Lavadero Primero

While all routine and mundane tasks will eventually be relegated to software and robots, some tasks are sufficiently far off that a little short-term compromise might be necessary. One of these tasks falls in the realm of laundry. While the atomic operations of cleaning and drying have been automated for so long that the legacy manual operation is no longer even attempted by most, chaining these operations into a single compound automated system seems sufficiently out of reach. While some systems are starting to bridge cleaning and drying, the operation that seems hopeless to automate is the dreaded folding step.

Clothing is a unique substance in that each item is made up of fibers which are solids with one key property; extreme flexibility in a single dimension. The processes of looming and stitching exploits this property and makes a three-dimensional object which has a general shape but still remains quite flexible in all dimensions. The flexible properties of clothing are what make them appealing as garments as they allow for a wide range of body sizes, shapes and motions. The flexible property is even exploited in the automated cleaning and drying steps of laundry as clothing is fluidized and agitated to encourage the respective dirt and water separations. The flexible nature of clothing is requisite for these reasons but has enabled a dark side of clothing manufacture that is diametrically opposed to and essentially prevents any efforts to automate the folding process.

Fashion dates back to the 12th century as tailoring guilds began forming in Europe. At this point in history there was no concept of automated washing so no naturally clothes were designed with no consideration for the practice. The automated washing machine would not begin to appear for six centuries meanwhile fashion continued spiraling out of control generating garments of immense complexity. Today garments produced by high fashion defy categorization and look like nothing when not being worn.

I guess she couldn't stop chewing her leg?

How is this a bathing suit?

While most people won't wear the clown suits that model's wear on runways, the products of high fashion act as a north star for fashion design whereby the Old Navy's and Gap's of the world attempt to walk a fine line between practical and fashionable. Very little consideration is paid to how well these garments lend themselves to automated laundry. In fact the "north star" products mentioned above normally can't even be subjected to conventional laundry processes and instead have to be dry cleaned which is still a semi-industrial process which is not meant for the home. The bottom line is clothing is thought of a personal statement rather than the utility it is which is a detriment to its longevity and efforts to automate it's maintenance. 

It is because of this that clothing manufacturers focus on how the clothing looks on a mannequin/model and then settle on what an acceptable number washes is before it disintegrates. Where does this leave automated folding? The sad state is that due to the insanity that is the fashion industry, clothing varies so much that even the best computer vision and robotics we have today (and likely will have for many years) will be confounded when that one hot skirt/body wrap/cabbage/small dog that is all the rage is picked out of the pile. The robot arms that could perform a quadruple bypass surgery on a muskrat will end up ripping a frock/sweater/ski mask/basket of muffins to pieces, the owner of the confounding garment will blame the machine and we'll have wasted everyone's time. 

The proposal on the table is (temporarily) abandoning aspirations of high fashion and embrace the AI we have today. If the variety in clothing is limited to a degree, then a robotic folding system of today could have a success rate of  >99% and the ultimate laundry machine would be possible. A single machine that would accept laundry from the hamper and produce neatly folded piles of clean laundry could be in every home in 2 - 5 years. 

I stress this is only a temporary solution. AI will accelerate itself and soon computers will be able create and maintain garments that we never thought possible. The point i'm stressing is we don't have to wait until then. For many the time and sanity that is saved by automated laundry is worth the sacrifice in fashion.

Engineering a Merry Christmas

Everyone knows that services and facilities can experience deviations from the normal quality and availability of service during holiday times. This results from anomalous stresses being applied to affected services and facilities. These stresses come in two main forms; increased demand for services and products, and decreased labor supply due to vacations. All services and facilities experience the labor shortage while parcel services, food preparation, and retail experience also experience a sharp demand increase. These services are squeezed so hard that to meet the demand they have to engineer out the labor supply shortage with seasonal labor and conditional employment clauses. 

When a service or facility is stressed logistically, this stress is translated to physical and emotional stress on the labor force which supplies the service or operates the facility and the consumers who rely on the service or facility. Since most of the population fall into one or both of these demographics, everyone shoulders a piece of this stress. The origin of the stress is the lack of sufficient turndown in all affected services and facilities. Examples:

• Retail stores are not built to accommodate a daily traffic equivalent to Black Friday or else they would look more like amusement parks or convention centers. 
• Medical offices don't keep 1.5X the needed doctors on staff so their appointment traffic is unaffected by multiple concurrent vacations. 
• Restaurants don't maintain extra dining rooms, kitchen space, and cook staff to ensure their wait times on New Years Eve are similar to any normal time.

These examples come off as absurdities, however they are what would be required to diffuse the above-mentioned stresses given the current model of concurrent holiday celebration. The historic benefit of the concurrent celebration model is it maximizes the probability that one will get to visit with all their family and friends in one occasion. This has always been the "reward" for shouldering the above-mentioned stresses. 

