CD Album Info

Today I dug up an old CD, I Don't Want To Miss A Thing by Aerosmith. The case it came in was previously stuck and wouldn't open, but today I managed to fix it. Having taken the CD out of the case I decided to give it a play on my laptop.

So I fired up Windows Media Player 11 and out of curiosity tried to retrieve the album info online. Usually I can't get the album info because I mostly own Chinese CDs. I thought this time would be successful because the CD is English and popular. Wrong.

WMP11 found the album alright, but its record showed only 3 tracks instead of 4 (track 2 was missing). Even WMP tells me my CD has 4 tracks, but it presents to me an album with just 3. How stupid is this?

After mucking around in WMP a little longer, I found the correct album in one of the last search results. It had 4 tracks! Except it had no album art. And the year was wrong (1989 instead of 1998, probably a typo).

So today I found out what crappy software/service MS was producing, especially since this tiny CD ripper will get the correct info first try, without any clicking or choosing the right album from a list.

Reliable Technology

Half a week ago I was working on my final year project report, when my laptop suddenly began to behave strangely and randomly shutting down. A day later I found the problem: the CPU appeared to have died, causing the laptop to prevent overheating by shutting itself down. All my data, which resides in the harddisk, fortunately remained intact. It did gave me a good scare.

A few hours ago, I was applying final touches to the report. I was working on my laptop (with an improvised cooling system) while doing other tasks on my desktop, including writing a long todo list for the report. All of a sudden, my desktop rebooted, taking with it my unsaved todo list.

It is most frustrating when computers start shutting down or rebooting unpredictably. When you are working on an urgent piece of work, that becomes a frightening experience.

Feeling insecure about more data losses, I decided to search for a more reliable technology. The report must be word-processed, that I can do nothing about. The todo list, on the other hand...

I picked up a pen and some scrap paper and began rebuilding the list.

Another Telemarketing Story

Every time a salesman calls I tell myself the best thing to do is to keep the conversation short, that I should cut them off and tell them I'm not interested. However, as more marketing firms outsource their staff to India, I can't resist giving them a chance to pitch their sales so I can challenge them back. This time is no different.

The call started with the presumably junior staff pitching their mobile phone plan to me. She asked me how much I spend on mobile phone each month. My answer was $10-15. She then elaborated on the plan, which costs $22 per month and includes a free Motorola V3x RAZR. Words came out of her one syllable at a time and at regular intervals, which made her speech as natural as Ananova.

She also didn't listen. Right after she finished reading the plan, she transferred me to her supervisor, who immediately began to sign me up by asking for my name. I told her I didn't commit to any purchase. She replied the deal was beneficial because I am currently spending $30 on my phone. Huh? I corrected her and assured her I have never spent more than $20 a month in the past four years, which is a fact. I also informed her politely the free phone is of no value to me -- I had to restrain myself from telling her the RAZR is sooooo 2005. Realising she had ran out of reasons for converting me, the supervisor hung up.

Now for the analysis/rant.

Persuading me to buy anything I don't really need is certainly one hell of a task, but I doubt I am alone. I think my generation is more wary of salesmen and their pitches because we have experienced their naggings since we were kids. We are also better educated so it is harder to mislead us. We know that if a deal sounds too good to be true it probably is.

Based on the above it is a bad strategy to outsource call centres to India because the staff there has poor English skills and little motivation. If I pick up the phone to a telemarketer who cannot communicate effectively and doesn't care enough to initiate a sincere, two-way conversation with me, what would I think about the company that hired the person? Do I really want to transact with that company?

Force/mass Confusion

I have just read a news article about the fitness requirements of a Formula-one driver. Due to high accelerations during the races, drivers experience high G-force, which creates stress to their bodies. Below is the article's description of the stress to a driver's neck.

