Ivory Terminal

This week, Apple released something that has the potential to be huge: A Fingerworks-inspired multitouch mouse. Apple’s track record with mice is so terrible that most are not expecting much from the latest in a line of odd input devices. I think the “Magic Mouse” has the potential to make Apple desktops as “necessary” as their laptop computers.

I think the laptops are necessary almost entirely because of their touchpads. There are other features that are desirable, but since the switch to Intel, I have hardly considered any non-Macintosh laptops for my primary mobile computer. Apple has sub-par screen resolution offerings, and until the Air came around their computers were much larger than the size/weight I would prefer for a travel machine. However, they all had large multitouch trackpads. I found that the more I used them, the less I wanted to use anything else, getting angry at the touchpads on my EEEs and the nipples on my Thinkpads. Any other input device on a laptop falls farther and farther behind every time Apple lets one more Fingerworks-style gesture into the wild (I am still waiting on the other 280 or so, but I am sure they will come back with time). I cannot write enough good things about the touchpad.

However, there is a huge area where the touchpad is embarrassingly bad, and that area is Windows. I already view the touchpad as a must-have feature, so I want an Apple laptop, however when I try to run Boot Camp on it, even the simplest multitouch features become unreliable. I am beginning to feel that both Microsoft and Apple to not have the right incentives to make Boot Camp perfect (and each can blame the other), but for the sake of productivity, I wish the two would get beyond the bickering and make the product perfect. For now, I travel with a bluetooth mouse that I use only for Windows when I have to do a lot of scrolling.

Back to the Magic Mouse, Apple is going to be at a crossroads. They have every incentives to make the multitouch desktop experience a killer feature exclusive to the Mac, so I only see Windows drivers coming from third parties, but they need to make sure that their desktop input device does not aggravate those who use multiple operating systems. Currently, on my Snow Leopard desktop, I virtualize Leopard, Sabayon, Ubuntu, Vista, and XP. I really want to love the Magic Mouse, but in what approaches an operating system agnostic environment where I use the best tool at any given time, I need my input device to just work. So, even if Apple decides to make their multitouch devices hell to use on other devices, they need to make their devices work with other software on their hardware. I use a Mac for my desktop, but I certainly do not have the same loyalty to it. While the laptops are perfect, my desktop comes with a bag of hurt when updating to high-end video cards and other problems that all of a sudden make Dell workstations look very attractive.

I hope that the Magic Mouse is incredibly successful, and Apple has some time to build upon any ergonomic mistakes that arise, but in the meantime, I am going to dream about well-working software comparability.

Separately, I am away and using my laptop for the weekend. Right now I am working at a desk, with a USB number pad. It is a different height than my MBP and has different sized keys. It ends up being difficult to use quickly.

I think that Apple should make a number pad that is pushed up to the same height as the MBP because it packs a battery inside. With their wireless obsession, I am sure Apple would want to make a bluetooth device, but it would make so much more sense to me if the pad could add a couple extra hours of battery life.

It would come with a MagSafe dongle (power discharge) and a USB dongle (input and power charge) in a single cable like the displays. The device would charge when the computer was connected to A/C power, and only discharge when both the MagSafe cable and USB cable were connected to a computer, to make sure that it would not accidentally discharge in a customer’s laptop bag. It is unfortunate that the MagSafe and USB ports are on the opposite side of where a number pad should be, but an extra 18” of cable would be a small price to pay for faster inputting and longer battery life.

I have now gone three weeks without the visual voicemail “feature” on my iPhone working.  AT&T cannot tell me why, and the Apple team is as usual clueless. 

Being without visual voicemail alerted me to a couple of things to add to the growing complaints about the iPhone’s lack of security, such as the fact that an iPhone comes set up without a voicemail password.  I never had to think about this issue until I found that my visual voicemail had stopped working.  Like my other AT&T phone, a venerable Blackberry, I began to dial “1” to get my voicemail.  However, with the iPhone, there was no password set up as a default.  Thankfully, I have one set up now, but for all of you other iPhone owners out there, your voicemail box is just a single caller-ID spoof away from the rest of the world, no 10,000 attempts necessary.

I like my iPhone so much, and could not imagine switching full-time to another device after two years of seeing how good things can get, but it seems like at least in the US, the combination of Apple and AT&T cannot quite get things done.  I do not imagine for a second that the incompetents at any of the other three national carriers could do half as well, but it is disappointing to see at least one supposedly current  feature (3G, visual voicemail, tethering, etc) always on the wrong side of the horizon.