The concurrent celebration model developed from superstition that specific dates had legitimate significance but remained because it solved the logistics problem of coordination. In the past where communication with distant friends or relatives was difficult or impossible, the concurrent celebration model was the crutch that ensured people would see each other if they returned to a habitual place on the right dates. It suffices to say that these coordination problems, for which the concurrent celebration solved, have been solved with current technologies. Meetings can be arranged and even rescheduled to accommodate attendees' needs quite easily. Yet we still shoulder the stress of the concurrent celebration model.

It is with these considerations that a new model is being proposed. The dispersed celebration model removes the service and facility stress of the concurrent celebration model while relying on modern communication tools for self-organization of celebrations. In this model, the same number of holiday leave is given to workers under the concurrent celebration model however they will be given as floating holidays. In this model floating holiday overlap is minimized to prevent the labor supply impact. This will naturally force people to organize within their family/friend groups to move holidays around to accommodate the overlap clause. In this model Christmas will be celebrated all year by someone but never at once by everyone. The trickle down effect of this will be the services and facilities that experience an increased demand during holidays in the concurrent celebration model will see this demand redistributed across the calendar and turndown will no longer be an issue. 

Redistribution in the time domain is the only logical solution to the problems the concurrent celebration model presents. It is a no-cost solution which will benefit society as a whole by removing the stresses presented by the concurrent celebration model. The first step will need to be revoking state acknowledged holidays. Second will be getting the largest employers to agree to redistribution of holidays and eliminate service level impacting floating holiday concurrency. Holiday pay can still exist if employers offer comparable compensation for those who abstain from floating holidays. These two steps cost nothing to anyone and will put society on the fast track to eliminating holiday stress. 

The great idea that Capitalism will kill in the cradle

Build-a-Phone






















I mean obviously it is appealing, PCs are very similar to this in a respect. I personally would love it if this were the case. However, I can't see this happening for three reasons.

1) The phone OEMs (Samsung, HTC, RIM, Microsoft via Nokia, and most of all APPLE) will never let this happen in the way Dave Hakkens imagine it. This disintermediates them because component manufactures like Qualcom and others enter into very detailed and binding contracts with the above OEMs. Some of these contracts limit who the component manufactures do business with; exclusivity clauses if you will. Just like the iPhone was an AT&T exclusive for several years. If any of the major component manufactures indicate that they might bypass the OEMs and release one of their top of the line processors or sensors directly to customers in a form that is compatible with this lego style phone, the OEMs would retaliate. They would threaten to ditch them as suppliers. Since the OEMs have all of the marketing power and carrier deals this could be a death sentence for their main business. Which leads me to reason two.

2) The one component that makes or breaks this idea is the 3G/4G radio. A stand alone plug and play radio would have to get blessed by the carriers that it plans to connect to. Due to the lack of common carriage laws in the US there is no regulation that says any carrier has to allow a device on to there network. So since this will not only bypass the OEMs, but also the carrier's handset retail business (which is just as lucrative as their service business if not more so), no carrier will approve a modular radio to connect to its network.

The result of these first 2 will relegate these modular devices to wi-fi only handsets with medium to low quality parts from small component manufactures. This may find a place with niche consumers, but will never come close to replacing anyone's main smartphone. It would be a companion device at best and therefore likely never get made. Now you might see a form of this but only in a form that doesn't threaten any of the established players. I could see Samsung releasing a line of modules that will work together, the catch will only Samsung parts will work together. The component manufactures would still ship the raw components to the OEMs, and then they would add encase it in the swappable module. This would allow you to upgrade your Samsung branded processor with another Samsung branded processor. If you wanted to use parts from say HTC if they started doing the same thing, you'd have to start over and get all HTC parts thus defeating the purpose.

3) Getting past 1 and 2 are not impossible but will require significant regulation reform in the US to prevent these types of exclusivity contracts and require wireless carriers to act as common carriers with mandated connection requirements. When/if this happens it will be years from now, in addition to make all the modules work well together, someone (The FCC maybe?) would have to put out strict interoperability protocols and then enforce them. Each component would have to have it's own FCC filing which will increase the cost of going to market with new components. This is all possible, but the time to get it in place is staggering, and my prediction is if/when it is, smartphones will no longer be the main computing paradigm. These components are getting very small very fast, and wearables/implantables are right around the corner. So unless you want to assemble the component modules of your smart contact lens with a microscope, the smartphone is likely the last chance for modular computing in the macro sense and due to the lack of regulation on US capitalism it will never reach its full potential.

Driverless Cars...

RE:Google's Trillion-Dollar Driverless Car -- Part 2: The Ripple Effects

In part 2 of Chunka Mui's series on how the driverless car will shape society he expounds on how many business models will be disrupted in the near future by the technology. While he also predicts some opportunities that will emerge, reading the first 2/3 of the article left me deeply concerned.

