your computer's home directory? It's a crippling design flaw in the real-world interface.

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This passage is interesting in a few ways. First, the comment about the “crippling design flaw” is an interesting way to look at things, but it takes too long to get there, and in context, if feels too forced and clever.  The passage also takes the opportunity to snipe at Microsoft unnecessarily. And all that obscures the point he is making and the story he is telling about technology.

And that brings me to commentary on Microsoft.  

Roughly 88 percent of scanned consumer PCs are found to contain some form of unwanted program (Trojan, system monitor, cookie, or adware).
...
Funny too how these infection rates hover at near 90 percent, which matches the percentage of computers running the Windows operating system. One might safely conclude that virtually all computers running a Windows operating system are infected if they are also connected to the Internet; it's just a question of whether the spyware compromises performance to the point where the user notices and becomes annoyed. Often the only cure is to erase your entire hard drive and reinstall the operating system. The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group also estimates that 80 to 85 percent of incoming e-mail is spam. An innocent Windows user might be tempted to inquire how Moore's law will soon produce computers that are smarter than people, while expensive, "intelligent" software programs running on today's latest, greatest hardware are still unable to stop spyware, or e-mails with the subject line "Visit the giant penis store',"

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It used to be all you needed was a computer and an Internet connection. Nowadays, an unprotected PC hooked to the Internet can be infected and hijacked within minutes, which means that now you need $200 worth of programs-firewall, antivirus, anti-spyware-before you can safely connect to the new, evolved, and improved Internet.

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The author loses credibility for a couple of reasons here. In addition to being full of cheap shots, there are a number of things that are just technically wrong.

1. Cookies are not malware. Does your PC remember remember your password or user ID?  You’re enjoying cookies.
2. System Monitor? Really?  A tool so you can see how your system is doing? Now, I know he describes these at “unwanted programs” and not malware, he does go on to describe them as infections.
3. A few sentences later he refers to all these elements as “spyware” which simply isn’t true.
4. He cites a survey showing 80-85% of incoming email is SPAM. while it may be true that 85% of the email on the ‘net is SPAM, the vast majority of that never gets to a user’s inbox. SPAM filters, even in 2008, were already quite effective and diverting it. Further, he buries this in a MSFT discussion. SPAM affects Linux and Apple users just as much.
5. He goes on to say you need to spend $200 to keep a Windows machine safe. Even in 2008, when he wrote the book that wasn’t true. There were plenty of free, high-quality tools to protect users that didn’t require them to spend anything.

It’s hard to take him seriously after such a discussion.

It’s a shame because there are some interesting points he tries to make in the book. His overly clever writing and anger at Microsoft significantly diminishes the quality of the book. There are plenty of other books out there for those who want to learn more about the Singularity.  Check those out instead.

Book Review 66: iWoz: How I invented the personal computer, co-founded Apple, and had fun doing it

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that day, Sunday, June 29, 1975, was pivotal. It was the first time in history anyone had typed a character on a keyboard and seen it show up on the screen right in front of them.

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Steve Wozniak’s memoir (co-authored by Gina Smith), “iWoz” is a great book for several reasons. It’s generally well written. It gives a nice overview of the history of the computer buisness in the 70s (and is a great compliment to Andy Grove’s, “Only the Paranoid Survive”), and it tells us a lot about Woz as a person. It’s a book with great geek appeal.

If you want to learn more about Apple’s design or marketing practices, this is a not the book for you. The recent Steve Jobs biography may be a better choice for that; Woz was largely done with Apple’s day-to-day operations when Apple became a design house. This book is more about the early days of the PC business and the evolution of electronics.

The biggest negative about this book is that at times Woz and coauthor Gina Smith seem to ramble or repeat things unnecessarily. While mildly annoying at times, this doesn’t really detract from my enjoyment of the book.

The thing that stands out most for me is how Woz can talk about how smart he is and how his inventions changed the entire industry and the world, and he does that without sounding arrogant or like he’s bragging. There is an innocent, matter-of-factness to his stories that is both amazing and charming. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone else pull that off.

So right there in that bowling alley I suddenly had this cool new goal. I was going to go back and start thinking about my first design that was actually going to put characters on a TV set. I remember how, way back in high school, I wondered how, if I ever did a computer, I would ever be able to afford one that could ever display characters on a screen. That was unfathomable back then. But now, I knew, something was different.

Everything had changed.

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So I designed this game Breakout.

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That was amazing because back then color TVs operated with circuits a lot more complicated than any computer was back then. And the funny thing is, that very idea came to me in the middle of the night at that lab at Atari. I did no testing on it, but I filed it away in my memory, and eventually that was exactly how things like color monitors ended up on personal computers everywhere. Because of my wild idea that night.

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Every computer before the Apple I had the front panel of switches and lights. Every computer since has had a keyboard and screen. That’s how huge my idea turned out.

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The Apple II was the first low-cost computer which, out of the box, you didn’t have to be a geek to use.

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Woz’s father was an engineer in the Bay-Area aerospace industry, and he encouraged his son to learn the field where transistors were still new and computers were mamoth things fed by punch cards.

Engineering wasn’t just a good living -- it was a calling. There was a beauty and elegance to electronics and engineering. Technology was an end in and of itself.

I so clearly remember him telling me that engineering was the highest level of importance you could reach in the world, that someone who could make electrical devices that do something good for people takes society to a new level. He told me that as a an engineer, you can change your world and change the ways of life for lots of people.

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And I came to that same view when I was very young, ten or maybe younger. Inside my head -- and this is what has really stayed with me -- I came to the view that basically, yes, technology is good and not bad.

People argue about this all the time, but I have no doubt about it at all. I believe technology moves us forward. Always.

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As Woz grew up, he quickly picked up on computer programming. This discussion is interesting in a couple of respects. One is that he grasps the technology so enthusiastically. The other is the way he breaks down digital technology to the basic math.

