Empoprise-BI

(empo-tymshft) Why Bad Predictions Happen (the "five computers" prediction)

2012-01-27T05:00:00.000-08:00

Mark J. Fletcher wrote a recent blog post on bad technology positions. While the bulk of his post dealt with a bad prediction about E 911, he started off with a classic bad prediction from Thomas Watson the elder.

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.

Now some people like to look at bad predictions and laugh at how stupid the predicter was. In my case, I'd rather put myself back in the shoes of the person who made the bad prediction, and try to understand what motivated the person to think as he or she did.

I've even done this to myself, including the time in 2009 that I was forced to retract my prediction that Oracle and Sun would not collaborate until 2010 or 2011, or after final approval of the Oracle-Sun merger.

But let's look at the environment in which Thomas Watson made his oft-repeated prediction...if he made it. There's no evidence that Thomas Watson the elder actually said such a thing; perhaps the statement, or a similar statement, was made by Douglas Hartree or Howard Aiken or Thomas Watson Jr., and the statement might have been made not in 1943, but in 1951 or 1952 or 1953.

So let's assume that SOMEONE made a statement, perhaps in the early 1950s, claiming that a few computers could take care of the world's computing needs. How could someone have such a misguided conception?

Well, actually it was pretty easy. Remember that at the time, computers were big hunks of metal that were pretty much huge calculating machines. (Actually, the computers of today are also huge calculating machines; it's just that today's computers calculate Farmville crop yields instead of missile path projections.) These huge calculating machines were expensive, hard to maintain (all the bugs, you know), and required great effort to input data and receive the data output.

If this is the way in which a person of 1953 thought of the computer, then it would be extremely difficult to conceive of something radically different.

In that year of 1953, a young boy named Albert Gore, Jr. was five years old. Now even though Gore's father was a powerful man - he had just been elected to the U.S. Senate in 1952 - it's ludicrous to imagine Senator Gore getting a computer for his young son. Where would the Gore family put their computer? Where would they get someone to build the raised floor and the cooling system? How long would it take the kid to figure out how to input stuff into the computer? Where would the family find a machine-language coder to create programs for kid to run on the computer?

And, come to think of it, why would you want to create programs for a kid? Computers were good for doing complex military calculations, and for undertaking tasks such as compiling census data for the United States. Only an idiot would take the time to program a computer to play solitaire or something like that.

It wasn't until 1954 that computers were really seen outside of government circles. In December 1954, John Hancock (the life insurance people) got their hands on a state-of-the-art IBM 650 computer. Early IBM 650 computers were extremely powerful, and had memory capacities of 2,000 words (or 10,000 characters) - not enough for anyone to manage a simulated farm. And even if it had much more memory, the 22-33 operations per second speed meant that you couldn't do all that much.

Yet even the (by modern eyes) meager capabilities of the IBM 650 resulted in a revolution in computing that couldn't have been predicted back in 1953. By 1962, IBM 650 computers were flying off the shelves, and an amazing 2,000 computers had been sold.

And all of that happened before computers became more powerful, and much smaller, and much easier to use. By the time I used my first computer in the 1970s - a machine with a single-line display that was dedicated to running BASIC programs - computers were able to do all sorts of things that people in the early 1950s just could never envision.

And it just went on from there.

How could a person in 1953 have predicted that within 50 years, hundreds of millions of people would own "computers" that didn't require special cooling, a special room, or punched card entry. Could a person of 1953 have imagined a strange cross between a typewriter and a television - a COLOR television - with a display that looked like a piece of paper? And could the person in 1953 imagine that a computer user of 2003 would effortlessly combine text with pictures, send the result to another computer thousands of miles away, and enable a different person in a different location to see that text-picture combination within seconds?

In fact, the person of 1953 would probably say, "That's not a computer!" It's a...it's a...well, what is it?

Perhaps these little tiny things aren't computers, but computer terminals that tie into computers elsewhere which are the REAL computers. And as the pendulum swings toward cloud computing, John Battelle revisited the early prediction:

The march to cloud computing and the rush of companies building brands and services where both enterprises and consumers can park their compute needs is palpable. And over the next ten or so years, I wonder if perhaps the market won’t shake out in such a way that we have just a handful of “computers” – brands we trust to manage our personal and our work storage, processing, and creation tasks. We may access these brands through any number of interfaces, but the computation, in the manner Watson would have understood it, happens on massively parallel grids which are managed, competitively, by just a few companies.

Instead of having just a few computers at selected government agencies, we might just have computers at Facebook, Google, and a few other places. Battelle doesn't believe that Facebook will make the cut; he thinks that the five companies might be

...Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and...IBM.

But if he's wrong, I'm certainly not going to slam him for his inaccurate prediction.

What is the proper perspective?

2012-01-26T05:00:00.000-08:00

Floyd Teter is an expert in Oracle applications software.

When Teter wants to read about Oracle products, he wants to read about Oracle products. But recently, when he was checking his feeds, he ran into different stuff:

The top hits are all about the lawsuit with Google, the lawsuit with Montclair State University, and the latest plays on Oracle stock. No question the suits have taken over the headlines.

Teter was not happy, and his post on this ("We've Lost Our Perspective") concluded with a CAPS-LOCK LADEN RANT, asking for a return to perspective.

Joe Paterno's death last weekend also resulted in a consideration of perspective. To some, the proper perspective on Joe Paterno was to concentrate on his entire illustrious career. To others, the proper perspective on Joe Paterno was to concentrate on his lack of effective action one day in 2002, a lack of action which allegedly resulted in several boys being molested over the following years.

I'm sure that all of us can think of a number of people, companies, or events that can be looked at from different perspectives. Just to take one admittedly fascinating example, Richard Nixon could be considered as the President who launched the most significant thaw of the Cold War era, or he could be considered as the President who continued a brutal war in Southeast Asia. Or the President who ended the brutal war in Southeast Asia. Or the President who sold out our allies in Southeast Asia. And I haven't even gotten to Nixon's domestic policies.

To be truthful about it, we adopt the perspective that best suits our worldview. If our lives are dominated by fighting the evil of child molestation, that's going to shape our view of Joe Paterno. If we're a Google fanboi, that's going to shape our view of Oracle.

In effect, the best way to approach this is to acknowledge our perspective, and (in most cases) explain why we have the perspective that we have.

Your thoughts?

Online word of mouth requires that one be online

2012-01-25T05:00:00.000-08:00

While we talk about advertising techniques and search engine optimization and all of that stuff, the fact remains that one of the most trusted methods for obtaining product information is via word of mouth.

And while this could occur in a face-to-face conversation, it can also occur via electronic means.

This, of course, is nothing new. As I previously noted, I used electronic means to share product information (in this case, my opinion of the Wall of Voodoo album Call of the West) back in 1982.

And I was not the only college student to share music information online. In fact, four researchers studied the practice and reached several conclusions, including the following:

The results demonstrated that music Internet use appeared to be a determinant of both online opinion leadership and opinion seeking. Online WOM [word of mouth] is facilitated through a variety of tools such as weblogs, bulletin boards, chat rooms, discussion forums, and instant messenging. Individuals should be comfortable with these communication tools in order to spread WOM or seek information. Thus, Internet usage for music appeared to play a central role in explaining both opinion leadership and opinion seeking. This finding highlights the critical role of Internet skills/proficiency in online WOM communication. People who are inexperienced or uncomfortable with these tools may be lagging behind the current trends, isolated from the online community in the information diffusion process.

In essence this is common sense, but it helps to be reminded of it every once in a while. If you're a band - or a plumber - and want to promote your product online, you're obviously going to be a lot better at it if you have an online presence.

There are too many cases in which someone wants an online presence, and goes to hire a professional to create one. Now I don't have a problem with professionals, but it can be dangerous to hire a professional to do EVERYTHING for you. Remember what recently happened to Nadya "Octo-Mom" Suleman:

The mother-of-14's Facebook, Twitter and UStream pages were all shut down Monday after she parted ways with Gina Rodriguez....

“I fired my manager today and she’s a little upset so she shut down all my profiles online,” Nadya tells [Radar Online]....

"I’m not technologically savvy but I’ll have to now start from scratch and set up my own Facebook and Twitter as she had done all that for me.”

So Suleman apparently knew little (if anything) about the various tools, and relied on Gina Rodriguez to do everything for her. Rodriguez obviously made sure that she retained control of the properties, and therefore was able to shut them down when the contract was terminated.

Suleman would have been better off if she had learned about Facebook, Twitter, and the rest on her own, and had then hired a professional help her to improve her own accounts (rather than have someone set up accounts on her behalf).

However, with 14 kids, Suleman probably doesn't have a lot of time to teach herself Twitter...

ADMIYA (acronyms do me in yet again)

2012-01-24T12:20:00.000-08:00

Over a year ago, I wrote a post about the acronym IAI. You see, I was searching for information about the International Association for Identification, and instead found information about the Irrigation Assocation of India.

There are many cases in which we focus on an acronym, and then find out that we've focused on the wrong acronym.

If you don't believe me, just ask the people who run the website for the Scottish Organic Producers Association. CNET's Chris Matyszczyk notes that this association has received a number of negative comments lately, despite the fact that the Scottish Organic Producers Association has nothing to do with the proposed "Stop Online Piracy Act" legislation in the United States.

Incidentally, Matyszczyk is NOT the Chief of Naval Education and Training...

H/T Helen Sventitsky-Rother, to whom I commented:

Actually, the protests were entirely justified. This organization promotes the enslavement of sentient organic products to satisfy the needs of indulgence and capitalist greed. Let the organic products go free! (singing) "All we are sayyyyyingggg..."