If Visual voicemail is down much longer, I am going to change my iPhone plan to a Blackberry one and at least have the access to the great e-mail options when I switch my SIM out.

 There is a huge debate (at least being portrayed by the media) about what to do with Credit Default Swaps (CDSs), the pesky financial instruments that made AIG and others impotent, and have forced the US to put insolvent firms through anything but conventional bankruptcy. Since the US has put themselves on the hook to these firms, and to the firms that would stand to lose in swap payouts, they are taking the far cheaper bailout route.

Lately, many are calling for the banning of CDSs, and just as many are identifying them as a vital hedging tool. Since most people never look under the first layer of the financial onion, they come off as a tool of the insincere. Like short selling, it is “not nice” to bet on failure, so their purpose is not understood. However, the complete removal of CDS offerings would make investors much less likely to take on large corporate debt positions, hurting the bond and loan industries. In a sense, the existence of CDSs allows capital markets to be more “open”, a politically and economically important part of our current national agenda.

It seems to me that the obvious solution is also a relatively simple one. Make CDSs incredibly boring. Savings account boring. Regulate the market until nothing exciting can be done. Require dealers to be licensed, dictate the size of the market, and in one way or another require a debt position to be held to hold a swap. CDSs are much more like insurance than options or short selling shares. Equity shares (long or short) and options are generally instruments with evenly dispersed payouts. CDSs are betting on a (usually) improbable event, and that low probability is matched with a massive payout.

When limited to covering a risky investment, a CDS switches from an aggressive bet to a conventional tool. This also limits the size of the market, eliminating situations where is far more profitable for investors to have a firm go under. Instead of attacking what is difficult to understand, spend some time looking at the incentives these instruments offer, and build their future in a way that limits morally hazardous opportunities.

                With the recent attention on the economy, it is difficult to go more than a couple of days without seeing articles giving tips to job seekers.  My favorite articles are always the ones with tips from recruiters talking about their pet peeves, like this one found on the front page of Yahoo! today (I consider Yahoo!’s front page to be a general barometer of what the “average” Internet user cares about).  After spending more time than I would have liked over a lifetime dealing with HR as both a candidate and as someone attempting to hire, I think it is high time that we start seeing some articles about how to make the process better from within.  Here are some of my suggestions:

1.  Stop lying about open positions:  In an attempt to prevent sub-optimal hiring from within (a valid concern), many firms have instituted policies that require openings to be advertised prior to promoting or moving an internal candidate.  This practice has so many problems that it deserves its own list:

a.  This practice floods the market with bogus job listings.  “Entry programmer, salary $12/hr.  Would prefer Ph.D. in Anthropology, fluency in dead languages, and ability to carry up to 250lbs.  Must provide own transportation and computer”.

b.  The process wastes everyone’s time.  The hiring manager wants a person right now, and knows who it is.  An interview process can take weeks.  The time of interviewees is also wasted.

c.  The practice makes it more difficult to be promoted from within, which is a huge problem for employees in an economy where they are not getting significant raises or bonuses otherwise.

2.  Recognize job hunters who are and are not fishing with dynamite:  After returning to school and looking for an internship for the summer, I applied for four positions after doing a ton of research.  One was a position at a huge company that several of my peers applied for, and the others were positions at small or unconventional companies that were not even specifically looking for interns.  Because I did my homework, knew about the companies, and knew that I could fill true gaps in their workflows, I was able to physically interview for all four positions.   After meeting them, thanking them, and being told that I would be updated on their hiring process, I only received further uninitiated contact from the firms where I was given an offer.  I view the remaining firms as unorganized and unprofessional not because I was not chosen as the best candidate, but because a verbal agreement was broken by their HR representatives who inconvenienced me by not letting me know that they found a better fit.

Many of my peers applied for dozens or even hundreds of positions, and were hardly able to keep track of them.  Admittedly, this is a turn off described in almost every article, but the important difference is that many of the most qualified candidates do not attempt this type of application.  I feel that if you take the time to apply for a position that you are qualified for (and there cannot be that many), then it is the responsibility of the searching firm to acknowledge your application.  A non-response should only be used as a clear indication that you are not qualified for a position.  This practice could discourage candidates from fishing with dynamite.

