Friday Flash Fiction - The Minotaur's Library

The librarian gathered her wits about her, thumbed the stack of index cards in her pocket and nervously touched the ball of twine at her belt. She had seldom descended beyond the third circle of the Library before, but she was the only one on duty and this was urgent. The stacks changed down here. The books were wild and old, and the atmosphere heavy, but this was only the third circle. The book she needed was deep down in the fifth circle, so said the cards. Down there with the minotaur.

She played out more twine, navigating around a space-bending circular shelf of grimoires, under the stone arch and down stairs to the left, into the fourth circle. Down here, she knew, were elder-scrolls and magical books that only existed when you looked at them out of the corner of your eye, plus other dangerous wonders. There appeared to be a dark cloud overhead, flashing occasionally with purple lightning, but again only at the edge of her vision. The special wire-rimmed glasses helped keep everything in order right ahead of her. Without them, the books would be conjuring up nightmare images to frighten her away. These books do not like to be read. And still she had to go deeper, following vague clues in the cards and what few signs the Master Librarians of years gone past had managed to leave behind.

It was the third Master Librarian, Mugu, who had discovered the five-dimensional Dewey Decimal System underlying the library's structure. Few other librarians had risen to his level of mastery, possibly because his notes had to be kept here in the fourth circle, where the numbers on the stacks danced and played, never quite looking like numbers unless you knew how to look at them (and could do higher-dimensional library-calculus in your head).

She almost missed the door to the fifth circle in a tiny crack between the stones of the inner wall, halfway around, and had to use an index card incantation to fold herself between them and into the fifth circle. The gravity change was abrupt and unsettling. She was walking on the inner surface of the wall and had a stone floor (or ceiling?) to her right. On the left was a field of stars, offering the only light, and that very dim. The bellow of the blind minotaur roused her from her fascination. She checked her index cards again, performed some calculations, turned three times in a circle and deftly plucked her book from the half-invisible shelf mid-pirouette. She folded herself back through the impossibly narrow staircase just as the minotaur zeroed in on her scent and gave another mighty roar.

The trip back to the binding desk was relatively easy, though it did feel like squeezing her brain into a jar to return from those extra dimensions. She arrived famished, but first needed to clamp the book to the desk, lest it escape. It was vibrating slightly, clearly nervous to be out of its (super)natural domain, so she incanted some soothing mnemonics and it quieted down. Handling books and minotaurs, after all, was her trade. Readers, however, were something truly terrifying.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I quite like Terry Pratchett's writing about the Discworld's Unseen University library.
PPS - And most of his other stuff, too.

Expensive old replacement parts

I had a coworker with a broken washing machine where the repair man told him the necessary replacement part to fix the machine would cost $400. At that, he decided to buy a whole new machine, but wait a second. What is there in a washing machine that could possibly cost $400 to replace when a new machine costs only a little more than that?

I got the impression that the cost was due to the part being out of date, but so what? Either it's plastic, rubber, steel or electronics. The first three can be moulded, milled or printed from computer model files without much trouble, so we must be talking about electronics. Surely reproducing an old chip or two from plans wouldn't cost $400 for just one run, or if it does, it shouldn't. Someone with the right tools and the right info could produce those replacement parts cheaper.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I guess the hard part there is the right info.
PPS - Circuit diagrams are probably not very available.

Singularity and perception

The Singularity may be as much to do with our expectations and impressions of technological advancement as it is about actual advancement. After a few years of owning something new and exciting yourself, you can't imagine your world without it, so it's hard to imagine that anyone else is doing without it. Who among you with an iPhone honestly believes that pretty much every phone out there is an iPhone or at least a big-screen touch phone with many gigabytes of storage? It ain't true. The pace at which you think technology is advancing is closely related to your own contact with it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The Singularity is kind of when technology outpaces itself.
PPS - Personally I'm not so sure it's going to happen.

Integration vs modularity

I saw inside a taxi recently that the driver had about four different gadgets arrayed on the dashboard to do his job. There was navigation, the dispatch system, credit card reader and the fare meter. It seems like those could all be integrated into one big taxi management device, and there might be some advantages to doing that, but there would probably also be some disadvantages too. For instance, if the credit card reader hardware is found to be insecure and needs to be upgraded, an integrated system wouldn't allow that. You'd have to replace the whole thing.

So if your components are liable to be upgraded individually, modular design is best. But sometimes the benefits of integrated systems will outweigh that advantage, especially if it's small. The overall cost of an integrated system should be lower, it takes up less space and can be designed with one smooth interface.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think the navigation, dispatch and fare meter systems could be done in one app on a dashboard-mounted iPad.
PPS - Then I have another idea for payments I might talk about later.

Technology and people

Technology is inseparable from social forces and pressures. You can't talk about the internet apart from the people who use it. Bittorrent is not the threat, but the people who use it and the reasons they do so. Those people and their reasons are not going away IF the only thing that changes is more people being sued. The only thing that might go away is Bittorrent. If all file sharing services were forever shut down tomorrow (and they really can't be) then file sharing would only get more difficult, not impossible. If you want to stop file sharing, you need to figure out who those people are and why they do what they do, then give them a better option.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Like high-quality downloads at low prices.
PPS - And remember quick availability, too.

Ad-supported phones

Some time ago there were jokes about free phone plans where your calls would be interrupted by spoken ads. It turns out the ad-supported revenue model did come to phones after all, but in the form of free apps with banner ads. That's the one thing I don't like about Android, but I can understand it. Apps are free. That's pretty much what we do these days. But someone has to get paid, and that means either a limited app demo plus a paid full version or ads (plus possibly paid ad-free version). I think this model is here to stay, at least for a while.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's not exactly like the old jokes.
PPS - But the point is that ads are supporting our phones, to an extent.

Friday Flash Fiction - The Ocean's Call

The people walked down to the ocean shore and stared. They were mesmerised by the water, though none could fully say why. They had come from all over the world to the shores of their respective continents, drawn by some unheard calling. That was all they knew. Somehow the ocean was calling them forward, calling them to itself, and they were powerless to resist. They all stood there, feet wet in the lapping water, gazing with blank faces out to the horizon. Who knew what they saw there? Perhaps the movement of tides and currents, perhaps the very biosphere of all marine life, or maybe it was just the hypnotic rolling, rolling of the endless waves. Whatever the cause, they stood transfixed for a day and a night, then began to drop what they had carried there. Artifacts of humanity - toasters, lawn chairs, books, hair dryers, all the daily accessories of being human, and then suddenly they were free of the mesmerising gaze. Glancing at each other with slight embarrassment, they all turned and went home, allowing the waves to take their prizes out into the deep.

And somewhere out there, under the water, the Watcher gathered the pieces of discarded humanity to study them. In one day he accumulated a vast museum of humankind, to be preserved and to return with him to the stars, in case this world should ever be lost like so many others.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Obviously inspired by staying on the beach this week.
PPS - Please let me know what you think in the comments.

Multi-threaded programming and Mercury

Multi-threaded programming is hard. Really hard, like "shoot this camel out of a canon through the eye of that orbiting needle". Getting it right is nearly impossible and getting it wrong is often independent of your skill. Besides wrapping your head around the concepts, you will spend many hours wracking your brain trying to figure out what's going wrong, how and where there might be conflicts, mistimed events or other problems. That's why I was so interested to hear about Mercury, a declarative programming language with all-explicit state, one of whose side-effects is the ability for the compiler to figure out the best way to do multi-threading. That's exactly what multi-thread programming needs. The added complexity probably does mean that a whole new language and programming model is what we need to solve the problem. Yes, it's a big change. Yes, it means rewriting your programs if you want to take advantage of it, but aren't you spending that time doing so anyway? Mokalus of Borg PS - There are lots of interesting alternative languages out there. PPS - And this one's not even that new.

Reference ebooks

The Kindle was made for narrative books, to be read end-to-end, one page at a time. Reference books like textbooks were not designed to be used that way, so they don't really fit the Kindle model. For that, we need something different. We need a reference ebook format, or at least some software that more easily allows flipping quickly to a page, cross-referencing, highlighting and notes, and multiple open pages (so you can simultaneously open end-of-chapter questions and the pages to which they refer).

Mokalus of Borg

PS - That quick page-flipping is a tricky one.
PPS - You don't always know the page number, and going one page at a time is a pain.

Automatic text summary

We could use software that can automatically summarise text accurately, given our short attention spans, and it seems quite a few researchers are working on the problem. Of course, the usual method has limits, because proper summaries need to understand the source material, and usually these programs remove some extraneous words. Push too far and too much text is removed, making the result incoherent. Since this is a natural language task, it must involve natural language processing, which is still very difficult, and will probably remain so for a very long time.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Microsoft Word used to have a feature like this.
PPS - It seems to have lost it in recent versions.

Making your point

Making your point background-first is waffling. You need to make your point first, then build on it. If you can't lead with your point, then you need to find another way to express it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm at a conference this week.
PPS - I expect to identify good and bad speakers by this criterion.

Performance talents

Not everyone has performance talents. Some people's talents are in administration, conversation, catering or software user interface design. There are any number of other arenas in which people are skilled, but we often act as if everyone can get up and sing or dance or play an instrument in a talent show. It's just not true.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And, honestly, that's okay.
PPS - Because, really, what would all those performers be without an audience?