How badly do we want to produce products domestically? Not that badly.

2012-01-24T05:00:00.000-08:00

[6:41 AM - TYPOS CORRECTED. ARGH.]

This post is written from my perspective as a United States citizen, but the same situation applies to some (not all) of my non-U.S. readers.

If you have been around for any length of time, you realize that there has been a tremendous shift in manufacturing over the last couple of decades. Even in the 1970s, people would complain about the fact that so many products, once manufactured in the United States, were (in the 1970s) being manufactured in Japan.

Of course, those days are long gone. Now when one thinks of manufacturing, one often thinks of China - although there are other countries, ranging from Mexico to Bangladesh, that provide manufacturing services for the products that the First World loves.

And people don't like it, and express their views loudly. Both Republicans and Democrats sometimes champion the "Made in America" slogan, sometimes because of the negative impact that foreign manufacture has on jobs and wages in the United States, sometimes because of the loss of manufacturing prowess that occurs, and sometimes because of foreign policy/defense concerns ("do you want a significant portion of our American economy to be dependent upon THEM?").

But even if the wage issue were to suddenly go away, I suspect that we wouldn't want manufacturers to return to the United States. Even if pollution issues were to suddenly go away, I suspect that we wouldn't want manufacturers to return to the United States. Yes, I know that we say that we want U.S. manufacturing plants, but we really don't.

This hit me when I was reading this New York Times article. While Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher's article talked a lot about Apple and iPhone manufacture, the issues that were discussed go well beyond Apple.

The thing that hit me while reading the article was this episode that was recounted:

New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight....A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames.

For the record, Foxconn denies that the episode took place as stated:

“Any worker recruited by our firm is covered by a clear contract outlining terms and conditions and by Chinese government law that protects their rights,” the company wrote. Foxconn “takes our responsibility to our employees very seriously and we work hard to give our more than one million employees a safe and positive environment.”

The company disputed some details of the former Apple executive’s account, and wrote that a midnight shift, such as the one described, was impossible “because we have strict regulations regarding the working hours of our employees based on their designated shifts, and every employee has computerized timecards that would bar them from working at any facility at a time outside of their approved shift.” The company said that all shifts began at either 7 a.m. or 7 p.m., and that employees receive at least 12 hours’ notice of any schedule changes.

OK, let's give Foxconn the benefit of the doubt, and assume that something like this occurred:

Plant management was informed that new screens would begin arriving at the plant near midnight....At 7:00 pm, foremen contacted 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories and told all of them that they would begin working on a new project the next morning. Upon reporting to work at 7:00 am the next day, each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames.

OK, now that we have the politically correct version of the manufacturing process, imagine that happening in Fontana, California, or in Toledo, Ohio.

First off, the assumption that U.S. workers would even consent to live in a dormitory in the 21st century is laughable. The employee had better be paid enough to get an apartment, and that apartment had better have satellite TV and broadband.

Second off, while it certainly happens, the whole idea of contacting an employee one evening and telling him/her to start a new project the next morning is hard to imagine. Especially when the same process is repeated 8,000 times over. Heck, in the United States it would probably take a week to get all the FOREMEN up to speed to make the necessary contacts. And who knows how long it would take to get all of the staff in. "I have jury duty." "I have to get my daughter to school." "I have the sniffles."

I can tell you what would happen if anyone were to try to mobilize 8,000 employees at a United States plant within 12 hours. What would happen? The local government's department of labor/employment would be flooded with grievances, the press would have a field day about the inhumane treatment of labor, and government officials would end up demanding that the company stop its "slave labor" practices.

Which is why no American company would dare pull a stunt like this at one of its U.S. factories. Instead, they seek their laborers elsewhere - it's a lot easier.

Now one can debate the morality of the situation. Perhaps you feel it's best that United States workers are NOT treated in this way. Or perhaps you feel that American workers had best "suck it up" and deliver goods just like they used to in the 1890s.

But regardless of whether such work practices are moral for U.S. workers, the truth of the matter is that it ain't gonna happen. And until the day that Chinese workers feel comfortable enough to call in sick after a late-night national sports event, we have to take it for granted that the bulk of U.S. product manufacturing is going to take place outside of the U.S.

Don't let the law get in the way of a sponsorship - Brazil, Anheuser Busch, and FIFA

2012-01-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

Fan is short for fanatic, and sports fans can often be the most fanatic of all. Because of this, governments often have to pass special laws regarding the behavior of fans.

Football (soccer) fans can often be passionate, and football fans in South America especially so. Because of this, according to CNN:

Legislation passed by the Brazilian government in 2003 prohibits the sale of all alcohol in football arenas.

I am not a Brazilian, but I certainly respect the rights of the Brazilian government to enact such legislation. And the motive behind this legislation is understandable - in my own country, there have been alcohol-fueled catastrophes at sporting events, and it is hoped that the prohibition of alcohol sales can lead to better safety for everyone.

However, the Brazilian government's action has run into a little snag.

You see, Brazil was awarded the rights to the 2014 World Cup.

And the World Cup, like many other sporting events, takes in a lot of sponsorship money.

Including sponsorship money from Anheuser Busch, the official beer of the World Cup.

And it doesn't look good to FIFA when its sponsor, the official beer of the World Cup, can't sell beer because of some silly local law. So FIFA's plan is simple:

FIFA has been battling for a change in the Brazilian law, with General Secretary Jerome Valcke currently in the South American nation to press for progress on new legislation.

However, some members of the Brazilian Congress are campaigning for the law to remain the same, a situation which is complicating arrangements for the month-long soccer showpiece.

But before you immediately voice your complaints about some sports organization trying to run roughshod over local law, remember that the same thing happened in my own country, the United States. I actually alluded to the story in a previous post. Here are the details:

Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt ... signed an executive order creating a paid King holiday for state workers in Arizona.

The holiday was never celebrated: The attorney general said Babbitt, a lame duck who was eyeing a run for president, did not have the authority to declare a paid holiday, only the Legislature could do that.

Incoming Gov. Evan Mecham, citing that attorney general’s opinion, rescinded the holiday shortly after taking office, just days before it would have been observed....

[T]he National Football League threatened in 1990 to move the Super Bowl that was scheduled to be played in Tempe’s Sun Devil Stadium in 1993.

As I noted in my original post, a fight broke out between those who wanted to support a King holiday and those who wanted to retain the existing Columbus Day holiday. The King holiday ended up going to a vote and was rejected, and the NFL made good on its threat and moved the Super Bowl from Arizona to California.

One could argue that the Brazilian case is just wrangling over cold hard cash, while the Arizona case was about principles. But in truth, the Arizona case was about cold hard cash also - specifically, how a league which employed a number of African-American players could sponsor a major event in a state which, in the eyes of the all-important fans who bought NFL products, did not honor African-Americans.

Time marches on, the King holiday is celebrated in Arizona, and Anheuser Busch is currently more focused on a major American sporting event that will take place in two weeks. Of course, there's a little controversy there also, since Anheuser Busch is paying millions of dollars to SOPA/PIPA supporters such as Comcast NBC and the National Football League.

Sometimes the antics off the field are more entertaining than the antics on the field.

Reddit and Y Combinator - this may be an effective move

2012-01-22T16:05:00.000-08:00

This blog has recently talked about ineffective moves against perceived threats to freedom of speech in the United States.

Boycott GoDaddy? Just gives them publicity and doesn't put a dent in their bottom line.

Boycott NVIDIA? A few hobbyists aren't going to bring down a multi-billion dollar company.

Ah, you say, but you were wrong about Wikipedia. After the blackouts at Wikipedia, Google, and other sites, SOPA and PIPA died!

Don't kid yourself.

In the long term, the blackouts a few days ago will be as effective as the Twitter activity against the Egyptian government. How's that democracy going in Egypt right now? And even if SOPA and PIPA are dead, all that is needed are a few days and a new acronym and the whole thing will be back in Congress again. My favorite acronym candidate is PAK-MAN (Protect All Kids - Maintain Accurate Networks).

Why can I say that the threat from SOPA/PIPA v2.0 still exists? Because the proponents are still pouring more money into their cause.

But what if that money spigot ended up being useless - or if there were another money spigot that was directly opposed to what the SOPA/PIPA proponents want?

And no, I'm not suggesting that Christopher Dodd be convicted of bribery for threatening to cut off the cash flow to politicians. If you believe in the First Amendment, then you have to believe in ALL views protected by the First Amendment. And if Christopher Dodd and the Pfizer folks and the labor unions want to spend tens of millions of dollars to get their view out, I believe they have just as much of a right to do so as you or I.

But what if they spend all that money and it goes for naught?

Steven Hodson recently shared something from Techie Buzz. This post mentioned two proposed initiatives that go to the heart of the matter. The first:

Reddit is looking to boycott movies made by the top six recording studios, namely Walt Disney, Sony, Paramount, Fox, Universal and Warner Brothers.

Ho hum, you might say, but consider that the Reddit participants are knowledgeable in social media - and that the six listed studios depend more and more upon social media to get the message out about their movies. (And, for some of these companies, their record albums and television shows.)

If you want to see Reddit discussions on boycotting Hollywood, here's a search.

Now can you imagine what Reddit-fueled activists can do with something like this?

Here's one idea. Imagine that SuperDuperStudio posts a YouTube trailer for its forthcoming blockbuster movie, Explosions and Girls in Bikinis (in 3-D)!!!! You see, when that trailer gets posted on YouTube, people are allowed to vote on it, and to offer comments.