Here’s what was amazing to me back then. I thought to myself: Hey, at my current level of fifth-grade math, I am able to learn math used by a computer -- De Morgan’s Theorem, Boolean algebra. I mean, anyone could learn Boolen algebra and they wouldn’t even need a higher level of math than I already had in fifth grade. Computers -- were kind of simple, I discovered. And that blew me away. Computers -- which in my opinion were the most incredible things in the world, the most advanced technology there was, way above the head, above the understanding, of almost everyone -- were so simple a fifth grader like me could understand them! I loved that. I decided then that I wanted to do logic and computers for fun.I wasn’t sure if that was even possible.

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This is one of the things that many people overlook about computers -- they all work on very basic principals of math. They’re nothing but collections of light switches where everything is on or off. The entire digital world economy is based on this simple construct. And those switches will only do exactly what the user and programmer tell them today.

Woz continued to develop his skills in technology. He developed such a deep affinity for technology, that eventually he could actually write in machine code.

This 1 and 0 program could be entered into RAM or a PROM and run as a program. The hitch was that I couldn’t afford to pay for computer time. Luckily, the 6502 manual I had described what 1s and 0s were generated for each instruction, each step of a program. MOS Technologies even provided a pocket-sized card you carry that included all the 1s and 0s for each of the many instructions you needed.

So I wrote on the left side of the page in machine language. As an example, I might write down “LDA #44,” which means to load data corresponding to 44 (in hexadecimal) into the microprocessor’s A register.

On the right side of the page, I would write that instruction in hexadecimal using my card. For example that instruction would translate into A9 44. The instruction A9 44 stood for 2 bytes of data, which equated to 1s and 0s the computer could understand: 10101001 01000100.

Writing the program this way took about two or three pieces of paper, using every line.

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Woz developed a particular knack for simplifying hardware and software designs. Whether due to the cost of chips or just the challenge of technology, Woz would redesign and improve systems by removing chips and simplifying code. He also approached it all as a learning opportunity. A lot of what he accomplished he did because it was something he didn’t necesarily know how to do. The reason he can talk about his accomplishments without it coming across as excessive bragging is that he never seems to act like he knows everything already. He’s perpetually curious.

This plywood was covered with parts and it was a huge project. And having a huge project is a huge part of learning engineering -- learning anything, probably.

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That made me realize that a million times a second didn’t solve everything. Raw speed isn’t always the solution. Many understandable problems need an insightful, well-thought-out approach to succeed. The approach a program takes to solve something, the rules and steps and procedures it follows, by the way, is called an algorithm.

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His desire to push the boundaries of technology wasn’t his only motivation. There was also the more basic need he felt, born from his own shyness. Communicating with people was always a challenge for him. He faced the traditional nerd challenge of making friends and building relationships. Technology was his solution to the problem.

In that sense, it was a great way to show off my real talent, my talent of coming up with clever designs, designs that were efficient and affordable. By that I mean designs that would use the fewest components possible.

I also designed the Apple because I wanted to give it away for free to other people. I gave out schematics for building my computer at the next meeting I attended.

This was my way of socializing and getting recognized. I had to build something to show other people.

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Woz also talks about his love for practical jokes. In college he discovered he could jam a TV signal in a rec room with a device. He would turn it on, the signal would go out, someone else would get up to try to fix it, Woz would turn off the device and really confuse people.

So anyone watching would think that, okay, hitting harder works better. They all thought something was loose inside the TV and that by hitting it hard with your hand you could fix it. It was almost like a psychology experiment -- except, I noticed, humans learn better than rats. Only rats learn it quicker.

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At one point he started getting phone calls from people who were trying to reach and airline. Woz started having fun with them.

I told some caller they could fly “freight.” But they had to wear warm clothing.

I kept a straight face because everyone always went for the lower fare. At some point I started telling them it was cheaper to fly on a propeller planes than jets. The first time I did this I tried to book a guy on a thirty-four hour flight to London. But he would have nothing to do with it. I did get a number of people to buy a cheap twenty-four hour flight form San Jose to New York City.

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Woz tells more about the early days of Apple, his relationship with Steve Jobs, his endeavors after leaving day-to-day operations at Apple, his family life and more. I’ve only scratched the surface here. Regardless of your feeling about Apple as an organization, this is a fantastic book, and Woz has had a fascinating life. Despite the occasional bit of rambling and redundant content. “iWoz” remains an excellent read.


You can find more of my book review here.

Twitter traffic helps actual traffic

Here and interesting short story from the Seattle PI:

When Michael Micheletti's car stalled in the center lane of Interstate 5, he documented his ordeal holding up traffic on the social networking site, Twitter.
The Shoreline designer told KING-TV that tweeting was his way of passing the time after calling for a tow truck. He didn't expect the quick help he got in response.
...More

I would probably do the same thing in his place.  If I'm stuck in a middle lane, and my car won't move, I suppose I would first call a tow truck, and then start tweeting about it.  I'm not about to get out of my car in the middle of freeway traffic; that's almost never a good idea.  And does it really justify calling 911?

Friends saw his Tweets, which they passed along, and pretty quickly the DOT notices and moves the guy before his tow truck gets there. 

I recall hearing on report once that every minute a lane of traffic is blocked causes 6 minutes of congestion.  Looks like Twitter saved a whole bunch of drivers a bunch of time.

Problem with a QR Code

QR Codes are starting to appear on signs, products, business cards and ads in the US. They've been extremely popular in other parts of the world that have historically had more advanced cell phone technology, but with the growth of the iPhone and Andorid-based phones, they are finally gaining traction here.

A QR code is a variant of the UPC bar code we've seen at the supermarket since the 70s. They add another dimension, which means they can represent more data.