3.  Recognize that job applications are time-sensitive:  In one case, I applied for a position, and received a call close to a year later from a hiring manager who was then upset that I was no longer interested in the position.  Qualified candidates are not applying for positions for fun, and there needs to be a relatively short statute of limitations for contact.  Once I left the corporate world for school, I received calls asking if I was looking for full-time work because I was no longer listed at my old company.  Ironically, this was well after I had begun looking for an internship.

4.  People that left a promising career to go to a full-time competitive graduate program likely did not get laid-off:  I am asked if I was laid-off at almost every interview.  Many people do not seem to understand the 9-12 month process of applying to a physical graduate program.  I cannot help but blame the uncompetitive for-profit online degrees for cheapening my academic pursuit.  If you are a recruiter, take five minutes to browse the website of the graduate school on an application.  This can tell you a lot very quickly.

  5.  You are not a detective:  Until you catch a candidate being dishonest, drop the ridiculous attitude.  Odds are, you are not going to break someone talented at lying to you, and you are guaranteed to turn off genuine candidates.  The ones in the middle that are bad at lying will reveal themselves long before the end of the hiring process, so the combative demeanor is not needed.  More than once, I have had to ask HR screeners if I am wasting my time applying based on their attitude when questioning me.  Based on my experience, lying employees will reveal themselves.  When in doubt, give them a simple computer skills test, regardless of the position.  I have been asked extensively about computer skills in almost every interview, regardless of the position.  I have only been on one interview where I was asked to demonstrate them.

 I am not an experienced television viewer. I got my first “very large computer monitor” in 2009. Being an audio freak, I attached my panel to a fairly high-end audio system. Watching the occasional program, I have noticed that many of the commercials omit a very high pitch tone. Thinking that I was just trying to find information in noise, I wrote the frequency off as an artifact of the compression used to make commercials sound louder than the regular programming.

This evening, when I was watching some programming with a couple of friends, I found myself bothered by the frequency, thinking that I had some equipment malfunctioning when the frequency first appeared. No one else seemed to hear any other noise, but I found the signal to be more perceptible than normal.

I decided to take a couple of minutes and use my DAW to compress a couple of signals until they sounded like television commercials to see if I could replicate the results, and I came up empty toned. I created some of the most obnoxious soundscapes in the world and still did not come up with any sustained high frequency tones.

Unable to create the tones as artifacts, I let my paranoia run wild. I am curious if the high frequency tones are used for devices like Nielson boxes to communicate whether or not commercials are being watched. Obviously, there is big money invested in television advertising, and the model will be turned on its head if DVRs are truly impacting television viewing. Months ago, I heard someone talking about Nielson Soundscan, and I am curious is this technology is also being used to measure viewership of some commercials. Coupled with Nielson’s ability to track advanced demographics, a time-coded signal over commercials would give market researchers an amazing amount of information, which could be used to valuate commercial time in the digital world.

Television advertising is still functioning as an old-world industry, and there are many people with a lot to lose if it turns out that quantitative measures show that advertising is ignored or ineffective. With the demographic information and a time code, the data could show who watches which commercials on which shows. If it turns out that desired demographics are tuning out commercials, rates could plummet even though general viewership is good. My worry for the advertising industry is that it will turn out that the demos targeted for advertising ignore the commercials, especially when they embrace DVR technology (for which adoption would likely rise with income). Lower rates would lead to even crappier programming, and a revenue loss that would likely lead to an increasingly hostile stance towards technology and the Internet (which is often blamed for the decline of old-world media). Regardless of why my commercials sound like garbage, advanced tracking will eventually come to pass, likely leading to some serious rate adjustments.

I sure wish there was a way to short FB right now.  It seems to me like they are already on the decline.  Unless DST got a glimpse of a totally new platform to be offered in the future, the valuation and the size of the position seems way out there.  

Facebook is very likely going to have to start aggressively slinging customer information if they expect to keep their valuation so high.  As far as my own bias, my life without facebook is just fine.  It was odd for a couple of weeks as I missed a few invitations sent via the platform, but everyone learned quickly and I now have no need or desire to be connected to the service.

I am still surprised by the slow rate of twitter adoption among my peer group, as it seems like a natural choice because of phone integration.  

Anyway, congratulations facebook, now get moving on that IPO so I can short…

 One of the most amusing overreactions to the “swine flu” is Egypt’s decision to slaughter all of the pigs in the country. While is a hilariously misguided campaign on its own, it serves as a very serious example of a problem with the nationalist mentality.