"Head plus helmet weighs 6kg. With added G-forces when cornering, the neck has to support up to 30 kg."
-The Age, 17-03-2007

The article is telling me the cornering G-forces are about 24 kg. Anyone spot the problem? Forces have no mass!! Kilogram -- or more generally, gram -- is a measure of mass, which tells you the amount of "stuff" of an object. A force is not a substance (unless you go into quantum mechanics), so they cannot have any mass. The above sentence implied that G-forces have added additional mass to the head plus helmet system, which is not correct. Rather, the G-forces add to the total downward force exerted on the neck, which originally consisted of just the weight of the head and helmet*.

Since the neck has to support more downward force not more mass it is inappropriate to use a measure of mass, kg. Instead, the sentence should go "...the neck has to support up to 300N.", where "N" refers to Newtons, a measure of force. Note that we arrive at 300N because on Earth, 1kg~10N. However, had the reporter actually written that, no one would understand what he/she meant, so it is better to rephrase it as "...the neck has to support up to an equivalent of 30kg."

* Weight is the gravitational force the Earth (or another large body) exerts on an object and is not equivalent to mass. Strictly speaking, then, it is incorrect to say the head+helmet weighs 6kg, because kg measures mass not force. However, such usage has become mainstream and I shall let it go.

Redundant Exercises in Exams

Having just walked out of my first exam this semester, I decided to write my semi-annual exam bash/rant. The exam I just had is on microeconomics, which involves quite a bit of maths. For me, who also take courses in engineering, the maths are quite easy. In fact it is so easy I question the need to waste time on them in an exam.

Take a simple example, solving a pair of simultaneous equations. We all know how to do it since year 9 or 10 and it is (usually) simple. However that doesn't mean it can be done very quickly, especially in a time critical situation such as an exam. This particular exam should be testing my knowledge on economic theory and how to apply mathematical tools (e.g., solving simultaneous equations) to get the information we sought. If I apply the correct theories I should get to a point where I can say, "OK, we have two unknowns and two equations, so we can solve for them." The test should end here because it had verified I understand the economic theories and know how to get at the answers.

But the test doesn't end there because I need to write down the actual numbers for full mark. Can anyone tell me why I need to justify to the examiner I can solve a pair of simultaneous equations in this context? To me this is just a pointless exercise that has nothing to do with economics.

I would, however, like to point out that things would be different if the question does not ask for a number, but rather an expression of the quantity we are after. Then it would be useful and interesting to fully solve for the expression because from that expression we can tell how the value will change in relation to the known parameters.

It is unfortunate that all too often exams contain numerical rather than analytical questions. Coupled with odd parameters (a=0.423 instead of a=2), you wouldn't know you made a mistake since your answer, whether right or not, is just a number. On the other hand, a mistake can be spotted more easily in an expression if you know how the variables should interact with each other.

If I want to solve mathematical problems numerically, I won't be studying economics.

Security is a Tradeoff

Everyone is talking about security these days. Politicians want to protect their countries from terrorist attacks, while companies are worried about frauds of all kinds. These concerns led them to introduce various security measures such as more stringent checks in airports, identifying a person by their biometrics, and looking at the buying patterns of a credit card. Although there is no doubt each additional measure increases security, they also put extra burden on the process and that can add up to a large cost.

For example, it is very convenient to shop with a credit card. Just swipe the card and sign the bill and you're done. However, if your credit card details is leaked to a malicious third party, he or she can easily purchase goods from online stores under your credit. Hence this is not a very secure payment system.

Now let's consider the opposite end of the scale. Suppose every time you want to pay with your credit card the store needs to verify your identity by checking two official documents that identifies you (say your HKID card or drivers licence), as well as performing three separate biometric scans. Clearly it is now a lot harder for someone pretending to be you using your credit card, but at this point I suspect you wouldn't want to use your credit card either due to all the hassles.

The above is of course an exaggeration of what might actually happen in practice, but it illustrates an important principle, that although security measures reduces the risk of losses, it imposes its own costs. Thus it is not wise to blindly put in place any and all security measures you can think of into a system, because the cost of performing these extra steps becomes higher than what you lose by being less secure. The art of security, therefore, is to find the point where cost is minimised rather than engineering the most secure (and likely most tedious) system.