To use one, you point your cell phone camera at the code and use the phone's software to scan it.  Often that will take you to a website.

Here's and example I generated at kaywa.com:

When you scan that QR code, it takes you to this blog, which may be pointless since you're already here, but it would be useful if I put it on a business card.

This is really a long way to go to make my point.  That point is that the only QR code I saw at the Northwest Flower and Garden show was a big miss.

In order for a QR Code to work right, the phone has to be able to read it. The black and copper design had two things wrong with it.  It was low contrast and a little reflective.  That made it hard for the camera to lock on to.  It's an example of form getting more attention than function.

The other problem was that it was dark in that part of the convention center.  That made a marginal QR code illegible for many smart phone users.

This annoys me because the field is still so young in the US. If the only QR codes new users encounter are ones designed in this way and displayed in these circumstances, then they are less likely to give well done QR codes a chance.

And that would be a shame.

Fix "This disk is offline because it has a signature collision with another disk"

I try to be diligent about backing up my data. After all, there are only tow types of computer users:

1. Those who have lost data
2. Those who will lose data

I’m occasionally not as systematic about it as I would like, but that’s changing.  I just finished my first complete data backup in some time -- all personal computers, network drives, and external USB drives. It turns out I have about 1.6 TB of data.

Phase 1 was to consolidate what I could to minimize duplication, and to back up everything to a single USB 2TB hard drive. It took about a week.

Phase 2 was began today.  That’s the phase where I copy everything on that 2TB USB HDD to another 2TB USB HDD and send it out of state.  This gives me off-site back up.  After all, all the backups in the world won’t do me any good if they are sitting in my apartment if disaster strikes.  Off site backup is an important part of any backup strategy.

The two 2TB drive that I’m using are identical models, and that’s where the problems came up.

I plugged the first one it, and it was fine.  I plugged the second one in, and it never came up in “My Computer.” Windows 7 did not appear to see it.  It tried rebooting, swapping the ports and still had the same problem.

So I dove deeper into the Windows setting. A word of caution here:  these tools give you the opportunity to really screw things up if you’re not careful.  Make sure you protect your data before getting into this.

A great tool to use when you have disk problems is the Disk Management tool. To access it in Windows 7, click the “Start” button, and type “Disk Management” in the search box.  When the option comes up, click “Create and format hard disk partitions.”

While the “My Computer” windows gives you access to the data on your drives, and to the drive letters (which may or may not reflect physical drives), this utility gives you access to the drives themselves. It tells you which physical drives are installed, and how those drives are divided up.

In my case, it showed both of my 2TB drives, but one was showing an error message:

“This disk is offline because it has a signature collision with another disk"

Windows identifies each drive based on a signature related to the physical components of the drive.  Because my two 2TB Seagate drive were both the same model, size, speed, and part number, they had the same signature.  Windows could not tell them apart.

The solution to that problem was to change the signature on one of the drives.  I found out how to do that at HowToHaven.com.  Their article on how to identify and change the drive signature is here.

The instructions are well written and easy to follow.  They do involve using the command line in Administrator Mode, and since you are messing with deep settings, it’s important to be careful.

Since one of my drives was blank, that’s the one I changed the signature on.  That way I didn’t risk any data loss if I screwed it up.

But the process worked fine.  I had no trouble.  I followed the instructions, exited the utilities, hooked up all the drives again, and everything appeared in “My Computer” just as it should.  And right now that computer is busily copying 1.6 TB of data from 1 USB drive to another.

The lesson here?

• Back up your data
• Learn to use diagnostic tool that come with Windows
• Google error messages
• Back up your data.

Those steps can help solve a heck of a lot of problems.

Technology to Change the World

We have more than enough energy to satisfy our greatest needs and desires.  It's out there in the environment -- in the sun on our faces, the wind on our back, the vibration of the freeway, the rattling of trains, the surf eroding the shore, the atoms we split, the garbage we rot, and the coal we burn.  The only problem is that it's not where we want it, when we want it.  Our goal for the 21st century should be to fix that problem

Mobile technology, computing technology, communications technology and related items have really changed the world over the last 20 years.  What's the next step?

Batteries.

If we can develop dramatically more efficient, less expensive, and (ideally) more eco-friendly battery technology, we can change the world again in the next 20 years.

Improved battery technology can drive electricity costs down. Imagine being able to charge your home's batteries at night when powerplants are underutiltized.  Power can be cheaper in the off hours, and we can eliminate a lot of the Brown-Out and rolling Black-Out problems parts of the country face on hot summer days.

Electric vehicles, like the Nissan Leaf and Tesla family of cars are giving us a viable alternative to gasoline, but they still are limited in range to about 100 miles for the Leaf and under 300 miles for the Tesla. Imagine battery technology that's good for 1000 miles.

Combine those vehicles with off hours charging and household batteries and we get world changing benefits.  Even charging cars with electricity from coal powerplants produces less greenhouse gas  than driving on gasoline.

These two battery solution gives us even more benefits, though.  Storing power locally gives us better disaster preparedness.  When powerlines go down due to wind, rain, or hurricane, household batteries can keep the lights bright and the refrigerator cold.

Alternative energy solutions at the local level, whether those solutions are roof top solar panels or home sized windmills become much more viable with the right battery technology.

Large scale alternative energy solutions, again, whether they are hydro-electric, geothermal, solar, wind, or wave action are all more viable when we can efficiently store they energy.

And back down to the small scale, as we migrate more and more to cloud computing, keeping those laptops and smart phones charged is critical.

I'm not sure if it's just a question of more efficiently scaling our current technology -- of making refinements to what we already have -- or if we need massive conceptual shift in areas of chemical and electrical engineering that I know nothing about.

The company that can master battery technology -- the country that can master battery technology -- will own the economy of the future.