Globalization has led to an increased concentration of goods production, as manufacturing is shifted to countries that are not as far along in their economic development. This means that products like flu vaccines are produced in a few concentrated locations. During normal times, this simply means that transportation costs need to be considered. However, when countries begin to panic about something like a flu pandemic, scenarios involving nationalization of manufacturers materialize.

The same nationalist focus can lead to interesting implications for the world. Egypt announcing that it will slaughter all of its pigs in isolation does not have a noticeable impact on the world, but what if every country announced an identical plan at the same time in a misguided attempt to save their own citizens?

If any single animal population was in fact responsible for a disease pandemic, this concept could actually be tested. If every nation (or all that possessed the species in question) decided to eliminate their animals, there would be an organized, conscious, and preempted elimination of a species. Obviously, an outcome like this would be highly unlikely, but it is interesting that these kinds of scenarios are not considered when governments make decisions that would be destructive if adopted by everyone.

Currently, I am in an area that supposedly has a flu outbreak, and I am amazed at the lack of thinking that has led to our current situation. My local university basically inspired a panic about the flu through overuse of their post-VT emergency notification system, and then created highly visible testing centers. Thanks to the bottom-feeding of 24-hour news reporting coupled with the fear-mongering of the university, a significant portion of the student body was allowed to worry themselves into what is likely mentally-induced “sickness”. Many students were told by their families to return home, which in the case of a true outbreak would have exposed an exponentially larger population to any disease. Just like the nationalist problem described above, these students returning home would have put a bigger population at risk due to their selfishness.

When groups of people isolate themselves (whether a continent, country, city, or family), decisions that are made to benefit the group at the expense of others carry unintended consequences. Obviously, the concept of defending those you are close to is throughly engraved in modern human nature, and it would be almost pointless to combat. However, the externalities that are created by selfish behavior are rarely addressed, and should be considered before decisions are announced.

If my university would have thought about the panic their announcements inspired instead of focusing on being “proactive”, I think I would be looking at a very different campus today. Because the campus is now in a paranoid uproar and has basically ground to a halt, the university is now trying to convince the population that things are in fact okay. Ironically, this step would have been completely unnecessary if they would have calmly addressed the issue in the first place.

Having a front row seat to this absurdity has made me think about how panics are created. Obviously, the “swine flu” panic is a media darling, creating overdone concern. This concern compounds into a full panic once local cases are “identified”, and the population then creates pointless customs in attempt to show they are being vigilant. Soon enough, both the flu and the customs created will be forgotten, and the population will wait for the next media focus. It seems to me that there is an identifiable cycle of media focus, panic and new customs, and forgetfulness once the media moves on.

Recent events like the plane flying low in New York seem to support this idea. New Yorker’s do not seem to worry about plane attacks any longer, but once they see the stimulus that was given thousands of hours of media coverage like a low flying plane, the automatically abandon office buildings. The current flu will become a much stronger stimulus than something like SARS, which was only covered by the media as something happening far away. Since the flu is a common annual occurrence, I hope the attention devoted to this current strain does not result in population panics every winter.

I deleted my myspace and facebook accounts after finally getting one too many requests/messages/etc from accounts that mostly represented bands or brands.  I still think that the social network halflife is measured in months, but I do like Twitter.  I came across this on Wired.com and had a nice little shiver.  It may be funky and offbeat bands, but just wait…  

I also got my first friend request from a random rap artist.  I wish them all the success in the world as the love the service, but I think this is the beginning of the end.  Call in the fail whale.

Sticking with the topic of screen resolution, I am happy to see that the resolution of laptops is making it into mainstream technology news. Recently, the topic has been revived by Microsoft’s news ads targeting Macs, when many of the Apple fanboys pointed out that a 17” laptop picked in the first ad contained a 1440×900 display.

We have not yet arrived in the land of resolution independence, but consumers are becoming used to high-density screens, likely because of popular mobile phones like the new Blackberry models and the iPhone, with some DPI’s in the 200s.

As an Apple user, I am thrilled to see tech reviewers mention laptop screen resolution as a buying guide. Beyond gaming laptops, few manufacturers are adding high-resolution screens. Lenovo deserves a mention for their fantastic Thinkpad line, recently bolstered with the x200s with a 12.1” 1440×900 screen. By comparison, the 1280×800 panel in my MacBook Air is like a Lite Brite.

Hopefully Windows 7 and Snow Leopard will turn more people onto higher resolution screens, and pressure more manufacturers to offer models (at least BTO options) with higher densities.