This is not to say one cannot improve security without causing extra trouble to the customers. For example, one of the biggest reason people don't (in the companies' view) adequately secure their PINs and passwords is because they want to share them with several others whom they can trust. We all do that at some point in time, and sometimes it makes sense to do that. Usually a more secure system means it's harder for people other than the account owner to gain access. But this contradicts with our needs to sometimes let people we trust to access our accounts!

In theory, if the system knows the owner gives (or would have given) another person consent to access than it should be safe to allow access for that person, but this is almost impossible to implement without increasing risk. If I want to access my mum's back account, should the bank let me? Let's say my mum give me permission today and I got in, but I try to get in again the next day. Does the bank let me in now? Can it safely assume the situation will not change in just one day? No! It needs permission from my mum again. But if my mum is always around to give permission she can just access the bank account herself!

If the bank has perfect information it will just let me in, but it doesn't. The best it can do is look at my track record and assume that I'm benign because I always have a good relationship with my mum. Again this is a tradeoff -- set the criteria too loose and anyone can access the account, too strict and we're back to where we started -- and the trick is to find the point that minimises hassles and risk of fraud. Realistically I can't imagine anyone building this kind of system just because it's so complicated and so hard to find that "middle point". That's unfortunate, because it means legitimate people like me have to "hack" into my mum's accounts just to change a credit card number.

Too many passwords

Depending on how active you are online you may have anywhere between 1 to 50 logins (username and password pairs). It's just that every web site you go to requires a separate login. Sometimes you can reuse the details but not always. Your favourite username might be taken, or the password rules are incompatible with each other. Thus it's practically impossible to use the exact same login for every site you run into. This is usually not a problem for sites you use on a daily basis such as emails, but for sites we seldom use the it's always a challenge to recall the username and password. "Which email address did I use for the username?" "When I changed my password last year did I remember to update for this site?...no, and apparently I didn't update for the password change two years ago either." The problem becomes more complicated as some sites change ownership or two sites merge. I once lost my netscape.com email because when AOL bought Netscape it got changed to netscape.net, and with that I was unable to recover the password for the old SETI@home project. In short, things can become quite messy, and this is the reason I do not create accounts on web sites unless I absolutely have to.

As if things are not bad enough, we also have some "hidden" accounts created for us automatically when we subscribe to real services such as phone and utilities. Most of the time we are not even aware of the existence of these accounts until we need to say change our credit card details or enter a competition. But if we didn't create the accounts ourselves, how the hell do we know our username and password? If you are lucky, you may be able to dig up the letter they sent you when you first subscribed and the login details would in that letter. More likely there was no letter or it was lost or they never told you the login details. Thus you can't login and have to call support to get the details. If you can confirm your identity to the support guy he might tell you how to login. If you are calling on behalf of someone else, good luck.

Here's a real life story and basically what motivated me to write this post. My mum's credit card was discontinued because they thought the spending pattern seemed suspicious (in fact nothing of the sort was going on). Rather than reinstating the card, they had to issue a new one to my mum. This means we have to update the credit card details for our phone services. Now, trying to log onto the phone website, I found the password on the phone bill would not work. A few trials later I was redirected to a password recovery page, where it would email me the password. Great, except at the bottom I have to enter the "4-digit service code". What?! What the hell is that? You can imagine how silly this is. If I don't know the password why would I know a 4-digit service code? So in order to retrieve one shared secret (the password), I have to have another shared secret (the service code)? Come to think of it, isn't the service code just another password?

It's not hard to see the problem here. We have too many passwords, so only the frequently used ones are remembered. I don't know how long it'll take phone or utility companies to realise their customers don't need to access their accounts every day. Or every week. Or every month. Or ever (just call support...). If they want the customers to actually be able to login, maybe they should make the logins easier. Maybe the username is the customer number and the password the driver license number or something they actually know. You might think this choice of password is insecure, but if I know your driver license number I can just call up support and ask them to tell me the password. And no, these companies will never understand passwords should not be revealed to anyone including the support staff.