While i have considered many of the implications of an economy of driverless cars in the past, Mui's assembly is a much bigger and more far reaching set. I agree with most all of the claims but what has me concerned is not "what" will happen but how arduous the transition will be. If the past 100 years and even the next 5-10 years of disruption in the information system economy is any barometer, the industries that stand to loose in Mui's predicted disruptions will look to block the transition in every way they can. Instead of looking to capitalize on the opportunities this new and revolutionary technology presents, they will lobby heavily against laws that will allow driverless cars to do more.

There have been laws past so far allowing driverless cars in some states. I believe that this will become a harder battle in other states as the implications that Mui has outlined become more and more real. There will likely become a huge argument over who is to blame when a car that is driving its self is responsible for an accident. Just because i hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't. This responsibilty question is almost trivial in that the frequency of this happening will be in the six sigma range, but the fact that it can happen will be fuel for the opposing argument, especially from insurance companies.

To build on the that thought, the implications of having a vehicle drive it's self has significant implications when you apply it to shipping. If large trucks could be automated, why have a driver in the truck at all? This adds one more group that stands to loose, truck drivers. The labor unions will lobby heavily to make it illegal to operate a vehicle without a capable driver in the vehicle. If states go different ways on this matter i can image trucks going stopping at state borders just to pick up a driver so as to operate legally in the next state. How do you enforce this? What happens when a vehicle get's pulled over and there is no person in it? I can see the trucking company getting fined and having to send out a driver to move it. All to satisfy a law that was put in place to keep a dying profession alive. Small indications of this are already starting to crop up in the case of NYC banning Uber to keep the taxi's in business.

Another thought I've had relates to the transition and the interaction between automated and non-automated vehicles. How long will they be allowed to co-exist on the same road. The benefits Mui highlights about lighting and road construction are great but only apply if "ALL" the traffic is automated. The answer is certain roads will have to become "driverless only" roads. The opposition will argue against tax dollars being put toward infrastructure that can't be used by all. This is a ridiculousness argument but it will be made by a subset of the population that will refuse to use driverless cars. There is still a subset of the population that even refuses to use cars.

To be clear I want driverless cars right now. I don't ever want to drive a car ever again. The benefits Mui has presented so far are real and can change so much. I am just very concerned about how we are going to get there. The linear thinking that has been so pervasive in industry as of recent does not lend it's self to such step changes in technology. The industries that will be threatened by the commercialization of driverless cars have a lot of money and a lot of friends in government. I don't think they have really seen the writing on the wall but they will and when they do, things will come to a screeching halt.

Aereo case is huge turning point

Latest on Aereo Case

Very soon a decision will be handed down that will decide the fate of television as you know it. Although Barry Diller and his co-horts at aereo won't admit it, the company is more about forcing change than making money. As you'll read at the end of Greg's article; the opposition to Aereo is claiming that if left alone Aereo's service will kill "free" television. This is the most misleading statement ever. What he really should say is that it will kill cable television. If aereo can deliver the same content as cable without paying for it the business model of cable collapses. The cable companies will loose subscribers in droves as aereo expands to other markets and won't be able to pay as much for content from the providers (CBS, ABC, NBC...). To preserve revenue these content providers will have to do what the cable companies have been holding them back from doing; sell there content directly to consumers over the internet. Advertisers will follow the content providers and some of the biggest advertising cash cows in television (reality shows, American idol and pro sports) will be free but instead live streamed from FOX or NBC directly. This outcome is what the cable companies fear since it is a future where they are reduced to mere conduits for data. This future is nothing if but a huge win for consumers in that all the possibilities of TV will become available to anyone with an internet connection. Consumers will then get to select what connect to pay for and what to watch with adds. The first wall that will break is HBO. They are poised to do it today with their HBOGO service.

 The aereo court case is about way more than a round about way to not pay for cable. It's is a landmark decision that has the potential to usher in a new era of content delivery that is long overdue. It's the "boss stage" of a game that has taken almost 2 decades to beat. It started with the music industry and mp3s (music stores died off in the process). More recently the same happened to books with the kindle (books stores died). If aereo is allowed to continue to operate it will mark the start of the grand finale. In the end aereo won't last either way. If cable collapses and the content producers make their content available online it will render aereo unnecessary. However, letting it persist now will have the most profound and necessary effect on the industry since broadcasting was conceived.

Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T invest $100 Million in Isis; prepare mobile payment battle with Google

Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T invest $100 Million in Isis; prepare mobile payment battle with Google

So this headline would have you thinking that Google is the Behemoth and these guys are just trying to keep up, but that couldn't be further from the fact. In reality Isis is nothing more than a cow on the tracks that has been put there by these wireless and credit card companies as a form of collusion.

Wireless payments are not a priority for the wireless and credit card companies. The last line of the article says it all "ISIS has not yet announced a national rollout plan" and if if weren't for Google why would they ever. The wireless companies are not merchants accounts. They have no history making money off point of sale transactions so this is extremely new territory for them. The credit card companies are scared about disintermediation of the all of the merchant account companies (hanger-ons) that have gotten rich off of playing middle man every time a card gets swiped. Square has shaken things up and merchant fees have gone up because these companies are hearing the death bell and are scared. The best thing for all of these companies to do is to stop mobile payments dead it it's tracks until they find a way to make sure all of the intermediate companies get paid; Enter ISIS.