Once the Reddit people get done with that, Rebecca Black will look like a Grammy Award candidate. When these studios get millions of negative votes and "U SUK" comments on all of their social media outlets, entire marketing campaigns will be adversely affected.

So if all the cool kids say DISNY SUX, then what's a teenager going to do with his or her summer? That's where the other part of the campaign comes in.

At the same time, popular startup-funding firm Y Combinator has decided to fund startups that will compete with movies and TV shows.

Again, a potential ho hum, except for the fact that Y Combinator understands industry issues even more than the passionate Reddit folks. Read their piece Kill Hollywood.

Imagine how some of these pitch meetings will go:

PITCHMAN: And then when the service goes out of beta, we'll have cool kids drooling over our insanely great service and we'll get bought out by a major studio!

YC: And will you have better ideas than Hollywood?

PITCHMAN: Oh yes! You know how Hollywood uses 3-D a lot? Well, we'll use 4-D. That's 33% better than what the major studios do!

YC: Hmm...speaking of major studios, could you share your First Amendment policy with us?

PITCHMAN: My what?

YC: Your pledge that your company will behave in an ethical manner and honor the free speech rights of all Americans, and the inherent free speech rights possessed by every human being in the entire world.

PITCHMAN: Uh...we'll have to get back to you on that.

YC: And WE'LL have to get back to YOU regarding your request for funding. Next?

Frankly, these two moves have the potential of being much more effective than any of the previous moves, since they directly attack the profitability of companies that propose to threaten free speech principles. However, as I noted in a Google+ entry, there are still a couple of other things that need to be done.

One of them has been suggested by me and others before (twice). If Christopher Dodd and the like are going to fund politicians that support SOPA/PIPA principles, then other companies, groups, and people have to step up to the plate and fund politicians that oppose SOPA/PIPA principles.

The other idea hasn't been shared in the blog, but I've shared it on Google+. I have quoted something regarding Comcast/Universal, something regarding the National Football League, and something regarding a number of major corporations. In each case, I preceded each post with a statement:

Remember this as all of you support SOPA and PIPA on February 5.

Yes, I'd be willing to bet that a whole bunch of you are going to loudly declare your support for SOPA/PIPA on February 5.

You see, many of you (and I include myself in that number) are going to be spending a good part of our afternoon and evening watching commercials from companies such as General Motors, Hyundai, Volkswagen, Toyota, Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Mars, Best Buy, CareerBuilder, and (here they come again) GoDaddy. Oh, and we'll probably see movie spots from the likes of Sony, Walt Disney, and Warner Brothers.

So what? you say. GoDaddy opposes SOPA/PIPA, and some of the companies you listed haven't taken a stand on SOPA/PIPA.

But they have.

You see, each of those companies is forking out a minimum of $3.5 million dollars - sometimes a lot more - and giving the money to Comcast NBC, who is a SOPA/PIPA supporter. At the same time, Comcast NBC is forking a whole bunch of money over to the National Football League, who is another SOPA/PIPA supporter.

And where are Anheuser Busch, GoDaddy, General Motors, and the others getting all these millions of dollars that they're giving to SOPA/PIPA supporters?

From us, the customers who watch the Super Bowl and who are going to get all excited over the commercials and buy products from these companies.

So - how many people are going to spent February 5 boycotting the Super Bowl, the National Football League, Comcast NBC, General Motors, Hyundai, Volkswagen, Toyota, Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Mars, Best Buy, CareerBuilder, GoDaddy, Sony, Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, and every other advertiser who is donating to the SOPA/PIPA cause?

My guess is that the SOPA/PIPA supporters will rake in multiple millions of dollars on February 5.

Come to think of it, maybe the Reddit and Y Combinator moves aren't all that effective after all....

(empo-tuulwey) Testing tools in an amiable way

2012-01-21T05:00:00.000-08:00

Online services are constantly adding new features, and when they are added, there is a subset of new people who like to try them out.

Perhaps you've seen a number of people taking generic Google searches and subsequently asking their Google+ friends about the topic used in their generic Google search. I first heard about the "Ask on Google+" feature via Danny Sullivan. To use the feature, (1) make sure you're logged into Google, and (2) be sure to scroll all the way down to the bottom of your Google search results. For some reason (Aunty Trust?), Google has chosen not to blatantly emphasize this capability.

And of course, I had to try it.

Hi there! I have a question about so why did this ask on google+ tip that danny sullivan talked about appear on the bottom of the page?...

I continued to experiment.

Hi there! I have a question about buying organic remote controls...

And it wasn't too long until this showed up:

Hi there! I have a question about enrage my ocelot...

The phrase, sort of an antagonist to Joker, the Amiable Ocelot, is one that I've been using for some time, in various forms. It may have first been used in this May 12, 2011 tweet:

Well enrage my ocelot! Boards of Canada ain't Canadian. They're like Scots and stuff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boards_of_Canada

A couple of months later, I was using the phrase on Google+ to see how long it took a Google+ phrase to propagate to Google's main search results. (This was before the tighter integration of Google+ and Google.)

Enrage my ocelot Captain Smirk! This is a test. I want to see how long it takes for a public post on Google+ to show up in Google's realtime search results.

I've used the phrase on occasion since. as this FriendFeed search indicates. Once, in a private FriendFeed comment, I even managed to work the word "vibrant" into the phrase (you'll recall that "vibrant" is one of the favorite words of movie/cigarette marketer Ludo Cremers).

But I hadn't used the phrase lately - that is, until I found myself reading up on Bill Griffith, most famous as the creator of Zippy the Pinhead. Apparently that reading session triggered the "enrage my ocelot" portion of my brain.

Now I can use various tools to find instances of this phrase. In addition to the aforementioned FriendFeed search http://friendfeed.com/search?q=enrage+my+ocelot, I can also search Google+ via https://plus.google.com/s/enrage%20my%20ocelot, and Google's regular search via https://www.google.com/search?&q=enrage+my+ocelot. I can also search Twitter via https://twitter.com/#!/search/enrage%20my%20ocelot, but that search (at least presently) has limited historical data and is therefore pretty much useless.

As time passes, my "standard" version of the phrase evolves. As of this morning, my current version of the phrase reads

Well enrage my amiable ocelot, Captain Smirk! A tool is not a way of life.

If I keep on expanding it, perhaps it will eventually become a NaNoWriMo project.

But then Disney may find the link between the phrase and its 1960s "Joker" character, and would probably sue me for copyright infringement.

Question authority - looking at piracy statistics

2012-01-20T12:30:00.000-08:00

All of us rely on some commonly-accepted wisdom and take it at face value, but often we don't probe the "wisdom" to see if it is true.

For example, a January 17 item from Jennifer Collins, discussing the (then) forthcoming Wikipedia blackout, included this statement.

The Obama administration has opposed portions of the bill and the House has also pulled back. But with piracy costing up to $775 billion a year, virtually everyone agrees the bills in some form will survive.

Steven Hodson saw this statement, and (in a post on Forty Two Times) offered the following suggestion:

It would be extremely beneficial to her audience if Ms. Collins were to provide additional substantiation for the claim in her recent post.

Remember what I said about taking things at face value? Hodson did NOT write the words I quoted above. Here's what he ACTUALLY said (and you can check me on it):

Okay Jennifer Collins consider this your official call out – where is the proof - publicly available proof that has been verified by more than just the entertainment industry that piracy costs $775 billion a year.

Prove it, please.

Show us the facts and figures, as well as where you got the information to base such a claim on.

Prove it because I am calling bullshit.

I don't know if Ms. Collins saw Mr. Hodson's request, but I did some searching on my own and found the source of Jennifer Collins' $775 billion piracy cost claim. It turns out that she got this from a February 2011 report from the International Chamber of Commerce. Here's part of the press release that the Chamber released at the time:

A new report released today by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) indicates that the global economic and social impacts of counterfeiting and piracy will reach US$1.7 trillion by 2015 and put 2.5 million legitimate jobs at risk each year....

The report reveals that based on 2008 data, the total global economic and social impacts of counterfeit and pirated products are as much as US$775 billion every year.

OK, so there's the figure that Collins cited. But a single figure alone does not necessarily allow one to develop a full-fledged anti-piracy policy. First off, what is included in this figure? The first hint is in the press release itself:

This includes impacts of lost tax revenue and higher government spending on law enforcement and health care.

Right here you learn a little about the methodology used. The total costs used in the $775 billion figure not only include the direct estimates of losses due to piracy, but also include outside costs, such as law enforcment costs. This suggests and obvious solution - if you want to reduce the costs of piracy, reduce the amount of money you're spending on law enforcement.

To really analyze this $775 billion figure, you need to take a detailed look at the study itself. If you go to this page, you can find links to PDF versions of the Executive Summary and the Full Report. I confess that I haven't read the full report, but I have spent some time reading the Executive Summary (PDF here). Ignoring future considerations, what makes up the $775 billion figure? Page 2 of the Executive Summary lists four categories that are analyzed:

Category 1: Counterfeit and pirated goods moving through
international trade. We update the OECD’s estimate of the value of
counterfeit and pirated goods moving through international trade, drawing
on new customs seizure data indicating that the incidence of counterfeiting
and piracy has increased relative to the 2005-based customs data used in the
OECD’s 2008 study.

• Category 2: Value of domestically produced and consumed counterfeit
and pirated products. We develop a methodology, derived from the
OECD’s modeling work, to generate an estimate of the value of domestic
manufacture and consumption of counterfeit and pirate products – thereby
capturing an estimated value of fake products that do not cross borders.