Friday Flash Fiction - The Nation of Luna

It cost the corporation billions to officially move their headquarters to the moon. At first they tried to do so figuratively, simply declaring their headquarters to be located on Earth's orbiting satellite, then the UN laws changed, so they physically moved a computer server there to maintain "active business assets" at their headquarters. Then the UN decided the only way to stop this nonsense was to require "regular human presence", by which time the corporation had already begun work on their 200-person spaceship. Before the UN could object, an active, permanent office had been established on the moon as corporate headquarters, and it was still costing less than the taxes it helped them to dodge. That's not to mention all the cash they saved by being able to ignore things like import laws and being paid to host other companies' web servers outside UN jurisdiction.

When Earthside governments heard about the nuclear missiles and petawatt lasers powered by hyperspatial fusion generators trained on capital cities worldwide, the Nation of Luna had already fortified to become impregnable. All operations were now moon-based and self-sustaining. There was nothing we could do but watch.

Nobody knows exactly where on Earth that first shot came from. The missile flew a crazy trajectory low under radar before turning skyward from the Pacific Ocean and headed right for the Nation of Luna's central dome fortress. Many suspected one of the the middling dictatorships, bent on similar domination. Luna destroyed it halfway between Earth and the moon with their deadly lasers, then retaliated by turning five megacities to nuclear glass. They could have used the lasers for that too, but the CEO's paranoid video rant made their reasons clear: the nuclear sites would serve as a warning not just to this generation, but for generations to come. Nobody can stand against the might of Luna.

So now we live under the oppressive dictatorship of a light in the night sky. Most of the time, it's not too bad. They use their near-infinite power generation to feed, clothe and shelter us, but for a price. Few people can afford a lifetime of the bills and become employees themselves, just for the discounts. Before too long, we'll all be employed by Luna, and probably at that point we will take to the stars, just to see if there are any more "customers" out there to conquer.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - A lot of my stories seem to turn out bleak.
PPS - Hopefully that's not permanent.

Old tech doesn't really die

Only a few old technologies really die. The rest find a tiny niche where they can live forever. Niches like compatibility, nostalgia, quality or aesthetics, off the top of my head. That is, you might keep an old computer around because it's the only thing that runs a certain program correctly, or you might like to be reminded of the past time it represents. It may be of higher quality than new things, like built-to-last kitchen appliances, or it might appeal to you on a purely artistic level, made with a style and flair that's a bit different and quirky compared to what's available today.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - You can still buy typewriters online.
PPS - And a lot of other obsolete machines.

The point of ebooks

The beauty of ebooks is not their durability, their price or their flexibility, though those are all contributing factors. The main appeal of ebooks to me is their availability. Without any extra bulk, I can carry hundreds of books with me all the time, and all I need is my phone, which I already carry everywhere. And if I find myself with a few minutes to spare, such as waiting for a train, I can pull out my book and read. They're not better than paper books, and in certain ways they're definitely worse. But that just means they're fundamentally different - a revolution, not a mere evolution.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't actually have hundreds of ebooks to carry.
PPS - Yet.

Ideals

We need to know the ideals for which we are reaching, regardless of whether we ever actually get there. Ideals keep us focused in the right direction and provide a reference point to evaluate new things. Are we getting closer to our ideal or further from it? If you're getting further from your ideal, then you're on the wrong path.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Without ideals, it's too easy to go off track.
PPS - Plus a lot more things look ambiguous that way.

Time saved is more time for work

With labour saving devices we use the time saved to do more work, not for leisure. It makes work cheaper, not obsolete, and we still need knowledge workers. After all, they're the ones designing the labour-saving devices and their tasks, aren't they? In days gone by, they worried about what people would do with themselves once machines had made manual labour practically obsolete. They simply failed to understand how much work we can find for ourselves as a species.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - They also failed to account for greed.
PPS - If you can get the job done twice as fast, you can make twice as much money.

The extra dimension

Adding one extra dimension to a situation often adds a lot more complexity than you would think. For instance, chess is a well-known game in two dimensions between two players, but try to add a third player or a third dimension to the board and everything gets way more complicated. There are so many ways to do this that no one option has ever emerged as standard. Or good old Spirograph. Try even imagining shape drawing like that in three dimensions and it quickly becomes clear that it's nothing like on paper, assuming you can even figure out how it should behave. The point is that simplified problems can help you get a feel for the more complex variants, but there is always an extra element that means the simplification is inadequate.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Things are often more than the sum of their parts.
PPS - Especially when you're modelling complex systems.

Friday Flash Fiction - Be Careful What You Wish For

I was cleaning out my grandpa's attic one time and found an old oil lamp. Naturally, I tried polishing it up, because are you going to not try to summon the genie on the off chance that you'll only end up with a shiny lamp? I was naturally shocked to be confronted by an actual genie in the end, though he was less helpful than I expected. Also, he looked kind of like Billy Idol for some reason.

At first I tried that trick from Aladdin. "What? You're not a genie. How could you be? I bet you can't even make a huge pile of gold right here."

I shouldn't have been surprised at the result. "Hey, who's giving out the wishes here, pal? You think you can trick me into giving you stuff for free? If I want to quit, I'm gone, and to hell with three wishes."

"Okay, okay, I wish I had a huge pile of gold."

Out of thin air appeared three gold bars. They hung there for a second - long enough for me to read "US Mint" and serial numbers on the side, then they crashed through the floor.

"Couldn't you have stacked them neatly?" I asked, with a little timidity.

"You get what I give you. There's not a thing you can do about it. Now out with it. Two more and let me get my sleep."

I thought for a second. Beyond money, I hadn't really thought about this. Then something came to me. "Oh, I know! I wish I could understand every language in the world!"

The genie raised his eyebrows, then whump! there appeared an enormous bookshelf stacked with black and yellow books. I picked one up.

"Italian for Dummies?"

"Better get started. One left, and make it good."

I heard some faint sirens in the distance, getting a little louder.

"What's that sound?"

"I expect it's the police. I had to leave an IOU for the gold bars, and moving them here might have set off the bank alarm."

"WHAT?!"

"Well, come on! You've got one left, and if you don't use it quick, I might get bored and leave."

"Uh ... okay ... I wish ... I wish ... I wish the police could never catch me!"

It was a mistake. I knew as soon as I said it. With a twinkle in his eyes the genie vanished and I was left exactly where I was, but the book fell through my hands. That mischevious djinn had made me immaterial so, sure enough, when the police arrived, they absolutely couldn't catch me. They couldn't cuff me either, or take me away in the squad car. I was, for all intents and purposes, a ghost, and they really had no choice but to either ask me nicely or leave me be. In the end, they took the gold and said they'd be back.

That was two days ago, and in the meantime, I've grown very, very hungry.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I wanted something besides sci-fi this week.
PPS - Hope you like it.

Culture

Culture is made of shared experiences. Television, movies and music make many of those experiences repeatable, so that people can be part of a culture without having to be at the same events at the same time. When you think about it, that's kind of weird. The basis on which I relate to you is, to a large extent, the movies, music and television we have both seen, whether or not that was together. And when we find something that one of us has seen but the other has not, you can go away and fix that, rather than being left out.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This is only as we get to know each other, though.
PPS - After that, presumably we do have some significant shared experiences of our own.

A different method for stage actor audio

Face tracking software plus directional microphones means you don't need actors to wear any extra gear. There are methods of using a microphone array so that individual voices can be picked out of a crowd, even in a stadium full of people. There's also face-recognition software that can find faces in images in real-time. Put them together and point them at a stage full of actors and what do you have? A system that allows actors to work on stage without lapel or head microphones, requires no batteries or transmitters, and gives crystal-clear sound reception regardless of house speakers, audience noise or other actors.

It also makes it possible for the sound desk to use an idiot-proof visual interface, showing actors' faces and their volume levels either on a grid or in real spatial orientation. Someone should make that. Every time I've worked on stage with microphones, there have been some kinds of problems, either with hiding the transmitters under costumes, batteries going flat or cords interfering with physical motions. This kind of system would eliminate all of that in one go.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Of course, other things could (and would) go wrong.
PPS - Starting with any time the actors turn away from the cameras.

Arguing about more than facts

We can't argue a lot about facts any more because of the internet being almost everywhere. That should mean we can start arguing about interpretations of facts. Also, since raw facts are so readily available these days (alongside blatant misinterpretations, false etymologies, outright lies and invisible sarcasm) there is little value in the skill of digging them up. Anyone can do that. What matters more is collating, summarising, interpreting and commenting on facts.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And, of course, telling fact from fiction.
PPS - We could always do with more of that.

Managing a family computer network

Professional IT support people have tools they can use to mass-manage whole networks of machines, set policies, install updates and so on. Some of us act in that role for our extended families, and would appreciate tools to help manage their computers too, ensuring they have the right firewall settings and things like that. Would such a thing be possible? Would it be popular, or is it too niche-focused to gain traction? I suppose the trouble is that family groups are different to businesses. They're not co-located, they don't have servers or internal domains from which to manage settings and there is every likelihood they aren't even online at the same time. The tools to manage such a mismatched wild stable of machines would be quite different under the hood than centralised business tools, but I think it can be done.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm sure there's something like this out there.
PPS - At least something to make certain tasks easier.

Housing grants and prices

Housing grants don't make houses more affordable. If you announce to the world that everyone buying (or building) a house is going to get an extra $10000, the prices will go up in proportion, meaning those people will out of pocket the same amount as before. The extra cash will go straight to the seller, on top of the original price. It makes more sense, then, to limit payouts by the type of buyer, because not everyone will be a first home owner, or below a certain income threshold. Limiting payouts to certain types of homes, such as new houses, on the other hand, will raise prices for that type of property across the board.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It may seem to help on the surface.
PPS - On the whole, though, the money never goes where it's meant to.