Battery technology isn't sexy.  It's not exciting.  It rarely makes headlines.  But it should.  

Our nation's infrastructure and ecnomy depend on it and demand advances in battery technology.

The question is, how do we capitalize on it?

Movie Review 18: Tron Legacy

On Saturday, The GF, her college roommate, and I went to see Tron Legacy in 3D.  I went in with low expecatations, and I think the movie met them.

This is not a good movie.  It's fun.  It's pretty.  It's entertaining. It has great music  But it's not good.

The problems with this 2+ hour movie are mainly script issues.

The story is a sequel to the orignal Tron from 1982.

In Tron Legacy, Sam Flynn is a goaless, wealthy 27 year old, reluctant to grow up and run the corporattion his is a major shareholder in.  He's disapointed in his father, Kevin Flynn (the main character of the original Tron), who disappeared years ago. He stumbles onto his father's old work station and gets zapped into "the grid." Now he is a program.  But not just a program; he's also a user.  He embarks on quest to survive, find his father, and get back to the real world.

That's when things start to fall apart. Flynn gets captured pretty quickly. Other programs outfit Flynn with the uniform he'll wear in the grid and the assign him a disk.  Is it unusual to have a new program show up with not uniform, lights, and disk?  It would seem likely, but there is no indication of that. Perhaps the nature of the digitla environment is that there is nothing "unusual" to an operting system.  There are just standard procedures.

That's part of the problem.  The film doesn't treat other programs as applications with specific tasks.  It treats them like people, but never clarifies was makes these collections of code individual applications.  It waffles on the fundamental nature of the characters.

Flynn's new outfit glows blues instead of yellow or red so we know he's a good guy. But they don't every tell us why things are those colors.  Is this a program-based decision?  Do they other programs see each others' colors? Is this just a convention to help the audience keep track of the characters?

After getting his new outift and told he must protect and keep his disk, Flynn is immediately sent to an arena to battle other programs for no apparent reason.  At that point, he is supposed to remove his disk and fling it at other programs in an effort to destroy them.  What happens when he takes his disk off?  Nothing, apparently.

The movie goes on and more random things happens.  Characters accomplish tasks that should be hard but just seem to happen.  Flynn meets his father who may or may not have god-like powers. There are plenty of biblical references, Star Wars references, and even a couple Lebowski references.

There is a fundamental problem with the rules of the universe on the grid.  There doens't appear to be an overriding prinicple or physics of the grid. Characters do things that are impossible in our world, which is fine, but we are never really told what is possible or real in the grid.  How do characters alter their environment?  Are there things they can't do?  How can the rules change?  What is the nature of Flynns?  How are users different from programs?  How do programs interact?

I'm not suggesting we need 15 minutes of exposition to tells us all of this.  We can pick it up from the characters' interactions if we know the foundation.  The problem is I don't get the sense that there is an over-riding rule book used in the creation of the world.

The lines in the script are often trite. The dialog isn't strong enough to make up for the confusion and missing plot elements.  It feels like it's full of short cuts.

Part of this may simply be timing.  In the past 30 years, a lot has happened that the original Tron script did not need to deal with.   Tron's style and design was revolutionary in 1982.  It dealt with concepts of data, avatars, and the desire of information to be free in a way the movie-going public had never seen before.  It was rare to have a computer at home and even rarer the have a way to connect it to other computers.  At the conecptual level it was mind-bendingly awesome.  In the time since then, computer technology has become part of mainstream culture.  While much of the culture remains suspicious of new technology, it also lives with it every day.

Those of us in the technology industry live even closer with the digital culture.  While the first Tron showed us a world that could be, Tron Legacy shows us a world that we know does not exist.  Reality has gotten in the way of the Tron world creation.

In addition to the changes in the real world, our movie culture changed, too.  In 1982 we were still dealing with the new Sci-Fi blockbuster format.  Sure, we had the first two Star Wars movies, and Tron came out the same year as Star Trek II and Blade Runner, but we still hadn't seen the movies that come to show us more about the possibilites of digital effects and digital integration with our lives.  War Games, Hackers, and The Matrix still had not some out.  William Gibson had not yet published Neuromancer and Neil Stephenson had not yet published Snow Crash. Tron was leaving its footprints in a field covered with fresh snow.

Tron Legacy tries to do the same thing, but the digital pop culture landscape is by now well trod.  Tron Legacy has to do more to tell us about how its digital landscape is different than the ones we have already seen and lived in.  In short, the bar is higher in 2011 than is would have been in 1984.

That said, this is an undeniably beautiful film  The production design is fantastic.  The updates to the original Tron look-and-feel are well done.  I really like the aesthetic of the simple neon lines on black.  The look if rife with possibilities and still looks futuristic, rather than dated.

The 3D effect is nice; the film is only 3D in the digital world.  Even then it's not necessary.  There aren't many 3D effects that are striking and you can easily enjoy the view in 2D.

Part of the buzz for the film was on the score, by Daft Punk.  The GF was initially sceptical, since the soundtrack does not sound like the traditional stuff Daft Punk does.  In the movie though, it's excellent.  The movie and sound is very well done.

The bottom line is that if you want a fun, entertaining, somewhat forgettable film, check out Tron Legacy.  It's good popcorn fare.  If you're looking for a picture that says something interesting or that has a good story, that's not Tron Legacy.

But it sure is pretty.

My fix for problems with Firefox 3.613

I had to prep a new laptop recently, and wanted to put Firefox on it.  I'm not sure why; I've prettey much abandoned it for Chrome, but it still seemed like a good idea.

I downloaded the latest version (3.613) from the Mozilla website, installed it, and tried to launch the application. It wouldn't launch.  Instead it just crashed on startup.  I tried it several times and had no luck.  I did get it to launch in safe mode, but that's no fun.

I tried rebooting, uninstalling, reinstalling, redownloading, and kept getting the same result.