• Category 3: Volume of pirated digital products being distributed via
the Internet. We describe, evaluate and contextualize industry reports and
academic studies on the value of digital piracy of recorded music, movies
and software. We then use these studies to produce an estimate of the total
value of digital piracy that has been calculated using consistent assumptions
and methodology across these industries.

• Category 4: Broader economy-wide effects. We provide a summary of
previous analysis aimed at identifying the broader economy-wide effects of
counterfeiting and piracy.

A later statement further identifies category 4 as "Effects on government tax revenues, welfare spending, costs of crime health services, FDI flows." This is the law enforcement/health care category that I discussed earlier.

For 2008, the dollar values for these four categories are (page 3):

Category 1: Between $285 billion and $360 billion

Category 2: Between $140 billion and $215 billion

Category 3: Between $30 billion and $75 billion

Category 4: $125 billion

Which brings us to a grand total of...well, it depends. Depending upon how you add the numbers above, you either get a figure of $580 billion or $775 billion.

Guess which figure the Chamber highlighted in its report.

In addition, it's important to discern when someone is making an apples and oranges comparison. When one is talking about rogue websites, it's improper to say that rogue websites cost $775 billion. Rogue websites would only fit into category 3 of the analysis above, which means that the rogue website cost would be one-tenth of the $775 billion figure - $75 billion, or perhaps as little as $30 billion.

And there's a world of difference between $30 billion and $775 billion.

As I said above, I have not looked into the detailed report to see exactly how the Chamber came up with these figures. If you would like to do so, go to this page and click on the "Full Report" icon (PDF).

P.S. If you believe that it's flawed to misrepresent the figures in a study, what about misrepresenting whether a cited study even exists? Kevin Fogarty wrote about this aspect of the problem. An excerpt:

According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report published in 2010, all the estimates on which pro-SOPA forces based their numbers – which became the justification for SOPA and PIPA – are from studies no one can find.

Though both the FBI and Customs and Border Protection are cited as primary sources of the studies – because, presumably, they'd paid to have them done and then published the results – it turned out that neither agency had ever done such a study and had no idea where the numbers came from.

In each case the first use of the figure was in a speech and press release put out by the agency – the FBI's in 2002 – with a vague reference to the origin of the figure.

When even the source every citation references as the originator of a piece of data has no idea where it came from and denies ever funding studies that might have come up with those estimates, the odds that the data are anything but a chimera begin to grow.

The most likely origination for both numbers, according to the GAO report, was that someone from the FBI or CBP used the figures in a speech, quoting or misquoting numbers without an accurate citation that would make fact-checking possible.

It just goes to show that press releases are kind of like surveys - without knowing the underlying facts behind the press release, any claim in the press release can be considered questionable.

[12:50 PM - I PREVIOUSLY NEGLECTED TO CREDIT CHRIS GEORGE AS THE SOURCE FOR THE PHANTOM STUDY STORY. MY APOLOGIES.]

(empo-tymshft) Clothes make the person, even on the 21st century west coast

2012-01-20T05:00:00.000-08:00

I recently attended an all-day event at a southern California university. For the purposes of this post, I will refer to the institution as "Reindeer University." (Yes, it differs from the "Deer University" I have referenced in the past.) The university was hosting an event for transfer students, and some of the proceedings were organized by present-day students, many of whom were wearing black shirts.

But there were a rainbow of shirt colors there (Star Trek fans, no red shirts; sorry). During one of the sessions I got to talking to a woman in a blue shirt. She asked where I was from, and I replied that I was from Ontario, California.

"I went to the University of Redlands," the blue shirt replied. (Redlands is about 20 or so miles west of Ontario.)

Considering the event, I then asked, "Oh, were you a transfer student to Reindeer University also?"

The blue shirt then pleasantly informed me that she was not a transfer, and that she had completed her bachelor's degree at the University of Redlands. And she had also completed her Master's degree at the University of Redlands. It turned out she was was a director-level employee of Reindeer University, and not a student as I had assumed.

Someone at Reindeer University thought that it would be great to show the team nature of the institution by having various groups dress up in similar attire. But because the attire was casual, I was unable to perceive any difference between a high-ranking director who had made a career out of student services, and a student who had volunteered a couple of days of time to welcome new students to campus.

Something like this would have been less likely to happen in the past, or in other regions. If you have attended a similar function at an East Coast university in the 1960s, without question the staff of the University would have appeared in "professional attire." But the West Coast is more casual than the East Coast, and the 2010s are more casual than the 1950s. While the President of Reindeer University wasn't wearing a casual shirt, he wasn't wearing a tie, either.

But at the end of the day, I did encounter two people who were slightly more formally dressed. These two people, male faculty members, were both wearing ties.

Perhaps it was just a fluke - or perhaps these faculty members understood that in an educational environment, the professors who were teaching the students should comport themselves in a manner that demands respect. While Reindeer University clearly wants the students to be engaged - the phrase "learn how to learn" (a phrase I had heard in my college days) was repeated often - there was still the sense of a hierarchy, in which the people who were imparting the knowledge and challenging the students were, in a sense, on a higher level than the students themselves. After all, if professors and students are equal, then why bother to pay good money to go to college at all? Couldn't the students just gather together at a local library and teach each other?

Oh, wait a minute - that's an accepted educational method. For elementary school students.

The curriculum derives from a pedagogical philosophy that goes by several names—“Constructivist Math,” “New-New Math,” and, to its detractors, “Fuzzy Math.” I’ll stick with “Fuzzy Math,” since the critics are right. Nothing about Fuzzy Math makes much sense from a teaching standpoint.

One weakness is its emphasis on “cooperative learning.” Fuzzy Math belongs to a family of recent pedagogical innovations that imagine that kids possess innate wisdom and can teach each other while a self-effacing “facilitator” (the adult formerly known as a teacher) flutters over them. If the architects of Everyday Mathematics had their way, I would have placed my children in various groups, for the most part unsupervised, so that they could work on one elaborate activity after another, learning on their own.

Perhaps they could buy some brightly colored shirts for their self-education gatherings.

(empo-tuulwey) One person's "texture" is another person's "leash"

2012-01-19T05:00:00.000-08:00

My daughter introduced me to the blog Craft Fail, which documents some true failures (such as the person who attached chocolate malted milk balls to an Easter wreath with a hot glue gun) as well as failures of other kinds.

Many of us build things and intend them to be used for a particular purpose. But toddlers often ignore the purposes for which the tools were intended. Why? One reason is because the toddlers don't know any better - something that makes perfect sense to an adult mind is outside of the comprehension of a toddler. Another reason is that the toddlers are often right.

Carissa shared the story of a book box that she made for her toddler, intending that the box be used as a receptacle in which his books could be placed. As she created the box, Carissa used her creativity:

To decorate the book box, I wrapped some leftover black yarn around the top to give it some texture.

A minor little cosmetic detail, but at the end of the day this became an important feature to the toddler.

Apparently what I saw as decoration, my son saw as “leash.”

More details at Craft Fail and at Creative Carissa. Check the embedded video on the latter.

Is cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) good for you?

2012-01-18T05:00:00.000-08:00

Yes, I just titled this post "Is cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) good for you?"

It seems like a silly question. After all, here's what the Mayo Clinic says:

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a lifesaving technique useful in many emergencies, including heart attack or near drowning, in which someone's breathing or heartbeat has stopped....

It's far better to do something than to do nothing at all if you're fearful that your knowledge or abilities aren't 100 percent complete. Remember, the difference between your doing something and doing nothing could be someone's life.

And the Red Cross, who offers CPR courses, strongly urges people to take them:

One quarter of Americans say they’ve been in a situation where someone needed CPR. If you were one of them, would you know what to do?

In effect, the strong message that is out there today is that CPR is a good thing, and getting trained to deliver CPR is a good thing - a matter of life and death.

But is it?

On Google+, Denise Seitz shared a link to a November 30 item from Ken Murray entitled "How Doctors Die." The main thrust of the article is that doctors, who often (for various reasons) perform extraordinary life-saving processes for their patients, often do not have such processes performed when they themselves get sick. Here's what Murray says about CPR:

Many people think of CPR as a reliable lifesaver when, in fact, the results are usually poor. I’ve had hundreds of people brought to me in the emergency room after getting CPR. Exactly one, a healthy man who’d had no heart troubles (for those who want specifics, he had a “tension pneumothorax”), walked out of the hospital. If a patient suffers from severe illness, old age, or a terminal disease, the odds of a good outcome from CPR are infinitesimal, while the odds of suffering are overwhelming.

Murray didn't publish specific figures, but Robert H. Schmerling did:

As opposed to many medical myths, researchers have reliable data concerning the success rates of CPR (without the use of automatic defibrillators) in a variety of settings:

2% to 30% effectiveness when administered outside of the hospital
6% to 15% for hospitalized patients
Less than 5% for elderly victims with multiple medical problems

Murray also says the following:

[Doctors] want to be sure, when the time comes, that no heroic measures will happen—that they will never experience, during their last moments on earth, someone breaking their ribs in an attempt to resuscitate them with CPR (that’s what happens if CPR is done right).

Basically, if you're not breaking someone's ribs, you're probably not applying enough force. Science Daily:

New [2007] findings show that the majority of people untrained in how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and even many trained emergency personnel, do not push with enough force to properly administer CPR....

The findings showed that 60 percent of the CPR-trained rescue personnel pushed with more than 125 pounds, whereas more than 60 percent of those not trained in CPR failed to push with more than 125 pounds of force....