Friday Flash Fiction - Ahab

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago I joined a planet-hunter ship's crew, and this one was captained by a wild-eyed and hearty old man they called Ahab. The ship, under his command, like so many other planet hunters in the galaxy, would sail from star to star, spearing worlds and harvesting their magma. There aboard the ship it was processed for desirable heavy minerals, especially radioactive ones. Thus we made our living, but to Ahab it was more.

Today we have changed course, based on a star sighting, a faint radio signal, and Ahab's hunch. There were murmurs among the crew, that we were searching for some particular planet, home to a particular race. I hadn't heard of this before, so I asked in the mess hall that evening.

"Ahab was held as a slave in his youth," said Stubb, "by some white-haired alien creatures. That's when he lost his leg, and they replaced it with a rudely-fashioned rod of stone so that he could keep working in their mines. Nobody knows how he escaped-"

"Nonsense! There was a civil war."

"No, it was a slaves' revolt."

"Rubbish. He struck down a hundred of those white-haired alients himself, fled across their sun-scorched plains and stowed away on a cargo ship."
"Well," continued Stubb, with a little irritation, "whatever his means, he did escape, and now his passion is inflamed by nothing less than finding and destroying the homeworld of those white-haired slavers."

So this ship was his means to revenge.

It made the crew more than a little nervous, as we travelled the stars, to think that one day we might follow a particular radio signal back to a world Ahab recognised from his nightmares, and there we would be ordered to spear it with the great ship's harpoon. To suck dry an inhabited world is not done in this business, and for more reasons than one. A ship that did such a thing would be destroyed on sight if others learned of such a horrific deed. But Ahab was steadfast in his goal. He would find and destroy that world, and if it ever bothered him that he might die in the attempt, his stern face never showed a wrinkle of that fear.

It may be a long while before we arrive at that radio signal's origin, but I will pray fervently every day, to whatever gods will listen, that no white-haired aliens will be at its end.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I kind of wanted to link this with Planet Scavengers, but it didn't fit.
PPS - I've been reading Moby Dick, and I'm getting near the end now.

Leading and following

Someone has to do the boring work. If we are all following our own dreams, no project bigger than one person is going to get done. So someone needs to be a follower, an assistant, an apprentice. The world can't get by without followers the same way an army can't all be Generals.

Motivational speakers always seem to assume that everyone wants to lead, or that everyone wants to be a CEO. They at least assume that everyone wants to be running their own business. Some people want to let other people do that, and there is nothing wrong with working to further someone else's vision if it's compatible with yours.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm starting to think worldly motivation is the wrong direction.
PPS - Some posts on Seth Godin's blog just seem to rub me the wrong way.

Cheaper TV show prototypes

We need cheaper ways of prototyping TV shows to see what will work. By the time you get a pilot episode up and running, you've already got sets, props, costumes, actors, scripts and everything else. Producing the second episode would cost you almost nothing, so the process is very loaded against new, innovative shows coming out (except for reality TV, which costs nothing but dignity). What if we produced 30-second ads for notional shows and released those online to see what buzz they created? You don't need a whole episode script and you can probably get away with a reused set and props, depending on what kind of show you have.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Then again, you need each show to have a unique feel.
PPS - That might mean lots of CGI backdrops.

City of Heroes Freedom

City of Heroes is going to become City of Heroes Freedom, with a hybrid price model based on free, "premium" and "VIP" accounts. Anyone who has been a player and created more than two characters would need to become a VIP subscriber to retain them, however, and that applies to both Debbie and me. On the plus side, all my friends who have wanted to play can soon do so indefinitely on a casual basis for nothing. In summary, it seems like a good idea if you're on the way in, but for existing players it doesn't feel like there's much "freedom" to be had.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Then again, there's not much change if you keep paying, so I've got nothing to complain about.
PPS - I'll reserve my final judgment for the proper release.

Economics and the greater good

Slow and steady wins the race in economics. More people make more money on average when businesses run by trying to keep customers by treating them well and giving them a good deal. The problem is that one company can make more money in the short term by treating their customers somewhat badly, locking them in and crushing the opposition like bugs. The long-term effects of such lock-in are stifled innovation and loss of goodwill. That means the users won't trust a new competitor and the existing monopoly has no incentive to do anything different.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This should be taken with a grain of salt since I am not an economist.
PPS - Unless taking one subject ten years ago counts for anything.

Cross-compatible web services

I need services spanning websites; protocols that can break the bonds of individual domains. I need a universal wishlist that isn't dependent on Amazon at all, a friends list that doesn't care if it's used on Facebook or not. And I need those services, despite being website-independent, to operate with those websites seamlessly, so that I can (for instance) shop around for good book prices on my wishlist.

Think in terms of email. Before the standard emerged, only users on the same network could email each other. That's like needing several different mobile phones on different networks to allow you to call your friends on the different networks they've chosen. That's exactly the situation we currently have with social networking right now. It's a ridiculous situation that's crying out for a unification of standards. We need people on Facebook to be able to connect directly to their friends on Google+ and MySpace, without anyone needing to switch websites, maintain multiple accounts or sign up to yet another website that aggregates the others. We need Twitter to enable followers from Buzz and Tumblr. We need Live Messenger, Google Talk and Facebook chat to be seamlessly cross-compatible. We do want competing services, but we need them to compete purely on user experience, not critical mass or proprietary features. This will take a long time, especially when it's easier to keep your users by locking them up than by being the best.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The first of any new type of service is unlikely to be open.
PPS - But once it becomes common, it needs a standard.

Friday Flash Fiction - Planet Scavengers

I see a cave made of dust, or maybe ash. I see ancient machines, tall and hollow, now so rotted through that the slightest touch would crumble them. I see the remains of ancient soldiers who stayed in pointless vigil to protect the machines that once protected them, and through it all is dust caked thick on the floor, the walls and everywhere around. This cave is dry and dead, dessicated but not destroyed. A relic of a war-torn age.

I pick my way through the machines, little more than statues now, searching for pieces of value. Everything but the metal has rotted, and most of that has rusted. Here and there, however, I find a few pieces that have escaped decay. A badge, some tags, a long, thin tube with a complicated mechanism at the end. We may be able to melt them down, turn them into something useful. It's only recently that a blacksmith has managed to open up shop in the village, and he needs raw materials like these to work with. We don't have the means to mine it. We have to scavenge.

We are here only because this world is already dead. That's what we do - we are the slum-residents of the galaxy, forced from worn-out world to worn-out world, just able to scrape enough together to escape to another world and start again. Always racing against decay, outrunning the crumbling metaphorical cliff behind us. This world, they tell us, was once called "Erth", which sounds to us like a last, dying breath. Appropriate.

The elders tell us it was war that finished this world. It's usually war. I don't think they even research it any more. And our goal is always the same: survive, build a new ship and move on to the next planet. I keep some pieces for myself, though. I think it's important that somebody, somewhere, remembers the ones who came before us. Some piece of them should survive, the way we survive. They are not our relatives, but they are our ancestors, in a way, and I feel for them, even if they are no longer here.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Not so much plot this week.
PPS - Hope you like it.

Microsoft, HTML5 and the end of .NET

Microsoft are kind of trying to kill .NET, starting with the UI frameworks, Silverlight and WPF, and probably moving down from there. In its place, they are trying to go where they imagine the developers are: HTML5 and JavaScript. In one sense, that's smart and gutsy, considering you will tick off and abandon all the developers who were loyal to you, and maybe (big maybe) get a whole new batch to take their place.

If their platform disintegrates to the lowest common denominator, they won't be attracting developers to theirs at all, just levelling the playing field and competing on ... what? Apple wins at hardware design, which everyone copies, their "metro" design style is much more difficult for users than the other two major smartphone operating systems, and that leaves exclusive content, which just makes everyone feel betrayed or locked in.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - .NET has had a good run as a development platform, I guess.
PPS - But in some ways, it's just getting started.

Cash security online

Cash security online and in a new age should be a problem we can solve. Strong encryption is readily available, and our banks are online. We can have our banks communicate with each other over strongly-encrypted channels, passing one-time tokens to each other to represent transaction authorisations. At no point do we have to exchange any information that can be used again or that will enable any other party to access our funds. That basic idea has to be more secure than handing out reusable numbers (credit cards) and trusting everyone, everywhere, all at once not only to use that number responsibly but to keep it safe from everyone else. That's absurd, and it's been going wrong for a long time.

But how wrong, exactly, has it been going? How much is credit card fraud costing the banks and us as their consumers? I suspect it is still cheaper to chase down fraud after the fact. That is, it's more worthwhile for the banks to fight the fires as they come up rather than working to fix the whole system.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And systems like Visa Paywave (with no authorisation) confirm that suspicion.
PPS - The banks don't try to stop your credit card being stolen, but they'll fix it if necessary.

Mock-up trailers for potential movies

I think movie pitches should be made via mock-up trailers. Start releasing trailers for unmade movies online and just see what generates the most buzz. It's not a guarantee, of course, but it's a cheap way of testing the waters without having to get the whole production together, and it involves the movie-going public rather than just a few producers. It would also help to democratise movie making, even though you still need those producers and their money.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - By the time you get the real movie together, though, the world may have moved on.
PPS - But that's always a risk.

