Special Interest Group on CRAP

During my lifetime, there have been several major paradigm shifts in computing.

• The personal computer
• Graphical user interfaces (mouse and windowing)
• The Internet
• The World Wide Web
• Laptops (they started out as computers called “luggables”)
• 802.11 wireless networking

Each of these brought tremendous change to the ways that we think about computing. One of the reasons why I started working on Android is because I see mobile computing as being as big a paradigm shift as any of the previous ones. We have a ways to go in this, held back in large part because of the cellular providers, who still have their heads wedged where the sun does not shine. It’s still going to be a huge change on how we interact with computers.

It’s always sad news when someone you know dies. Regrettably, Sam Roweis died last night, apparently by taking his own life. It is always difficult to comprehend the situation that could lead to this, and my heart goes out to his family and friends. I had the pleasure of working with Sam on the Google Listen project, and he was always a wonderful guy to talk to. He shall be missed from this earth, but not forgotten.

It’s odd that Facebook was blocking post of a link to this. For the humor impaired, this should be recognized as satire.

I went back to look at the spam that is sent out by ACM trying to get me to buy a membership. It turns out that it is sent out on the 11th of each month, right on schedule. I guess that means there is a cron job someplace that is firing off these things. I wonder if any of the mechanism design people have analyzed the data from this spam to see how effective it is. What metrics would you use to judge effectiveness, given that it continues to build up long-standing animosity among a few people like me?

This is a supposedly reputable “scientific society” whose sole purpose seems to be to lock up publications behind a pay firewall and spam potential members to encourage them to join. These clowns even throw in a “Free World Clock Calculator”. Is that the kind of professional society you want to belong to?

Here is the latest spam. I am posting it in the hope that it will encourage spammers to spam them.

We have an important chance for you to join ACM, including a world clock calculator, if you respond at:

https://campus.acm.org/public/qjstuwithbook/joinacm2.cfm?client_no=%27%2B%3C%27%2FPL7%2B3%20%20%20%0A&promo=PSAP28SVL

As a member of ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, you will have access to a host of career-enhancing benefits including the newly re-launched “Communications of the ACM” magazine, the most trusted source on advanced computing.

Essential reasons to read “Communications” each and every month:

* News, analysis and insights from the computing world’s leading authorities on the cutting edge of technology
* Balanced and accessible coverage
* Broad and in-depth technical analysis
* Serious and insightful commentary
* Access to an active global community of computing professionals
* Full, real-time, website access to additional content, tools and resources

ACM members are raving about the fully redesigned publication:

“A must-read from cover to cover”
“More articles relevant to my work and interests”
“A top scientific journal”
“Quality technical content”
“More engaging”
“An exciting layout”
“A vastly better magazine”

Learn more about all of the additional benefits of ACM membership, including access to thousands of online books and courses, by visiting:

https://campus.acm.org/public/qjstuwithbook/joinacm2.cfm?client_no=%27%2B%3C%27%2FPL7%2B3%20%20%20%0A&promo=PSAP28SVL

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

I hope you will take a moment to consider how valuable an ACM membership and “Communications of the ACM” magazine can be to your career!

Sincerely,
Lillian Israel
Director of Membership
ACM
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ACM Member Services Department
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Just think if the Internet had been designed by the telephone companies:

1. We would have four different internets, with gateways that restricted what could flow through them.
2. You would have to buy your computer from your ISP, and you couldn’t switch ISPs and keep the same computer unless the remainder when you divided the MAC address by four was equal to the remainder when you divided the third octet of your IP address by four. (did you get that?)
3. Packets between ISPs would be billed at the rate of $125/megabyte if they carried email.

I’m hoping to see some of this change during my lifetime.

The impending demise of geocities.com reminded me of an event from 2004. In that year a former colleague named Larry Stockmeyer died from pancreatic cancer. I remember thinking at the time that those of us who knew him would always have our memories to appreciate his humanity and his intelligence. Other computer scientists need to rely upon the scholarly literature to preserve his scientific legacy. In spite of its many failings, the scholarly process still functions pretty well at this.