Pushing with more than 125 pounds increases the potential for rib fractures. Nevertheless, the chances of survival increase enormously.

So let's say that you're one of the few people who survives after CPR. After your ribs heal, do you just pop out of your hospital bed and get on with your life? Schmerling notes:

In real life, many of those who are revived by CPR wind up severely debilitated.

Caregiver.org provides more details:

Another possibility is that CPR may be only partially successful. If the heartbeat is restored but a person is still too weak to breathe on his or her own and remains too weak to do so, he or she may be on a ventilator for days, weeks, months or longer. Moreover, when breathing or heartbeat fails, the brain is rapidly deprived of oxygen. As a result, within seconds, the brain begins to fail (one loses consciousness), and within a very few minutes permanent damage to the brain occurs. If it takes more than those very few minutes to start effective CPR, the person will not fully recover. The brain damage may mean anything from some mental slowing and loss of memory to complete and permanent unconsciousness and dependency on a ventilator and sophisticated medical life support.

So why is CPR perceived as something that must be performed, when in many cases the likely result is death, broken ribs, and/or brain damage? Associate Professor William Mark Smillie of Carroll College in Helena, Montana has asked his students this question. Here is part of his presentation on the topic:

ETHICAL ISSUE: Since CPR emergency treatment often brings burden to the patient and frequently fails, when is it reasonable to initiate CPR in a clinical setting and when is it reasonable not to; and when is it reasonable for a patient to refuse future CPR attempts?

Three decades ago, when people learned how to attempt CPR, they tended to perform CPR whenever a patient suffered an arrest. This was frequently a mistake.

On the other hand, it is often hard not to perform CPR and let someone die, who could have benefited from being saved, and whose death could subject them to accusations from the family about medical negligence.

Ken Murray also addresses the issue of why doctors who refusing heroic efforts for themselves will perform it on others.

The trouble is that even doctors who hate to administer futile care must find a way to address the wishes of patients and families. Imagine, once again, the emergency room with those grieving, possibly hysterical, family members. They do not know the doctor. Establishing trust and confidence under such circumstances is a very delicate thing. People are prepared to think the doctor is acting out of base motives, trying to save time, or money, or effort, especially if the doctor is advising against further treatment.

Murray also stated:

[D]octors are fearful of litigation and do whatever they’re asked, with little feedback, to avoid getting in trouble.

It's a gross oversimplification to say that unnecessary lifesaving procedures are performed because of money, but money truly does play a role in these decisions. Businesses, including hospitals, often seek to avoid risk, and one of the biggest risks is the risk of litigation. Especially when the money is coming out of someone else's pocket, such as an insurance company or the Federal government, it's often better to perform medical procedures that won't work, rather than to refuse to perform unnecessary medical procedures and get sued for millions.

Murray cites an example of a patient who had a written Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order:

Even when the right preparations have been made, the system can still swallow people up. One of my patients was a man named Jack, a 78-year-old who had been ill for years and undergone about 15 major surgical procedures. He explained to me that he never, under any circumstances, wanted to be placed on life support machines again. One Saturday, however, Jack suffered a massive stroke and got admitted to the emergency room unconscious, without his wife. Doctors did everything possible to resuscitate him and put him on life support in the ICU. This was Jack’s worst nightmare. When I arrived at the hospital and took over Jack’s care, I spoke to his wife and to hospital staff, bringing in my office notes with his care preferences. Then I turned off the life support machines and sat with him. He died two hours later.

Even with all his wishes documented, Jack hadn’t died as he’d hoped. The system had intervened. One of the nurses, I later found out, even reported my unplugging of Jack to the authorities as a possible homicide. Nothing came of it, of course; Jack’s wishes had been spelled out explicitly, and he’d left the paperwork to prove it.

If more people understood the true ramifications of CPR - both its success rate and the consequences of partially successful CPR - perhaps fewer people would treat it as the Super-Duper Survival Tool. But is a television show writer going to write something in which someone dies or is brain-damaged? Is the Red Cross going to tell people how to break ribs? I think not.

What? You can't get to Wikipedia? Blackouts are made to be broken.

2012-01-17T22:05:00.000-08:00

One of the arguments against Internet censorship is that censorship is ultimately ineffective, because people will always find a way to get around the censors.

This also applies when the censors are the good guys.

At 9:00 pm Pacific time, the most important protest in the history of humankind began - the protest that will ensure that the Internet as we know it will not die. Yes, at 9:00 pm this evening Wikipedia went dark.

Well, sort of.

First off, as I noted earlier in the evening, the blackout only affects the English language version of Wikipedia. If you can read Spanish, or Finnish, or any other language, Wikipedia is still available to you. And even if you can't, you can run the foreign language Wikipedia entries through a translator.

But what if you need to get to the English language Wikipedia for some reason? Mark Trapp described how to do that.

Speaking of SOPA blackouts, to get around Wikipedia's lockout, just disable JavaScript or use your favorite script or ad blocker to block the following regex:

^http:\/\/en\.wikipedia\.org\/w\/index\.php\?title=Special:BannerController&cache=\/cn\.js&303-4$

Or just block http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:BannerController&cache/cn.js&303-4

Since we're talking about civil disobedience and all.

But there's an even better way to get to the English language Wikipedia. Peter Kafka tweeted about it, and Loren Feldman reshared it on Twitter and on Google+. Kafka:

Realize not in the spirit of the thing. But! If you have to use Wikipedia for next day, use a mobile device. No blackout there.

OK, this is highly technical, but I think that we all can master it. You know how you usually type en dot wikipedia dot org? Just type en dot m (for mobile) dot wikipedia dot org. And this is what you get:

So if you somehow feel deprived because you can't get to Wikipedia, don't worry. You can get to Wikipedia.

But the really silly part of this whole thing is that everyone is jumping on the bandwagon and blacking out their avatars and praising Wikipedia and Reddit and jumping on the bandwagon for twelve hours or twenty-four hours or whatever.

And then, when the blackout is all done, and everyone feels good about the stand that they took, everything will return to normal, and people in the United States will turn their attention to the NFC and AFC Championship Games.

Yes, the NFC and AFC Championship Games.

Which are sponsored by the National Football League.

Um, remember that list of SOPA supporters that I posted on December 23?

I guess I need to write a SOPA Wikipedia something post now

2012-01-17T17:30:00.000-08:00

I run in online circles of tech-weenies, and lately the talk about SOPA has gained even more traction than the talk about how George Lucas has ruined his films, or the talk about Ron Paul, or whatever talk that the tech-weenies are supposed to talk about.

But the tech-weenies are mightily disturbed that SOPA and PIPA are not the number one topic on every street corner in the United States of America. The Internet as we know it is about to disappear into Homogenized Corporate Control, and no one cares. Or those who do care lose their jobs. (Update: David Seaman is now a contributor to Business Insider again.) But the 99 percent don't - uh, wait a minute, I didn't mean to use the term 99 percent to describe the people who don't care about SOPA, because the 99 percent are the good guys, and that means that I'm the one percent and I'm a bad guy and Obama and Ron Paul will tax me and...

Excuse me. Let me continue.

Anyway, tech-weenies everywhere are jumping up and down in their Zappos shoes because finally, the world is paying attention to the grave danger that awaits it. Or at least the world will pay attention shortly.

Wikipedia, you see, is going black.

No, I'm not saying that Jimmy Wales has sold Wikipedia to the Wayans family.

What I am saying is that for a 24-hour period, Wikipedia will divert attention from its data and let people know that SOPA and PIPA are very very bad.

This, of course, will result in intensive, in-depth coverage of the ramifications of the proposed legislation, its impact on legitimate foreign commerce, the "due process" issues involved, and the moneyed interests that are aligned on both sides of the bill.

And if you believe that you'll see that level of in-depth coverage over the next couple of days, I'll sell you a bridge in Brooklyn at a steep discount.

Here's what the 11:00 pm happy news will look like in some West Coast city tonight.

HAPPY NEWSWOMAN: And in other news, Wikipedia has gone black!

HAPPY NEWSMAN: Wikipedia? Isn't that the online encyclopedia?

HAPPY NEWSWOMAN: Yes, Bruce. Wikipedia has gone black to protest SOPA!

HAPPY NEWSMAN: Protest SOPA? Don't those Wikipedia people bathe?

HAPPY NEWSWOMAN: Ha ha ha! In other news...

Of course, Wikipedia is not the only online property that will show its opposition to SOPA. eSarcasm has indicated its "me too" attitude:

eSarcasm has announced it is joining with its comrades Reddit and Wikipedia to combat the evils of Internet censorship. On Wednesday, January 18, this Web site will go dark for 12 hours to protest SOPA and PIPA, two proposed laws we don’t really understand but know are bad because everyone we know says so.

And that really sums it up.

Now I don't know whether I'd call Wikipedia's actions an ineffective move. After all, more people will hear about the Wikipedia blackout than ever heard about the NVIDIA or GoDaddy boycotts.

But if you're an American, and you step in the voting booth in November, will you even remember what SOPA stands for?

(Stop Online Piracy Act, in case you've already forgotten.)

Where do you get your medical information?

2012-01-17T12:30:00.000-08:00

Way back in the dark ages, there was no Internet, and doctors didn't advertise. Therefore, your primary source of information was your family doctor. He (and it was usually always a "he") was considered to be the knowledgeable and reliable source for medical information.

A conversation such as this would never have occurred in 1912:

So what is happening with that lump on your head?

I saw Dr. Smith about it. He says not to worry.

So you're not worried then?