Google has already demonstrated that mobile payments in action with the Google Wallet, hell Japan has been doing it for years. So why is ISIS trailing so far behind with out any goals or ambitions? Because they have the weight of most credit card companies and wireless companies saying "we aren't sure this is good for us right now" so they all make a deal to sit on their hands and call this anti-competitive deal ISIS. The ISIS website is ironically deceptive because it displays exactly what it's supporters don't want right now, a mobile payment system.

So why do they need ISIS? If they didn't have this deal, then any one of the players could be lured to join the Google bandwagon which would drive up competition. Mobile payments would hit the street sooner than later and threaten the established payment system. By keeping all of the biggest players in credit cards and wireless in a deal to do nothing, they all can feel safe doing business as usual.

I should have been born like 2 years ago.

A Perfect Example of the Law of Accelerating Returns

For the longest time i have walked past these adds at the grocery stores that are on back list scrolls behind glass. If you don't pay them much attention they look like LCD screens but up close it's just paper behind glass. Ever 30 seconds or so the scrolls rotate and a new add replaces takes the frame. I always thought "How restrictive? if they want to change the adds they have to take the damn thing apart and put a new scroll in there. The possibilities of such adds are so limiting. It saddened me to know that the the grocery store had invested in this old medium instead of just waiting. Well today i was extremely relieved...

The slight of this was fantastic. This is a sign that LCDs have gotten so cheap that the obvious benefits of having a dynamic remote controllable screen are enough to justify the costs. Now if they want they could simply flash a store specific add for a sale item like fish or blueberries in between the paid adds for branded products. The grocery store is like a garden of eden for tech innovation. I'll go ahead and say in 5 years this LCD TV will be replaced with a static symbol. At first this would appear to be a step backwards but in actuality this symbol will be an anchor for an AR (Augmented reality) add that will only show up in people's glasses and contact lens. In fact the add will be different for each viewer. Personal buying habits based on customer loyalty program data. Today's display is just another glaring reminder that i was born way to early.

MS Office is a problem

Microsoft word and excel are becoming serious problems. They are like drugs almost in that people in professions all over the world couldn't function without them. The same could be said about electricity so what is my point? My point is both of the programs put handicaps on productivity potential. Writing and data analysis aside the programs have been integrated into businesses to act as information carriers in the form of forms them selves.

Everyone has probably filled out a form that exists as a Microsoft word or excel file. Applications, interdepartmental requisitions, background check forms... the list of forms that are filled out in MS word or excel on a daily basis is staggering. Now i'll admit this is better than having to hunt down a paper form like 20 years ago but this is still a dead end. These forms are essentially a way to move information (data) from one entity to another, it's great that the conveyance is paperless but they require a person on both ends. Addresses, social security numbers, dates, names, all of this data on these office file forms are essentially trapped in the form unless a person looks at it. Now this information likely started in a data base, was looked up by the person filling out the form, emailed in the form, read by a person on the other end and then entered into another database. There have been standards out for years now that take both of the people out of this process. It is called extensible markup language (xml), it is a scripting language that requires that the form be defined once as a schema or DTD and then any simple web software (such as java script) can be programmed to pulled data from a data base and create an xml file automatically. If both the sending and receiving entities have access to the schema then they can ensure that there software can write or parse the xml file flawlessly with no human intervention. Even if the source of the data has to originate from human entry by design a very few lines of HTML can be written to make text entry spaces appear on a web page for data gathering and then some java script can take the entry and generate the xml file. All of this can happen with orders of magnitude less memory and processor time than opening and running Microsoft word or excel.

Office programs are overkill for this kind of information traffic. It's like constructing an imax theater just to communicate the names and phone numbers of training session participates for a particular training session. Just consider how quick you can blaze through links on twitter. Then compare that to how long it takes to open a large form in MS with macros. Oh and word can freeze completely deleting hours of work. Websites can be built to constantly save your work instantly (google docs and blogger) with some java script so even if your computer explodes the most you have lost is 15-30 seconds of work.

The problem is HTML, XML and JavaScript are foreign to people outside of computer science type fields like software engineering and web development. Yet people of all disciplines are making and updating these forms in MS office programs all the time. They gravitate toward office because it's easy to learn but as i highlighted it's a dead end to productivity. The solution lies in secondary education. These scripting languages are not hard to learn. They don't require a mastery of discrete math or data structures. A high school Junior could pick up XML in a week or two. Arming tomorrow workforce with these skills is crucial. These scripting languages should be a mandatory part of every high school curriculum.

