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March 31, 2004
My Rusty Cage
If I were on American Idol, I'd sing John Cage's 4'11".
Posted by Mike at 07:50
PM
| Comments (0)
It's All About Oillllllllll
OPEC cuts oil
output 4%.
Looks like it's time to go over there and prove the
conspiracy-theorists right and take all that oil. Kidding, of course,
but an entertaining idea nonetheless.
Posted by Mike at 07:48
PM
| Comments (2)
March 30, 2004
A Spam-filled Porsche
Spammer's seized Porsche up
for grabs after AOL sues the pants -- and the Porsche -- off of
him. Too bad it's just a Boxster.
Posted by Mike at 08:40
PM
| Comments (0)
March 29, 2004
The Great Debate
Strange how I just posted below about finding articles bemoaning
(incorrectly) that digital "just isn't there yet" for photography, and
here I find
one that is, once again, correct in principle, narrowly, but
utterly wrong in application.
Before I post my extensive rebuttal, a little bit about my
qualifications. I will only be covering the still photography side of
the debate, as I have no experience with movie photography. I've been
shooting extensively since I was 18 years old. I was an Army
photojournalist for five of those years, and I've had photos published
in many Army publications and civilian ones as well.
I have developed and printed my own photos. I have spent long hours
in darkrooms, burning, dodging, mixing my own chemicals, to get the
perfect print. I've shot in the widest variety of conditions imaginable;
from the 120-degree heat of the Egyptian desert to the muggy tropics of
Panama to the cold of Goose Bay, Canada. Most of the shooting I did in
the Army was on film, as at that time, digital cameras were not yet good
enough or cheap enough to be practical or to produce acceptable results
in extreme conditions. In the last 18 months, though, digital has
really matured, and I now prefer it in all aspects to film.
Before I get into a line by line rebuttal, the poster seems to have a
good enough knowledge of what he is discussing, but his knowledge is
limited to a very exclusive area of the digital realm, that of the
high-end advertising and fine-art photographer.
The story isn't just pixel count; quality of optics,
dynamic range, sensor noise, etc, all put digital at a great
disadvantage.
Once again, this point is true, given perfect conditions and the best
film equipment available -- i.e., something that no consumer has and
very few professionals possess. In that case, if you are going to print a
billboard, a digital image will not look as good as the best film
equipment available. How many photographers, even pros, go around
shooting to print billboards, or even 16 x 20 prints? Maybe a few
fractions of one percent of the market. This point is correct for as far
as it goes -- which is not very far.
That resolution figure only applies to 35mm images. Any
professional or semi-professional photograph (the minimum standard
required, e.g., for advertising) is medium format (2 1/4", or 6x7cm
approx). Film of this size carries (measurably) ten times the data: or
100-150 megapixels equivalent. Then there is 5x4" film, which quadruples
the data again; and then 8x10" (still used), which would amount to well
over 2 billion pixels to approximate. Why would anyone bother?
Most professional photographers, by any definition of the word, now
shoot digital. This point is deliberately misleading, I feel. Medium
format is only required for one small segment of the advertising market,
that which is designed to be printed extremely large, such as in-store
displays and billboards, etc. And now, even the majority of that is being
shot with medium format digital camera backs, something of which
the writer seems wholly unaware. Either the writer has been out of the
loop for a while, or is deliberately misleading the reader to make a
point.
If I had to guess, I'd say that 95% of professional photographers (as
the Sports Illustrated photographers do below) shoot digital,
with some choosing medium format, and some infinitesimally small number
using large format. Due to the cost and time necessary to shoot medium
format, and the exponentially higher cost to shoot large format negs,
these were little-used by pros even when digital cameras did not exist.
The mistake this writer makes is assuming that the little market
segment he is interested in -- the few percent of professional
photographers and the 0.% of all photographers who shoot medium and
large format should be sole gauge by which all digital imagery should
be judged. I fundamentally disagree with this. Yes, large format cameras
do produce better images if you blow them up on the side of a building
than any digital camera available now. And I will be sure to buy a large
format camera the next time I intend to shoot an image I want to put on
the side of a building.
His points are elitism at its worst. Most people, even
professionals, have never so much as seen a large format camera.
I've been working in digital pre-press, graphic
reproduction, photo retouching and professional photographers for around
18 years and making chemical photographs for around the same length of
time, so I have a reasonable perspective on the issue. I've even learned
to use a drum scanner (which is the only device that can satisfactorily
capture what's on a piece of film).
More elitism. First of all, the bottom-end price on a refurbished
drum scanner is $5,000. Again, this is a piece of equipment that most
people, including most pros, have never even laid eyes on. A
fully-equipped, reasonably-priced drum scanner brand-new will be closer
to $45,000. If a drum scanner is the only thing that can satisfactorily
capture what is on a piece of film (a dubious assertion), then 99.99%
of the photographs you have ever seen are inadequate.
Everybody who has an opinion on the quality of digital
should do two things before they enter the debate: do a few years of
chemical (b&w) photography, including darkroom work, and try to find
the true limits of film; use a medium format (6x6cm or larger) camera
and a good lens; and carefully examine a few dozen high-resolution drum
scans from film (I've probably assessed more than 5,000).
I've done all of these things. And for certain applications, mainly
for when you need things really large, say beyond 20 x 24 inches, there
is not yet a digital solution that is adequate. Or, to put it another
way, a digital solution is far more than adequate in almost all cases
where someone, even a pro, needs to make a photo.
I am not holding my breath waiting for digital to catch
up; and nobody has to. Film has been nearly perfect for 50 years and
thank God, you can still buy it. Like all "revolutions," digital
photography regresses the field (quality, integrity) as much as it
progresses it in others (freedom, ease). It's a marketing triumph, not a
technological one ...
Regressions like I get better, more consistent images. I get to spend
a great deal less money. I can clear crap images without even needing
to develop them. I can preview my work in the field, and reshoot if it's
useless. It's only a marketing triumph, for the umpteenth time, if I
need to print a billboard. Once again, wake me up when that need occurs
for me or most photographers.
The quality of digital imagery will asymptotically
approach film. Only digital boosters (e.g. photographers who've just
leased $100K of the latest digital doodads) make whacko remarks such as
"better than film."
Digital is better than film for the vast, vast majority of
applications. Better in almost every way. And I have shot far more
images on film than I have on digital.
In my experience, the "better than film" remarks
invariably come from photographers trying to justify their investment in
the new technology. I have personally never seen a digital image of
quality "better than film" -- whether in detail, or colour fidelity,
though it is conceivable that the best digital hardware can beat a
mediocre film image.
Most of my digital images are better than most of my film images
because they are not as grainy, do not have lab defects, I can do more
in software with them, and they cost me essentially nothing to produce.
Better in every way.
The next few paragraphs he goes off into some pomo rant about
Marshall McLuhan that I won't bother to rebut as it's barely worth
reading, even.
The first, and simplest to grasp, is that it has
dramatically reduced image quality at the low end of photographic
applications. (Like most revolutions, it does not deliver on the promise
that things will be "better" for everyone!) Even a Polaroid camera
produces better images than many digital snapshots I have seen offered
in a professional context. The typical digital snapshot -- whether taken
at home, or by a company employee on site at an engineering project, or
by a journalist shooting their own interview portrait, pick up any
trade magazine for a hundred examples -- now suffers from BOTH the
perennial photographic blunders (lighting being the usual problem) AND
computer-related faux pas.
And just imagine the vast reduction in book quality that occurred
when the printing press broke onto the scene. All those illuminated
manuscripts replaced by nasty, common books. Once again, I think the
writer is living in the past in more than one sense. Right now, the
average person can pick up a 4MP digital camera for around $300. For
what the average person does with the average photo, this is enough to
print out an 8x10, this is enough to send high-quality photos to
grandma. But if were to print a billboard.....
It's strange how he goes from talking about professional digital vs.
film photography, to happy snaps, where his argument has even less
traction, though it would've been valid about three or four years ago.