Bad Regulations

I have discovered a class of regulations that does the opposite of what it is supposed to. Basically the lawmakers, with good intentions, creates a rule that cannot be enforced against those who are determined to break it. On the other hand, the rule inconveniences people who break the rule but not with malicious motives. Here is an example: banning photography in underground train stations. It is almost impossible to catch someone if they are trying hard to conceal their actions because every mobile phone is now a camera and provided the photographer is not posing like one, the only way to catch them is to look over everyone phone users' shoulder to confirm they are not breaking the law. On the other hand, there are many benign reasons to shoot away in a station, one of which being teenagers just like taking random pictures and posting them onto MySpace. These people are not doing anything wrong so they do not have to hide their actions, but it is them, not the potential terrorist attack planners, that get caught.

This problem isn't limited to laws -- DRM is a good example. Digital Rights Management is supposed to stop piracy but it never bothers the real pirates. Instead it is customers with legitimate copies that get inconvenienced.

The takeaway message of this post is that for any regulatory scheme to work as intended, you must be able to enforce it against those determined to break them. Failing to do that, the "bad guys" will remain free while the "good guys" will suffer rather than benefit from said regulation.

Guns, Guns, Guns...

I just discovered another murder-suicide incident, this time at NASA. Should we even be surprised that these shootings just keep happening?

From what I read on a blog, it appears that most Americans don't believe these types of shooting are directly caused by the lack of gun control laws in the country, even though the rest of the world disagrees. Below I share with you two pro-gun comments on the blog, which asked the question whether NRA was responsible for these shootings.

One person tried to compare the situation to high powered vehicles causing traffic accidents. This analogy is flawed. Cars, even ones with abnormally powerful engines, are built for transportation. No one drives around with the intention to cause fatalities. The same cannot be said of guns, because they are designed to kill or at least seriously injure another person. NASCAR may promote speeding that may cause fatal accidents, but an organisation that promotes possessing guns must necessarily endorse using them (or there is no point carrying a gun around), and the direct effect of using a gun is taking someone's life. This is not a side effect, as is the case with speeding.

Another claimed "Guns don't kill; people do". This is not an accurate statement. A person intent to kill, and there is a chance that this person actually kills someone. The "probability of success" depends on the methodology, and clearly using a gun increases that probability substantially. In short, guns themselves don't kill, but they sure make the killer's job a lot easier. Can anyone dispute that had the killer been armed with a baseball bat or even a katana, the death toll would be much lower?

Clearly the merely act of restricting gun possession will not totally eliminate such killing-sprees. The black market will ensure these who are desperate, and rich, enough will get their weapons. However, it will prevent every other angry kid from causally taking the family gun from an unlocked drawer and carrying out a massacre in the classroom.

What's ironic, as one reader submitted to the newspaper, is that Americans need the right to bear arms in order to protect themselves from other citizens who have the right to bear arms. (I can't get a direct quote since I threw away the paper!)

Censorship

I suppose I will focus on TV censoring off obscene languages and gestures. I don't oppose censorship in general but the way it is done on TV just makes everything worse off. Let me explain. First of all, the shows that usually get censored are the so-called "reality shows". Now I don't know if the participates were told to swear their heads off or the producers just let nature runs its course, but clearly no one tried to prevent swearing in the first place. Perhaps it is thought that "natural swearing" makes the show more realistic, or that coarse language, albeit censored, is a selling point like nudity.

Then there are shows like Jerry Springer, where the main selling point is two people fighting their way out of the problem, and plenty of insults mixed in with the action. There are two reasons I can think of for censoring out the swearing -- to prevent children from learning them and to cater for those who find swearing offensive. So somehow it is not acceptable to expose children to obscene words but okay to show them scenes of physical assault, and that people who'd rather not hear rude words don't find real-life fighting offensive. People usually swear when they're angry, and angry people are likely to perform other undesirable behaviour such as physically assault other people, throwing objects and making threats, all of which are worse than swearing but are probably not censored.

