Voice/Text Messages

I want to be able to leave "voice" text messages. Text messages themselves aren't for me. Aside from the $.20 per message cost (!), it's always struck me as being an inefficient means of communications.

What's with the $.20 price tag, anyways?! Sending a text message has to cost the mobile network next to nothing. What we've been taught growing up is that in the USA capitalism reigns, and in this case a competitor should arise that will offer cheaper text messages. But I claim that's can't happen here, due to monopolies and collusion amongst the mobile carriers. The only hope I hold for this is with the FCC's auction of airwaves and the fact that they will be requiring some amount of openness to them. But I digress... I can have a full rant about this issue at another time.

Going back to my original point, I don't see text messages as very efficient. I do have a smart phone (Palm Treo), so writing a text message isn't much harder than writing an email, but I find voice communication to still be much better. So what's the reason for world-wide fervor surrounding text messages? I can think of two reasons:
1) They are a silent form of communication
2) They offer a way of fast, one-way communication

I won't argue with reason #1. There are times, like in meetings/class/clubs/etc, where talking into a phone is either undesirable or not possible.

But for reason #2, I would like to there to be a way to leave a voice message instead of a text message. Currently, to leave a voice message for someone, I have to either wait for a bunch of rings + the outgoing message (with a sizable potential of the recipient answering his/her cell phone instead), or I have to go through my voice message box, and leave a message via some menu option (and this only works if I want to leave a message for someone on my own network).

Why can't I just hit some button on my phone, record a short message, and then have that message deposited in some inbox of sorts for another person? Furthermore, why can't that other person then look into their inbox in much the same way as looking through a list of received text messages? They would be able to, with one or two button presses, listen to a message when they choose to. I've heard the iPhone can do as much for voicemail messages; this would be similar, I guess.

I can also imagine an interface that effectively merges push-to-talk with this concept. This is similar to what I've described above, except it'd be more instantaneous and you wouldn't be able to re-record your message.

Okay, that's my rant/request. Maybe I'll expound upon it later...

- Mike

Great H-1B Visa Idea

In a Slashdot article, Which Google Should Congress Believe?, Google is whining about the limits of H-1B visas. I'm a big fan of Google -- which is why I'm particularly disappointed by this. The other company I've heard make a big stink about this has been Microsoft. But I'm not usually surprised when Microsoft does "evil things".

Without rambling too much, my issue with H-1B visas is that they artificially bring down wages. Don't get me wrong.. I'm definitely a fan of [legal] immigration, especially of highly skilled workers. But that's not the argument here. The argument is that the United States does not have enough skilled workers.

I would argue that we very well do have enough skilled workers for Google, but they would have to pay them enough. Although programmers get paid a fairly decent wage, they don't usually come close to what doctors and lawyers can be paid. As an example of the problem, a friend of mine, who is a highly proficient programmer, has instead decided to become a lawyer because it pays more. That's just one H-1B visa that wouldn't be needed!

To reference the doctor profession again, if we allowed H-1B visas for doctors (which I've heard the US doesn't allow) you would see too that doctors' wages would go down. And lest you think this would reduce medical costs, I believe doctors' insurance is the biggest problem there, and so that wouldn't be affected.

The problem, therefore, is that companies want more H-1B visas simply so they can save on some costs. And it's true that the US should want more H-1B visas so we can try to better consolidate the world's brain power here. But this issue should be about immigration, and just immigration; it should not be about trying to supplant this country's existing skilled workers.

But getting back to my point. Within the Slashdot article I mentioned above, I read a great idea that would very much help solve this H-1B visa problem...

Re:The two are not mutually exclusive (Score:5, Interesting)
by Retric (704075) on Friday July 20, @01:09PM (#19929083)
Yea, the article is junk but so is the H1B quota system. It seems like the simple solution is for the government to auction off H1B's.

If Google really wants someone they can offer 50k but they can probably get local talent for cheaper. My guess is H1B's would balance out to around 25K a pop and most Americans would be fine competing on that type of playing field.

I love economic solutions! Economics can really be quite elegant.

So I'm in agreement. I think the US should auction off H-1B visas. That would help balance out the salary market.

- Michael Krebs

Legislative, Executive, Judicial... and Scientific?

Is it time to update our separation of powers to include science?

I was reading an article (Discover, "Reasonable Doubt", July, 2006) and I got the idea that maybe we should create a new branch of government that would handle matters of science. Bear in mind this just now came to me, without much thought, so don't feel bad if you want to say it's stupid for some reason.