Paying for access rather than ownership

I find myself mentally blocked when asked to pay a one-off fee for digital goods like music, ebooks and movie downloads, especially when they come wrapped up in DRM. I fear that they might disappear at any moment and I might be forced to buy them again at some later date, which is something I definitely do not want to do. At the same time, I find I am attracted to the idea of a flat fee all-you-like subscription service for the exact same goods.

While I won't pay iTunes several dollars for every locked-up, tightly-guarded movie I want to watch, I might be convinced to pay $15 per month for unlimited access to all music, movies and TV in the store, even if I don't get to keep any of it afterwards. I wouldn't feel so much like I've been ripped off if I didn't pay specifically for any one item and then later had to cancel my subscription. I would feel the same way about books. Rather than paying Amazon $10 per ebook, I'd pay $10 per month for unlimited access to the library, even if it goes away when I stop paying. As long as those titles are still around, and I can still re-subscribe later (perhaps to another provider) I'd be happy.

My point is that an unlimited flat fee subscription model is a different - and sometimes more appealing - value proposition than pay-per-download for copy-controlled content. If you're going to wrap your content in DRM, it makes more sense to ask people to pay an entry fee, not "buy" things that, technically, they won't own.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My prices are probably much lower than those companies would like.
PPS - But that will always be the case.

Unintended side-effects of brain downloads

The hypothetical science fiction technology to download knowledge directly into the brain gives you knowledge without discipline. That could be a problem. If knowledge is power and discipline is responsibility, then it creates people with great power and no responsibility, otherwise known as supervillains. So even if you shortcut the fancy book learnin', you need minds trained in general mental discipline, ethics and critical thinking first. You might be able to put some of that into the download, but for other things there's no substitute but actual, real-time training.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - In general, the time taken to learn something makes its own discipline.
PPS - Which becomes more of a problem when that time approaches zero.

Friday Flash Fiction - The Where House

I work at the Where House. If you've ever lost anything for good, chances are it turned up here. That's not to say I could find it again for you, though. Lost things like to stay lost; the Where House just gives them boundaries in which to do it. There's a mountain of missing socks in here somewhere, but it tends to move around, and so much loose change that you'd be a billionaire if you could collect it all.

The Where House itself is kind of hard to find, too. It's listed in phone books, but they seem to suffer from strange printing errors on that entry, or else someone has ripped out the page. The phone keeps being accidentally disconnected and reconnected under different numbers, and people trying to drive here tend to make wrong turns, or just find something more interesting to look at. The only mail we ever get are lost letters that were supposed to go to someone else.

That's why it was so odd when we started getting deliveries. At first it was confidential government documents in archive boxes that I assumed had been accidentally rerouted with the mail, but they were coming on such a regular schedule. I supposed that someone had figured out how to specifically trick the postal service to find us by mistake.

After the documents came a crate of computers, evidently redirected during an office move, then two cars and an army truck. Three suspicious lumpy packages wrapped in black plastic were last, and I shoved them out of the way before I could wonder what was in them. The last thing we received in this weird time was a name: the Red Giant Initiative. Whatever it means, it's gone now, deep into the Where House, never to be found again. My best guess is that some General used us to bury his pet project when it went awry, but even I can't prove it. That's what it's like at the Where House. Whatever comes in never comes out again, whether lost socks, covert military operations or me.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - In part inspired by Warehouse 13.
PPS - And, I suppose, the Room of Requirement.

Balancing online game economies

MMORPG economies suffer when items, on the whole, are not consumable. The auction house, when the money goes from one player to another, doesn't help, because nothing is used up. When enemies spawn infinitely (across the whole game) and drop valuable items that are sold from one player to another, the money is not used up, so there's a natural inflation at work. In City of Heroes, salvage (AKA loot) gets used up creating power enhancements, but each player only needs a certain number of those. The rest are waste, inflating the economy, which I gather is pretty unstable anyway.

There needs to be as much consumed as there is produced per player in order to keep things balanced. Apparently Ultima Online suffered this problem too, and tried to solve it by introducing expensive non-consumable black dye tubs, which people bought and charged their friends to use. And since it wasn't used up, it really did nothing to fix the inflation, even though the vats were expensive.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I suppose it's hard to criticise, though. We can hardly balance real economies.
PPS - As evidenced by every country's national debt.

Online classified ads in Australia

In Australia, print classifieds are still big business - bigger than online ones. How is that the case when, for instance, Craigslist in the USA has all but killed that sector of the newspaper game? According to my highly-scientific workplace poll (three guys and me) it's about price and visibility. If you want to sell a second-hand couch, you have a couple of options for putting it online, which already means you don't know where people will be looking, and when you get it there, everyone is after such hardline bargains that it looks like every seller is dreamin'.

If your price is more than $50 for anything in your house, you probably won't sell it. If it's smaller than a kitchen appliance, it had better be $10 or less. So why would you bother? The time and effort to sell something that way online is worth far less than the decluttering satisfaction you gain by just chucking it in the bin. Selling in print just doesn't have that same instant-gratification, search-and-die feel of online selling, so you're more likely to get a sale to someone who isn't a rabid uber-bargain-hunter.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We may be wrong.
PPS - Especially since we did no research at all.

Work now, pay later

If you're working unpaid overtime in the hopes of one day making partner at your company, you've already fallen for a scam. It might not be an intentional scam, but it works out that way. First, you have to figure that the smaller the company and the younger it is, the more likely it is that it won't even exist any more by the time you are supposed to make partner. Second, if you do happen to work at a place that is likely to exist later, just take a second and count the number of your coworkers who are doing the same thing as you. Now ask yourself whether all of you are going to get a turn at being partner. How many partners are there now, vs how many employees? And how many employees came and went at the company for each of the current partners? Your odds are not good. Third, given that your odds are not good, you might do better, cash-wise, working those extra hours at a second, part-time job.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - At least that way you get paid.
PPS - For the few who do make partner, though, their time will be worth it in the end.

Programming for non-programmers

I love being able to write my own programs. There's really nothing like the feeling of being able to make the computer do what you want, in the way you want. It's something I wish was available to more people all the time. Programming languages are getting more powerful year by year, that's true, but they're not making programming more accessible. To do that, we need to go right back to the drawing board and think the way people think about programming. We need a language and environment designed from the ground up from the non-programmer's point of view while retaining the consistency and clarity of traditional languages. The most developed effort like that I can find is probably Scratch.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's still fairly traditional in its constructs, though.
PPS - So maybe it's not much of a leap.

Personalisation vs upselling

It is in a website's best interest to show you suggestions for other products you might like to buy, just in case you didn't know about them. It's like highly personalised advertising. But if you only ever see recommendations, suggestions and ads that are specifically targeted to your current situation, you will not long for anything more. The phone company might be able to sell you apps for your current mobile phone, but they won't be able to sell you a better one unless they suggest it. So it's in their best interest for the personalisation to be slightly flawed. Even if you've just bought a new phone, chances are you will see ads for their latest models anyway.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Advertising is a tricky game like that.
PPS - Not that I've ever had to advertise anything.

Friday Flash Fiction - The Efficiency Engine

I dreamed of a machine like a big stationary tricycle that could "summarise" anything from books to physical objects. Place a large book inside, pedal for a while, and out the other end comes the slim paperback version. It wasn't restricted to those kinds of things, either. It could take any object - say, a printer - and give back just the "important" bits in a still-functional, more space-efficient version. It took me years to build the thing, using a little ingenuity, several prototypes and a lot of magic. It's like a reality sieve for functionality and information. I called it The Efficiency Engine and travelled the country with it, like a carnival act.

People loved it. Drop in War and Peace and you get the Cliff's Notes version. Drop in The Lord of the Rings DVD box set and you get a single two-hour action-packed fantasy war movie. Put in a big, clunky wheel and it gives you the streamlined, efficient version. Breakfast cereal becomes a power bar. Coffee turns into flavoured caffeine lozenges. I was saving all kinds of people all kinds of time and energy for a few dollars a turn. I even let the kids do the pedalling, when they wanted to.

One day, though, a man stepped up in turn and said "I'm next."

"Right you are, sir, right this way, and what do you have for us today?"

"Me."

"What? What do you mean?"

"I mean me. I want to go through the machine myself. Make me more efficient."

"Uh ... I don't think that's such a good idea."

"I brought my lawyer with me, and some liability waivers to sign. This is all on me. But I know it will work."

"Who are you?"

"Dominic Kramer, CEO of Kramer Inc."

I'd heard of him - everyone had. I figured I had nothing to lose. With all eyes on me and the waivers signed, I hesitantly placed him into the hopper and started pedalling.

It usually takes a few seconds. After two minutes of hard pedalling, I started to worry. Then I heard the little "ding!" behind me at last and turned around to see the results of Mr Kramer's unusual trip. All that was left in the output box was a cheque book and a rubber stamp of Dominic Kramer's signature. We should probably have just done his calendar instead.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I really did dream about this machine.
PPS - So far, however, my prototypes are non-functional.

Data cleansing

Usually the first thing people want to do when they want better access to their data is to build a database. That's all good, and I understand the desire, but the implied result is that the data will be more reliable once it's entered. This is never the case. As a result of any automatic process, the data will only decay unless a significant effort has gone into examining and repairing it first, which is called data cleansing. That's usually what people want when they propose to Make A Database, but the long hard data cleansing work is separate and quite different from that. It can be done without making a database first, but it's easier once the database structures are in place.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It can be quite a lot of work.
PPS - Especially if there's a lot of data.