Having established that censoring don't really shield anyone from offensive scenes, I now show censoring is also bad for those of us who don't mind hearing verbal abuse. It's not like I enjoy listening to people swear, but if they said it, they said it. Bleeping out part of the sentence just makes it difficult to understand what they are trying to say. On shows such as Jerry Springer, where other every word is a swear word, a constant bleeping block out other non-obscene words so you have absolutely no idea what they said. To a lesser extent, I find a few bleeps in the middle of a sentence is all it takes to render it meaningless. My theory is that the mind needs to capture some minimum number of words to make them meaningful. The bleeping cuts this short so it takes extra thinking to understand the sentence. Whatever the reason, the result is still that the censorship renders the exchange of words meaningless to the audience, which in turn makes the show less enjoyable.

Frankly I think the TV stations censor their shows in order to meet certain rating restrictions, so they can show Jerry Springer in the afternoon rather than 1am. I doubt they really care about influencing kids negatively or offending elderly people. I'm damn sure they don't care about making their show impossible to understand because 50% of the conversations were bleeped out.

US School Shooting, Yet Again...

The whole world today is talking about the Virgina Tech massacre. This news item is grossly overrated, because it is not the first of its kind, nor will it be the last. As long as the Americans hang on to their right to bear arms, these tragedies will continue to happen. I'm not necessarily saying the Second Amendment is wrong or bad, but merely laying out the options: give up free access to guns or endure the consequences. Yesterday's events are the logical outcome of taking the second option. After the Columbine incident almost 8 years ago, the Amish school shooting last year, and everything else in between, is anyone still surprised that yet another shooting spree has taken place? If people really care they should start thinking about the underlying problem and do something about it, instead of just mindlessly learning the facts from news outlets and feeling shocked, confused, angry and sad all at once.

I do not have the evidence (too late, too sleepy), but the NRA is probably the main reason there still aren't any gun control laws in the US. Thanks to them, 33 lives were needlessly lost. Turns out America's greatest threat is right at home. Thank God it is not my home.

Give Me My Credit!

While on the subject of TV, I cannot object more to the way TV stations deface the credit screen. Usually it is done by squashing the original picture to free up half the screen to show previews for upcoming programmes. This makes it impossible to read any of the credit text, and the voice over covers up the ending music. While viewers usually don't bother reading the credit roll, it is sometimes a good source of information, such as finding out the actor for a particular character and the year it was produced. Occasionally, the credit roll is creatively transformed into an entertaining segment. For example, in one episode of The Simpsons, Homer "fired" every name that appeared on the credit. In the cinema version of Toy Story II, pretended bloopers were shown alongside the credit. One might argue that distorting the credit roll audibly or visually lowers the value of the show to viewers.

Just because the credit screen is not part of the story and is generally boring does not mean it can be mutilated to make way for promotion. In their pursuit of maximizing advertisement air time, TV stations will soon find themselves stepping over the line. When entertainment value for TV shows is all but eroded, the audience will surely turn to the Internet and DVDs for their viewing needs, legal or otherwise.

A Matter of Reputation

So Windows Vista had finally launched. There are news that indicates consumers are more interested about discounted gadgets (to promote Windows Vista) than the operating system itself. But that's okay, I am not writing tonight to bash Microsoft...well not directly. This evening I saw on TV this Apple ad making fun of Vista; I laughed my head off. While I searched for this ad online I also came across what appears to be a Vista ad. I'm not sure if this one aired on TV due to its length; in Melbourne we have a much shorter and to-the-point version. Comparing the two commercials is like pitching an iPod against a Zune. The Apple ad is short and humorous, and it sends a simple but strong message to the audience. This is just like the iPod -- its interface is clean and simple yet leaves a lasting impression. In contrast, the Vista ad tries to inform you of all its features while confusing you with the spinning people. It bores the life out of the viewer, who ends up not remembering, or caring about, any features. It is not unlike the Zune, which is overall a good media player that does everything it promise and does them well, but I would struggle to find a feature in the exceptional category.