In the mean time, it is starting to look like the x200s is the perfect “netbook”. The Dell Mini 10 with high-density screen seemed almost perfect (1366×768), but I have been tempted by the hopped-up Japanese-market Vaio P-Series computers available on Dynamism (1600×768). However, for a price similar to the P-Series, the x200s offers a C2D chip and an available 9-cell battery. High density options are here, and it is time to reward the manufacturers giving us more desktop space with less. Hopefully Apple and others will take notice.

Lately I have been involved in a lot of talks about encryption.  As laptops become more important, and people are literally storing their digital lives on them, some level of encryption is a good idea to protect data in the event of theft.

Most of the time when encryption comes up, breaches are the first thing mentioned.  ”I heard that by freezing the RAM you can take data off of a sleeping computer”, etc.  Most of these claims are likely true, but like anything else, data protection is a continuum.  For the purpose of this discussion, we will compare encryption to cars.  Triple AES-768 will be an Abrams Battle Tank (there is harder out there, but it is not going to move around much), and a system password will be a convertible.  An Abrams and a convertible both have measures to protect the interior of a vehicle.  Even though an Abrams is comparatively impenetrable, you see a lot more convertibles on the road.  Why is this when the smaller car does not do nearly as good of a job at protecting items in it?  To begin, an Abrams costs millions of dollars, weighs 70 tons, and is not normally accessible to the public.  To a novice computer user, the AES-standard is an impossible concept.  It is difficult to implement, requires a great deal of specialized knowledge, and is slow and bulky.  Since our hypothetical user would at least like some protection from unexpected bad weather, a convertible is in order.  It is cheap to run, accessible, and sporty.

You never hear people, even the Phil & Ted stroller-pushing new moms, mention that they want an A1 Battle Tank.  Many try with an Escalade or the like, but once again, there is a continuum.  They do not want the tank because they understand the costs and limitations of a 70-ton treaded vehicle (not to mention tearing up the subdivision).  They understand that depleted-uranium armor is not needed to get from home to day care and back.  

However, when we transfer the analogy back to the digital world, this understanding goes away.  Everyone all of a sudden wants the most hardened security in the world, regardless of their status as a target or their activities.  I manage to offend many people when I mention that the weakest link in any modern encryption platform is the user.  They may get tired of slow read times and turn off disk encryption, they may use the same key for encryption or computer protection as they use to log into Gmail.  They may write the key on a post it and leave it on their monitor, or tell a friend their password or e-mail it to themselves in case they forget.  Even if they do not do these things, passwords are incredibly uncreative, and the concept of a passphrase is not yet mainstream.  Knowing full well that most users will do things like this, it is hardly worth debating the relative merits and flaws of various encryption algorithms and standards.  Users also need to understand their status as a target.  Someone must be highly motivated to even attempt to guess a password, yet alone break disk encryption.  If they are sufficiently motivated, any casual protection standards will not be a significant deterrent, and it is always a good idea to have a backup plan if you lose your data or if someone else gets it.  Things like identity theft are a huge pain, but armoring yourself so heavily that you stand out from the pack will honestly just make people curious.  Like the tank, there is no point having the armor unless you are willing to go through the training to operate it, and spend a great deal of time with maintenance.  An Abrams with the keys left on a panel marked “car keys” in the garage is an awfully expensive front.

My personal data is protected to the highest standards that I can understand and maintain, and I am willing to accept performance slowdowns to compensate.  However, beyond a certain point, my data protection priority shifts from protection from theft to protection from loss.  If a dedicated team decides to devote tremendous resources, they will likely be able to obtain portions of my data.  However, it would take an incredible feat to remove my data in a way that I too would lose it.  Part of my redundancy involves offsite storage transfered online, and it is ironic that in choosing this redundancy, I expose my files to the wild land of the Internet.  Even if you hide yourself in an impenetrable cocoon, you then have to worry about redundancy, and if you are paranoid enough, multiple site redundancy.  At some point, one must bow to reason and realize that if someone wants your data badly enough, they will be able to obtain it, and the harder your security, the more likely it is that you will be the link in the chain that gives.  A tank is not necessary to protect your family photos, just make sure you have your top up when you go out in bad weather…

If you are worried about your protection standards, just make a better password, and read up about data protection.  As you understand a little more, you can switch to some home directory or full-disk options, and fall down the spiral of paranoia from there.