Why does everyone need to know how this stuff works? It's because forms and information transfer are never static. Now when a company decides to do some web based data gathering from user input they rely on web developers to do the code. When slight tweaks need to be made, they are helpless without the web developers. For smaller companies that means either maintaining a costly ongoing contract or letting the required tweaks accumulate until they can be contracted as a large project justifying the cost of paying for the web developer services. If the majority of the graduating workforce was familiar with this web standards, then tweaks to web sites would be done as needed since everyone could easily update them.

Passwords are seriously becoming a problem

Passwords are quickly becoming a plague to interoperability. To often are people forgetting their passwords to various internet services due to auto-login. Just last year my wife and I set up an account on The Knot to organize our wedding. We both quickly became auto-logged into the site on our laptops. The one time I tried to get in on my phone was never successful because neither of us could guess at the password or the username for that matter. There is more than a couple internet services that I just automatically click "forgot password" on because it will take less time to reset my password via email then try and actually remember it. The problem is that every internet service has different rules to what is allowed as a password. Facebook connect is great if you are on your normal device. I read an article recently that predicted that passwords will soon be replaced my NFC style communication with a smartphone that will authorize the user via fingerprint. This can not come fast enough.....

Broadcast Purgatory

I can't see the ending of the Simpsons because stupid football cut off the beginning on the DVR and broadcast companies are so behind technology that they intentionally put up barriers so it isn't available on hulu yet. They need to get it through their heads that "channels" are an artifact from last century. The only media that is time sensitive is live broadcasts. Just embrace HULU or equivalents as the MAIN viewing platform and get rid of DVR. Then people have to watch commercials again but are not at the mercy of live television interference. This is where things will be in a few years and i can't stand feeling like i am in the middle of a river on a small wet stone.

Why do it if a machine can?

Things are getting a lot easier (especially if you have a smart phone) and i have the strange feeling that the majority of people are afraid of this trend. For instance information is so easily accessible it's nuts. Language has become a joke. I don't even have to spell words even close to correct and my phone offers up a list of possible words to select from. Even if that is to hard i can simply speak the word at the phone and it will recognize it. If i don't even know where to begin vocally i can simply take a picture of something and google goggles will search based on the image bypassing the need for language. I seriously think this is where we are heading. I sit here and type out English words knowing full well that this form of communication is dying a slow death. Language is simply a way to communicate ideas in the absence of sensory demonstration. With portable machines linked to networks designed to massively transmit audio and video what real need is there for language.

To add to this new internet world is a great invention that just came to light this past week called Youtube leanback. This is a feature of you tube that strings together videos consecutively so you aren't required to intervene. Very similar to the living room relic which is quickly becoming obsolete. I can't get enough of this new service. I don't want to be bothered with having to pick what comes next. Plus judging a clips value on a still plus some bit of english or foreign language is more information than i need to evaluate a 20 second clip. I would spend more time deciding on the clip than the run time of the clip. Giving the viewer the ability to force advance the clip is key, this prevents boredom. If i wanted boredom i would just turn on the TV.

Give into the night....

i just saw a commercial where a dude with a feature phone got hosed trying to to a girl with a smart phone. The commercial was best buy piggy backing off the EVO and was really stupid but it is a milestone in my eyes.

These commercials are posed to influence people on a almost instinctual level. The message is "you need a smart phone to attract members of the opposite sex". This message has been applied to so many products over the years from cars, to clothes, to sunglasses, to beer, the list goes on. On the surface most people disregard this message and laugh at the commercial. However ad agencies aren't successful by luck, they study statistics relentlessly. Advertising is a purely empirical world so if you see a commercial advertising a reputable company it's likely they are paying a large ad company lots of money to disseminate this seemingly stupid and juvenile message. They aren't doing it because they personally believe the message or think the target audience will take the face value of the message, it's because the ad agency has the statistics to back up the approach. However this approach doesn't always work, it really depends on where the product or service is in market acceptance. You won't see this approach with the slap chop or snuggie because they are small niche gifts. Until today i didn't think I'd see it used for cell phones.

In this example the milestone is that smart phones have reached a point where they are approaching mainstream. We can thank Apple, HTC, and Google for this. I personally can not wait to see what second quarter cell phone sales figures look like. Not only for the always interesting war between android and apple, but also for more eye opening figures of how much smart phones are gaining on feature phones. Everyday i hear about people moving from features to smart phones. I also hear more about people switching from iphone to android. Just today i talked with a colleague of mine who has an iphone for 3 years at least. I asked him if he would be getting the new iphone. He said no, that even though the new iphone looks considerably better than his current model, he is much more likely to jump ship and get the HTC incredible. He mentioned AT&T's poor service and Apple's overbearing need for control as the two influences in his decision. I immediately encouraged his intentions citing the many pro's of the incredible.

Feature phones will be a severe minority in the world of mobile communications. It is merely a matter of time, and i can not wait. The larger the market the more services and companies will cater to it. The last player will obviously be the government but imagine a world where all you need to leave you house is your cell phone. Life will simplify. Clothes will change. Garments with multiple pockets will become unnecessary. However purses will still hold on but the ratio of useful contents to useless will decrease exponentially. A good question is will wallets or coin purses that match the main purse still be manufactured and sold? They will serve absolutely no purpose. I mean at that point neither does the purse but something has to match the shoes.