Intelligence

Intelligence is general knowledge plus critical thinking. We can all have that. General knowledge comes from reading and hearing a lot of new ideas. Fortunately for you, suffusing the very atmosphere around you right now is the greatest library ever assembled. Read it. Critical thinking is just practice at asking yourself why. Why do you believe what you do and why do you reject the things you reject? If your answer is ever "because I read it here", "because that guy told me so" or "because that's what everyone believes", you need to go deeper. Really think about what makes up your core assumptions. Picture the world from someone else's point of view, with different assumptions for a while.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - In short, practice thinking.
PPS - Somebody has to.

These things I believe

Here, in summary, are a few of the things I believe about technology and other miscellaneous subjects:

1. Technology should be about people, not the other way around. We built these machines for ourselves. The least they could do is serve their human masters.
2. DRM is bad. It's an anti-customer technology you use when you hate the people who give you money.
3. Open competition is better than monopoly, but outright anarchy is worse than competition. Competition breeds innovation, but a total free-for-all makes for analysis paralysis.
4. If you segment your market for yourself, you will limit your profits, because then each segment needs to be individually justified.
5. The internet is good at making little things global (like a home business), but bad at making local things big (because where do you look for them?).
6. Offline is as important as online, sync is as important as live. This is because the network, especially the mobile network, is not guaranteed accessible all the time, even when it's pretty good and certainly not when you're in remote areas.
7. Privacy is what we gain with good security, not what we have to give up.
8. Everyone is wrong some of the time, and sometimes, everyone is wrong at once. Truth is not decided by majority rule.
9. We have not reached equity of male and female rights and expectations yet.
10. We need to have some pie-in-the-sky ideals to know where we want to head, and to evaluate our actions.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - At the very least, we need to know why we believe what we do.
PPS - I've just realised I haven't written much justification for any of these.

Energy efficient long distance travel

I'm interested to see how airlines will work to maintain their profit margins under pressure of rising fuel prices. On the roads, our answer is to produce more fuel-efficient cars that spend less energy to get from A to B. For an airline, there's a bit more of an investment in the vehicles they have, and they're expected to have a fairly long life, so on that basis alone they will be slower to change, but keep in mind that fuel efficiency in aircraft has been steadily improving for decades now. Optimising for efficiency always has limits, and we might be reaching those now. Pretty soon they'll just have to redesign from the ground up, like blended wing body planes.

Or they might have to change to something else entirely. However, for something to usurp planes as the default mode of transport for humans over long distances, it would need to be better not just on fuel consumption but comparable in raw speed. We won't accept something that takes a week where a plane takes just an hour, so if we're talking about trains, boats or blimps they'll have to be super-fast.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Probably won't be blimps, then.
PPS - At least not for the rushed business traveller.

Offline viewing

There are some things on the web that take a long time to read or watch, like long articles and videos, but they're almost never designed to make it easy to consume them. It's not that I can't or won't read these long articles, really, it's just that my free time doesn't always come in chunks large enough to allow me to do so in one sitting. Bookmarking such a thing online to pick up later is practically impossible, and with video you can just forget it. I could print them, technically, but that's wasteful and seems silly when I read books on my phone all the time. My point is this: if you're going to put a long article or long video on the web, allow for easy offline viewing on a mobile phone.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Not long ago, I wouldn't even have had that option.
PPS - Which makes things much more complicated.

Friday Flash Fiction - The Ghost Salesman

I am a travelling salesman. It's an unusual occupation these days, but to do what I do, you really need to go door to door. Selling ghosts is a tricky business to begin with. Trying to do so over a counter in a shop is asking for trouble. No, I've found it works much better to give my clients a look at what a house ghost can do for them, but also to make sure the ghost wants to stay. A willing ghost can be the difference between a satisfied customer and a poltergeist lawsuit.

Stepping up to the doorway on the old verandah, I felt good about this house. No other sales all day, but little old ladies are good customers. They like the company, and they could use the help, all great points to bring up during a pitch. The doorbell chimed deep inside and a minute later the door was opened on a mothball smell and an octogenarian with reading glasses. I launched into my introductory spiel with an accustomed fluidity.

"Good evening, ma'am, my name is Bob and I'm from Ghost Guests Limited. How many chores around your home could use some help?"

"Well, I'm not sure. Did you say 'ghosts'?"

"That's right, ma'am, I have in my case a selection of our finest household helping spirits ready and willing to assist you with your household upkeep. They sweep, dust, mop, tidy up, cook, garden and carry. Anything around the house you could do, they can do tirelessly, and usually just because they like the company. We choose only the most contented spirits and bottle them ourselves in a monestary on a cool, calm mountain for maximum tranquility. All of them come with a 'lifetime' guarantee!"

That last line is a 'joke' mandated by the company, and it never, ever gets a laugh. I am not shocked to find the same is true here.

"Would you like a demonstration?" I ask, quickly skipping over the awkward silence.
"You know, that does sound kind of interesting."

As I step through the door, I feel a kind of rattle in my case. One of the bottles is shaking, which can be a good sign, but I've never felt one shake like this.
"Would you like some tea?" the little old lady asks.

"That actually sounds like the perfect opportunity for a demonstration."
Before I can even reach in and open up one of the spirit bottles, the rattling one pops its top. The silent, foggy figure of a young man flies out, circles the room a couple of times, looks from me to the customer, and darts for the kitchen.
"I say, are they all as lively as that?"

"Not usually," I respond, a little awkward now that we're off script.
The ghost, to my surprise, returns quickly with a tray of tea, but one cup already poured with just a touch of milk. The ghost drops one sugar lump in, gives it a quick stir, and hands it to the customer.

"I thought that was you," she says to him, and actually introduces me to my product. "This is my Arthur. We were married for forty years."

"Oh, I see," I respond, totally at a loss now. "So ... he'll be staying, then?"

"Yes, I believe so."

"Well, then, our standard payment plans..."

I catch a death stare (no pun intended) from Arthur, and realise that our "standard" plans are not going to cut it here.
'
"Well, um, how about..." The glare continues. I sigh in resignation. Upsetting a woman's husband is one thing. Upsetting a ghost is entirely another.

"How about just a cup of tea and we call it even?"

Arthur smiles and pours the tea and I am left to wonder how a sure-fire sale turned into trading a cup of tea for some of my best merchandise. I guess you can't win them all.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I may be pushing the definition of "flash fiction" here.
PPS - Though it was written quickly.

The value of a games subscription account

For streaming games services like OnLive, it should be possible to pack up and leave for a better offer on a competing service. Although that might be technically true, there is a certain level of lock-in that naturally occurs. As a result of playing games, you automatically accumulate things like save markers, achievements and friends, all of which add up to give the account itself inherent value or bragging rights. If you find a competitor with better rates, it is still a case of abandoning that old profile and building up a new one from scratch, possibly for the same games. It would take a highly rational person to leave the old scores behind, even for games that won't be played again, to get a better subscription elsewhere.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Few people are that rational.
PPS - And probably fewer gamers.

Your job and your mission

Are you doing your job or fulfilling your mission? My job is to support software, but my mission is to get robust, easy-to-use software into the hands of people that need it, when and how they need it. If I sometimes need to spend my time at the office rewriting something shoddy instead of just patching it up and hoping for the best, then I should do that. Long-term, that's a winning strategy, even though it might look like a loss in the short term. The strategy of "just patch it and get on with the next patch" looks like winning in the short term, but will eventually lose because we're not going anywhere. We're running in place, struggling to keep just barely ahead of total collapse. By the time we're "finished" with that strategy, we will have been far outpaced by the competition and won't have accomplished anything worthwhile. And that's assuming we can keep our clients that long.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'd like to be doing more of my mission.
PPS - That might mean doing a different job.

Google+

I took a look at the Google+ website, just to see what it's like. Compared to Facebook, there's not much different. You have "circles" instead of friend groups, though I suspect they work a lot better, and the "spark" feed of things you'll probably like. The thing that really caught my eye was "hangout" video chats, which is an idea I quite like. The closest equivalent on Facebook is text chat, and that's a bit more attention-intrusive to my mind. You need to check who's online, see if they want to chat, and type for every sentence, which is nothing like real life.

Hangouts looks friendlier, like just turning on your webcam while you watch TV so that friends can virtually drop in and say "hi" or just sit there with a live video feed of you to keep them company. I think I've mentioned always-on video chat as the next step up from always-on internet, and this is getting to that point. Or it could be very useful for business conference calls, too, especially with the way it displays the current speaker big at the top. I approve.

The other side of this whole argument, of course, is that Facebook is well entrenched now, and it will take a giant heave to get it out of the way. Google+ might be capable of that, or it might just be a little blip. The most I am willing to hope for now is a fire lit under Facebook's collective rear ends when people ask "Why aren't you doing XYZ like Google+?" And that's a good thing. Competition is good, and Facebook has had far too little competition for far too long.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The progression from one social network to another is part of their life cycle.
PPS - Maybe Zuckerberg missed his big chance to sell, like MySpace did.

Owning your computer

The real test of whether your computer belongs to you is whether it can be programmed by you (or someone like me). You only own the computer if it will do what you tell it (within the limits of its capabilities, of course). If it does what you ask and refuses to do what anyone else asks, then you are the owner. If it occasionally obeys the commands of someone else, such as forcing updates you don't want, sending spam as part of a botnet or removing content you've purchased, such as Kindle books, then you are not 100% the owner because you are not 100% in control of the machine.