Finally, I uninstalled it one more time, then I sought out Firefox 3.5.  I found it and installed that version. Once I launched it, it prompted me to upgrade to 3.6.  I chose that option, installed the upgrade, and it finally worked.

Short version of the story?  Download the earlier version of Firefox, install it, upgrade to the newer version, and have fun surfing.

Freeze a hard drive to recover data

It happens.  I had a hard drive crash.  It probably happened because I dropped the laptop on the ground a few dozen too many times.  Fortunately, I was able to recover my data.

To begin the story, I just want to say it is critically important to back up your data.  There are only two kinds of computer users:

1. Those who have lost data
2. Those who will lose data.

Is your backup current?

When my hard drive failed, it had been about a month since my previous back up. That meant that while it wasn't critical that I recover everything, it still did represent a potential loss of 75-100 hours of work.

I took the hard drive out of the computer and put it in the freezer, as suggested on Lifehacker.  This suggestion is popular because most computer hard drives are mechanical devices, subject to expansion and contraction with temperature.

When a hard drive crashes, it typically means the the drive head, which hovers less than the thickness of a human hair above the data platter, touches that data platter for some reason.  When they touch, data can be destroyed. Or it could happen because parts go out of alignment or seize up.

Freezing a hard drive lowers the temperature enough that many times, that drive will briefly come back to life.

I put the hard drive into a USB enclosure and tried to access it from another computer.  No luck.

I wrapped the enclosure in saran wrap, and stuck it in two ziplock back, to minimize damage due to moisture.  Then I stuck it in the freezer for a few hours.  No luck.

I left it in the freezer for a couple days.  No luck.

Then I pulled it out of the enclosure, and put the frozen hard drive directly in a laptop.  No luck.

I was about to give up.  I took the drive without the saran wrap this time, put it in a ziplock pack with a silica gel pack to, again, minimize moisture damage, stuck that in another plastic bag, and put it on top of the frozen pizza in my freezer.

Then I did some more trouble shooting.  I took a known good hard drive, stuck it in the USB enclosure, and tried to read that data.  No luck.

It turns out that not only had the hard drive crashed, I also had a bad enclosure.

I bought a different USB adapter. A week after covering the pizza with data, I tried again. I pulled out the hard drive, plugged in the cable, and I put it on one end of a cookie sheet.  On the other end, I put two ice pack.  I used the aluminum cookie sheet to keep the hard drive cold while I went to work on it.

I hooked it all up, and the computer could actually see the drive.  It did give me some errors.  It though the drive was unformatted, and it wouldn't open the properties right.

But the hard drive was making more appropriate noises.

I opened a DOS window in Windows 7, and ran, "chkdsk /f /r /x d:"  In this utility, Windows scans the disk and attempts to correct errors it find in the data structure.  It ran for several hours.  Eventually, my ice packs were starting to melt so it was time to add froze vegetables to rig.  This is how it all looked:

As the utility trudged along, it found more and more data.  At the end, I finally had access to all my documents.  All that work was now safe.

I got lucky.

The lesson is the always have a back up of your data.  The hours that go into creating it, or the prescious memories associated with your it are too important to not back up.

But if you do have  worst case scenario and can't get your data any other way, stick it in with the El Monterey Chimichangas, and it might just work.

One Night in Camtasia...

Actually, it's turning into months in Camtasia but that doesn't sounds as cool.

I've been spending a lot of time this month creating screencasts for work.  I'm putting together product training videos and sales program training videos.

This has involved me sitting in front of the computer with my headset on, and recording scripts that I wrote.  Then there's the post production stuff of trimming a second here, a half second there, resyncing the video and audio after I break it, and then finding out after I rendered the final product that I misspelled something on a source graphic.

Here's a few of the things I've discovered as part of this process:

• It is weird talking into my headset when there's no one on the other end.
• I'm at the point in my life where I no longer worry about the neighbors calling the cops because of a loud party.  I'm worried they'll call the cops because I'm speaking too loudly into my microphone about SKUs, referral fees, and purchase orders.
• After playing back my audio over and over again, I'm glad I don't have to hear myself speak in real life.  I'd just like to apologize to the world that does.
• Portions of the script that I wrote, I can read and record with few problems.  As soon as I get to a section where I copied the text from somewhere else in the organization, my tongue trips more than a hypersensitive car alarm in a hail storm.  
• I'm becoming a reluctant fan the Quik Time format
• 5 seconds is an eternity
• Deciding when a project is done is much more complicated than it would seem

It's been quite a learning process.  If I had to offer one tip to Camtasia users, it would be this:  Don't record your audio while you record your screen actions.  Separating the two processes allows you to concentrate on one things at a time.  And it makes editing and correcting easier.

Any other screencast tips?

Book Review 57: Only the Paranoid Survive

I'll describe what a strategic inflection point is a bit later in this book. For now, let me just say that a strategic inflection point is a time in the life of a business when its fundamentals are about to change. That change can mean an opportunity to rise to new heights. But it may just as likely signal the beginning of the end.

Page 3

Andrew Grove’s well known book, “Only the Paranoid Survive” was quite different from what I expected. It was more narrowly focused than I anticipated. I’m not disappointed though. I learned some new things about my industry, and it made me think more about the challenges a corporation will face. While Grove does not discuss this part of it, it’s clear to me these challenges can affect smaller organizations within a corporation. That, however, goes to my thoughts on how managers need to think strategically about their role in the organization, and is a topic for another blog post.

The book is all about corporate Strategic Inflection Points. Those are points in a corporations life when suddenly the wold is a very different place. Grove’s discussion is detailed and frank.

Clearly, the old world was no more. Something had changed. And the more successful the players were in the earlier industry, the harder a time they had to change with it.