Japanesse style...

So the HTC EVO 4G launched today. I'd like to take a second to highlight how this phone is going to be a unique specimen in cell phone evolution. It has two cellular radios. One for 3G service which is pretty ubiquitous at this point and one that works with Spring's new WiMAX system which is only available in select cities. This phone is the most capable phone on the planet because it is the only phone that has the hardware, software, and network capability to engage in video conferencing. This is a huge step from what Alexander Graham Bell developed in 1875. But Ironically this device will use this capability the least out of the tons of other things it can do. Simply because communication is a two way street. There has to be another person with an equally capable device to make this work. Since the EVO is the only one, there will be very few options for using this. Not only that but both callers have to be in the right city, that and they won't be able to chat for that long since the 4G radio and the bandwidth necessary for video conferencing are both extremely battery heavy. Don't get me wrong i think this technological direction is inevitably awesome and will be common place in 2 years. But now that Froyo can give you 100% of the internet in the palm of your hand the bulk effort of the market needs to shift. The software and hardware of the mobile world has been shot out of a cannon in the 2 years and has left both the communication infrastructure and the power supply technologies in the dust. Again i don't want to give the wrong impression. I think it's great that i all i have to consider before trying something on my phone is "is this activity worth the battery?" not "i wonder if my phone will be able to do this". It's like doing a steam vs. recovery or overhead purity study on a LPG fractionation column every time i decide to turn on the GPS for some reason. The fact that the software has out developed the infrastructure is really no surprise. I may be making a novice statement but to me Software engineering is different from all other disciplines because there are no physical unknowns. It is all a matter of generating the right code. The other disciplines are always struggling with discovering and understanding nature and the properties of materials and chemical and electrical systems. In fact years of engineering research can be exhausted only to find out that the original idea is not physically or economically possible, safe, or economically feasible. This is where the phrase "back to the drawing board". This is why the battery and the cell phone towers are now the limit to what we can do with mobile technology, these technologies rely on manipulating things in the physical world rather than the virtual world. The EVO 4G is a great step in mobile technology, but by the time the support systems necessary to facilitate everything it can do have caught up, this device will be a thing of the past.

New beginnings

For a while now i have been frustrated with the short comings of the computer tools i use on a day to day basis. I have been a helpless end user with no outlet for my frustration other than to complain. I am on the other end of the stick with operation of a large piece of a 180K bbl/day oil refinery at my day job so i know what it's like to be on the other side. Now that i have left the shackles of the closed code world with my smart phone i feel like there is some potential to migrate to the other side in computers. I have a lot of catching up to do since my C++ class freshman year of college but i could have aced that class in a whiskey fueled black out. I have no excuse not to give this a try.

i love trends

Phone Wars

I am becoming addicted to not just cell phone but a cell phone that hasn't even released yet. Worse yet since it hasn't released i am not just sustaining off of news about release of the phone. This phone is the HTC incredible. So gripping is my addiction that i have put together the following review.

Currently it appears there are 4 cell phones which will be the front runners of technology for the rest of the year. None of these phones are currently available but will (mostly likely) be by the end of the summer. They are:

Nexus One for Verizon
HTC Incredible
HTC EVO 4G
Iphone 4G

Since they have not released yet they can't be judged by reviews or sales figures so i have put together a Google trend of the 4 contenders below.



As you can see all of them have been gaining momentum since the beginning of April. The abrupt appearance of the HTC EVO 4G is not a mystery since this handset was not known to the world until CTIA (as the event tag shows). It gained significant momentum pretty quick since it is in my opinion the best phone on the list.

The Iphone 4G is obviously on top for a majority on the coat tails of it's predecessor. If you ask me this will release last of all four. Apple will most likely see what is most popular from the other three, integrate them into the 4G Iphone and then add more claims to the lawsuit against HTC. I stand by my claim that apple is evil.

An interesting anomaly in the data shows >100% increase in traffic regarding the Verizon nexus one. This was during the time leading up the CTIA when the world thought Verizon was going to use this venue to launch it. However Verizon did nothing of the sort. That is why this fizzled back to the background linear progression almost inline with apple.

Verizon seems to have a new approach to releasing new phones. Also highly anticipated at CTIA was the HTC incredible which is speculated to launch any day now. But instead of formally announcing the release Verizon will not say anything official. Instead every 3 - 4 days some small bit of "proof" that the incredible is going to be available eventually. These have mostly been in the form of screen shots or cell phone pictures of Verizon employee systems for training or programing of the incredible. Now whether these employees are acting alone or being prompted, Verizon is benefiting from the seemingly inadvertent press. If this was a real leak the security would have tightened after the first leak. My guess is this is Verizon's new strategy. It is likely that the incredible is not equivalent to the EVO 4G but by covertly building suspense without actually releasing the specs they can create a die hard following guaranteeing huge sales for a product they won't even officially announce. The funny thing is it's working... I can not wait for this phone...