Well, I'm not sure. I found a medical book in the back shelves of the library that indicated that it could be a tumor.

Oh dear.

And when I was walking down the street, I saw a guy yelling on the sidewalk that lumps can be caused by excessive exposure to smoke and oil.

Oh dear.

And when I attended a political meeting, someone revealed that President Taft is intentionally poisoning all Americans.

Oh dear...

Nowadays, of course, we get information from everywhere. Doctors advertise, and even if they don't, your health insurance provider gives you big lists of doctors on your plan so that you can somehow choose one of them. And the Internet provides all sorts of medical information, including advice from learned medical sources such as autism expert Jenny McCarthy and leech therapy expert Demi Moore. (And no, Ashton Kutcher was not the leech in question.)

Recently I shared an old example of online medical information - a December 1982 Usenet post written by Dr. Jack Buchanan, in which he discussed a report that he had read on a strange new illness called AIDS. Buchanan quoted from a publication issued by the Centers for Disease Control, noting that the CDC was (at the time) most famous for identifying Legionnaires Disease.

Now I didn't happen to see that net.singles post when it appeared, but I assume that if I had seen it, it would have seemed convincing to me.

But what if Buchanan had misquoted the CDC information?

Or what if the CDC had never issued such a report? What if someone issued a report and said that the CDC issued it?

What if Buchanan made up the report?

What if Buchanan was not a real doctor?

What if Buchanan had never even been to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill?

Hey, it could happen, as this 1987 story showed.

Meredith Vieira, reporting on fraudulent AIDS therapies on CBS-TV's "West 57th" last April 27, interviewed a man who called himself Dr. Sebi. "Dr. Sebi," said Vieira, "isn't a doctor. He's an herbalist, a man from Honduras who brought his bag of miracles to Brooklyn. His cure for AIDS starts at $500. It's the same regimen of diet and herbs he prescribes for everything." In an earlier television interview with Washington, D.C.'s "Eyewitness News" reporter Ellen Kingsley, Dr. Sebi stated, "We have always charged $250 for the first consultation to get the herbal compounds. On the AIDS, we increase it to $500, because of the psychological reason that goes along with the price. When someone invests enough money, they're going to go along with the program." Sebi has since been arrested for practicing medicine without a license.

Well, it's a relief to know that this scam was shut down. Uh, wait a minute:

Welcome to the website of Dr. Sebi

The World Renowned healer has cured several ailments with his Electric Cell Food. Reversing illnesses such as: Cancer, Herpes, H.I.V., Diabetes, Aids...

Unintentionally the subject of the story (Daniel Schorr reads Nixon's "enemies list" on live TV)

2012-01-17T05:00:00.000-08:00

When someone writes about a topic, the person must decide whether to write in the third person or in the first person. Edward R. Murrow, for example, would tend to write in the third person. Hunter S. Thompson would write in the first person. The point of reference is very important, since it affects how the story is presented.

One cannot say that one way is universally right, and another way is universally wrong. I'll grant, however, that certain organizations have a preference of one way over the other.

During the 1950s through the 1970s (and beyond), CBS News would clearly fall into the "third person" camp. CBS reporters such as Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and Dan Rather came from a tradition of reporting the story and refraining from editorial comment.

But occasionally, a CBS News reporter from that period would find that he had become the story. One notable incident involved CBS reporter Daniel Schorr, who became embroiled in a story without even knowing.

As Schorr recalls, Schorr was covering the Watergate hearings in which John Dean was being questioned. During the questioning, Dean revealed that the Nixon Administration had kept an "enemies list" of twenty people who were perceived as opponents of the Nixon Administration, and who were therefore targeted for government harrassment - special IRS audits and the like. The correspondents covering the hearing, including Schorr, obviously wanted a copy of that enemies list so that they could read the names on the air.

And so we ran outside the Senate caucus room and waited for a copy to be given to us. And I was handed a copy live on the air, had never seen it before, read it, and there it was from John Dean to H.R. Halderman. "Subject: On Screwing Our Political Enemies." This is a priority list of 20. And I read down a list.

As he continued reading the text that he had never seen, Schorr got a little surprise.

At 17 came to my own name with the notation next to it "a real media enemy." I think I tried not to gulp. I tried not to the gasp.

However, his CBS training shone through.

I read it without a comment. I just tossed it right back. I wanted to collapse.

You can see the episode about a minute in to this 2010 CBS News obituary of Schorr.

Everything is physiological

2012-01-16T12:30:00.000-08:00

[DISCLAIMER: WHILE I AM EMPLOYED IN THE BIOMETRICS INDUSTRY (AND THEREFORE MAY BE CONSIDERED A COMPETITOR TO THE TECHNOLOGIES PROVIDED BY MR. OLIVADOTI AND OTHERS), I CANNOT SPEAK AUTHORITATIVELY ON SOME OF THE TECHNOLOGIES CONTAINED IN THIS POST.]

I apologize to those of you who are not in the biometrics industry, but the hot topic among us the past few weeks has been butt biometrics.

Seriously.

If you haven't heard about this, Jake Kuramoto shared a Bruce Schneier article which linked to a PhysOrg piece.

Cars of the future may use the driver’s rear end as identity protection, through a system developed at Japan’s Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology. A report surfaced earlier this month that researchers there developed a system that can recognize a person by the backside when the person takes a seat.

They are achieving 98 percent accuracy in the lab with this procedure. While the potential is limited - it would be much harder to identify yourself with a rental car, for example - this just offers another way to try to identify people via their physical characteristics.

But I didn't want to talk about butt identification. I wanted to talk about something else.

Because, you see, when this was discussed in the biometrics Yahoo! group, there was an interesting reaction from William Olivadoti, who provided his professional assessment of the Japanese work:

Nahh- That is stone-age biometrics.
It belongs in the Flintstones` Flintmobile.
That is reaching the bottom of the barrel.

Olivadoti went on to say:

Ours is 21st century hi-tech:

https://sites.google.com/site/wmolivadoti/

Olivadoti's site itself continues the "new biometrics are better than old biometrics" theme:

Did you know Fingerprints were discovered in 1858?

Why are you tied down to 150 year-old 19th Century horse-and-buggy biometrics when you can have the most advanced 21st Century biometric security in the world!

(Incidentally, the use of fingerprints for identification goes back thousands of years, as this piece on Ed German's web site indicates.)

But back to the present. The advanced 21st century method promoted by Olivadoti is "nerve firings," which are described as weak signals which can, using Olivadoti's technology, be detected from up to 7 meters away. But this statement on the website is an interesting one:

The picture and signature are time/date stamped and are sent to a recording PC/dvr/nvr.

The signature is sent then to a dedicated computer that stores the signature and matches it against a database of signatures.

The accuracy is up to 99.999% using mathematical software and/or inexpensive off-the-shelf commercial noise or sound or voice biometric recognition software.

While remembering that "up to 99.999%" technically includes "0%," that is certainly a claim that makes people take notice.

Of course, the biometric nay-sayers of the world (such as Simon Cole) will ask for scientific proof that these nerve firings provide unique ways to identify people. We are directed to a 1999 article (20th century?!?) in the Journal of Neurophysiology, entitled The Neuromuscular Transform: The Dynamic, Nonlinear Link Between Motor Neuron Firing Patterns and Muscle Contraction in Rhythmic Behaviors. Vladimir Brezina, Irina V. Orekhova, and Klaudiusz R. Weiss presented the following abstract:

The nervous system issues motor commands to muscles to generate behavior. All such commands must, however, pass through a filter that we call here the neuromuscular transform (NMT). The NMT transforms patterns of motor neuron firing to muscle contractions. This work is motivated by the fact that the NMT is far from being a straightforward, transparent link between motor neuron and muscle. The NMT is a dynamic, nonlinear, and modifiable filter. Consequently motor neuron firing translates to muscle contraction in a complex way. This complexity must be taken into account by the nervous system when issuing its motor commands, as well as by us when assessing their significance. This is the first of three papers in which we consider the properties and the functional role of the NMT. Physiologically, the motor neuron–muscle link comprises multiple steps of presynaptic and postsynaptic Ca2+ elevation, transmitter release, and activation of the contractile machinery. The NMT formalizes all these into an overall input-output relation between patterns of motor neuron firing and shapes of muscle contractions. We develop here an analytic framework, essentially an elementary dynamical systems approach, with which we can study the global properties of the transformation. We analyze the principles that determine how different firing patterns are transformed to contractions, and different parameters of the former to parameters of the latter. The key properties of the NMT are its nonlinearity and its time dependence, relative to the time scale of the firing pattern. We then discuss issues of neuromuscular prediction, control, and coding. Does the firing pattern contain a code by means of which particular parameters of motor neuron firing control particular parameters of muscle contraction? What information must the motor neuron, and the nervous system generally, have about the periphery to be able to control it effectively? We focus here particularly on cyclical, rhythmic contractions which reveal the principles particularly clearly. Where possible, we illustrate the principles in an experimentally advantageous model system, the accessory radula closer (ARC)–opener neuromuscular system of Aplysia. In the following papers, we use the framework developed here to examine how the properties of the NMT govern functional performance in different rhythmic behaviors that the nervous system may command.

As you can see, this particular paper does not address the issue of unique identification, but certainly the technology can detect that SOMEONE is there.

Olivadoti has apparently spent much of the 21st century providing this technology - I found an October 2003 listing that discussed an "intruder bioelectric signature."