As science has evolved, we have adopted an informal tradition of putting our research papers on the web, often using free services to do so (e.g., our employer). It’s good to see that Larry’s old page on www.almaden.ibm.com is still around, but Larry also put many of his papers up on a geocities site as well. I remember at the time he died that his geocities page probably wouldn’t last forever, so I quietly made a copy of it on my own site, just to preserve his legacy a bit longer. Now that geocities is finally going away, it reminds me that science (particularly theoretical work) is destined to outlive almost all technology, and it is only through a community of scientists that we will properly curate our work. As my small part of it, I’ve exposed Larry’s original home page on the cstheory.com site.

Followup: the query [site:geocities.com "theoretical computer science"] on google reveals that there are quite a few pages on geocities that are concerned with theoretical computer science. I doubt that many of them are very important, but only history gets to decide what is important in science.

A few years ago, my daughter became suddenly ill with abdominal pain and I had to take her to a doctor. I have relatively good health insurance through my employer (since I’m American that is my only viable option). The rules of the plan were:

1. Go to primary care physician
2. If primary care physician refers you to an in-network specialist, then it will be covered.

In case of a true emergency (e.g., spurting blood), you can bypass this procedure, but the case should be clear cut.

Seems simple enough to me, and it’s a means for insurance companies to control costs by using a lower-cost physician to screen problems in a medically competent manner. I followed the rules, and the primary care physician said that he strongly suspected appendicitis and referred her to a nearby in-network surgeon to do further screening and possible surgery. He had her admitted to the hospital across the parking lot from his office, where she spent 24 hours but was ultimately released (she turned out not to have appendicitis).

The surgeon was probably annoyed by this since he didn’t get to charge his big fee for the surgery, and when he issued his bill a month later, it was for about $800 more than what the insurance+deductible would cover. When I called the insurance company, I was told that his contract with the insurance provider did not allow him to charge more, and that his acceptance of the referral constituted an agreement to whatever the insurance company would pay. I therefore refused to pay the excess to the doctor.

The surgeon’s office continued to send us bills for the excess charges, and after a couple of months started making constant phone calls to my home. I stood my ground and refused to pay, explaining it to the office manager that they were in breach of a contract that gave them the referral. The surgeon’s staff eventually referred it to a collection agency, causing it to show up on my credit reports. I stuck to my guns and refused to pay, and eventually they simply stopped trying to collect.

The dynamics of the marketplace were apparent to me at the time. The doctor wants as much money as he can get, but he can’t get patients without agreeing with an insurance company to get new customers. The insurance company doesn’t have any incentive to help me enforce the contract, and I’m not a party to that contract. They simply ignored the problem. I had no way to shop for a doctor, given that my daughter was in intense pain and might have a serious condition. The marketplace basically failed to exercise any cost controls, and I lay the blame squarely at the feet of the insurance company. They offered me no assistance in enforcing their contract with the doctor, and they took no punitive action against the doctor since the following year he was still listed as an in-network doctor. They behaved rationally, because they had no incentive to do so, either through regulation or through market forces.

So for those of you who tell me the marketplace works to control health care costs, please explain what market mechanism would work here. I concluded at the time that insurance companies need more stringent regulations, and I still believe it. Either that or a public option.

Today I got a piece of spam sent to the email address that was only used for communication with allofmp3.com. In case you have forgotten, that was a shady music seller who sold MP3 music files by the megabyte, but was eventually shut down through pressure by the US trade representative. The spam had a PDF file attachment, which means that either they use PDF to evade filters or else the PDF is a potential virus.

Anyone out there interested in dissecting a potentially rogue PDF file?

Today I got another spam from ACM, plus a spam from “World Scientific Publishing” that tries to look like they are acting on behalf of Purdue University. I have appended the one from World Scientific Publishers in the hopes that it will shame them into avoiding spam in the future. Why would Purdue University consent to such behavior?

Dear friend,

Thank you and regards,
Jason Lim
Marketing Executive
World Scientific Publishing Co Pte Ltd
5 Toh Tuck Link
Singapore 596224
Tel. +65 6466 5775 ext. 247
Fax. +65 6467 7667
Email: cjlim@wspc.com