The path of an image from camera to audience is now
subject to numerous new process pitfalls involving resolution (how many
snap-shooters know how many pixels are enough? for print? for the web?
for a poster? can their camera and lens even deliver what's needed? on
the whole, they simply don't know), colour (how many Photoshop users
understand the difference between Adobe RGB and sRGB colour profiles?
how many can colour correct a random image to a commercial standard? in
RGB? colour separate it?) and format (e.g. excessive levels of JPEG
compression). Most images suffer in more than one of these areas.
These are new hazards for photographers, because chemical photography
left many steps of the process in professional hands (few photographers
do their own processing and darkroom work). Now, everyone has to
understand image processing and colour science to get decent results.
This is perfectly analogous to the effects of desktop publishing on
typography.
So? Every technology demands tradeoffs and new ways of doing things. I
know and can do all the things he mentions, and most users who really
care can learn them in a few months, too. As for the users who do not
care, most digicams produce acceptable images at default settings,
anyway. Blaming digital photography for their woes seems pretty asinine
to me.
The fruits of the digital photography "revolution," for
most users? Pallid JPEG pixel-porridge. They'd often be better off with
negatives or slides or Polaroids -- the extra effort still buys more
quality. Digital is only defensible when one must cut corners for
convenience or cost; and, in my observations, there is a commensurate
loss in the end result.
Has he seen most "average people" photography? Most of it is utter
crap, whether it's shot on a Canon Powershot S400 or a film camera, just
as it would be if that average person picked up a Linhof Master
Technika. Beyond a certain point, which digital passed about eighteen
months ago, the skill of the photographer now matters far more than what
equipment he's using.
But it's the blatant overselling in the high-end and
middle markets of photography (e.g. art, advertising) that really irks. I
won't labour the point other than to say that, besides the subjectively
noticeable shortcomings of dynamic range and sharpness, scientific and
objective measurement puts digital one or two orders of magnitude behind
film transparencies. This makes perfect sense to me: Anyone who has
handled film and admired the engineering of a professional lens, camera
and drum scanner will be less willing to dismiss the decades of
development that has gone into the analog process. It's a minor miracle
the way optical, mechanical and chemical engineering come together to
deliver such a nearly perfect reproduction of nature!
So he is saying that digital is only 1/10th or 1/100th as good as
film? That's interesting, because that's what "one or two orders of
magnitude" would indicate. Once again, he is here talking about only the
highest of high-end applications of photography, at which digital does
not yet exceed the capabilities of film, or far less than 1% of even the
professional market.
He goes on to talk about digital movie cameras, about which I know
nothing, and it's not really applicable to the discussion of film
photography, as movies in the theater are designed to be viewed much,
much larger than most photographs, so what he's saying there probably
has a lot more validity than his talk on film vs. digital still
photography.
At least, so my pessimistic side says. I think Mark has
it in a nutshell with the word "acceptably." Digital is "acceptable" for
a certain type of work; for a certain quality level and certain styles.
But why not demand more than just "acceptable" results! Film aims for
sublimity. Some favourite examples: The cinematography of Solaris
(Tarkovsky); any of Bertolucci's work; David Lynch's dark worlds rely on
film's ambience; the astonishing black and white work of Kurosawa; all
these have enormous emotional appeal, and only the most ruthless
reductionist could argue "digital can do as well." My hands have been in
too many developing tanks to accept that. And then we can discuss still
photographers: Snowdon; Arbus; even the Apollo astronauts used film
expressively (as Michael Light's very hip book Full Moon shows).
Digital is "acceptable" for the vast majority of what people, even
pros, do with their cameras. More than acceptable -- in most cases, it
exceeds the capabilities in both quality and cost vs. film. It's sad
that the traditional ways of dying out to some people. I think that is
what largely provokes this reaction to digital photography. I've done it
both ways, and I am not sad at all. I don't miss, as he apparently
does, my hands stuck in developing tanks. It takes days for that smell
to leave your hands, and it stains your fingers.
And by the way, for most applications, even in art, film does not aim
for sublimity. It aims for the best possible product at the cheapest
possible price. This is what digital provides.
OTOH, my father, a Fine Artist all his life (painting,
drawing, sculpture, and then digital art for the past 25 years -- see
his 3D sculpture gallery here ) -- reminds me that "quality" is also
context-dependent: on the web, for instance, digital photography is a
perfect fit. Most of what I have written assumes print or advertising or
movie or Fine Art photography.
As digitial photography is the perfect fit for just about anything
below a 20 x 24 image. Print or advertising or movie or fine art
photography are infintesimally small portions of the market, and even
then, many of the things asserted about them are incorrect.
I know I can get emotional about this and come across as
a hand-wringing, old-fashioned traditionalist -- which is half true. I
don't have much to say on the subjective, qualitative issues; other
than, I personally can't live without grain. There is an elusive quality
of mood (je ne sais quoi!) that is not easily available through digital
means.
Grain is not present in the real world, at least not on any scale
humans can see, so why would I want it in all of my images? This reminds
me of the "vinyl-is-better" crowd. Sure, it's better if you like random
hisses and pops and inferior media, and easily-breakable players,
expensive equipment and such. But I do not wany any of that in my music,
just as I don't want any of that in my photography.
Perhaps there is something to the idea that film
requires greater discipline, too. Having wrestled with technique over
the years, I am still floored by a flawless shot -- whether a still or
in a movie. Despite all this I fear it is inevitable that digital will
simply take over; and the qualities of film will become unavailable
through simple economics. It's painful to contemplate.
Film does require greater discipline. The discipline to do
unpalatable things like spend more money for inferior results, to waste
time and resources on film and lab processing, and if you really want to
do it right, the additional waste of money for your own darkroom,
mixing your own chemicals, and the other assorted headaches of private
processing and printing.
Film will become unavailable through simple economics, that is true.
But by that time, digital will far exceed film in quality and price in
every arena, including what's necessary for high-end advertising and
billboard-printing.
For all you budding photographers out there, I wouldn't worry too
much about this debate, as it has already been won by digital, and the
last of these hand-wringers and tongue-cluckers will be gone soon
enough. The most important thing is to learn to see the world as your
camera sees it, and then to work within its limitations of sight to
create your own vision of the world.
But if I ever need to print some billboards, which I need to do
almost every day, Toby has certainly pointed me in the right direction.
Posted by Mike at 01:25
AM
| Comments (1)
March 28, 2004
SI For The Sharp Eye
Found this
article at
Instapundit, and I was interested in the same part of it he cited.
The pictures themselves, Fine says, have changed the
look of the magazine. "For years [with film], we've been fighting a
battle between sharpness and grain, especially in low-light shots. You
try to sharpen and you just end up building more graininess. I'm amazed
at the quality we're getting in low-light shots off our digital files.
We're running [low-light pictures] up to two-page size that we could
never have done before. Sometimes [digital] looks like it's underwater, a
little bit too smooth. A strobed basketball game on a Hasselblad has a
sharp line and a punch that digital doesn't have. But we don't have
grain anymore. In really poorly lit situations, the ability to make a
clean picture far outweighs the downside." . . .
Digital photography has changed not only the magazine's workflow but
also its visual aesthetic, says Geoff Michaud. "There's a different
quality expectation with digital vs. film. With film, grain was accepted
and tolerated. It was a by-product of sharpness. When we moved to
digital we found that the expectation changed. I'm not 100% sure why.
Now a softer feel image [is considered good], and when noise becomes
apparent it's a negative thing, where it wasn't with film. I'm concerned
with my operators now that because noise or grain has become a negative
thing, sometimes they're holding off on sharpening. [Sometimes] I look
at images, and I feel they're not quite sharp enough." That said,
Michaud adds, "I think [the magazine] looks better now, but maybe that's
because my expectations about what looks good have changed."
So much for the idea that film cameras take infinitely better photos
than digital ones. And he's right -- digital cameras do take much
smoother images than film cameras. No grain. You have to add noise to
the image if you want to get it to look as if it were shot on film.
I also took note of the point below.