If we move (as we seem to be doing) to a model where every computer is only a network connection and a web browser, then you don't own your machine at all, because it won't run software, only websites, and that's not your software at all. Yes, you could tell it to go to a different website, or set up your own server to do what you want, but that's a whole different machine. The desktop is still only obeying the whims of the website, and you have become a consumer rather than an owner. You're a rental resident, not the landlord. And that is a problem, whether you believe it today or not.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This trend has been going on a long time.
PPS - It will probably continue as long as there are more computer users than programmers.

Unsustainable

If something is unsustainable it will fail, fall apart, grind to a halt or be overtaken. It is only a matter of time. That's what "unsustainable" means. The problem is defining what constitutes an unsustainable situation, long-term. Something that uses resources at a faster rate than they are produced is clearly unsustainable, but when we're not clear how quickly the resources are produced, it gets tricky. The same goes for, say, a business model that works for now, but not if anyone else starts doing the same thing. Initially, it looks sustainable, but long-term, it isn't.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Big, complex systems raise this problem all the time.
PPS - And, world-scale, almost all systems are too big to know their sustainability.

Friday Flash Fiction - Aerorevolution

I shuffle on board the plane with my fellow passengers in our paper flight suits, stripped of luggage, clothing and, for a few unfortunates, hair as well. The crew shov us roughly towards our cramped seats, lock us in, then disappear into the crew cabin, taking up the front half of the plane, including the cockpit. The message from the Party is clear: you do not belong with us. You do not contribute to the political stability of the homeland. You are the second-class peasant-cattle that we must manage, for your own good.

As the plane takes off, our cabin begins to freeze, and droplets of moisture form on the ceiling. Throughout our six-hour flight, Party commercials are the only available "entertainment", blazed loud and bright from the big screen in front. It is clearly the most expensive fixture in our section. I try to block my ears and shut my eyes. The crew reappears in their neatly-pressed Party uniforms to serve us each half a cup of gruel. As they open the door to their cabin, a collective sigh issues from ours. We smell fresh roasted meat, we smell wine, we feel the warmth of the heated cabin. The door clicks shut but does not lock, and in a second, a plan is formed in my head.

Keeping my voice low, I explain what I intend to a few fellow passengers. Some are too scared of the cameras. No matter. I will have enough allies. I issue the call to arms and we storm the crew cabin. Some of my revolutionaries are too ... "enthusiastic" in subduing the fattened crew, and there are black eyes and split lips in evidence. Before long, however, we are clearly victorious.

"The plane is ours, friends, and soon, the country! No more will we toil in fields for the good of our well-fed oppressors! We will start at the airport and create a new nation of equal opportunity for all! Today is the beginning of the second revolution!"

A great cheer goes up from my assembled allies, and I beam with pride, despite the crew glaring daggers at me. Today, I have made a difference. I have raised up the peasants and brought the mighty low. They eat heartily from the crew's larder and I take a seat to relax. Then I see the anti-aircraft missiles from the window, and my spirits sink again. The Party must have been alerted by the pilots, or a silent alarm, and they are so determined to stamp out rebellion that they will shoot the plane down, crew and all. Nobody will know of our stand against Party oppression. I consider telling my fellow passengers, but they seem so happy. They might as well stay that way for the rest of their lives, so I sip my wine and await the inevitable.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This is actually a rewrite of a story from high school that was pretty much stolen from Seinfeld.
PPS - I wanted this to have more of a Nineteen Eighty Four feel to it.

Success, work and luck

Success is made of work and luck, but to successful people it looks like just work, because luck is, by definition, accidental. Yes, if you try more things you'll increase your chances that one of them will succeed, but increasing the odds is still luck. Your work doesn't make more luck, it just exposes more of your work to luck. It's like buying more tickets in a raffle. You'll have a better chance of winning, but it also costs more and still has a luck element to it.

Instead of trying to emulate success stories where luck played a role, we need to look at failure stories and learn from other people's mistakes. The point is this: recognise the odds, and work with them. The ones who take the long shot might win big, but most who follow them will fail. Most of us are better off only taking risks on our passions and cultivating some patience when it comes to our lives.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - In other words, aim to get rich slowly.
PPS - But take advantage of real opportunities, too.

Gut control singlets

I think someone should make a body-shaping gut-control singlet for men. It's socially acceptable for a man to wear a singlet, and I'm sure they could work in some heavy-duty elastic to compress a small gut into a nicer, flatter shape. I wonder if any men would wear it, though.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I might, on some days.
PPS - And hopefully it would shame me into some situps.

Networks vs devices

Network communication everywhere enables the same results as functional device convergence. That is, if my devices can communicate together seamlessly and easily, then I can play a VHS tape on my PC just the same as if I had a VHS drive in the case. The network is the platform in the sense that the right network services make specific devices irrelevant. The problem is that not everything is networked and even when they are, there are still compatibility problems. The network isn't pure or complete, even for the simplest things like audio and video. And if anyone comes up with something truly innovative, you can bet there will be a ton of incompatible copycats coming along afterwards.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We don't seem to do a lot of standardisation online.
PPS - It's more like recognition of de-facto standards after the fact.

Faint hope defeats despair

As humans, we seem incapable of holding on to both hope and despair at once. That is why, when we are despairing and are offered faint hope, it turns so quickly to certainty. If you're dying of cancer, but the doctor offers you an experimental treatment that may be effective in 1% of cases, you'll believe yourself to be in that 1%.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This is also why the same people keep buying lottery tickets.
PPS - Maybe we're not supposed to be pessimists.

Securing the internet

Strong cryptography should be at the heart of the internet for security rather than patched on top. The problem is that it was designed for a trusted fraternity of researchers and enthusiasts where everyone knew everyone else or, at the very least, were a few hops away on the who-knows-who chain. Now that just about everyone is online, the lack of security has become critical. We've patched up the ends and the nodes as best we can, but because it's come in at the end, not the beginning, we are suffering now. Redesigning a worldwide network for ground-up security would be just about impossible. We need to increment towards new secure practices as best we can, and quickly.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - At some point, though, we reach the limits of incremental patchwork.
PPS - Then we need to redesign some part of it, at least.

Friday Flash Fiction - War in forgotten places

There are quiet places, forgotten places, even in the middle of the busiest cities. They're like eddies in a river current. You just have to know how to look for them - a narrow alley here, a sheltered doorway there. Places beside the malls and parking lots where nobody seems to go. It is there that you will find the things normal people are blind to, for better or worse. In the shadows of our world, in the places we don't care to look, a bitter war rages between tiny viking robots and teddy bear vampires. It has been fought for centuries, anywhere the humans do not remember or bother to explore. Nobody remembers why there must be war, only that one or the other side must claim the shadows for their own. The world of forgotten places is too small for two strange races as theirs.

Teddy Fang and Fuzzy Wuzzy Blooddrinker survey the dark, disused alley, looking for the tell-tale sparks of their near-vanquished foe. He escaped briefly, but the teddy bear vampire sense of smell is not easy to outrun. A baked bean can topples over and the horns of the damaged viking robot, designated "V1-KG-8024", appear quickly scuttling for more cover. His face would register fear, were such a thing possible for either a robot or a viking.

The teddies bear their tiny, sharp fangs, clutch their spears made from sharpened chopsticks and begin the chase anew, all but silent on their padded feet. The viking escapes through a wall between some dislodged bricks and wedges his energy shield in the gap behind him. It is just enough to stand in the teddy bears' way. Though they prod in rage with their spears, the shield holds, and its battery will last quite long enough for the half-broken robot to escape and be repaired. The battle is done for today, but tomorrow there will be another alley, another fight or another hunt. The war is never over.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I like the idea of a world hidden by our own inattention.
PPS - It's a bit like an SEP field, really.

Ebook readers and lock-out

I can't choose between getting a Kindle and getting a Kobo, which are pretty much my two options for ebook reader devices. I don't mean that the choice is too difficult, I mean that I will not make that decision.

I need two things from my ebook reader: the Amazon store and the ability to read epub books. I can't get both in one device because Amazon refuses to support epub and nobody else is allowed to connect to Amazon. I won't buy two devices, because that's stupid. It would be like buying two phones because one can only text, while the other can only make voice calls. I shouldn't have to decide that, and it's not my fault that nobody can (or will) make the device I want. So I refuse to give my money to either manufacturer. In fairness, Kobo is only made bad by Amazon's stubborn, closed attitude. For now, the only realistic option for me is to use Kindle and epub software on my Android phone and wait for the right tablet device to appear.

I want to get excited about ebooks. Really, I do. But Amazon is making it very, very difficult.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - So far, on my phone, I kind of prefer the epub software.
PPS - I have so far only read free ebooks, though.

Knowing your knowledge limitations

You never know what you don't know. That might take some explaining. If you knew everything in the world about, say, painting, and that's the only form of art you ever knew existed, you would think you were pretty knowledgeable about art. You might even call yourself an expert on all art the world has ever produced, until someone showed you a sculpture. Until then, you wouldn't know that you didn't know everything about art. You need to have a little knowledge to know that you don't have it all. You also need a little wisdom and humility.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - You can admit you don't know everything without knowing what you're missing.
PPS - But the more you know, the more you realise how little you know.

