Special Interest Group on CRAP

Everyone probably gets these emails telling you that you have a long lost uncle who was an official in Africa who left you $21 million, and if you’d just send $1,000 to them then they will wire you the money. They are called 419 scams. About once a year I also get an airmail letter from Africa with one of these scams, trying to get me to send them information for them. For the last four years I have also been getting phone calls to my office from these clowns, trying to get me to yield to temptation and help them steal from me. This last week I got three of these calls, all from country code 233 indicating Ghana. It’s getting more and more annoying (though perhaps the solution is simply to disconnect my phone).

If you try to shop on craigslist, you regularly come across semi-obvious scams, and there are even more scams that are fairly well concealed. I am now getting several spammers a day following me on twitter, and my spam folder on my personal email account typically has 5,000 spam messages in it (I never look at them).

All of this is a reminder that a lot of people on this planet try to make their living from fraud and other criminal activities. Technology has become an enabler for these scams, and the most chilling offender in my mind is voice over IP, which makes phone calls from countries like Ghana essentially free. People who are naive or lonely or otherwise vulnerable (particularly senior citizens) are going to fall victims to this criminality. It used to be that if you wanted to avoid crime, you could mostly do this by sequestering yourself in a civil part of the world. The Internet is making that more difficult.

When I first signed up for facebook, it was obvious to me that it was a walled garden taken from the same mold as AOL or Prodigy. Facebook allows you to import things to facebook, but they never allow data to escape except to humans. As an example, I’m writing this on my blog, but it will soon be copied to Facebook with relatively little trace of how to find my complete blog site of sigcrap.org. The reason for this is obvious - they want the advertising dollars that can come from human attention.

So long as people knowingly turn over data to facebook, I see no problem with it. We should be clear however that Facebook is not an open platform, and Facebook is not likely to encompass every activity you might want to have.

Today I got spammed from ACM. There were several annoying things about it:

1. The fact that they use direct mail marketing in the first place. The email address they used is the one I used to register for SIGIR 2006, so at least they are using the “existing business relationship” loophole.
2. They are still a dead tree society, mailing the CACM to all members. No matter what you think of this periodical, it’s silly for ACM to cling to the old publishing model like grim death.
3. The message is cleverly worded to avoid discussion about the ACM digital library. In fact, ACM membership does not include access to the ACM digital library, so apparently they think membership is orthogonal to science. ACM members still have to pay $5 per article to download from there (nonmembers pay $10). If ACM membership included this instead of the CACM, then I would consider joining.
4. The organization is now using preferential pricing. To quote:
   

   Join ACM today and receive a 15% discount plus an ACM Free World Clock Calculator!

   They included a link “just for me”. What justification is there for me to be offered a lower price than a new PhD in CS? And WTF is ACM doing giving away World Clock Calculators? Did they buy too many of those in the 80s? Do they offer toasters next month?

Can you imagine a world with an ACM that organized as a professional society? As a start, I want them to do the following:

1. put science first by supporting open access to publications (like Usenix)
2. treat their members on an equal footing without preferential pricing
3. didn’t waste resources on useless trinkets
4. didn’t use email to spam potential “customers” (I can’t really call them “members”).

They invited me to “… consider how valuable an ACM membership and Communications of the ACM magazine can be to your career”. I have. They are CRAP.

I find myself fascinated by the California budget process. Much of the stuff I have read about blame for the crisis makes no sense at all to me, and has made me even more cynical about the state legislature. The shortfall in revenue this year amounts to about 10% of revenue. That doesn’t seem so complicated - simply apply a fairly regular cut across all departments. Some departments are experiencing increased true demand for services (notably unemployment insurance), so you’ll have to cut some departments more than 10% - say 15%. Some departments are legally protected against cuts, such as proposition 98. The legislature can repeal it with a 2/3 vote, but they are of course completely incapable of compromise so that won’t happen. Cutting 10% will hurt like hell for all departments, but private industry goes through such cycles regularly, and they almost always result in a stronger organization.

Who can tell me that there is a state department that would not benefit from cutting lose the bottom 10% of performers among their employees?

Also, one thing that companies do in tight times is to offer incentives to reduce expenses in the short term, trading them for long term obligations. An obvious way to do that is to offer retirement incentives to people, offering them a larger pension paid in outyears based on their agreement to retire NOW.

I’m sure the process is complicated, but it has become a lot easier for me lately. I’m voting out any incumbents in the state legislature when the next election rolls around. Their inability to compromise leaves no choice.

Correction: today the governor gave a speech in which he says the revenue shortfall amounts to 27% decrease from last year. That makes the severity of the cuts much more severe, but doesn’t change anything else about the strategy to solve it.

Part of the recent discussion about the demise of Chrysler and GM has centered on their dealer network. One report stated that Chrysler has more than 3100 dealers, whereas Toyota has only 1200 dealers. Since Toyota sells far more cars, you’d think that Chrysler needs to cut their dealer network.

But that kind of begs the question. Why do car manufacturers need *any* dealers? In this day of supply chain management, internet shopping, and competitive business, why sell cars through retail outlets at all? Why not have a small number of “drive stations” where people can drive a car, and then let people customize their car with an online web site, and purchase their car online, having it delivered directly to them? Some people might balk at the thought, but I’ve now bought two cars without seeing them first, and the process is not as bad as people imagine - particularly for new cars.