Fine is delighted to be walking out of the trailer at
3:00am. In the days of film, SI brought two minilab film processors and
almost a dozen assistants and technicians to a Super Bowl. Exposed film
was processed as it came off the field, and all the negatives were cut
and put in slide mounts. As many as five photo editors would edit the
take from the negatives. The selects were then scanned and transmitted
to New York, a process that typically lasted well into the day on
Monday. With digital, the magazine needs about half the personnel and
they're finished hours earlier.
So, better images, half the personnel (and thus, half the costs), and
you get a better product at the end in hours less. And yet I still
manage to see articles about "how digital photography isn't there yet"
and such. Amazing.
Posted by Mike at 08:53
PM
| Comments (0)
Petals Fall
Posted by Mike at 08:43
PM
| Comments (3)
Drones On
The
first steps into war so far only predicted in the sci-fi of Gregory
Benford, et. al.
Posted by Mike at 08:31
PM
| Comments (0)
Closed Minds, Open DVD Players
Interesting little
article about an otherwise-staid female accountant, Karyn Miller,
who works for a porn company. The quote below, though, surprised me the
least.
"Adult entertainment does well along the Bible Belt,"
Miller says.
I've found that often the more vociferously you condemn something in
public, the more you crave it in private; and that this holier-than-thou
pandering now ongoing on in the American public life likely conceals a
deeper sickness and repression in the minds of many.
Posted by Mike at 05:22
PM
| Comments (1)
March 27, 2004
Water Strider Peep Show
I caught these two water striders violating all standards of American
decency by having sex in broad daylight in the park in front of kids
and everyone. What is Michael Powell going do to about it? I demand
fines!
Posted by Mike at 05:46
PM
| Comments (0)
Shave Bush
This
is how corrupt our government has become.
In addition, on Thursday, Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and
Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) introduced a bill that would allow the
Justice Department to pursue civil cases against file sharers, again
making it easier for law enforcement to punish people trading
music over peer-to-peer networks. They dubbed the bill "Protecting
Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act of 2004," or the
Pirate Act.
The bills come at a time when the music and movie industries are
exerting enormous pressure on all branches of government at the federal
and state levels to crack down on P2P content piracy. The industries
also are pushing to portray P2P networks as dens of terrorists, child
pornographers and criminals -- a strategy that would make it more
palatable for politicians to pass laws against products that are very
popular with their constituents.
I cannot believe our government has been so co-opted by business
interests. I don't want to believe it. But businesses are the ones with
the most money, and politicians need that to get elected.
As for the average person, they are more concerned with their next
paycheck and their kids than issues of freedom, and individual rights,
and the limits of government. I'd be surprised if 1 in 10 people I work
with could even tell you what irrevocable rights the First Amendment
enumerates. And this, folks, is how tyranny begins.
On a related note, Rachel riffs
on an article I sent her about the cozy arrangmenet of Clear Channel
and the Bush administration. The attack against Stern was, in my
opinion, very selective.
People are so focused on the (largely-valid) war on militant Islam
(as I am now calling it), while allowing the Bush administration and
large businesses to abscond in the night with many freedoms, unprotested
and unremarked.
"I thought by talking about this for two weeks and
making my case known, guys like Richard Huff would rise up and say all
of our rights are being challenged, but he totally missed the friggin
point," Stern said, referring to a Daily News article in which Huff
chided Stern for whining about his censorship woes.
Censorship is censoship, no matter what. It's unconsitutional, but
the constitution is already in shreds thanks to big businesses and an
uncaring public. I don't think this trend is reversible, because people
are so apathetic, but I will fight anyway.
These issues of the First Amendment and big business infiltrating the
government are far, far more important than any war abroad. The nation
is more likely to fall from within than without, and pulling out the
very foundation, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, will make this
happen sooner rather than later.
Posted by Mike at 01:10
PM
| Comments (1)
Light Concrete
Coolest thing I've seen in a while: Light-transmitting
concrete.
Posted by Mike at 02:53
AM
| Comments (0)
Zero Breathing
Further proof that school
administrators are probably the dumbest form of life on the planet.
Kim McFerrin was in seventh grade when she had her first
asthma attack on the soccer field at her school in Northeast Salem,
Ore.
"I kept sneezing and the more I kept sneezing, the harder it was
getting for me to breathe and it got to the point where I couldn't
breathe at all and I knew my inhaler was across the street and on the
other side of the school," Kim recalled.
Kim's inhaler was locked in the principal's office, because even
though the school knew about her illness, it was against school policy
for her to carry an inhaler with her.
So-called "Zero Tolerance" should be called "Zero Thought." It's a
way for the small-minded and minorly powerful to feel they have some
power, which describes a lot of school administrators all too well.
Any administrator who causes a child to die because access to his or
her asthma (or any other) medication was denied should be criminally
prosecuted for negligent homicide. This is one of the consequences of
the drug war, but the drug war is merely a consequence of something even
larger which I will write about later.
Posted by Mike at 02:37
AM
| Comments (2)
March 26, 2004
The Accidental Tourist
I don't quite understand why the police and motorists in Richmond
leave non-injury accident vehicles sprawled across the middle of the
interstate. Driving in, there were two small wrecks, no injuries, one so
small that I could observe no obvious damage to either vehicle.
Yet, they both blocked half of 95 and 64, respectively, with the
victims and police making no effort to clear them to the shoulder. In
Charlotte, they'd be moved off the road with haste, or there'd be war.
Posted by Mike at 06:44
AM
| Comments (0)
March 25, 2004
More On Missile Defense, Psychologically Approached
One of the advantages of missile defense that doesn't function at
100%, or even at 50%, is that it implants a seed of doubt in the mind of
your enemy. If the enemy doesn't know what you are capable of, but
knows you have the capability to defend yourself on some level, this
gives you an advantage. Concealing the amount of your ability to defend
(i.e., how effective the defense is really) is a good thing in this
scenario.
I am not stating this to advocate the Pentagon deliberately
concealing the effectiveness of any technologies being developed now,
but in the final incarnation, as with any new defense system, it makes
more sense to conceal its exact capabilities, while talking them up in
public. Psychology is just as important in war and defense as the actual
ability to fight itself.
Missile defense is useless against the irrational. This is another
argument I've seen put forth, and it is true. Almost any defense is
useless against the irrational, as the suicide bombers in Israel
demonstrate. However, one of the psychological advantages of missile
defense is that I believe it forces even irrational agents into
attempting more difficult ways of attacking. Instead, say, of Pakistan
developing an ICBM and lobbing a dozen of them our way after it becomes a
rogue Islamic state (which I think is highly likely), they will be
forced to attempt less reliable (but unfortunately less obviously
detectable) delivery systems, such as container ships and things I'd
prefer not to write about here.
The critics of missile defense cite the enemy as being forced to use
other delivery systems as an extreme disadvantage to missile defense. I
don't quite understand this. To me, it's like saying police officers
shouldn't wear bulletproof vests, because then maybe the perp will try
to shoot them in the head instead. And what of it? Just like lobbing
missiles indiscriminately is easier than loading up container ships with
nuclear weapons, shooting someone in the head is a great deal more
difficult than hitting the chest. All defense systems prompt other ways
of attacking. I do not find the argument that we should not attempt
defense because the enemy will find other ways of attacking an
incredibly persuasive one.
While it perhaps made sense to advocate no missile defense during the
Cold War to keep in balance the delicate detente of MAD, this detente
no longer exists. If al Qaeda had ICBMs, they would already be raining
down. It should also be noted, though, that I think one of the primary
reasons Reagan and his team advocated the Star Wars program was not
because they thought it would actually work, but because of the
psychological and monetary impact it would have on the Soviet Union
which worked, by accident or design, by the way.
Missile Defense will never be perfect. The standard of perfection,
which many of its critics either implicitly or explicitly demand, is an
impossible one to meet. Have their cars never broken down, their
computers never crashed?
The test of missile defense lies not only in its actual ability to
defend, but for the psychological impact is has on potential enemies.