The article talks about how DNA lab results can be wrong. It states that the chances of matching a DNA profile against a random, unrelated individual is less than 1 in 10 billion. A problem apparently arises, though, because DNA samples aren't always complete. And it gives a quote from Robert Shaler, some forensics guy: "It's kind of like you know what you're looking for, and if it looks like it's there, you kind of convince yourself it's there." And, in reference to a specific case: "I think there was a huge amount of pressure on the lab to come up with an interpretation that was favorable to the prosecution." What I took from this is that DNA science is closely connected to those who use it: in this case, law enforcement.

Now, the whole idea of the separation of powers is that it's supposed to keep everyone in check. One set of people can make sure another set of people don't screw the country up. So, making science be a separate power would allow it to balance out the other powers when they try to manipulate facts to match their own agenda.

But how can facts be at risk for being manipulated, you ask? Facts currently come out of business, academia, the general public, or the government -- either directly or through funding of it.

• Business is motivated by money. If there's no money to be had, there's no reason to do it.
• Academia is good, but is limited by resources (time and brain power), especially when you exclude academic research funded by government or business.
• The general public has limited power and, I would say, does not always help the cause. For example, the general public is motivating science to find a cure for the bird flu, even though it's arguably not our biggest problem within the pandemic arena.
• Government is motivated by the need to stay around. They will usually only back what will keep a department funded or an elected official in office.
  

So, getting back to my point, science does not have much of a mind of its own because it's almost always controlled by some other force -- a force that usually has a motive behind it. What I'm focusing on, in this rambling post, is just that force due to our government.

In the last few years, for example, I seem to remember hearing of environmental studies that had been squashed because President George W. Bush didn't like how they would affect his policies. Another example goes back to what the article was talking about, where DNA science is being manipulated by the desires of law enforcement to provide a guilty verdict. You also have school boards trying to dictate policies based on loons who preach "intelligent design".

It would seem to me that facts deserve their own power. They have some inherent power, I suppose, but the problem occurs when facts are changed, or ignored, by the branches of our government. Facts should stand on their own and, at least in the USA, they don't always get that chance.

I should say that I realize this post hasn't at all addressed how a scientific branch would be run. I feel that something like the NSF (National Science Foundation) is probably pretty close to what we'd want, but that's a whole other topic.

In closing, I imagine our founding fathers didn't think to make Science a separate power of the government. They probably assumed facts would speak for themselves. But when you have instances where the legislative branch tries to redefine Pi to be 3.2, something needs to be done to protect the truth and keep our country on the leading edge of discovery and human advancement.

- Michael Krebs

Policing the Politicians

Simply put, I'm very worried about my future in the USA. Every day, it seems there's a politician who introduces some legislation that threatens either my privacy or my freedom. I'm going to keep a list here of those I notice in the media. I wish I could do more, like vote them out of office, but I have no control over what crazy men and women becomed elected in states other than my own (California).

So here goes my list of shame...

For legislation that would require ISPs to retain data about their customers:

• Rep. Diana DeGette (Colorado, Democrat)

Lazy Comedy

I want to rant about what I think of as lazy comedy. Lazy comedy is comedy that any Tom, Dick, or Harry can perform. I see a lot of this during the late night talk shows, and I find it to be very disappointing.

A typical example might be a bit where they show a clip of the President, and then dub some random person speaking over top of it saying something different from what the President would say. Big whoop. Anyone can do that. I should say that I do think it's possible to make this funny... but the typical late-night bit doesn't do it.

Conan O'Brien does this kind of comedy a lot. I've generally liked his show, but skits where they show a celebrity's face with someone else speaking through his/her lips is far from funny to me.

Another kind of lazy comedy is fake news clips. This might, for example, start off with the comic saying there was a funny thing that occurred in the news today. He'll set it up with something about how a woman reacted stupidly to some event. Then, he shows the clip of some footage from a movie with dubbed over dialogue. Lame. Anyone can make up news stories... "Funny thing in the news today: they finally found proof of aliens [cut to clip from the movie Alien]".

Jimmy Kimmel seems to use this kind of comedy a lot. If you watch one of his opening monologues, much of it is simply fake news clips.

I know I might catch some flack for this statement, but I think the comedy "Family Guy" falls largely into the category of lazy comedy. Granted, I've only seen a couple of episodes, and there were actually a couple of funny moments in them. But most of it was just non-sequitors, and putting a bunch of non-sequitor events together isn't very hard. Worst case, you can get someone on LSD to come up with your story line. But chances are you can get some kid with attention deficit disorder to ramble off an episode or two for you.