Page 48

As Grove discusses these changes in the business environment, he often uses the phrase, “Something has changed.” Of course, whenever I see that phrase I think of Elphaba from Wicked. While Grove isn’t discussing good versus evil, he is still talking about similar things. Something happens and you can never go back to the way things were before. When it happens to a company, either the company makes major changes and grows, or it slowly contracts and dies.

The trick is to spot these Strategic Inflections Points while they are happening, recognize their potential impact, and act accordingly.

For Intel, Grove says that point occurred with shift to a PC compatible computer market and Intel’s decision to get out of its primary business -- making memory chips and focus on a new business -- making processors.

He also discusses the Pentium flaw from 1994 and its impact on the company. Since the he wrote the book at the birth of the consumer Internet in 1995 (it was published in the middle of the Dot Com boom) he disccussed the web only briefly. Even then, though, it was obvious it would be a Strategic Inflection point, perhaps not for Intel, but definitely for the computer business in general.

All this suggests that the Internet is not a strategic inflection point for Intel. But while the classic signs suggest it isn't, the totality of all the changes is so overwhelming that deep down I think it is.

Page 181

I have only a basic knowledge of the computer business prior to the advent of the PC compatible. I’d heard the names Wang and DEC, but besides some vague commercial memories, I couldn’t tell you much about them. Grove sketched out how the computer business worked in that era.

The computer industry used to be vertically aligned... this means that an old-style computer company would have its own semiconductor chip implementation, build its own computer around these chips according to its own design and in its own factories, develop its own operating system software (the software that is fundamental to the workings of all computers) and market its own applications software (the software that does things like accounts payable or airline ticketing or department store inventory control). This combination of a company's own chips, own computers, own operating systems and own applications software would then be sold as a package by the company's own salespeople. This is what we mean by a vertical alignment. Note how often the word "own" occurs in this description. In fact, we might as well say "proprietary," which, in fact, was the byword of the old computer industry.

Page 40

As the industry shifted from horizontal to vertical orientations, and memory chips became a more commoditized business, Intel faced the prospect of dwindling profits and revenue. Intel ultimately made the decision to abandon its core business to focus on new opportunities in the CPU business. That decisions in the 80s made Intel the company it is today.

In retrospect, its clear Intel made the right choice, but it wasn’t obvious at the time. As Grove tells the story, it was a heart-wrenching decision and a risky one at that.

Grove goes on about how challenging this was to Intel’s identity. He also explains just how out of touch with the issue his executive team was. While they were struggling with the decisions, it was already happening on the ground.

Over time, more and more of our production resources were directed to the emerging microprocessor business, not as a result of any specific strategic direction by senior management but as a result of daily decisions by middle managers: the production planners and the finance people who sat around the table at endless production allocation meetings. Bit by bit, they allocated more and more of our silicon wafer production capacities to those lines which were more profitable, like microprocessors, by taking production capacity away from the money-losing memory business. Simply by doing their daily work, these middle manners were adjusting Intel's strategic posture. By the time we made the decision to exit the memory business, only one out of eight silicon fabrication plants was producing memories. The exit decision had less drastic consequences as a result of the actions of our middle managers.

Page 96-97

In the case of Intel's exit from the memory business, how did Intel, the memory company, get to where only one factory out of eight was producing memory chips by the mid-1980s, making our exit from memories less cataclysmic? It got there by the autonomous actions of the finance and production planning people who sat around painstakingly allocating wafer production capacity month by month, moving silicon wafers from products where they seemed wasteful—memories were the prime example of this—to other products which seemed to generate better margins, such as microprocessors. These people didn't have the authority to get us out of memories but they had the authority to fine-tune the production allocation process by lots of little steps. Over the course of many months, their actions made it easier to eventually pull the plug on our memory participation.

Page 111

The executives at Intel made the decision to exit the memory business after the rest of the company was already implementing the decisions based simply on day-to-day resource allocation. When Intel finally announced the decisions to its customers, they had a similar response.

In fact, when we informed them of the decision, some of them reacted with the comment, "It sure took you a long time." People who have no emotional stake in a decision can see what needs to be done sooner.

Page 92

Fear of making the decision delayed it for sometime. And Grove realizes that delay was probably a mistake. Echoing a sentiment I’ve heard other executives express, Grove says:

Looking back over my own career, I have never made a tough change, whether it involved resource shifts or personnel moves, that I haven't wished I had made a year or so earlier.

Page 132

(Come to think of it, Wil Wheaton expressed that same sentiment in his book, “Just a Geek.”)

Grove explains that an executive must listen to the Cassandras in the organization. They’re in a better position to anticipate Strategic Inflection Points than management is.

Although they can come from anywhere in the company, Cassandras are usually in middle management; often they work in the sales organization. They usually know more about upcoming change than the senior management because they spend so much time "outdoors" where the winds of the real world blow in their faces. In other words, their genes have not been selected to achieve perfection in the old way.

Because they are on the front lines of the company, the Cassandras also feel more vulnerable to danger than do senior managers in their more or less bolstered corporate headquarters. Bad news has a much more immediate impact on them personally. Lost sales affect a salesperson's commission, technology that never makes it to the marketplace disrupts an engineer's career. Therefore, they take the warning signs more seriously,

Page 108-109

In Greek mythology, Apollo gave Cassandra the gift of prophecy, but when she angered him, he cursed her so that no one would ever believer her prophecies. I’ve know some salespeople in my life who can relate to that.

While everything in the book comes back to Strategic Inflection Points, Grove does offer other key business insights. Here’s how he describes the new rules of the horizontal economy. The seem like fairly basic business precepts to me. Did the world use to operate differently?

One, don't differentiate without a difference.

Two, in this hypercompetitive horizontal world, opportunity knocks when a technology break or other fundamental change comes your way. Grab it.