Not only is it good for picking missiles out of the air before they rain
down on American cities, it is also good for helping to ensure that
those missiles are never launched, even by irrational agents. I said
earlier that I do not find incredibly persuasive the missile defense
critics article of faith that we should not attempt to defend ourselves
because the enemy would just find other ways of attacking in fact, I
don't find that argument worth much more than a warm bucket of spit.
Posted by Mike at 07:16
AM
| Comments (0)
March 24, 2004
Is This Earth?
There was nothing special done to the above photo in Photoshop other
than the standard color correction for the light source and sharpening,
and that's all.
Posted by Mike at 05:44
AM
| Comments (2)
The Impossible...And Beyond!
U.S.
posts an Aegis-equipped ship in the Sea of Japan.
The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush is
pushing for an initiative to build a worldwide multilayered missile
defense network by combining air-, land- and sea-based systems to
intercept ballistic missiles with various ranges in their ascent,
intermediate and descent phases. It plans to start deploying such
systems this year.
Ballistic missile defense is a difficult subject to discuss
rationally. So many people are opposed to it viscerally because two
people they really despise -- Ronald Reagan and George Bush -- have
pushed the idea.
But most of the objections to missile defense from the critics are
(also) more based on faith than reason, such as the many who claim "it
can never work" or that "it's impossible to shoot down an object moving
at 10,000 mph." Yes, it is very hard to shoot down a ballistic missile,
especially when no one has ever done it before. It was equally hard to
build the first catapult, the first airplane, the first transistor, and
send the first man to the moon.
What's odd to me is that the idea of ballistic missile defense has
become a proxy battleground between the Right and the Left, and
specifically, those who particulary despise Reagan and Bush, and those
who particularly love them. While having my own opinions in this area,
they are irrelevant to the scientific debate of whether it is possible
to succesfully shoot down a long-range ballistic missile.
And of course, the answer is, yet of course it is possible. There is
nothing in the laws of physics that prevent a ballistic missile being
shot down at any point in its trajectory.
There are other questions, such as, How hard is it? Is it worth
doing? What are the costs and benefits? What are the drawback? None of
these questions can be answered in some pointless proxy battle between
political factions.
I think ballisitc missile defense is worth it if it doesn't cost so
much as to bankrupt us. It's only a matter of time before Iran or North
Korea or Pakistan devises a delivery system that can reach the United
States. If Pakistan's government is overthrown and converted to militant
Islam, which I think is likely, we might need that missile shield
rather badly.
As for the technology, we're not there yet. Getting close, but not
close enough. As for the people who argue that because we have not
achieved something yet, and therefore we can never achieve it (which,
strangely enough, seems to be the most common argument against missile
defense), I invite you to read this quote by a former DARPA employee,
those masters of the impossible:
"DARPA [has] funded things that a lot of people thought were
ridiculous, and some that people thought were impossible," said Harvard
University pathologist Donald Ingber, a onetime DARPA contractor.
In fact, you are reading this post on one such "impossibility" right
now -- the Internet itself, a DARPA creation. Missile defense may be too
expensive. But it's not impossible. It may not even be all that hard
with the right technology, just as modeling a storm is impossible
without transistors, but rather easy with them.
In the next post I will discuss the psychological effects of even
imperfect missile defense.
Posted by Mike at 02:13
AM
| Comments (0)
Bad Habits
I really hate the bad habit many programs have lately of installing
items in the right-click context menus with no way to remove the
entries. With as many programs as I run, I don't particularly like my
right-click menu to contain sixty useless entries.
Posted by Mike at 01:17
AM
| Comments (0)
Not Coked Up
Ok. So let's just catalog my brain damage.
About two hours ago, I decided to get a diet cherry Coke out of the
refrigerator. I put it on my computer desk, and then somehow I forgot
about it.
So, because I was too lazy to get up, I was thinking for almost an
hour and a half, Wow, it'd be great if I had something to drink, and, I
really need to get up and get a diet cherry Coke. So, after I overcame
my laziness, I stood up to retrieve one, and saw the one I had gotten
earlier sitting there, mostly warm, unopened.
I just note this for all those people at work on whose computers I
operate, who seem to think I am some kind of dark wizard ninja genius
boy.
And that's my brain damage tale for the day.
Posted by Mike at 01:01
AM
| Comments (6)
March 23, 2004
Salty Sea
This
means there is a pretty high probability that there was once life on
Mars of some sort, and may still be.
Unlike most, I do not believe that robotic landers have much of a
chance of finding life (if it exists) on Mars, as it will probably be
buried in some inobvious, treacherous place, where robots do not have
much of a chance of going, or surviving if they do.
Finding life on Mars will be the biggest scientific discovery in a
good long while. We need to get some boots on the ground for the real
work to begin.
Posted by Mike at 05:22
PM
| Comments (1)
March 22, 2004
Coyote Shivers
The myth
of the sugar high.
Posted by Mike at 06:42
PM
| Comments (0)
Eat Me
Dawn of the Dead
supplanted The Passion of the Christ at the box office this
past weekend, which is strangely appropriate, if you think about it --
especially if you are Catholic.
Posted by Mike at 02:06
AM
| Comments (1)
March 21, 2004
Slam Dunk
Speaking of hot rodding, just how fast do you have to be going to do this,
indeed?
Posted by Mike at 07:54
AM
| Comments (1)
Over My Dead Clocky
If you don't want to read about all things geeky, don't read this
post.
There, you're still reading. Ok. Bob Colwell, formerly an Intel
engineer, does
a real hatchet job on overclocking. I can only conclude that his
bias against overclockers has overwhelmed his sense, and that he
actually did not do that much research, as his stated observations about
the overclocking community and the methodology and reasons for
overclocking are in most cases dead wrong.
Overclocking has been around since the early 1990s, but
it seems to be gaining popularity.
Wrong. Overclocking has been around since the early 1980s, possibly
longer. Old-school overclockers have been replacing the clock generator
crystals on Apples and on 8086s ever since they came out. This is not
something 10 minutes of Google research will find (because it happened
before Google), so you'd have to know some real overclockers to glean
this information.
Well, no and yes. No, because there are very sound
engineering reasons for why the manufacturers set the clock rates the
way they do. The industry also understands something that the
overclocking community seems to easily gloss over a stable system that
runs acceptably fast is a more useful and valuable goal than a system
that runs 10 or 20 percent faster at the expense of random crashes and
unpredictable data losses.
This is a poor argument, and not true for the vast majority of
overclockers, and I have to conclude this is where Mr. Colwell is being
deliberately misleading because, being an ex-Intel engineer, he simply
has to know better than this.
My system is overclocked by a bit more than a full gigahertz. It is
perfectly stable. I can run Prime95 overnight; I can leave it on for
months with zero problems. Why can I do this?
Because, as I am certain Mr. Colwell knows, when Intel makes a batch
of chips, they all come from the same wafer. Yes, my little
2.4Ghz chip came from the very same wafer that produced the (at the
time) fastest chips available, the 3.2Ghz chip. Which is why, with good
cooling, my $160 2.4Ghz will run at same speed (and faster) as an
(again, at the time) $700 3.2Ghz chip.
Colwell has to be deliberately glossing over this fact to make
overclockers look bad, because this is a given in the chip industry.
Most overclockers look for stepping and revision codes on the surface of
chips to make more certain they get ones that were binned down from the
same wafers that produced the fastest chips available...because, aside
from the labeling, they are the very same chips.
Overclockers say, "Instead of buying a new PC, just
overclock the old one."
This is stupid. No overclocker says this. This is not
the point of overclocking. Never was, never will be.
The only premise mentioned in the overclocking book that
makes any sense to me is the idea of staying one or two speed bins
behind the leading microprocessor of the day and then overclocking to
make up the difference. That is not to say I agree with this strategy;
I'm just saying that nothing else makes any sense at all. Trying this
two-bins-back plan might be tempting because the highest performing
processors tend to command the highest average selling prices, not
necessarily in linear proportion to the clock or performance
differences. The two-bins strategy lets you pay less for your CPU, and
you get equivalent system performance if you can get the system stable
(at least to your own satisfaction) at the overclocked rates.