Litigiousness

The litigiousness of today's society annoys the heck out of me. I'd be willing to bet that the idea of being sued comes up every single day for me. I don't mean to say that I actually get sued, I just mean that a friend might tell me that something I just did could bring on a lawsuit. I feel that every step I take could, in theory, cause me to be sued.

For a more real example, I can look at my condo. I'm on the board of my condo association, and we have a bunch of renovations/construction we have to do. Now, as it turns out, the hardest thing to do is to find somebody willing to work on our place. Most people can't, or won't, get the insurance necessary to work on condos. I can't confirm that this is true, but I heard that 50% of condos sue after a construction job is done!

Well, I'm sure I could go on for a while on this rant, but since I'm not a big fan of typing a lot, I'll get to my proposal for a solution. It's quite simple, I think, although I see it occurring in two steps. The first step is for us (in my case, the State of California) to bring up legislation that would punish those who would bring forward frivolous lawsuits. A friend of mine suggested that maybe you could be allowed one such lawsuit every five years (so as not to discourage a legitimate claim). The punishment could be, for example, that the person would have to pay all legal fees of the defendant plus damages for time and suffering. In addition, you would make that plaintiff's lawyer also financially responsible for it.

But the real progress comes with the next step... Faced with this impending legislation, the Bar Association should self-regulate its members. It would be much better for them to do it themselves, rather than let some third party decide which is frivolous and which is not. The Bar Association could suspend a lawyer's license if he/she does what is considered unethical (e.g. door-to-door solicitation for lawsuits).

Junk Mail

I feel that I am on the road to being junk-mail free! It has taken some effort, but it is well worth it. I used to get maybe three or four credit-card offers, etc. a day. Now, I only get one every three days.

I think one of the most satisfying defenses is to mail back every self-addressed envelope, in order to cost them postage. And I do so along with a message stating I don't want to receive any more junk mail. For the offers with no envelope, I call up the 800-number and leave a message requesting to be removed.

But probably the most productive action was to remove myself from many different lists. One of them is https://www.optoutprescreen.com, or you can call 1-888-5OPTOUT.

Honeymoons

I don't have much to say about weddings. I only wish I had some thoughts worth mentioning about them. But until I figure out my place in all that, I'll at least write down a thought I'd had on honeymoons. That is, one should be quite wary about having a honeymoon lasting more than two weeks.

The "two weeks" is somewhat arbitrary. But the point is, for example, if you have a one-month honeymoon than one of two (bad) things are likely to happen:

1. You will have a terrible time. You will get on each others' nerves, and it'll only serve to bring doubt to your mind about the marriage. And this will be in spite of the fact that a couples' average existence isn't at all dealing with each other 24-7.
2. You will have a great time. This is actually bad because you very probably won't have another one of these one-month jaunts until you both retire -- and that won't be for decades! So despite the great marriage-affirming trip, you won't be able to experience it again until who knows when.

The good news about situation #1 is that, just like with #2, you won't have another one of those one-month trips until who knows when. But won't that bad memory still stick with you both? And with situation #2, you will both just sit waxing nostalgic about that month for a long time.

Ergo, the best way to avoid both situations is to limit your honeymoon to two weeks. You can find out what's it like to live with your life partner when you turn 65.

Carpet

From Loveline's Adam Carolla: white carpets allow for spotting bugs. I agree. I think I'd rather not have dark carpets anyways because they make me think of the 70's. I mean, the worst case if it gets dirty is you just replace the carpet, right? ...and you can always wait a while to do that anyways -- at least as a bachelor you can. :-)

First Comments

Since I'm hoping to collect my thoughts here, making them available to me for when I start forgetting things, I'll start with just a couple things I noticed while creating my first blog.

I like the big orange "Create your blog now" button of blogger.com. It's so easy to click, it makes me want to actually create another one.

I like black backgrounds. This isn't really new to this blog, but it did motivate me to pick the "Minima Black" template. I think non-black pixels on my monitor are distracting. The window manager I've been using for the last 8 years or so has a black background. My rxvts are all black with no scroll bars. My console window has a black background. Etc.

I'm not sure about this blogging thing. Is this really a reasonable way to organize my ramblings? I actually tried putting ramblings on a web page, served by my computer at home, but I spent more time messing with Apache than I did writting stuff.

I'll quit for now... so I can get back to doing my job, but also because I already forgot the ramblings that inspired me to start this blog in the first place. :)