Three, price for what the market will bear, price for volume, then work like the devil on your costs so that you can make money at that price. This will lead you to achieve economies of scale in which the large investments that are necessary can be effective and productive and will make sense because, by being a large-volume supplier, you can spread and recoup those costs. By contrast, cost-based pricing will often lead you into a niche position, which in a mass-production-based industry is not very lucrative.

Page 52

To be successful, a company has to be focused and take calculated risks. Trying to preserve as many options as possible and spreading its efforts thin will not work, according to Grove. An organization needs to choose a direction and go for it. That may limit options later on, but it is the key to success.

If competition is chasing you (and they always are—this is why "only the paranoid survive"), you only get out of the valley of death by outrunning the people who are after you. And you can only outrun them if you commit yourself to a particular direction and go as fast as you can. You could argue that, since they are chasing you, you should give yourself all sorts of alternative directions—in other words, hedge. I say, "No." Hedging is expensive and dilutes commitment. Without exquisite focus, the resources and energy of the organization will be spread a mile wide -- and they will be an inch deep.

Second, while you're going through the valley of death, you may think you see the other side, but you can't be sure whether it's truly the other side or just a mirage. Yet you have to commit yourself to a certain course and a certain pace, otherwise you will run out of water and energy before long.

If you're wrong, you will die. But most companies don't die because they are wrong; most die because they don't commit themselves. They fritter away their momentum and their valuable resources while attempting to make a decision. The greatest danger is in standing still.

Page 151-152

When a company is meandering, its management staff is demoralized. When the management staff is demoralized, nothing works: Every employee feels paralyzed. This is exactly when you need to have a strong leader setting a direction. And it doesn't even have to be the best direction—just a strong, clear one.

Page 152

Mark Twain is often credited with saying something similar and more succinctly.

Put all your eggs in the one basket and --- WATCH THAT BASKET.

Pudd'nhead Wilson, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, Chap. 15

In another note he explains that the telling others in the company what they CEO’s priorities are doesn’t matter nearly as much as showing what they are. How an executive spends their time demonstrates their priorities.

One more word about your own time: if you're in a leadership position, how you spend your time has enormous symbolic value. It will communicate what's important or what isn't far more powerfully than all the speeches you can give.

Strategic change doesn't just start at the top. It starts with your calendar.

Page 146

In theory, if you look at your calendar, the things that dominate that calendar should also match up with your job priorities. If they don't, it’s likely time to ask serious questions about calendar management or job descriptions.

The book may be 10-15 years old, but the key precepts still matter. If you’re looking for a general business book, you can probably skip this one. If Strategic Inflection Points intrigues you, or you are a fan of Grove’s, definitely check it out. It’s a fairly quick read (I got through 90% of it flying from Greensboro, NC to Seattle, WA). The writing style is entertaining, if not tightly organized.

I’ll leave you with a few of Grove’s thought about the Internet, right when it was starting it’s world-transforming growth.

Netscape went public as I was working on this book. I knew of the company, and I thought that they had a lot of promise. But the way the stock skyrocketed on the first day it was available for public purchase and its continuing growth just blew me away. I could find no obvious rational explanation for this incredibly rapid stock appreciation. Something was going on, beyond merely a promising new company being discovered by a growing number of investors.

Page 167

The second thing is that, when you explore these developments first hand, you'll discover that mostly they aren't what they're cracked up to be. In the early days, getting from one place to another on the Internet took forever and when you got there, more often than not, you found a stale marketing brochure. Electronic banking is still a clumsy way to replace a stamp. And interactive television seems to have vanished even before the ink dried on the mega-announcements.

Page 112

It is likely that the Internet appliance is a case of turning the clock backward, given that the trend over the last twenty to thirty years has consisted of pulling down intelligence from big computers to little ones. I don't believe that the Internet is about to reverse this trend. But then again, my genes were formed by those same twenty or thirty years. And I'm likely to be the last one to know.

Page 184

If you’d like to see more of my book reviews, you can find them here.

Priorities for private information

I recently worked an event where my company held a drawing.  People filled out cards to enter the drawing, and we asked them for name address, phone number, email address, and age (for legal reasons).

Some people asked about what we plan to do with the information, but most didn't.

What puzzles me is the fields people left blank.  If someone was going to leave a field blank, more than 85% of the time (rough guess), they left the email field blank.

They had no problem giving us their physical address, or their active phone number, but they felt the need to protect that email address at all costs.

Spam annoys me.  A little.  But I would much rather get 500 Spam messages a day than get one telemarketing phone call in a day.  Or 10 pieces of junk mail.  Spam is easy to delete -- it's just one press of the delete key. I don't have to listen to anyone or be jarred out of a contemplative state by a ringing phone.  I don't have to pick up and carry anything.

And yet many people feel compelled to protect their email address as all costs.  Have those of us in the industry been so loud in our warnings about security issues that people are now more wary of sharing their electronic mail address than they are about sharing their meatspace address?

Doggcatcher on Android

I have dozens of apps on my Droid.  You can see my current list here.  I've only paid for two of them, however.  One is the Zagat's app which I rarely use.  The other is Doggcatcher and I use that all the time.

Doggcatcher is easily worth the $10 I spent and is the best podcatcher I've tried on the Droid.

I tired the Media Fly apps, the Google Listen app, and several others.  I was about ready to give up on Podcasts on the Droid until I got Doggcatcher.

I like that it manages feeds well.  It downloads the Podcasts to my phone when I have 3G access.  It also has settings to limit to restrict it to WiFi only, if you prefer.  Through Doggcatcher, I subscribe to:

• This Week in Tech
• This Week in Google
• Manager Tools
• Career Tools
• This American Life
• Nerdist
• RadioLab
• Paul and Storm
• Podcast Answer Man
• NPR Technology
• Stuff You Should Know
• Seattle Geekly

Unlike my iPod, there is no syncing involved.  I don't have to think about making sure I have the latest content.  It's just there.