This is what the vast majority, around 99%, are attempting to do. Had
any actual research been done into the real community, he'd know this.
Getting the system stable is easy because, once again, the vast majority
of the time, they are the same chips, just labeled differently.
Most overclockers are interested in spending the least money possible
to get the most stable performance. This is, at least, 95% of the
community, probably more. This is why my dad overclocks, and has since
the 1980s. This is why I overclock. Sure, there are some flashy people
who use LOX to cool their processor down to 300 below, but that's the
infintesimally small minority. Most are just interested in getting the
most bang for their buck, and having a screaming system.
There are some points he makes that are good, but they've been
covered already, and far better, elsewhere: overclockers as the new hot
rodders, the gray market, etc. But even in that area, he is partially
wrong, and deliberately misleading. I have seen internal Intel memos
released that specifically mention trying to eliminate overclocking
because Intel feels that overclockers are "stealing" from them. Glad the
car manufacturers are not usually so asinine.
As for me, well, I'm an engineer, and I live in a
statistical world. I'm going with the odds.
What are the odds of doing some research next time?
Posted by Mike at 06:52
AM
| Comments (0)
March 20, 2004
It Isn't Easy Beeing Me...Or Photographing Bees
Posted by Mike at 05:12
PM
| Comments (2)
Muses
Dawn of the Dead features some of the most clever and
sometimes emotionally-compelling use of music I've seen in any movie of
late. If you don't want any sort of spoilers, don't read below this
paragraph.
The use of Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around" and Richard Cheese's
cover of Disturbed's "Down With the Sickness" are simply brilliant. I'd
recommend the matinee admission price of the movie for those two moments
alone.
As for the movie itself, while not as good as the original, it is
entertaining, amusing, very grisly (It is, after all, a zombie movie.)
and it forces the characters into making real choices. There are no true
heroes in the film, and no true villains -- merely people extremely
confused and terrified by a world overrun by the walking dead.
Recommended on two counts: for the film itself, and for the music.
Posted by Mike at 12:09
PM
| Comments (1)
March 19, 2004
Digital Rant
Michael at 2blowhards.com
writes about digital
cameras, the gist of which is good, but is only correct in
principle, and rarely in application.
You know how digi-photos, no matter how dazzling, often
look a little tight and flat? One of the reasons for this is that their
exposure latitude is narrow. They record info from only a small range
of brightnesses, which means that when you look at a digiphoto, you're
looking at one tight little slice of the visual world; the darks will
tend to fall off into black, and the lights will tend to blow out. My
engineer told me that people in the industry have been on the case and
that helpful new software will soon be on the market.
The previous preferred shooting method of most pros who chose 35mm
was slide film. Slide film has even less contrast ratio than the vast
majority of digital cameras. (The contrast ratio is a measure of the
difference between the brightest white and darkest black.) Pros, because
they are pros, are pretty good at judging whether something will exceed
the contrast ratio of their camera, and adjust for that. Almost every
photo on this site was shot with a digital, and I don't have a problem
with blown highlights.
Just as with any tool, a digital camera is what you make of it. It's
only as good as your understanding of its limitations and strengths.
Some general good advice is that the most common mistake is blown
highlights. Blown highlights are never recoverable because that
information was not recorded by the camera -- it's simply gone. You can
mitigate this most common photographic mistake by underexposing images
where you expect highlights will be blown out.
It's very easy to recover slightly underexposed areas, and even if
you lose some detail to black, it's not nearly so obvious as the glaring
white of blown highlights. In the example below, on the left is the
original photo (albeit converted to black and white for comparison's
sake). Notice the left image is underexposed by most measures by at
least two stops. Why? Because I was shooting in the snow, and capturing
the detail of snow is very nearly impossible without some blown
highlights when shooting normally.
By underexposing the image, and then correcting the exposure in
Photoshop, I was able to make sure that I lost no highlights. In the
image on the right, you can see every grain of snow. The image would not
be nearly as pleasant if it were just a mass of unvariegated white with
a flag stuck in the middle. It would have been massively boring with
blown highlights. If there is any doubt, underexpose every image. You'll
get much better results.
However clear and detailed a digicamera image is, it
still doesn't contain anything like the quantity of info a first-rate
film photograph does. The Kodak guy said that he and his colleagues
think that a digiphoto would need 13-16 million pixels to match a tiptop
film image. He compared the current state of digi-photography to the
early days of music CDs, when the sound they delivered -- while
brilliant and clear -- was also cold and grating. "We're at the stage
now where we're starting to be able to concentrate on making the images
creamier and more appetizing," he said.
I agree with this on principle, but only narrowly, but for most
people, even pros, this is simply not true. If a top pro photographer is
shooting, say, Agfachrome 50 (the lower the ISO number, the higher the
detail) on a perfectly-lit day with top quality lenses (for example,
Canon L glass) and manages to get good quality out of the lab, I might
be able to tell it from a digital image on a good day.
My digital takes far better images than any 35mm I've ever shot with,
and it makes far better images than most pros who shoot 35mm. Most
photographers, even pros, do not routinely shoot Agfa 50, as it is
enormously expensive. Most people do not use top-quality lenses or great
cameras for 35mm shooting.
While it's true in principle that, given an absolutely perfect
camera, lens, roll of film, and lab, an image shot by a top pro would be
only the equal of a 13-16 megapixel digital image, the above set of
conditions rarely comes to a confluence, and for the average shooter,
even the pro, they never coincide.
For most, due to the ability to alter the image in software, and the
avoidance of crappy labs and scanning, the digital image will be far
superior in both quality and affordability. Many of these complaints
were valid even as recently as two years ago -- but they no longer make
that much sense.
Posted by Mike at 05:25
AM
| Comments (2)
Elections And Bombs
Europe will be hit with more terrorism in the near future, I expect,
because they have shown themselves to be a soft target. al Qaeda
believes, rightly or wrongly, that it can swing elections to its favor
with such attacks. Since the U.S. is comparatively hard to attack these
days, and our response would be swift and terrible, while Europe has a
long (and continuing) history of pandering to and ignoring the
transgressions of Islamofascists, there is much more to gain from
attacking European targets these days than American ones.
I think al Qaeda also realizes that attacking America now would be
more likley to re-elect Bush, something that most Islamofascist types
have already declared quite plainly that they do not want to occur. I do
not expect any more attacks in America until after the election, not
before, as some people have augured.
I don't pretend to understand Spanish politics, but the election
there, however you spin it, was a definite victory for al Qaeda.
I understand that Europe is sick of war, sick of terrorism, sick of
bombs and death. Unfortunately, war and death are on their doorstep yet
again, and yet again, most of them are choosing to bury their heads in
the sand and pretend that if they just say the right things, the threat
will go away.
They are more wrong than they know, but they will discover this in
due course, with much bloodshed before the end. I expect Americans will
again be fighting in Europe within 20 or 30 years.
"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without
bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not
too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with
all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival.
"There may be even a worse case. You may have to fight when there is
no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves."
---Winston Churchill.
Posted by Mike at 04:22
AM
| Comments (1)
Honor Marks
If anyone feels the need to buy me anything, I'll take some Honor
Marks art, please. I've seen her paintings in person, and they are
stunning. Looking at them, I understand perfectly why some collectors
will pay millions of dollars for a piece.
If I can ever justify spending a few thousand dollars on a painting,
she is the artist most likely to get my money.
Posted by Mike at 02:57
AM
| Comments (0)
March 18, 2004
Depends On Me
Looking back, if there is a future to gaze back from, scientists will
classify this era as the one of the great extinctions of earth's
history. I am no classical environmentalist, but I know that the
planet's species are in grave peril, that all the fairy stories told
about how the environment is actually getting better are flat wrong. We have
the data to show this.