Communications problem

This past week at a CTIA (Cellular telephone industries association) conference it was highly speculated that Verizon wireless would debut one or both of their up coming phones. These being the availability of the nexus one on the Verizon network and also the HTC incredible. Verizon debuted neither and instead only demonstrated their new found compatibility with skype. However Sprint did debut the HTC EVO 4G which will be available this summer. This phone has some definite pluses over both of the speculated Verizon phones including the ability to be a hot spot, bigger screen, and my favorite two cameras one of which would be used for video conferencing.

Until this week i was eager to here a release date for the HTC incredible and was convinced i was going to buy it as soon as it came out. Now I'm not so sure. The longer Verizon waits to announce a release date, the more i am considering leaving Verizon for sprint and this obviously better phone. However if Verizon releases the incredible next week this idea will vanish and i will remain a happy Verizon customer for the next 2 years.

This issue highlights my ever complex relationship with Moore's law. Both of these phones represent points on what i call the Moore's line of innovation and development. For smart phones this line has some pretty intense curvature at this point in time so a 2 year contract basically grantees that your next phone will be a generational jump. However i have to "settle" eventually or I'll never be able to reap any of the benefits of new generation technology.

Right now i can see the Moore's line in front of me and can justify the incredible if and only if it is available now. Three months from now this phone will look old compared to the EVO 4G. I know i am not alone in this thought. Many news article have came out over the past few days criticizing Verizon for "missing the boat". I have to say I'm with them. I can see Verizon loosing considerable share of the smart phone market if they wait much longer. The droid was a good step but that was 4 months ago, that's a long time on the current stretch of the Moore's line. To be competitive in this market you can't wait around. Verizon may be planning to announce the incredible release on Monday and have it in stores by Friday, which will make my worries all for naught, but until yesterday when it was clear Verizon's lips were sealed i had not considered leaving at all. Now i have looked at Sprint's coverage and plans and even calculated what early termination costs would look like for me and my fiance, all because Verizon left the door open by with holding information.

Ignorance is Bliss

I just finished reading an article in the 3/13-3/19 issue of New Scientist that has left me unusually troubled. The article stated that a couple US states have started mandating that public schools integrate a "balanced approach" to teaching about climate change. The article then begins to state that several studies have shown that creationists are statistically more likely to be man made global warming naysayers. The existence of this demographic is what is particularly troubling since this particular demographic commonly referred to as evangelical Christians is also the source of the major pro-life movement who don't want safe sex taught in schools.

My perception of how this group view the world is best described by this sentence:

"God has created the earth for us to do our best to increase the population density as high as possible with out any repercussions."

Now this viewpoint is extremely dangerous. Uncontrolled population growth is directly responsible for our current carbon emission rate which is due to the lack of contraceptives. Now the evangelical viewpoint fits perfect in the theory of evolution (that they refuse to accept). In pre-modern societies excessive procreation was commonplace to ensure genetic security since life expectancy was so low. If a couple only tried to have 1 or 2 kids there was a low chance that either child would live long enough to reproduce, therefore the societies that preached massive procreation were more likely to survive the ages. This value was ingrained into the cultures of the successful societies since it was one defining characteristic that made them so.

Obviously things have changed so why has this one ideal so hard to expunge from society? I believe the answer is hope. Hope that the statement above is true. Hope so strong that amid excessive amounts of contradicting evidence that this hope remains.

My hope is that we can rid the world of this dangerous hope. One thing i think we'll get us there is the site Wikipedia. I have always shuttered at the idea of charity since i can't get over the idea of normal charity just being a band aid and that the real problem can always be traced back to over population. But i can say with confidence that i will be contributing substantial contributions to Wikipedia once i have the financial standing to do so. My contributions will be aimed specifically to ensure that Wikipedia is forms that is available to all ages and un-blockable by parental controls.

An easy way to save trees

So i have been buying a lot of stuff for my new house recently and one thing keeps pushing me to my limits. It seems that the most important part of making a big purchase such as furniture or appliances isn't what you would think it is. It's not doing research to pick the right product. It's not analyzing your budget to ensure you have the cash flow flexibility to make the purchase. And it is defiantly not shopping around to find the best deal. It is the little insignificant piece of paper that the cashier gives you at the point of sale.

It seems though Moore has left this one really big loose end behind in the dust. If you go into Best buy and purchase a laptop and are not Amish, two things happen. Best buy's retail enterprise network creates a database entry that logs every single detail about the sale including the name of the clerk who facilitated the sale. Simultaneously Visa (I only say visa because most banks use visa for debt cards) makes a similar entry into their database with info about where, when, and how much the purchase was. Then a stupid thing happens. The cash register prints out a receipt. Now that two servers have records that the sale happened, what is the point of printing out this document other than letting you out of the store without the accusation of theft? Well the answer should be nothing but unfortunately this little piece of low quality paper is the key to returning the item.