Regardless of whether or not this particular technology can UNIQUELY identify an individual, the fact remains that a lot of information can be gathered from us. Fingers, palms, feet, faces, irises, retinas, veins, voices, DNA, hair, saliva, skin, butt shapes, "nerve firings" - we're all providing information about ourselves all the time.

(empo-utoobd) Too bad I can't help 'em promote it - or maybe I can...

2012-01-16T05:00:00.000-08:00

As I've mentioned ad nauseum, my YouTube account was permanently disabled some time ago for reasons unknown. As far as I know, there's still no procedure to contact YouTube to rectify the situation and regain access to the account.

Of course, you get what you pay for, and I can't argue with what's being done here. Google could decide to completely shut down the YouTube service to everyone this evening, and no one would have any legal recourse.

But it's interesting to note that even though I am permanently banned from using a YouTube account, YouTube can use me whenever they want.

I recently discovered that YouTube has a page listing every YouTube video that I have posted to this blog. Yes, despite the fact that YouTube doesn't like me, I still like YouTube, and link to its videos frequently (though not exclusively). YouTube obviously compiles this information and makes it available for whatever purpose such statistics are used.

Hmmm...

Incidentally, here are the results from my 2009 inquiry into the permanently disabled status. Recap:

Your "empoprises" account has been found to have violated our Community Guidelines. Your account has now been terminated. Please be aware that you are prohibited from accessing, possessing or creating any other YouTube accounts....

We are unable to provide specific detail regarding your account suspension or your video's removal....

Perhaps Stilman White is one of the stars of the North Carolina basketball team

2012-01-14T17:25:00.000-08:00

Stilman White is a freshman basketball player at a major college program. He was playing in a game today in which his team was losing, and the play-by-play account states that White attempted a three-point shot with eight seconds left in the game.

He missed.

Not that the shot would have made a lot of difference anyway, since his team - the University of North Carolina - was being beaten badly.

And not that his coach, Roy Williams, said anything to White after he missed the shot.

Williams, you see, was not on the court any more. Nor were most of White's teammates.

Yes, you read that correctly. North Carolina was losing the game so badly, most of the team had left for the safety of the locker room. tarheelblue.com:

The [Florida State] Seminoles (11-6, 2-1) started the second half on a 30-8 run to take a 66-36 lead. Harrison Barnes scored 15 points and Zeller added 14 for North Carolina (15-3, 2-1), which finished 4 of 21 from 3-point range.

[North Carolina coach Roy] Williams took his team - except for five walk-ons who finished the game - from the court with 14.2 seconds left in expectation of the court-storming by the Florida State fans.

"We just tried to be cautious," Williams explained. "It's been shown that's it not always been safe in some scenarios."

[Florida State coach Leonard] Hamilton said he had suggested Williams remove the players as a precaution.

While I'm sure that Coach Hamilton was concerned for the safety of the students, what about the five students that remained? What did that say about them? Deadspin made it clear:

Florida State Upset North Carolina, But What We Really Learned Is That Walk-Ons Are Expendable

I learned about this whole episode from Edward Owen, who shared the Deadspin article and added an editorial comment of his own, which read in part:

Roy Williams is a piece of work.

I was unable to learn the names of the other four North Carolina players, but those four and Stilman White demonstrated more teamwork than the so-called leaders of the team.

Why Google's new search is better than Bing

2012-01-14T09:20:00.000-08:00

J.C. Kendall recently shared something from Sarah Kessler at Mashable. Kessler is convinced that Google's social search (Google Search plus Your World) is, in Mashable's words, "Too Much, Too Soon."

Excerpt from Kessler:

Social search results, for instance, often push more relevant non-Google+ results almost halfway down the page. When I search “Justin Bieber,” I see his official page, images from my network, three comments from my Google+ circles, and only then do I get to his Twitter page. He has 16 million followers on Twitter and posts frequently....

I don’t have a problem with Google showing me what friends have said about a topic on its network or asking me if I want to update my Google+ profile. But I do have a problem with those results being so prominent that they make it harder for me to find the other information I’m looking for....

It’s true that people who don’t want social results can simply hit a toggle switch to return to Google as they knew it last week (in my example above, this would make Justin Bieber’s Twitter page the fifth result), but it doesn’t make sense to me why social results can’t be incorporated less intrusively.

In Kessler's text above, notice that she is looking for information that is "more relevant."

What is relevance?

If you listen to Twitter (DISCLOSURE: Twitter is a competitor of Google) or Mashable (DISCLOSURE: Mashable needs contentious stories to get eyeballs to read its stuff), then the fact that Justin Bieber's Twitter site has 16 million followers makes it, in Kessler's words, "more relevant." And if you go to Bing search, that's what you're going to get.

But is that the true mark of relevance for everyone?

As a test, I tried a Google for Bieber. As you can see from the circled item in the upper right corner, I left my social search results on.

As you can see from the image, a Google+ comment from Loren Feldman figures prominently in my search results. In fact, it figures more prominently than Bieber's Twitter account, my Google+ comments on Bieber, Perez Hilton's comments on Bieber, that wiki page from the people that are always asking for money, and almost every Bieber page except for Bieber's own.

And guess what? I'm OK with that. In my case, I value Feldman's item, or Steven Hodson's comment on the item, more than anything that Perez Hilton would have to say - or anything on Bieber's Twitter page.

And if I didn't, I could very easily go to the upper right corner of the page and click a single button and see what The Powers That Be want me to see.

Google gives me the choice. Bing doesn't.

Oh, but Bing does.

I was logged into Facebook when I performed this Bing search, and Bing used this information to inform me that one of my Facebook friends, Josette Lewis, likes Justin Bieber.

I'll grant that this isn't a reordering of the results, but this integration of Facebook information into the Bing search results does, in the eyes of some, "interfere" with the results page in a minor way. Results get pushed down the page just so I can be informed about what one of my Facebook friends thinks - despite the fact that most of you don't care what Lewis thinks.

But I do.

And again, if I don't care what Lewis thinks, I can take a simple step to exclude that information from my Bing search results.

Of course, Bing doesn't go as far as Google does. If I want to know what my Facebook friends are saying about Bieber, Bing can't tell me. Bing's loss.

Let's face it - in some cases, social search IS "relevant." I'm happy that Google is giving me the option of getting this information.

Give it a +1 - the North American Number Plan Association (NANPA)

2012-01-14T05:00:00.000-08:00

If you've ever called a telephone number in a country other than your own, then you've probably have some experience with country codes. For example, if you live in France but want to call someone in Serbia, you need to use the country code 381 to do so.

But things are a little different in North America. If a French person wants to dial the United States, he or she would use the country code 1. How about Canada? The country code 1. Bermuda? The country code 1.

Basically, in 1964 the world was divided into several zones for calling purposes. Most of these were regional zones - for example, World Zone 2 (Africa) included separate country codes for the countries and territories within Africa. There were two major exceptions - the USSR, which in 1964 had the country code +7, and North America, which had a country code of +1.

North America calling had been organized long before the CCITT (now the ITU) had divided the world up. In fact, initial organization was not undertaken by a governmental agency, but by a private company - American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) - in 1947. As of 1964, the North American Numbering Plan covered the following countries and territories:

Bahamas, Bermuda, British Honduras [now Belize], Canada, Costa Rica, El Salvador, French Antilles, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, USA, US Virgin Islands.

Today, the list is slightly different. Beginning in 1968, some of the countries above were moved to World Zone 5, and other countries/territories were added. Today, the list looks like this:

...the United States and its territories, Canada, Bermuda, Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, Sint Maarten, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks & Caicos.

The North American Numbering Plan is administered by an entity known as the North American Numbering Plan Administration. Unlike other entities, the NANPA itself can change over time:

Since 1997, the FCC has selected the company that serves as NANPA through a competitive bidding process. In 1997, Neustar (then Lockheed Martin IMS) was selected to serve for a five-year term as NANPA. In 2003, Neustar was again selected to serve an additional five year term beginning in July, 2003. In 2009, Neustar was awarded an 18 month contract to continue to provide NANPA services through January 2011.

However, there are also national administrators for many of the countries within the NANP. Neustar is the administrator for the U.S., while SAIC Canada is the administrator for Canada.

For most of the countries in the NANP, it's pretty easy to track the area codes assigned to the country. In many cases, there's only one area code. Consult http://www.nanpa.com/pdf/NANP_Member_Country_Maps.pdf for a list of the area codes for most countries.

It's a little more complicated in Canada and the United States, where populations are so large that single cities such as Toronto and Los Angeles may have multiple area codes within the same city. This is clearly a change from the original US/Canada area code assignments in 1947. Some of the changes between 1947 and the present day:

The 916 area code in northern California included Eureka and the north coast, but not Sacramento. It is the only one of the original codes that now includes none of its original territory.

Florida had only one area code in 1947; as of 2010, it has seventeen.

The 914 area code included not only the suburbs north of New York City, but also Long Island.

The three area codes in Iowa and four in Ohio lasted until the mid-1990's.

In 1947, 34 states plus D.C. had only a single area code each. In 2010, only 10 of those 34, plus D.C., Alaska, and Hawaii, have single codes.

Also note that some areas, such as Alaska and Hawaii, didn't have area codes in 1947. But that wasn't much of an issue, since telephone users couldn't direct-dial area codes anyway; the area codes were for the benefit of the operators. But that would change in a few short years:

Nov. 10, 1951: Mayor M. Leslie Downing of Englewood, N.J., picked up a telephone and dialed 10 digits. Eighteen seconds later, he reached Mayor Frank Osborne in Alameda, Calif. The mayors made history as they chatted in the first customer-dialed long-distance call, one that introduced area codes....