Can humans survive on an earth with very little biodiversity? Yes, I
think we can. But that, to me, is not the issue. The issue is more an
aesthetic one, an atavistic one. I want to be able to walk
through teeming, mysterious forests where you are not sure exactly what
you will encounter. I want to be able to find strange creatures few have
seen before. I don't want those stange creatures to be a damn
butterfly, for god's sake.
Humans are likely responsible for most of the megafauna extinctions
of the past 50,000 years or so. The end of the Ice Age did not kill the
woolly mammoth and the sabertooth tiger; our ancestors did -- a fact
which was disupted for decades because it seemed so incredibly unlikley.
Now, it seems equally unlikely to many that we stand on the edge of
killing everything strange or interesting which dwells on the planet.
But we are at that precipice, with one foot already stepping into the
void.
Unlike many, I believe that humans are more important than animals or
plants. I believe that the people who claim to use only "cruelty-free"
products are hypocrites. I am deeply suspicious of the motives of most
self-avowed vegetarians. However, I see no reason to cleanse the planet
of all its animal and plants so we humans can spread our settlements and
our waste unfettered. I see no reason to kill so much of what makes
this planet absolutely unique, so far as we know -- the vast swath of
incredibly different creatures that have managed to spread from pole to
pole.
Walking through some moonlit grove on a night far from human sounds, I
want to hear something crashing through the forest. I don't want to
know what it is. I want my heart to race, my blood to burn against my
flesh so my sweat steams into the night, as I stand still as death,
waiting for the unknown danger to pass.
Like I said, my objections to this massive, ongoing extinction is
mostly atavistic, primal, aesthetic, but I can hardly think of a more
worthy objection, given that arguments based on numbers alone rarely
make it very far. There is much beauty in the world. I have been all
over it, and not seen nearly enough. I just want something thrilling and
astonishing left around to see when I am old. Have to use those Depends
for something, after all.
Posted by Mike at 04:59
PM
| Comments (5)
Screaming Shorties
I think all theaters should ban children under 10 unless it's a
G-rated movie. Too many times I've been in theaters with screaming kids.
Why bring a 2-year-old to Gothica? In addition to being scarred
for life, there is the risk of infanticide from the likes of me.
Posted by Mike at 04:18
PM
| Comments (2)
The Ring
I am sure almost everyone who has spent any time on the Internet has
seen this, but this is my site, and I am posting it again because I find
it hysterical, though I disagee with it.
Posted by Mike at 09:20
AM
| Comments (0)
My PhD From Harvard
This
is a bad trend indeed, and not just for those who are prone to lying on
their resumes.
Simple misrepresentation of facts on a resume is passe.
Lying convincingly is in.
As companies, via background searches, try to call the bluff of
less-than-honest job seekers, candidates are resorting to more complex,
sometimes hi-tech means to hoodwink potential employers.
Some applicants are providing employers with toll-free phone numbers,
which are answered by operators of Web sites that not only offer phony
academic degrees, but also "verify" a job seeker's education.
And, in an effort to put more credibility into embellishing their
resume, some candidates are paying hackers to plug their names into a
class list database of a university they claim to have attended.
What's really worrying about this increased level of sophistication
in lying on resumes is that it's like when Barry Bonds takes a big load
of 'roids -- it makes the otherwise honest players in the game feel they
need to lie as well to compete.
I hate to advocate more lawsuits, but I wouldn't be opposed to
employers bringing civil suits to recoup all wages paid to employees
caught lying flagrantly on their resumes.
Posted by Mike at 08:56
AM
| Comments (2)
March 17, 2004
Take This Shob And Jove It
An NPR commentator observed that one of the largest hindrances to job
growth is not machines or Indian wage slaves, but the fact that
Americans work so damn hard. I'd thought about this before, but never
really brought it to the forefront of my mind.
40% of Americans work 50 or more hours a week. We Americans work more
than the workers of any other country in the world by far, Japan
included. We have less vacation time than any other industrialized
country in the world, as well.
Chances are you, or someone where you work, is doing the job of two
or more people before "cost reductions" or "right-sizing" or whatever
euphemism you wish to use.
This is where a lot of the jobs have gone -- they are still right
here, but we have one person doing what could be the job of two or
three, working on little to no vacation.
Imagine if everyone worked only forty hours a week, got three weeks
or a month of vacation a year, as in Europe. Would there be more jobs
then? That's a more complicated question, but probably so.
I am not advocating either way; they both have their advantages. I am
just pointing out that a lot of the jobs people are looking for are
already here -- there's just one person doing a job formerly done by two
or three people.
Posted by Mike at 08:23
PM
| Comments (2)
Numbers On The Dial
I just realized for some reason I still remember my chorus teacher's
phone number from all those years ago in high school. Yes, this post is
totally random. It's amazing what fades and what does not, what holds
its color under the light of closer suns.
Let's just say she and I had a very...different relationship.
Posted by Mike at 12:03
PM
| Comments (2)
March 14, 2004
The Difference
The misunderstanding of science by people I consider otherwise
intelligent is worrying to me. Science is the whole framework upon which
the edifice of our society is built. And the practice of science is the
only thing that will allow humanity to prosper (or even survive) in the
future.
Most of the misunderstanding of science and its practice comes from
abysmal schooling, from teachers who do not understand the subject
matter themselves, from religious indoctrination in the home, from the
simple fact it is simpler to believe things that are demonstrably not
true simply because they are comforting and seem to offer humans a
greater place in the world.
People in general seem to have a great problem discerning fact from
opinion, evidence from belief, and wishful thinking from cold, hard
truth. One of my favorite quotes is, "You're entitled to your own
opinion, but not your own facts." I recognize stepping into the murk of
the science-religion debate is as pointless as tilting at windmills, so I
won't start down that path. Believing insane things like the earth is
only 6,000 years old, that extraterrestrials built the pyramids, that
genetic engineering is evil -- well, no amount of rhetoric or presented
evidence can disprove these articles of faith. These beliefs (and all
the others like them) are insidious brain viruses that infect because
they are comforting and offer hope.
Instead, I will cover two of the more popular misconceptions of
portions of science, which have the virtue of being relatively easy to
show the extreme divergence between what the vast majority of people
understand and believe about them, and what is really true.
I am sure everyone reading this has heard the phrase "Everything is
relative," or as sometimes formulated, "It's all relative." This phrase
usually springs up through some misapplication of Einsteinian physics,
specifically the Special Theory of Relativity. It is used by people who
have no understanding of even the most basic layman's physics, but with
the typical level of understanding of science found in (American)
society in general.
The Special Theory of Relativity says very specific things, which are
absolutely not applicable metaphorically to other, unrelated parts of
the universe. Among them, it asserts that the speed of light is the same
for all observers, regardless of their motion relative to the source of
the light. It also asserts that all parties should observe the same
physical laws when moving at a constant speed. The implications of these
assertions is that lengths and time change in relation to an observer's
frame of reference.
Why bring up such a pedantic point, of people using a metaphorical,
wrong understanding of the Special Theory of Relativity in daily use?
Because it very closely ties in with the misunderstanding of all
other relevant science that people think they "know." If they have the
Special Theory so bungled up, one of the more well-known, well-proved
theories out there, then just imagine the mess they make of things like
evolution and genetics and other such even more well-proven aspects of
science.
To be honest, when I hear someone say "Everything is relative, man," I
have to physically restrain myself from bashing them in the nose.
That's how much it bugs me. Everything is not relative.
This phrase means nothing.
The other less-common but still extremely bothersome misuse I see is
the misapplication of G�del�s Incompleteness Theorem. The Incompleteness
Theorem, like most things in math and science, puts forth very specific
tenets which are not metaphorically applicable elsewhere. The easiest
way to express in English what G�del discovered is "All consistent
axiomatic formulations of a mathematical system have undecidable
propositions."
That's all. He didn't say, as some suppose, that "All math is wrong"
or "All science is wrong" or that somehow God created the universe. None
of these things can be derived from G�del�s findings, because his
findings say nothing, even metaphorically, about such ideas. They imply
nothing about the creation of the universe or the place of god (or gods)
within it. His simple proof shows merely that mathematical systems
cannot be demonstrated to be true internally without relying on external
axioms that cannot be verified from within the system. It may apply
(but I don't think so) to the ability to create artificial
intelligences. And that's all.