It's not enough that there is redundant records of the original sale on two independently owned and operated servers but in our infinite knowledge of computers and networking we still rely on a small strip of paper to link them and thus making purchases reversible. I'm sure this situation will eventually phase out (if it isn't already) but it pains me to know that i still have to keep track of these otherwise worthless pieces of trash.

I can only dream right now of a world where purchase information remains where it belongs, on servers, retail terminal displays, and ideally on cell phone. Yes because in civilized society (AKA some areas of japan believe it or not) the visa card has become obsolete. The point of sale can occur completely between the retail terminal and the customer's cell phone. In this world the cell phone will also be privy to the redundant servers' records of the sale.

The above world isn't actually a dream. It isn't even a wish of mine. It is my actual expectation of Visa and the retail world which is consistently missed. In my opinion retailers should not be able to advertise that they accept visa and others, but instead it should be assumed that every retailer accepts these and those that don't be legally required to advertise the fact that they don't, equally as much as they advertise there products or services in general. In reality it this should not even apply to the card form of visa but the cell phone equivalent that we already lack.

I titled this entry as an easy way to save trees with the obvious idea that we need to stop printing receipts but we could save even more trees if we stop printing money all together. Cash is nothing but a complication when making a purchase. Currency does not have to have a physical form in fact commerce in hindered by the physical form as visa and master card have demonstrated in commercials. Another good example is paying a toll on a bridge or turnpike...

The most inefficient part of driving a car is accelerating from a dead stop. The kind of action paying a toll with cash requires. Just imagine the amount of money spent every year just by the unnecessary gas that is burned to accelerate all the cars out of the cash lanes at tolls. Or the carbon foot print that result from this antiquated archaic form of commerce generates.

The sad part of all of this is the technology to facilitate all of these apparent pipe dreams has been around for decades. We just can't seem to pull our heads out of the sands and stop cutting down trees to bridge these stupid little gaps between servers.

Baseline

Hello,

So far for the past several years since blogs have been developed i have resisted the urge to get involved in one. Today i came to a realization that has pushed me past my previous prejudices to begin "Everything is Numbers". I'll get to today's occurrence but first let me explain the name.

I, like several left minded individuals, am over analytical about every facet of life. Yet, I feel like part of my brain is constantly running an objective function for which the objective is changing with context. Language is nothing but a set of conversion factors used to make our interpersonal "units" equal. I can take any physical problem and (in my head) immediately begin defining boundary conditions for a computational partial differential equation solver to solve. As i let my mind drift into technical obscurity when problem solving, i try to simultaneously run an objective function to judge how accurate the solution should be based on feed forward estimations and feed back solution quality control.

To the right minded readers the above existence may seem like hell. In fact for me it is quite the opposite. I thrive on complex problems that require high powered computational solvers. That is why my blog is called everything is numbers. Because when "I" break things down to the core, that's all there is.

Now to explain why i have crossed into the blog world. For the last 6 months my workplace has been non-stop Chaos. Starting in March with massive company wide downsizing and "reorganization". When the smoke cleared i was still employed but with twice the work load in a company that now didn't know which way was up because of how wide spread the layoffs were. I found this revitalizing. Old stigmas could be broken, common practices could be questioned, in a way after 6 months my company is heading in a much better direction because of it.

Soon after, but way before we knew what we were doing, a huge fire broke out in one area of the facility. It damaged millions of dollars in equipment. The end result of the fire was we had to dramatically change the way we operated just to stay afloat. The ensuing chaos was amazing. I was on the forefront of this operational transition and loving every second of it. My areas were the one of the most effected by this new mode of operation and my name was attached to all the hot topics in front of management. I remember telling a co-worker a week before the layoffs that this place won't be the same for at least 6 months. Not only was i right but i didn't have the slightest clue how right i was.

Today 9.1.2009 is about 6 months since that conversation and it has finally hit me that things are back to "Normal". Oh but how i detest normal now. Being in the spotlight for so long has made me detest the day to day casual work. What made this apparent is that i actually had time (and the need) to go over my work list with my manager. Everything on the list now bores me to tears.

So i decided to begin writing here. Not only do i believe that servers are the most secure place to store stuff but maybe someone will read this and find it interesting. I plan to use this blog to keep track of how my struggle with technical chaos and the desperate need for it, but also to vocalize my opinions on how slow our "life automation" technology is developing.

I find it personally offensive that i have to enter my address hundreds of times into the different websites that keep that on record.

I think it's shameful of America that the Japanese can buy sodas from vending machines with cell phones while a majority of ours don't even take credit cards. Or even over the fact that cash still exists.

The executives at AT&T who drafted the exclusivity deal with Apple over the Iphone should be regarded as treasoners and executed.

The URL of this site is "Solve-it-once" for a reason. With all the worlds problems facing us and a declining average intelligence, it is important that those who can utilize their minds to solve them be freed to do so and stop wasting time re-inventing the wheel.