If they really want to energize their business, they should think about shitcanning their entire dealer network. Has anyone actually had a good experience with a car dealer anyway?

oh yeah - they also need to hire engineers who can design competitive cars. Almost forgot about that. Otherwise sayonara.

I’d like to know what the hell happened to the “do not call” list. Why are assholes always calling me trying to get me to extend my warranty? Actually I know - they are slimy scammers who will sell you absolutely anything you are willing to pay money for. Still, why do we have these laws with holes big enough to drive a truck through?

And here’s another question - what good is it to have such a fine military if we can’t call in an airstrike on these assholes?

And now that Guantanamo is empty, what percentage of Americans do you think would vote yes about putting telemarketers there?

OK I feel better now. But I’d still feel better with my fingers wrapped around the throat of one of those people.

One of the most overlooked achievements by man was the landing on the surface of Venus in 1975 by the Venera 9 lander. The conditions on Venus are incredibly harsh, with a surface temperature of 485 degrees. It is still amazing that a spacecraft landed there and lasted for 53 minutes, in time to send back the most amazing picture that I can remember seeing.

It’s things like this that should inspire kids to venture forth in science. We still have a lot to learn!

I’ve been wondering whether I should just let the blog die, or whether I should revive it. We all look for outlets for our writings, but blogs seem pretty dead to me lately. Maybe some day…

Now that the federal government set the precedent of giving out money to companies that made bad decisions in their business processes, it seems that the lineup for handouts is getting quite lengthy. The latest companies to come through rattling a tin cup are GM, Ford, and Chrysler. While I am very concerned about the impact to the economy if these companies go under, I am becoming a strong believer in the statement that the bankruptcy process is designed for them. During my lifetime the US auto industry has repeatedly faced problems in alignments of their business, and they continue to have difficulty in adapting to a changing world. There is something wrong with a company that refuses to learn from their past mistakes. Giving them money as a loan at this point is like giving a fix to a heroin addict. I say let them go under, and when they emerge from this they will be a much stronger company that realizes that they have to learn to adapt like the rest of us. The demand for automobiles has recently taken a huge dive, but that means there will be increased demand for maintenance of older vehicles. Why aren’t they adapting to that market instead of whining about how they can’t continue to make money doing the same thing they have done for fifty years?

Even though Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, BMW, and Honda are all experiencing the same downturn in the economy, I haven’t noticed them coming out to ask for bailout money. Instead of pathetically rattling a tin cup, their management is working toward managing their business, which includes temporary closures of manufacturing plants, adjustments to product lineups, incentives to move vehicles in the marketplace, and other adjustments. Honda has even reported a plan to increase production on their Fit model in order to meet a shortfall of supply.

I would wish the “big three” the best of luck, and send them on their way. Being the biggest isn’t guaranteed, and they need to find a way to reinvent themselves or go the way of the buggy whip manufacturers.

For a few months I’ve been carrying one of the new android phones. This phone was provided to be by my employer for development, but it’s essentially the same as the G1 from T-Mobile.

Several people have asked me for my impressions about the phone, and naturally you should be suspicious of my opinions since my employer has a vested interest in the success of android. Here are a few observations:

• The phone hardware itself is pretty nice. I really really like the idea of a qwerty keyboard, because while I would never consider this as a primary computer, it’s very important to occasionally be able to enter data. I found the iPhone virtual keyboard to be almost useless for this in the few minutes that I used it.
• The software environment is just what I was hoping for, though it’s a bit immature so far. I really like the variety of applications that are available, and the ability to tailor it to my taste. I’ve also been writing code for android, and from a software developer’s perspective it’s great. I started trying to write code for android a year ago, and at the time it wasn’t ready. Now it’s relatively easy to write applications, and there is a rich library of utilities to make this easy.
• The service from T-Mobile is surprisingly good in my area (silicon valley) and the 3G service makes for snappy and useful performance. During my 30 minute commute, my AT&T phone used to drop calls several times during the drive home, but the T-Mobile service almost never drops calls during this route. Service coverage is something that needs to be judged for each user, but luckily T-Mobile has a good web site to scope out your most important locations.

So I guess the question is - would I buy a G1 if I hadn’t been given this phone by my employer? The sad truth is that I would not. The reason has nothing to do with the hardware or the software or the service itself. It has to do with terms of sale. I would be quite willing to pay $400 for the piece of hardware (or maybe $500), but I am not willing to change my carrier, and I am not willing to pay the cost of a monthly data plan. You might think this is weird, since most of the functionality of the phone is dependent upon having an internet connection. I claim that 98% of my usage of the data plan would be covered by the WiFi coverage at work, in hotels, and in my home. I don’t want to pay $25 per month for something that I don’t need.

In the past, I have used internet service occasionally for things like google maps on my personal phone in the past, but AT&T would bill me by the kilobyte and that was fine with me. I ended up using this feature about twice a year at a total cost of $10 per year, which seemed like a reasonable tradeoff. I know that lots of people would say that “I’m missing out” by not wanting to have constant internet connectivity available to me at all times, but I have yet to see enough value in my life for a constant cost of $25/month.

I’m sure that T-Mobile and HTC came to the conclusion that this is the way to maximize their revenue, and eventually I expect to be able to find a nice phone that isn’t tied to a long term contract. Until that happens, I’ll be happy to wait. This seems to be a trend with some pieces of hardware (the other notable examples are Digital Video Recorders, which are only available if purchased with a monthly plan). I say no thanks.