It is therefore no surprise that nowadays nearly every new Apple product creates a hype, while the Microsoft equivalent turns considerably fewer heads and only out of necessity. Steve Jobs understands that marketing to the average consumer is more about the image than the product itself. It's not about making the best and coolest products but convincing the consumers your products are the best and coolest, although it certainly helps if you actually produce the best and coolest gadgets. To the modern teenager, appearance matters more than extra functions, and commercials are no different. An operating system should be marketed as delivering a unique experience or even lifestyle rather than the winner of a features race. Apple clearly gets this but I'm not sure about MS.

I also want to state that I'm not a fan of either company. I don't intent to upgrade to Vista until I absolutely have to (then again there is always Linux), and I have no plans to buy an iPod or Zune -- I just found my small-time-Korean-company-brand mp3 player with a whooping 128MB of flash storage. When in doubt, look under the bed.

Disturbing Windows Vista Facts

I have already established why I will not actively adopt the new OS and so wouldn't normally give any further reasons. However, what I have just found out can only be described as disturbing and thus deserves some mention. All of the following is based on Peter Guttman's A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection. Guttman listed many problems created by Microsoft's efforts to protect "premium content", which are implemented in their upcoming OS. In particular, two of the problems seem to affect me the most, given I won't be playing back HD videos in the forseeable future.

The first is that Vista will apparently check the hardware up to 30 times a second to make sure no one suddenly tempers with it. Although one may argue that the polling will not cause noticeable performance degradation, the knowledge that a process is continually doing extraneous things in the background doesn't sit well with me. Although I routinely run a lot of background applications to heavily customise my Windows interface, at no point do I allow non-productive applications idling in memory. If a program is not doing something useful to me, it must go immediately, and that includes virus scanners and firewalls. The polling imposed by Vista clearly violates this principle.

The second problem is that Vista requires hardware vendors to implement the so-called "tilt bits" which detects "suspicious" fluctuation in say the voltage level of a connection pin. This is to prevent someone from intercepting the data by tapping into the wires between a component and the motherboard. The name "tilt bits" clearly comes from the tilt function in pinball machines. Unfortunately, most of the time such electrical fluctuations are perfectly innocent. My speaker "clicks" whenever the fridge turns on and I won't be surprised if that also affects the computer power supply. Now I have no idea how sensitive these tilt bits are. It may be that normal household related fluctuations are tolerated so I may never experience an unexpected shutdown due to this "feature". Still, I am not very happy that the new OS may, however remotely, render my upgraded system less stable.

So if before I was unwilling to upgrade to Vista because I don't like the activation "feature", now I am just plain scared, and I'm not even trying to play any video on it! As Guttman have noted, if MS could just direct their efforts at locking down the system from hackers rather than the users, Vista would've been much more secure. If they marketed these technologies as ones that protect me from viruses, I can at least find one reason to upgrade. Right now I have negative reasons.

Oh and one more thing. All those restrictions they place in every HD video disc and related devices will not prevent piracy at all. You see, the system works by encrypting everything on the disk and different players (models) will have different keys to decrypt it so that if one particular device is compromise they can in theory lock these affected players out of future contents (whether they will really do that is another question). Each manufacturer will need to apply for their own key so it's not like anyone can get their hands on a valid key.

What I think will happen is this. Some Chinese pirates will probably get a working key by either bribing a (Chinese?) company or pretending to be a legitimate vendor. Once they get the key they can just use it to decrypt every movie that comes their way and then crank out a million copies of the movie without any protection. No one will be able to figure out who did this because the discs only contains unprotected video. Even if they find out the offending vendor and revoke its key, the pirates will just bribe someone else. I don't believe there will be any shortage of vendors willing to leak their keys, because the MPAA just can't control every vendor and every worker in the industry, and we all know that everyone is susceptible to bribery.