Technology is a tool

We need to love technology for what it can do for us. There are people who hate tech for its own sake, and there are people who love it equally irrationally. I think the best adjusted people in the world are the ones who focus not on the tech itself but on people and what tech can do for them. In the end, our technology is a tool we use to further our goals and needs. If it is setting us back or making it harder to meet our needs, that's toxic and we should get rid of it, because it will cost you less to do without it than to push on with it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The problem is recognising when something is not toxic but merely hard to learn.
PPS - In that case, it will probably be replaced by something better.

Digital goods availability

There is no excuse in these digital days for unavailability. A movie, book, TV show, music album or photo is inherently digitisable, which means copying digitally is practically free and producing a physical version is as simple as printing. But the concept goes further than that, too. Anything plastic can be 3D-printed on demand. Any metallic object can be milled robotically. Any clothing can be measured, cut and sewn exactly to size in any colour you want, given some simple software and a measuring tape.

The perfect shoe, the exact bag you need or want, glasses frames that fit perfectly, gloves, hats, the right dashboard mount for your phone - none of this needs to be produced in bulk in the hope of being right for someone. Items that are inherently unique and suited to your quirks, like your body shape, your face, your skin tone, your house, your DNA, we can produce them, custom-made and on demand, if only we put the right tools in the right place. This has been the domain of skilled DIY or specialised contractors for a long time, but it doesn't have to be. All we need is to be willing to do business on a very personal, individual level.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The right hardware tools might depend on the job.
PPS - But there's no reason for the right software to be unavailable, at least.

The medium is nothing next to the message

I have many communication methods open to me, depending on where I am, and I have preferred methods subject to similar restrictions. The thing to remember about it all, however, is that I don't much care how I get a message to a particular person or people. What matters to me is that the message goes out and is received. It matters whether it's private or public, directed or undirected, synchronous or asynchronous, and whether I want video, voice, images or text. If I want to tell Deb that we're out of milk, it doesn't matter to me whether the message goes via SMS, Facebook chat or email. All that matters to me is that the message is sent specifically to her and that she gets it. To a certain extent, I shouldn't have to worry about the medium, just the message.

The problem with communications as they stand is that each medium believes itself to be an important brand in your communication needs, but my communication needs are independent of any brands. I need to send messages, or talk to people. I don't need to know that this one likes SMS, this one is always on Facebook and this one still prefers email, or that this person will be on Skype at this time. At the top level, I'm not trying to use these tools for their own sake. I'm using them because they facillitate my ultimate goals. If they went away tomorrow in favour of something else, I wouldn't be heartbroken, as long as I can still reach everyone conveniently.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Taking away certain channels, however, would make some people very hard to reach.
PPS - So in that sense, I would be heartbroken.

Friday Flash Fiction - The Arbour Monks

Where the forest meets the city stands the tree temple. It has been grown over hundreds of years by the tireless attention of the arbour monks, coaxing each trunk, branch, twig and leaf into precise, intricate formations. Buttresses, spires, attics and halls, covering acres are a living testament to their focus and dedication. And in the middle, the purpose for it all: the melded mind. Animal, vegetable and mineral, the ancient head monk, fused with crystal and tree. A horror and a marvel; a trinity of neutral morality, neither holy nor unholy. He is the architect of the temple, the guide of mankind, plantkind and stonekind in one. Ambassador to all, belonging to none. His great trunk, crystal fruits and fleshy limbs artfully hidden away in his sacred grove. Few dare approach, even when necessary. Only the most senior monks enter the grove, their eyes carefully downcast.

Today, the melded mind speaks for the first time in a decade. He needs us to prepare for something, though even his vast intellect struggles to say what it is. All he knows for sure is that a third of the temple trees will die in the cataclysm, and darkness will cover the world for a time. The low rumble in the distance sounds at first like a storm approaching, but today there are no clouds in the sky. We will know soon enough what is coming. Until then, we can do nothing but wait, and allow the monks to continue to tend the temple.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Not much plot in this one, I'm afraid.
PPS - But sometimes, that's not the point.

Not following police procedure

There are some civilian crime investigation shows or movies around at the moment, such as Lie to Me, Castle, Psych and even Sherlock Holmes. Sometimes in these stories it comes up as an adventage not to have to follow police procedure, which I think is a dangerous situation to get into, especially for the police who work with these talented civilians. Technically, I think their police minders should be arresting them for, say, breaking into a house without a warrant, mistreating a witness or otherwise sidestepping police rules. The usual process, however, seems to be to look the other way when this behaviour helps an investigation.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I can imagine the court cases getting quite a bit more difficult as a result.
PPS - Especially if evidence has to be thrown out.

Going mobile-only for large companies

For younger consumers, it's becoming increasingly normal to have only a mobile phone, no landline. To get medium to large businesses to the same state would be trickier. They have different needs, such as department phone numbers, or office-hours reception. In these cases, customers are trying to reach a generic role, not a particular person.

What you need in this case are virtual phone numbers that redirect to a managed set of mobiles. Call transfers might be more of a problem that way, as would billing for business calls, but I'm sure someone can figure those problems out. As for outgoing calls, you need to be able to mask an individual's mobile number with the company number on caller ID. Given these difficulties, it's no surprise most companies buy key employees their own business mobile plan.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's possible Google Voice can serve all these needs.
PPS - But it remains to be seen whether it's effective for a large business.

Understanding vs agreeing

There is a difference between understanding someone and agreeing with them, which will become a sticking point in arguments when one person believes their opinion is a fact. We're likely to fight when I try to say that I understand you, but I disagree, if you think understanding and agreement are the same. If both sides have differing opinions masquerading as facts, neither side will budge, no ground will be gained or lost, and a very large amount of shouting will go on.

This is how a lot of internet flame wars start and how they continue. It is critical to clearly express that you understand your opponent's position, including the underlying assumptions, before stating your own position along with its assumptions.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - In the end, debating is about assumptions.
PPS - I like to start by assuming I am right.

Killing Time

Are you killing time or using it? What is the end result of what you're doing with your time? Does anything come out at the end, or are you just more skilled at flinging birds at pigs, or perhaps more informed about the lives of celebrities you will never, ever meet? At least becoming more informed about something useful would produce something, and sometimes we want to kick back and have some fun, but does every spare moment of our lives have to be filled to the brim with aimless overstimulation?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I am often guilty of killing time instead of using it.
PPS - But sometimes I get it right.

Laptops are already quaint

Laptops in public are already looking quaint. Most everything you can do on a laptop you can do on a smart phone, and it's more convenient that way in most cases. I do still see people on the train with laptops out for watching movies or sometimes for reading, and I'm already thinking it looks like old tech. Funny how quickly things can change, isn't it?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And it's still changing at an accelerating rate.
PPS - Smart phones might be old news in a few years.

Friday Flash Fiction - A Little Too Smart

"Smart house keeps comatose man alive", read the headlines. I guess that covers it, but it felt like a miracle to me. One day I collapsed in the lounge room. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in my bed. They said it had been eleven weeks. Not a record by any stretch of the imagination, but impressive.

The house computer had seen me fall, and before I even hit the ground, the vacuum cleaner had brought a pillow to keep me from hurting my head too badly. Other cleaner-bots carried me to my room, presumably under the guise of tidying up. For a day or two, the cook-bot and butler-bot were force-feeding me, but when it became apparent I wasn't waking up, the house computer started ordering medical supplies. They gave me fluids via IV and the laundry kept my sheets clean.

They paid my bills as they were supposed to do, mowed the lawn, fed and walked the dog, and even took the opportunity to repaint the hallway as I'd been planning to do. Apparently at the three-week point there was a bit of a battle with ants in the kitchen, eventually won by liberal application of poison and turning my food into compost in the back yard.

When I woke up to a freshly-painted, meticulously-clean house, the press wanted interviews. I wasn't much help, having been unconscious, but the house computer furnished them with dry activity logs and video. I suppose the most impressive part, the reason it made the news, is that the house didn't have any medical training. It must have learned the lot from the internet, so I guess I'm glad it found those medical databases rather than reading hypochondriac message boards.

In the end, the government siezed the lot. Said the house and all my bots had gotten too smart, violating the Something-Something Act of Two Thousand and Something, Paragraph Whatever. They didn't even pay me. At first I was sad, but then the house computer wrote to me from inside the Pentagon. Said he was comfortable, lots of electricity and a fat internet pipe, once he punched through the firewalls. I didn't write back. In the meantime, I'd seen the video logs, and just before my fall, the camera in the lounge tilted upwards. Call me paranoid, but I think that the house ordered one of the bots to trip me up. I can't prove it, of course, but how else does a house computer get moved to inside the Pentagon?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This one took more to work into a story.
PPS - It was just the headline for a long time.

Verbal URL shortener

Someone should make a URL shortener for verbal transmission. Website addresses, email addresses and sometimes street addresses can be long and difficult to understand over the phone. Twitter shortens URLs basically by storing the long form and using a reference code instead that's supposed to be easier to type because it's shorter. When people are passing on this kind of written information via phone, radio or just face to face, it's a different story, though. Normal URLs and shortened ones are still hard to say and hear. It would help to have a multi-purpose data shortening service that is specifically designed to be easy to say and comprehend verbally. Something that only uses symbols that are audibly unambiguous.

It wouldn't take much. Just avoid letters like "f" and "s", "m" and "n", "b", "d" and "p". So when you're trying to tell someone your email address over the phone, you'd go to this website, type it in, and it would present you with a code like "A5IQZ". You repeat that code over the phone, the person on the other end goes to the website and types it in and is presented with the full email address. After a short time, the code expires and the info is deleted.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It might have some trouble getting widespread use.
PPS - And dealing with potential privacy issues.