The mayors' call proved a vast improvement over the first transcontinental telephone call 36 years earlier, when it took five operators 23 minutes to set up a call from San Francisco to New York. For many years, long-distance calls required an operator at the calling end and another at the receiving end. More operators were often needed at intermediate points to build the route through the network one segment at a time.

With a whopping ninety area codes in 1951, and room for expansion, everything seemed fine - until we ran out of area codes in 1995. We jiggled the numbering system, allowing hundreds of area codes, and that should be enough for us...for a little while.

How a holiday becomes a holiday

2012-01-13T12:30:00.000-08:00

With the exception of holidays tied to supernatural events (Christmas) or cosmic events (various New Year's Days), holidays are created by people to commemorate significant events.

In the United States, some organizations will be celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which commemorates the birthday of King. (Well, sort of - in the United States, many holidays are actually held on Monday to allow three-day weekends.) The impetus for this holiday came from a variety of sources, including labor union contract negotiations, attempted legislation (PDF), a song, and political pressure from a sports league.

At one point, some people in Arizona were proposing to celebrate King Day by removing the celebration of Columbus Day. THAT holiday had been formally established decades earlier, via a campaign partly sponsored by the Catholic organization the Knights of Columbus, which originated in response to anti-Catholic sentiment from the Ku Klux Klan. So one can say that King's day and Columbus' day had a common ancestor of sorts.

Another person on the KKK's enemies list was former President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's birthday was first celebrated in Buffalo, New York due to the efforts of druggist Julius Francis. Unlike King and Washington, however, Lincoln's birthday has never been a national holiday.

Now if you're a member of the KKK and don't know what to do with yourself on Monday, perhaps you can celebrated Hot & Spicy International Food Day. Then again, maybe not - that's pretty much the definition of an un-American day. Perhaps National Fig Newton Day? No, because that cookie was created by a company originally known as the Kennedy Biscuit Company, and all KKK members know that the Kennedys were a bunch of Catholic Commies. At the end of the day, I'm not sure what holidays a KKK member would celebrate...

The world marches on

2012-01-13T05:00:00.000-08:00

I was performing a rather scattershot search, and the search results turned up a 2007 AppsLab post by Rich Manalang. You wouldn't think that five years would be a huge amount of elapsed time, until you read the title of Manalang's post - "Our Future Colleagues have MySpace Accounts."

Yet even if the reference seems dated just a few years later, Manalang's point is still valid. He speaks of the short attention spans of younger people.

So for this reason I'm cutting this post short. Read Manalang's thoughts - only six paragraphs, counting the quotes.

The power of ineffective moves (would Eugene Landy boycott NVIDIA?)

2012-01-12T12:55:00.000-08:00

Let's start with a recap of three posts that I wrote in late December.

On angering your customers - sometimes it's a good thing. I wrote this on December 23, and at the time I noted that all of the anti-SOPA moves toward GoDaddy were serving to get GoDaddy's name plastered all over the place. However, GoDaddy's entire marketing strategy is to get its name plastered all over the place. Which reminds me - I think we have less than a month before this year's "Will GoDaddy ads make the Super Bowl cut" tempest in a teapot. The fact that GoDaddy withdrew its support for SOPA as it currently stood, coupled with continued anger at GoDaddy, served to have no appreciable effect toward passage of SOPA. Although I guess it made people feel really good.

If you're boycotting GoDaddy, who else are you boycotting? This post, also written on December 23, included a list of a number of companies who support SOPA. Did you watch TV, listen to the radio, or play a CD over the past few days? Did you wear makeup? Or maybe you just used a credit card? Or read a book? Or took some medication? Well, you probably just showed your support for SOPA.

The power of ineffective moves (would Eugene Landy boycott GoDaddy?) This December 26 post summarized the previous posts, while noting a move that WOULD stop SOPA - namely, roughly $100 million of lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill. Whether you're willing to admit it or not, if the pro-SOPA organizations are spending tens of millions of dollars for Capitol Hill lobbying, and the anti-SOPA organizzations aren't doing this, the pro-SOPA organizations will win.

[3:15 PM: anti-SOPA organizations, not anti-SOPA organizzations]

Which brings us to 2012, and some new anti-SOPA moves. One of them was described on a Google+ post that appeared earlier today.

Announcing Operation Green #opgreen

Today we are announcing our first request for direct action. Our target is +NVIDIA, and the objective is to force the company to change its position on #SOPA

NVidia is all over the press these days, because of the #CES, and we have to take this opportunity to show those in charge at the company that their #SOPA support is not appreciated

Course of Action

Main targets are NVidia's social media channels.

+NVIDIA on Google Plus

NVidia on Twitter: https://twitter.com//NVIDIA

NVidia on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NVIDIA

The Message

Be polite and straight to the point.

NVidia has already deleted some comments left on their Facebook page last night meaning that they are reading them

On Twitter use #opgreen and, if you follow the account, stop following it and let them know why. Example (I just stopped following NVidia because it supports #SOPA #opgreen)

If you have any other ideas feel free to leave them in the comments and we will update this post accordingly

Let #opgreen begin

Read + Share + Spread + ACT = Stop #SOPA

At the time I viewed this Google+ item, it had been liked by 74 people and shared by 92 people.

As you may be able to gather from my previous posts, I predict that the chances of this effort having a major effect on SOPA are approximately 0%.

First off, who is NVIDIA?

Founded in 1993, NVIDIA has continuously reinvented itself to delight users and shape the industry. From our roots in PC graphics, we expanded into professional graphics and high-performance computing. Our recent move into mobile computing puts us at the center of one of the industry's fastest-growing segments.

Unlike GoDaddy, NVIDIA is a publicly-traded company (NVDA on the NASDAQ exchange). As of this afternoon it had a market value of $8.6 billion dollars, trades approximately 15 million shares per day, and has over 610 million shares outstanding.

So how are the Stop SOPA folks attacking this multi-billion dollar company? Via...COMMENTS.

Hi +NVIDIA , your support of #SOPA is unacceptable. I love your products but, until you change your position regarding this bill, that attempts to freedom of speech on the internet, I am boycotting your products and make sure that those around me do the same.

Hi +NVIDIA I have been a long time NVIDIA product user, and I'll make you a deal. If SOPA passes I will NEVER buy one of your products again. Not even a laptop or motherboard that uses one of your chipsets. Ever.

+NVIDIA Your support of #SOPA is not acceptable. There's a right way to do this, but you know that #SOPA isn't it. Please withdraw your support and try to work on a good solution instead.

If you continue to support #SOPA i will no longer buy your products though i do enjoy them. I will do everything in my power and anymore PC's i build for customers i will not recommend or use your products. This support of #SOPA is absolutely ridiculous and i hope you realize your folly supporting this!

I just saw the new driver update from NVIDIA in Windows update, but all I could think was "SOPA".

Now this is just a sampling of the several dozen comments that appeared on this post. Now assuming that everyone of these people, and then some, follow through on their promises and never buy an NVDIA product again...

...how much impact will that have on this multi-billion dollar company?

Yup, that's right. None.

(empo-tymshft) Al Gore's initiative

2012-01-12T05:00:00.000-08:00

Let's start with the famous quote, from an interview of then Vice President Al Gore by Wolf Blitzer:

BLITZER: I want to get to some of the substance of domestic and international issues in a minute, but let's just wrap up a little bit of the politics right now.

Why should Democrats, looking at the Democratic nomination process, support you instead of Bill Bradley, a friend of yours, a former colleague in the Senate? What do you have to bring to this that he doesn't necessarily bring to this process?

GORE: Well, I will be offering -- I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be.

But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

During a quarter century of public service, including most of it long before I came into my current job, I have worked to try to improve the quality of life in our country and in our world. And what I've seen during that experience is an emerging future that's very exciting, about which I'm very optimistic, and toward which I want to lead.

As we all know, Al Gore did not create the Internet, any more than Tim Berners-Lee did. But what did Gore do to advance the Internet?

Gore certainly has a long-standing interest in futurist issues. Gore, along with Newt Gingrich, was an early member of the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future, an organization which grew out of an Alvin Toffler conference. Of course, Gore had a number of interests:

Gore's passion for technological issues, from biomedical research and genetic engineering to the environmental impact of the "greenhouse effect," linked him with other technophiles on Capitol Hill known as "Atari Democrats."

By the late 1980s, the Internet was actively linking a number of agencies, but it was about as efficient as the U.S. road system in the 1940s. The parallel is significant - Gore's father had participated in the effort to create the U.S. Interstate Highway System, and now the son began to actively campaign for a new highway system.

In 1986, Gore introduced S 2594, the Supercomputer Network Study Act of 1986. But things really began rolling when the 1988 report Toward a National Research Network was released. In 1991, Gore introduced S 272, the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991. Despite previous failures to get a bill through both houses of Congress, the 1991 bill passed and was signed by President George H.W. Bush.

One result of the act was easy to document: Marc Andreessen's creation of the Mosaic web browser was accomplished via funds from "the Gore Bill." The National Research and Education Network created by the Gore Bill has been characterized as "a short-lived stepping-stone to the commercial Internet."

The question can be raised - could the Mosaic web browser and the commercial Internet backbone had come forth through private initiative alone? On this question, however, even Newt Gingrich defers to Al Gore's vision.

In all fairness, it's something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness, Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is -- and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got [to Congress], we were both part of a "futures group" -- the fact is, in the Clinton administration, the world we had talked about in the '80s began to actually happen.

Gingrich is also quoted as saying

Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet.

Gore was certainly a major contributor.