Everything else that anyone asserts beyond that is merely
speculative, or more accurately, superstitious, is not based on science
or math, and has very little (if anything) to do with what G�del
actually posited. In other words, most of what people assert about G�del
and what he "proved" is wishful thinking. And this is the general trend
about what people believe about science. Most of it derives from rank
ignorance or (seemingly) deliberate misunderstanding of the posits and
evidence pointing to the veracity of any one theory.
In short, people will believe what they want to believe, despite all
evidence. It's much easier to believe a convenient superstition rather
than the verifiable truth, because it offers comfort, hope, easy
understanding and a bigger place for those who do not know how to create
their own place.
But I hope by discussing two of the most common, everyday
misapplications of scientific knowledge, that I can make some people
aware of the difference between what science actually says, and what
they think it says, and how very well-defined scientific statements in
fact are.
I doubt this missive will make anyone examine their own wishful
thinking, but perhaps it will plant a seed in a mind or two that will
prosper into rationality over the years. That's all I can hope for.
Posted by Mike at 11:28
AM
| Comments (4)
March 13, 2004
Shooting Flares
Beijing warns
Hong Kong that it could declare a "state of emergency" to combat civil
upheaval. This is a story largely being ignored in the United States
because it hasn't flared up in an obvious way yet.
Posted by Mike at 11:24
PM
| Comments (0)
Automata
News
on the subject of automation.
The machine, which can pick up pieces of meat and place
them on trays at the rate of 70-100 a minute, is being heralded as the
latest weapon for food companies to meet the cost and quality demands of
the supermarkets.
It will replace the people doing the job now, but as Terry Starkey,
the marketing consultant for the company points out, "nobody wants to
work in meat processing plants."
Posted by Mike at 11:00
AM
| Comments (0)
No Responsibility
What's sad is that even
12% of the people in this poll think the "food industry" is to
blame for their being lardasses.
Posted by Mike at 10:03
AM
| Comments (0)
March 12, 2004
You, Robot
In my previous entry, I cited a couple of examples of automation, one
of which most people were likely unaware, to illustrate how the primary
cause of job destruction is in fact not (yet) offshoring of labor.
Every facet of the economy is feeling the effects of automation --
farms that use tractors piloted by computer, factories that are almost
completely robotic from input to output. Also, there are, of course
aspects of automation that almost no one considers; for example, the
Internet, WANs, LANs, cellphones, and on and on. And people think
computers are everywhere now -- just wait 20 years. We've already done
most of the easy tasks of automation -- but as our computers get faster
and ever-smarter, as the science and practice of robotics advances, and
as the process of even automation itself is automated, what we've done
in the last 50 years will be seen as merely a quaint forerunner to a
nearly-laborless society.
The primary drive of all this automation is laziness at the start,
and profit at the end. Laziness because humans will tirelessly work to
avoid having to do so, thus creating amazing things like robotic
assembly lines and driver-less tractors. And profit -- well, that's
obvious.
The eventual, almost-inevitable end-result (as I see it, anyway) of
all this automation and computerization is that most physical
labor-intensive and a large part of even the more intellectual jobs will
simply disappear. They will not be offshored. No one in Bangalore or
Beijing will be doing them, instead. They simply will not exist. The
movement of jobs to those cheaper places is merely the first step
towards them not existing at all.
Before you think, Oh, this is something my kids or their kids will
have to worry about, I don't care -- let me make it clear that, unless
you are 60 years old, you do have to worry about this, because this
is all happening right now. Like most true revolutions, it is a
quiet one. It won't be recognized fully nor understood at all until
after the curtain of inevitability closes. Due to the nature of
accelerating returns, this process won't encompass even the
relatively-short 200 or so years of the Industrial Revolution. Though
this changeover to what I am calling the Star Trek economy began
essentially in 1945 with the creation of the first computers, it did not
really find its feet until the mainstreaming of the Internet ca. 1994.
Historians looking back on our era 5,000 years hence will probably
cite the date 2000 (due to it being a nice round number) as the
beginning of the fourth startlingly clear delineation of human history.
I'll leave it as a challenge to my readers to figure out (it's easy) the
other three.
But what about this nearly-laborless society?
A bit earlier in my post, I referred to a "Star Trek" economy. This
is the possible positive result of the economy we are building now. It
is by no means an inevitable result, and depending on my mood, sometimes
I feel it is wholly unlikely.
For a long time now, the economy has relied on the "creative
destruction" of jobs -- as old jobs, such as buggy manufacturer,
blacksmith, etc., are destroyed others such as assembly plant worker,
computer technician, etc. are created to replace them. (This is too
teleological, but oh well.) It is my contention, and against most of the
economic establishment, that this process of creative destruction will
soon be at an end. The whole shape of the landscape is changing, and
this old pattern is only good for old cloth of thought about the
economy.
Old methods of thinking about the economy will no longer work in this
automated future. In fact, they will fail spectacularly.
The question boils down to, and restricting it to the U.S. right now,
what do you do in a society with 350 million people and only 20 million
jobs? In the past, this would be unworkable. Such a nation would be a
3rd-World nation and screamingly poor. But not when you throw in the
effects of automation and a computerized economy, this need not be so.
It could be the richest nation on earth, with much leisure time and an
extremely comfortable life for everyone.
In an era in which most labor and even thought is automated, in which
most people do not have jobs (because they do not exist), the only way
to ensure the viability of the society is to provide, for free, the
basic needs and even pleasures at a certain (comparative level) to those
citizens who cannot find work. Anyone who knows me knows I am extremely
capitalistic, but this economic change has nothing to do with
capitalism. If the amortized cost of producing basic goods is
essentially zero due to automation, there is no other alternative. A
capitalist economy simply cannot operate where few have jobs, and the
cost of producing things most people want is essentially nothing. The
Star Trek economy isn't some neo-Marxist choice, just a logical
necessity.
Well, I said there was no alternative -- but there is, and it can be
found in much dystopic science fiction -- the city-state corporations,
the 10 or 20 ultra-rich amongst the poor billions in thrall to their
technological masters living much like a serf in a fiefdom. This is
one possible (even probable) future.
Perhaps my timeline is skewed, or parts of my logic are flawed, but
the changes being wrought by the forces of automation (and offshoring,
which is just another form of automation looked at on a purely cost
level) will be the prime driving forces of the 21st century. The
so-called War on Terror will merely be a side note in the history books,
if mentioned at all.
The choices we make now, and in the very near future, will impact the
world for generations. And the strange and scary and thrilling part of
it all is that the world is changing so quickly, that the choices we
make are not rational, at least not yet, but based solely on what we
feel about the future. In a very real sense, we are shaping the future
day by day, and these shapes will serve as an impression for what is
built for a long time hence.
Posted by Mike at 06:14
AM
| Comments (4)
March 11, 2004
Future Is Now
Well, with this
poll, it's easy to see what most Americans are worried about. Not
Iraq, no the election, and not the stock market. What concerns them most
-- 84% of them in this admittedly unscientific poll -- is jobs.
We stand now on the rising crest of two great waves that will shape
the future for decades, and wash away much that was built before. One is
the increasing automation of the workplace by both robots and
ever-more-intelligent expert systems and learning software. The other is
the Internet, likely to be looked back on as the greatest invention of
the millennium just passed, that is forcing a global marketplace for
ideas and innovations that steamships and telegraphs and satellite
signals could only dimly presage.
There is no way to tell where this will all lead. We stand on the
edge now of a nearly-Vingeian singularity, the future unclear even to
those used to prognosticating it. Anyone who claims to know the shape of
the world in 30 years after these two great waves crest and crash onto
the shore is lying or self-deluded.