Basically the whole scheme will not work. And all Microsoft managed to do here is scared me away from their already overpriced and featureless OS.

Interacting With Computers

I recently received an invitation to a concert in my email. The invitations were managed by the online service Evite. The system keeps track of who's going and who isn't. A closer look showed you can even elect to join a carpool. At that time I was undecided about my attendance so I held back from replying. And promptly forgot about the whole thing. When I checked my email again two days before the event, I discovered the system had sent additional reminders to my email. Going back to the invitation page showed about 50 people said they would show up, 3 wouldn't, and over 300 people yet to reply. Having made up my mind to not go, I decided to join the 300 people and left the website without replying. Better to say I missed the email than to explain why I don't want to fork out $15 for a concert I might not like and with no prospect of meeting someone familiar.

If instead my friend invited me over the phone I would have to make up an elaborate excuse, or would even decide to go. So you see there is a difference in response depending who is asking the question: a machine or a person.

I am not trying to dismiss systems such as Evite. These systems are very useful when managing a large event. Computers (or machines in general) are very good at keeping track of things, doing repetitive tasks and they also scale well. Imagine the difference between manually calling up 50 people and 5000 people. For the computer, however, it is still just one click. There is definitely a good reason to use a computer-based system to help manage social events.

Where machines fall short, however, is the responses they get from clients (e.g., the invitees). In the example I have given, I was a "not yet reply" even though I was definitely not going. Most of the people on the invitation list also failed to reply. I cannot say for sure, but people may have given the invitation less thought because it was sent out by a machine to their email account. Additionally, because the entire reply process is managed by a computer, some people may have ignored it.

We definitely treat a computer and a human being differently, even if they are performing the same interaction with us. Sometimes I would add an item to the "shopping cart" just to find out the shipping costs and other info not present in the product pages, even though I never intended to buy the item. Now how many people will deliberately bring a product they will definitely not buy to the checkout, and at the last possible moment tell the store assistant they don't want it? We also feel less guilty lying to a computer. When I applied for Pandora, I just used a random US zip code to "prove" I live in the US. Had the signing up process been conducted over the phone, I doubt I would lie so readily to the operator.

In conclusion, computer systems are very efficient at managing social events and/or collecting information from correspondents. However, it seems they can seldom evoke a sense of urgency and at times even honesty like a human can. In some cases it is in the interest of the correspondent to reply promptly and honestly (e.g. to prevent fines or committing fraud) and the above doesn't matter too much. In less formal occasions a person can probably command a more timely and accurate answer than his electronic counterpart.

An Edgy Post

I thought I had missed tonight's Late Show but a careful examination of the TV timetable showed it was supposed to run for three hours. What? The networks can never run such good shows excessively; if anything, Dave must usually give way to cricket or rugby, which consistently goes overtime. This has got to be a mistake. Indeed it was a mistake. Instead of the Late Show, I got some infomercial promoting "Get The Edge". This is where I should introduce Anthony Robbins.

Anthony Robbins produces CDs that inspire people to be empowered and become successful in life. How does he do it? By (presumably since I did not get my set of CDs) making them feel confident about themselves and somehow persuade them get off their butts and do that thing they've always wanted to do. I think he mentioned doing things little by little in the segment. So far everything makes sense, but my question is why do we need someone telling us that? Can't we figure that out ourselves? Robbins claims he knows some tricks that can save you time (from having to figuring it out yourself), which does help, but ultimately if you have something you want done the most obvious course of action is to actually do it. There is no way around it. If you are not motivated enough then think about the consequences of inaction. If even that doesn't motivate you then clearly you're dreaming so wake up and think of something practical to do.