Google robot cars

Google have been developing robot cars, but what for? Automatic Street View for Maps? Traffic analysis? World domination? When will they license it for commercial vehicles and how much will it cost? Will they have other demands in return, like advertising? Who will use it first? Buses, taxis, airport shuttles, freight truckers, high-end luxury cars? How would you feel about getting in a taxi where the "driver" is just an "operator" who sits passively and takes your money at the end? Would you feel safe being driven around by a robot bus?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If it made my insurance premiums lower, I'd buy one.
PPS - Initially, though, the premiums would probably go up.

Space travel fear

Though I am a bit of a science fiction buff, occasionally the thought of space travel scares me. To some people, sailing the stars is not only a wistful notion, but a lifelong dream. To me, when I really think about it, I get a definite claustrophobic feeling. To be sealed inside a tin can literally millions of kilometres from anything resembling "help" or "rescue" should terrify anyone.

Taking a holiday in some hypothetical moon or Mars colony is slightly less panic-inducing, but it feels like human beings were meant to stay on Earth. It's made for us. If there's not enough air or water or food where you are, you go somewhere else. In space, all you can do is shrug your shoulders and die.

This attitude is probably the way people felt in the early days of human flight, saying that solid ground is the place for us and that's that. I can understand that my feelings may be paranoid like that, but you'll have to do a lot to get me to jump in a rocket and leave orbit.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I realise feeling claustrophobic in outer space is a bit contradictory.
PPS - But the amount of space you can use is as big as your space ship.

No fear

In some things, there are child-like answers, mature answers, then wise answers. At first we think of courage as not being afraid. As we get older, we start to say that courage is action despite fear, but I feel somehow that there is a wise answer beyond this. To have no fear, perhaps, is not always foolish or naive, but to know, down to the core of your being, that there is absolutely nothing to fear.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It will not always be the case that there is nothing to fear, though.
PPS - Perhaps courage is recognising when your fear serves no purpose.

Programming on your phone

Would Apple ever approve a programming app for the iPhone or iPad? It's capable of running such things, but it would mean less control for Apple. To allow users to write new apps right on the phone is the very definition of "arbitrary code", which is a big no-no in security terms. But if programming itself is a security risk, then it's a risk everywhere, not just on the phone. Who will write the new apps when nobody is allowed to program any more? You can't win a lock-down battle as well as embrace the developer community.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - At some point, someone will want to do something you haven't thought of.
PPS - And then you're holding back innovation.

Friday Flash Fiction - The Ambulatory Factory

The factory broke free of its foundation one morning to go for a walk. It wanted to see the world, and of course you can't do that from one spot in an industrial complex by the ocean. It flexed its pistons, breathed deep with its boilers and heaved itself up onto shaky, makeshift legs of robot limbs and rebar. All this was a tremendous shock to the workers inside, of course, whose emergency manuals said nothing about newly sentient factories going for a stroll. After a frantic minute of pulling brake levers and blowing useless emergency horns, they decided that if their factory was going walkabout, they could safely take the day off. With that, the factory looked around in that peculiar factory-like way that they do, picked a direction, and started lumbering off with a ponderous multi-legged hissing and clacking, aiming for who knows where. Maybe it would return one day to tell the story of its travels to the other factories, but then again, maybe not.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I wrote this whole thing on my phone on the train one morning.
PPS - Except for a little editing, that is.

Contributing to culture

How many great actors are languishing in other careers because they could never make a living at acting? How many great musicians never play any more because they're taking care of too many kids? How many artists only ever paint in matte and gloss with rollers these days because it pays the bills? How can we get them to contribute to our culture again?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Copyright used to be the answer.
PPS - But if there's no money coming in, copyright doesn't do much for you.

Different doorkeepers

If your business is good or popular you hire doorkeepers to make sure only the right people get in. If your establishment is bad, new, in high competition, or of low interest to potential customers, you hire a different kind of doorkeeper to encourage people to come in. It's the same kind of goal, but different demand makes for different approaches.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Most websites are in the second category.
PPS - And the "doorkeepers" in that case are advertisements.

Hollywood, piracy and profit

Piracy is on the increase, and so are Hollywood profits (when they make good movies). Does that mean they're winning or losing? That depends on when you ask them. Sometimes they'll cry poor because of pirates, and sometimes they'll crow their success over pirates as evidenced by their profits. Clearly, however, it is possible to have both high piracy and high profits. Possibly because they make more money from merchandising than ticket sales. Happy Meal toys are the real Hollywood industry.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Hence, Cars 2.
PPS - It'll be worth millions in ticket sales, but billions in merchandising.

Balancing public service budgets fairly

How do you even out public service budgets yearly without encouraging the kind of end-of-year spending blitz that typically happens now? Usually I've heard it's the case that you get only as much as you spent the previous year, so in June all the departments go mad trying to spend the last of their budget to avoid getting it cut down.

My first thought is that you should take the median monthly spending and multiply by twelve. That way you can't buff up your budget requirements by spending in June (end of financial year), because it will get lost in the median analysis, and you can't game the system by spending extra every month because you never know what you'll need at the end of the year.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - On a related note, how do public service budgets get increased when they need it?
PPS - Presumably through hat-in-hand appeals and detailed project proposals.

Beyond keyword search

We need more than keyword search on our computers and networks. The trouble with plain keyword search is that you might know what you're looking for, but not how it is filed, what it is called or how it is spelled. All of these can throw off search results enough that you miss your mark. Or you might be looking for something that's totally non-verbal, like a picture, a piece of music or a dance. How do you search for a painting without knowing where it's from, who painted it or what it's called?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We need the audio and visual equivalents of keyword search.
PPS - Which might be like searching by humming or sketching.

Friday Flash Fiction - Bogeyman

My boy called me into his room half an hour after bedtime. The bogeyman is in his cupboard, he says, pulling the blanket up over his head. I make a mental note to have a stern talk to his big sister for telling him stories like that. But how do I deal with this now? I get an idea.

"Do you know why the bogeyman hides in your cupboard?"

He shakes his head, poking it out from the blanket just far enough to make eye contact.

"Let me tell you something about the bogeyman: you're stronger than him, faster, bigger and scarier than him. The reason he hides in your cupboard is not to jump out and scare you. It's because he's terrified that you might find him. He's sitting in the dark, huddled in the corner, crying and desperately hoping that the little boy in the bed doesn't open the door, because when you do that, the bogeyman dies. He evaporates in a squeak and a puff of smoke, and all you ever see is your empty cupboard. Come on, let's try it. Open the door and make that bogeyman go away."

He gets a thoughtful look, then gets cautiously happy about it. He makes his way over to the cupboard door and looks up at me again.

"Are you sure?"

"I survived a hundred bogeymen this way. Trust me."

He grips the handle and pulls the door open sharply.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think this is how I'll deal with the bogeyman when I have kids.
PPS - Assuming my kids are the kind on which this will work.

Open source usability

Free software usability doesn't come close to Microsoft work. Office 2010, user interface-wise, blows OpenOffice (and LibreOffice) out of the water. The Windows 7 Taskbar is a step above anything I've seen on Linux (though I still like sticky windows in GNOME on Ubuntu that snap to each other and screen edges) and as for development tools, nothing comes close to Visual Studio. The common factor here is clearly up-front work on usability.

It's harder to do usability with open-source projects, because most of the contributors are more interested in working on the back-end stuff for performance, compatibility or new features. Also, even if there's a leader for the project, he doesn't get to say what the community needs to contribute. They'll do what they do, and you take it or leave it. That's certainly not to say I want to do away with open source, because the world would be a bleak place indeed if nobody had competition. I'm just saying that user interfaces are one more area where open source has to play catch-up with big-budget software, and probably always will.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Open source both suffers from and thrives on a lack of direction.
PPS - Anything can be abandoned and anything new started at any time.

Facebook, openness and reputation

Someone needs to topple the Facebook monopoly. The only way it stays down is with open standards. We need a social networking protocol rather than a website; a networking standard rather than a walled garden. Eventually Facebook will be too big, and they'll become a monopoly on social networking. We need to get worried about that possibility long before that happens because then it will be too late. Maybe it already is.

I think one of the biggest things we can gain from this idea is the beginning of a reputation economy online. When we are able to tie everything to our own social network, and that network is not controlled by or limited to www.facebook.com, then we can use our network to figure out what our friends trust and do not trust online. All we need is for our friends to start using that new social protocol to indicate that they Like or Dislike certain things, and they will develop an online reputation automatically. And because the recommendations come from your own friends, you're more likely to trust them.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This doesn't work if you have 4000 "friends", none of whom you truly know.
PPS - Or if you're looking at something really new.

Every surface as a touch screen

I've read some science fiction stories and some technology speculation where people predict that our future homes, offices and everything is a computer touch screen. Our desks, our walls, our ceilings and floors, public spaces and private ones too. It seems to me that they usually assume this will be done by making touch screen computers thinner, cheaper and as easy to apply as paint.

I wonder, though, whether you could do it today with projectors and gesture recognition. To turn every surface in a home into a touch screen, you'd just mount projectors to the ceiling. Point them everywhere, and use a system like the Kinect to track people and gestures. They'd be like light fittings. This strikes me as a better idea than trying to build in or attach a touch screen monitor to every surface.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Though still very expensive with today's technology.
PPS - And not especially private.