But here's what I think. I think almost everyone in the future will
be a contractor. Getting "hired on" at some company for an unknown,
indefinite length of time will seem as ridiculous as does indentured
servitude seems to us now. I do believe that a rising tide lifts all
ships -- the trend of offshoring and outsourcing if handled correctly
can lead to greater prosperity for both nations, not just for the one
draining jobs from the other.
Handled incorrectly, though -- well, it would mean economic doom for
the U.S., as fewer and fewer jobs go to more people. What many
politicians seem not to understand is that protecting jobs is such a
short-term gain, and when those companies can no longer compete in the
global marketplace, there is nothing that can protect those jobs when
the companies in question go belly-up. To me, it seems better to have a
few hundred people employed here, and a huge call center in Bangalore,
rather than no one employed at all anywhere by said company due to
protectionism.
The other great risk is automation. It's inevitable, and it's coming
soon. With fast food restaurants experimenting with automated food
lines, and even with my own company successfully implementing automated
valuation models for homes (which means appraisers, once the staple of
home sales, are no longer needed), it's already here. It's not
some figment of the future -- the main reason Americans can't find jobs
is not offshoring. That's yet a bugaboo. The real reason is that
companies are using computers to do much more with much less.
And that -- not offshoring of jobs -- is what I see as the real
danger. And that is what I will talk about in the next entry.
Posted by Mike at 09:24
AM
| Comments (1)
March 10, 2004
Slur
For all your racial slur needs, be sure to consult the ever-handy racial
slur database.
Posted by Mike at 01:55
PM
| Comments (3)
No Looting
Many people deplore
the actions taken in this video (right click, save as....). I feel
neutral about the video, because horrible things happen in war, and
compared to many of the things that happen, a looter's car being
destroyed is quite mild. I also feel neutral about it because many of
the same people who, a few short months ago, were asserting things like,
"The U.S. is not doing enough to stop the looters. Can't we shoot some
of them to serve as an example?" are now insisting how horribly wrong
are the actions depicted in the video.
Can't have it both ways. But there is often a sharp disconnect from
what one can advocate on paper and in words, and what one can stomach
depicted on video, or doing one's self. It's why many of the fiercely
anti-war folks want every dead body (friendly or enemy) they can find
paraded on national TV. They recognize without realizing it that
Americans are at heart a good people, and some of them will quail even
at unavoidable suffering.
Mainly, I just found it amusing that many of the same people in the
forum I frequent who were advocating shooting looters dead a few months
ago, now decry this as the most horrible thing the United States has
ever done.
Posted by Mike at 08:47
AM
| Comments (1)
March 09, 2004
Whack Me
I found my first Googlewhack today. Can't list it here, because it
will be indexed and then will no longer be a whack.
Posted by Mike at 05:09
PM
| Comments (1)
Bot No Got
Here's
a strange thing. As far as I can tell, it's a fake site set up for
e-mail collector bots.
Posted by Mike at 04:52
PM
| Comments (1)
Paypal Me That 150G
Another good
thing New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer had his hands in.
Spitzer is a real credit to lawyers everyhwere, who sorely need some
(but deserve little) -- going up against Paypal, one of the most
deceptive corporations I'm aware of. I only wish the fine had been
greater.
Posted by Mike at 03:39
PM
| Comments (0)
Trilobitten
If you can't afford
real trilobite fossils, buy the
vacuum cleaner instead. Or, you could just make some
trilobite cookies.
Posted by Mike at 06:45
AM
| Comments (1)
March 07, 2004
Oops
An amusing little blooper from CNet above (highlighted in blue).
Calling SCO a "linux company" is like calling the DEA a "drug cartel."
That's funny.
Posted by Mike at 01:12
PM
| Comments (0)
Cry
Favorite line from 24: "If you could read what's in my eyes,
you'd crawl under a rock and cry."
Posted by Mike at 11:33
AM
| Comments (0)
Massive SCOjones
When the whole IBM-SCO fiasco started, and during the more general
anti-Linux offensive that followed, I speculated that Microsoft was
behind the whole thing. Looks like I
was right.
No real surprise there, as if I were Microsoft, this is exactly the
strategy I would be undertaking -- I would've just hidden the money
better.
Posted by Mike at 08:23
AM
| Comments (0)
March 06, 2004
Shaftware
Slashdot
piece about adware and spyware. The article to which they link
mentions that 1 in 20 computers are infected by spyware/adware.
This number is extremely, ridiculously low. From my personal
experience, about five out of six personal computers and about half of
workplace machines are infected with this malicious software. People
just madly click on whatever pop-up windows spring up, no matter how
many times they have been warned against. At work, I remove
spyware/adware from the same users' computers over and over again.
The solution to this is not user education, because the users do not
want to be educated. I am not sure there is a viable solution, really.
Posted by Mike at 01:10
PM
| Comments (4)
Presaging A Future
This
looks like it might be good. Never make it to Charlotte on the big
screen, though, alas.
Posted by Mike at 11:16
AM
| Comments (0)
March 05, 2004
Not Likely
If the woman in this
photo was truly supposed to be masturbating, she has very poor
technique.
Posted by Mike at 02:24
AM
| Comments (0)
March 04, 2004
Soda
Since I stopped drinking any non-diet soda, I have lost 13 pounds. I
weighed 180 pounds exactly before; now I weigh 167. I intend to get down
to 160.
Posted by Mike at 03:27
AM
| Comments (0)
Parade Rest
Most of the commonly-relied-on telltale body language signs of lying
are unreliable.
No shock there.
3. Putting your hands behind your back is a power
gesture. For years presentation coaches have taught people to put their
hands behind their backs in what is sometimes called the "Prince
Charles" stance, in the mistaken belief that the heir to the British
throne is a good model for strong body language. Since he's a prince,
the thinking goes, and he stands that way a lot, it must be powerful.
Actually, the research shows that most people find the gesture
untrustworthy if we can't see what your hands are doing, we're
suspicious. So if your goal is to increase trust in any given situation,
don't put your hands behind your back.
A similar standing position is known as "parade rest' in the
military, and standing in that position shows subservience or deference
to another of higher rank. The deeper reason for this is that putting
your hands behind your back leaves you defenseless. It doesn't, in most
people's minds, exhibit strength.
Posted by Mike at 12:51
AM
| Comments (0)
March 03, 2004
REM
I had a dream last night that (in dream time) lasted approximately
four hours. It was so long that even after I changed my sleeping
location (couch to bed), the dream resumed, like a movie on pause.
It was my interpretation of Terminator. I wasn't John Conner or
anyone like that -- just some random soldier in the battle against the
machines, who was there when it all started.
My most distinct memory is being in the building the machines first
took over, and watching them use energy weapons to set the building
aflame. My compatriots made the decision to jump down the elevator shaft
to escape the approaching flames, but I knew it was too far and they
would not live. They did not. I watched their bodies pile up on the top
of the elevator car as I felt my hair singe.
I knew the expanding air inside the building would blow out the
windows momentarily. They were too thick for me to break, but I could
hear them crackling and bowing. I waited for them to give as my hair
burned. The drop to the ground was not so far, and softer. The windows
exploded outward, and I jumped.
Much more to this dream, but I have not all night. The leader of our
group was Julie Watson. Strange dream.
Posted by Mike at 12:42
AM
| Comments (0)
Heat Death
I'm surprised no one has made a "heat bomb" virus yet -- a virus that
utilized 100% CPU and taxed the memory to cause malfunction. Since most
OEM PCs are not adequately cooled, especially after sitting collecting
dust for two or three years, a virus that used 100% CPU time for more
than 20 or 30 minutes would cause malfunctions, crashes, and perhaps
even permanent death. Interesting idea.
Posted by Mike at 12:28
AM
| Comments (1)
March 02, 2004
Dresden
The
real story behind the bombing of Dresden.
I was always suspicious of the claims that Dresden was bombed for no
reason other than pure revenge, and this confirms what I suspected. And
in total war, as the Germans were waging, bombing any city of any
importance makes sense.
Read for yourself. It's a good article.
Posted by Mike at 12:40
PM
| Comments (0)
images