The fact that a lot of people apparently benefited from this program proves one of a few things:
1) Robbins' program is a "wake up call" for them, meaning they are initially lazy;
2) they need someone, preferably one with credibility, to tell them they can achieve their goals, meaning they are a sad, superficial bunch who cares about what others think of them over their own well being;
3) the laziness in 1 is overcame by the fact that they had already paid for the program, so better get the money's worth by following it^[1];
4) the belief that Robbins' program must work since he had a good track record boosted their determination, something also achievable if one feels confident about himself in the first place.
None of these are convincing me the program gives me things I don't already have or can never come up with on my own.

Besides, who is he to dictate that I should want to become successful, that I should want to be happy, that I should want to have a healthy romantic relationship and subsequently a family? Of course people who do not wish to be successful will not buy these CDs. Those who do should understand they can only achieve their goals by doing some work. If they need someone to coach them through that, well, refer to (1).

Having argued that the program should not be useful to anyone, I admit this is not the case in reality, because sadly a lot of people nowadays fall into the categories (1) and (2). They are too lazy to pick themselves up after a fall, and needs someone like Robbins to give them a lift, so kudos to him.

One last interesting point. Such a promotion segment is never complete without some testimonials. So three people who became successful after joining the program made their cases in front of the camera. The ironic thing is that small subtitles ran across the screen stating that, "Result are not typical. Individual results may vary." This liability waiver effectively nullifies any persuasive power the testimonials are supposed to have. I don't know why they put them on.

¹ Note that it is economically incorrect to think that. Money already paid out is sunk and should not affect future decisions.

The Tech Path of No Return?

All too often I hear people describe a particular technology as "once you try this you can't go back!" or "I can't live without it." Sometimes they say it as though I too will get hooked had I decide to "take the plunge". I can't disagree more.

I believe that people can and should adapt to the situation, whether it is taking a turn for the better or worse. I remember one time in Melbourne a fire broke out in a natural gas facility causing it to shut down and leaving the region without gas for several weeks. For most homes this meant their cooking stove and water heater ceased working unless they operated with electricity. Did anyone starve to death because of this incident? Apparently not. Restaurants simply had gas delivered in large metal cans. We were even able to have hot water baths by boiling water with our electric kettles. Sure it was inconvenient as hell, but we survived.

Now most conversations don't involve such serious disasters as losing an entire utility service. They are usually about broadband vs. dial-up internet, flat panel high-def TV sets vs. standard ones or storage capacity of mp3 players. The second of these was brought up in a recent conversation. I didn't fight hard for my point (people who wants to convince you so badly usually don't like being proved wrong), but my take on this has always been the content coming before the picture quality. It's good to have better pictures, but even without that luxury the point of the program/movie still gets through. I doubt the high-def version makes us more emotionally affected by the scene.

I read about the mp3 player topic on a newspaper column, which explained why older players were not suitable for working out. It started out with CD players skipping which is a fair point, but then went on to assert that early mp3 players could only hold enough songs for maybe one or two workouts. The author effectively implies it's annoying having to frequently upload different songs onto the players. To me this is just frivolous whining. One could also find it annoying to have to plug the player into a computer before they can transfer songs, or that the songs have to be downloaded with a computer or acquired from a CD. Why can't songs just come to my mp3 player automatically, without so much as a voice command? Indeed, as technology progresses, these seemingly unreasonable demands will become the very reasons you will want the latest gadgets, according to the media promoting the products. In the middle of this is the implied notion that one should not go backwards in technology, mainly because older technologies are worth very little these days and companies need high margins for their goods (of course the official reason will be going back is sooo unbearably inconvenient).

As an argument, I lost my mp3 player a few months ago and fell back to the bulkier MD player. Instead of drag-and-dropping songs onto the player, I now need to record it from the computer speakers. It's a pain-in-the-you-know-where but I'm not complaining because I have adapted to it. I just need to allow more time for the process.

Note: having said that I am looking to buy a new mp3 player, but for a different reason: it's simply impractical to record hour long podcasts onto an MD, and repeat it four times every week.