Unlike other Podcast and music apps for the Droid, Pause and Fast Forward work well.  Since it's not streaming I never have to deal with buffering. 

I'm actually listening to my Podcasts more often since I almost always have my phone with me. Even when I'm walking to the grocery store I can easily be learning more stuff.  With my iPod (which I still use sometimes) there are the extra steps of getting the iPod and then carrying it with the other stuff.  Doggcatcher on the Droid solves that problem.

It's not perfect.  The list that shows what will play next is a bit confusing. It works but it's not as intuitive as it could be.  The main interface also confuses me sometimes.  I'm not sure exactly how to fix it, but I hope that gets more polished in time.And I'm not sure if it stores content on the SD card (which is where I want it) or on the phone (where it takes up valuable space).

It boggles my mind that there are so few good Podcatcher/player apps out there.  But Doggcatcher is a good one and is well worth the money.

Gunnar Optiks packaging and thoughts

I first learned about Gunnar Optiks computer glasses at PAX Prime in 2009.

Gunnar Optiks makes glasses designed for computer users.  They are available in prescription and non-prescription flavors.  They use a special tint and lens geometry to improve screen clarity and reduce eye fatigue. You can learn more about the technology here.

A couple months ago I ordered a pair (Anime style in blue).  They work well do make the spreadsheets easier to deal with.  The increased contrast is helpful, and my eyes don't dry out as much following marathon sessions.  They are most effective in bright rooms.   The lenses are least effective when I am not only in a dark environment (like a hotel room where I have many of the lights out), but also when my laptop screen dims to conserve battery life.

Since they are tinted, they do distort color a little bit.  They amber lenses warm the colors on the screen.  It works well for general office work and light image editing, but graphics professionals may prefer the non-tinted version.

They are also helpful when I'm watching an LCD TV.

This post is not primarily about the glasses, though.  It's about the packaging.  I ordered directly from the company, and they shipped them in a padded envelope.

Inside the envelope they added a coupon for my next pair and assorted product literature.

The glasses were inside a cardboard box.

I lifted the lid and found foam protecting an inner box.

That covered a metal box.

Inside the metal box, there is a lens cleaning cloth/bag.

Beneath that, I finally found the glasses, secured in cardboard.

Here they are unfolded.

This is awesome packaging, and if I used them solely at my desk, I might be willing to use the packaging.  It's a little too bulky and pointy (metal corners) to travel with, though.  And I'm not sure what TSA would think of that rectangular metal box.  So I took the cleaning cloth/bag, and re-purposed an old Eddie Bauer sunglasses case. It provides adequate travel protection.

The other problem I have with the packaging is that the literature is too big.    The cards and flyers should be small enough to fit in the cardboard box, but they aren't.  I had to fold and crease them up so they would fit.

This may seem like a stupid thing to complain about, but Gunnar has guaranteed the literature will go  in the trash.  If it was a more basic packaging job, the literature wouldn't bother me. But they spent a lot of money on this.  It seems silly to not coordinate the literature size with the box size.

Regardless, I'm pleased with my glasses.  If you spend alot of time looking at computer screens, and color correction is not critical, you may want to check them out.

Hooking up blind

No, I’m not talking about a new dating site.  I’m talking about connecting cables. And no, that’s not a new dating site either.

Connecting home entertainment and computer equipment can be challenging.  Often it’s hard enough to figure out just which cable goes where.  But have you ever tried to do it when your equipment was already against a wall?  Or where you couldn't even see the plugs for some other reason?

One solution is to use a mirror and a flash light.  And that’s a good solution, especially if you have three hands to work with.  If you don’t have a spare hand, though, take a look at your video camera.

When I attached my monitor to a monitor arm, it worked great, except I couldn’t see the plugs where the cables go because the ports faced down and I was looking at it from above. 

I pulled out the hand held video camera, flipped the screen around, turned on the camera light, and now I could see everything I needed to.

Give it a try.

 

Tablet device as an Input device

Alot of the criticism of Apple's iPad stems from the computing features is lacks. It seems many people want it to be a computer, and it's not.  Leo Laporte has it right in describing it as a content consumption device, instead of a content production device.

I'm not going to join the fray in Apple bashing at this point.  I also have no intention of picking one up. The platform has me thinking, though.

What if, instead of using it as a computer, or instead of using it like a computer, or instead of using it as a display/network interface, you used it as secondary mouse?

I'd be interested in a Tablet like device that sits next to my keyboard, mouse, and computer.

Imagine you are editing audio files. You have your application running on your real computer.  You have virtual sliders, nobs, splicers, and other things that today you manipulate with a mouse.  Now, what if the application still ran on your real computer, but on your nobs and sliders appeared on your Tablet?  Now, you can use your fingers to control things on the real computer, and you don't clutter up your big screen interface with those controls.

This is different from the current iPad use case because the Tablet here is a "dumb" device.  All it does is display the controls and accept your input.

Imagine you are playing the latest incarnation of a World of Warcraft or a first person shooter.  Obviously, the portable tablet wouldn't have the power to run such applications in all the full color, high graphics wonder.  But if it's another input device, hooked into your real computer, it becomes more powerful.  Instead of using key combos, or navigating complex menus in the heat of battle, you look over at your Tablet which displays your favorite buttons or macros.  Perhaps they change depending on what is happening on your other monitor at that point in the game.

We already see some of this capability in Optimus keyboard.  It features OLED keys. Basically, the keyboard physically looks like most other keyboards, but the letters on each key can change.  You can choose a different typing layout, or do your own short cuts and macros. You can replace the letters with images electronically.

A Tablet device that works as a input device for your computer, separate from your main computer screen, and that changes its own appearance could be an awesome tool.