Hasta La (Alta) Vista

As you may have seen on the net or on the last page of the business section, Yahoo! is shutting down some of their less-popular services, one of which is the Alta Vista search engine.  Yes kids, there was a time before Google, and in that time there were a number of competing search engines, and Alta Vista was one of the most popular.

Alta Vista was started by Digital Equipment to show of some of their new technology.  Back then, Digital was still a major player in the computer biz, while Yahoo was a brash new upstart.  So at the time I worried that this was another example of an established company throwing money at a project to run a new competitor out of business (this was around the same time Microsoft was going after Netscape) and it seemed there was no hope for new tech firms.

With hindsight, all parts of that worry seem quite silly.  Yahoo stayed in in business, Digital faded away, Yahoo and Alta Vista were both eclipsed by an even younger contender, and Microsoft found they couldn't muscle every contender out of business.  So let that be a lesson on how the mighty fall, and how fast they fall in technology.

And if you're wondering about other search engines...

• Lycos - still around; bonus marks for having a link to Tripod
• Excite - still going, though the site throws a hissyfit if you don't have cookies enabled.
• Webcrawler - still there
• Hotbot - still there, with a robot character based on the original logo
• Infoseek - just sends you to Disney's go.com

I'm a Picker of Pixels and Writer of Hypertext

As with many people who attended the University of Waterloo, I took an economics course with Larry Smith.  He's not so much a lecturer as a stand-up comic whose material is all about economics. 

In one lecture, he talked about the size of the Canadian economy.  Thanks to our inferiority complex, we assume we're insignificant at everything, but we actually have the tenth largest economy in the world.  (And back when I was taking this class, we were ranked even higher, as the BRICS hadn't started passing us.)

So he asks the rhetorical question of how we became so prosperous, and answers it by saying that we are "hewers of wood and drawers of water," miners and farmers and so on.  He pauses, looks around, and asks, "Who wrote that down?  Scratch that out!  I can't believe you fell for that." and then he goes on to reveal that our economy has long been powered primarily by industry and services.

I keep thinking about that class whenever I see the latest round of Canada's Economic Action Plan ads.  Those ads have been criticized for a while for being thinly veiled Tory campaign ads on the public dime.  And there's also the fact that a party that emphasizes small government and fiscal responsibility is spending tens of millions of dollars to tell us about the new government programs they've created. 

But the recent ads are more focused on selling the Tar Sands to us.  It's not so much that they are trying to win us over on the environmental question, but that they're trying to get us to like the idea of a Canada focused on resources.  We're told about all the ways that not-so-resource-endowed areas of the country can contribute, usually by building things that the resource extractors can use.  It's not real convincing: I don't see Quebeckers getting excited about Alberta's oil just because they get to build the buses that the workers take to the drill site in Fort McMurray.

I'm not surprised that the Conservatives are going to bat for the oil industry, but I'm not clear on why they're insisting on promoting a big misconception about Canada's economy.  The ads even emphasize that the resource industry employs a million Canadians; that sounds good until you remember that there are 33 million of us.  Surely it would make sense to make us feel good about all aspects of our economy.  You know, tell us about how we're building cars that are burning the oil from Alberta.

Please. Stop. This.

There's a certain trick of writing that I keep seeing.  It's the practice of emphasizing by separating each word in its own sentence, like, Oh. My. God.  Guys, it's just been overdone. 

I'm not sure how it began.  It might have been someone trying to ridicule William Shatner's speaking style.  I think it might have been that classic "Poochie" episode of The Simpsons, where the Comic Store Guy declares the latest Itchy And Scratchy to be the Worst. Episode. Ever.  I'm not sure how everyone seems to know he was speaking each word in its own sentence, but that's how I've always seen it spelled.

By the way, I learned in school that you are supposed to italicise the name of a TV show, as opposed to say, a song, whose title is quoted.  But what about a show within a show?  They never covered that, and the mundane entertainment of the time didn't require us to know.

Anyway, the thing that pushed me over the edge on this one-word sentence thing was an op-ed piece today about Thomas Mulcair.  It's bad enough that the writer used this abused technique to describe an unexciting politician, but he was actually trying to emphasize the very fact that he is unexciting.  So that's it, it's the period that broke the camel's back from now on, if you want to emphasize something in print, you'll just have to us all-caps and exclamation marks, just like us poor souls on the Internet.

Midlife Crisis

Pretty much the only place I listen to the radio is in the car.  Lately the station I've listened to the most is CJIQ, the station on Conestoga College.  You might think I'd be intimidated by the young people's music.  But actually, these kids really like their heavy metal. So it's not that different from my own high school experience.  And now that Black Sabbath has a new album out, I have the odd experience of hearing people twenty years younger than me tell me about music made by people twenty years older than me.

I also get the experience of looking at music with a new context.  During the first wave of 60's nostalgia in the 80's, I remember my parents struggling to explain to me why they found it odd to see Herman's Hermits playing on the same bill as The Who.  Well, now I understand where they were coming from.  Today I heard them play Faith No More's "Epic," followed by Linkin Park's "Faint."

At first, that shocked me.  First, you have a song from my high school days, by an innovative and influential band with a cult following.  Then you've got a song from almost a decade later, from a massively popular band in the leading style of the day.

But when you look at it from the student-DJ's perspective, free of the context, it makes sense.  You see that it's two songs mixing hard rock with hip hop, also incorporating some classical keyboards.  So now I'll just have to wait a few more years for their inevitable joint concert tour.

Serenity (Google) Now

I've had a bit more experience with Google Now, the feature of the Android operating system to give you unsolicited advice and updates.  A lot of people seem to be calling its personalization "creepy," but I just find its behaviour strange:

• It notices when you frequently visit the same place, and begins giving you updates on the driving time (given current traffic conditions) to that location.  I found that it was constantly giving me updates on the driving time to my doctor's office.  That's odd, since I only visit my doctor every few months at most.  I've heard the stories about how Google can figure out where there are flu outbreaks by detecting people searching for their symptoms, so I'm staring to wonder if Google knows something about my health that I don't.  But then I realized: my doctor's office is in a shopping plaza, along with a supermarket I frequent.  So it thinks I'm constantly going to my doctor when I go grocery shopping.
• During the Champions' League final between Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, I - like most of humanity - asked the question, "Where the hell is Dortmund?"  So I consulted Google, and discovered that it's the largest city in the Ruhr area, a densely-populated area near the Netherlands border.  The next time I looked at my phone, it asked if I wanted to add Borussia Dortmund to the list of teams I get updates on.
• Similarly, I recently saw a news update on Blue Jays' shortstop Jose Reyes, who is recuperating from an injury by playing in the minor leagues for the Buffalo Bisons.  And I said, "What's up with the Bisons' uniforms?"   They were orange and had some octagonal symbol on the back in place of a number.  I consulted Google, and found that this was their annual Star Wars Night.  And the next time I look at my phone, it's telling me the driving time to the Bison's home stadium.

Bicycle (Shorts) Built For Two

I just saw a very pregnant woman on a bicycle.  That's kind of unusual to begin with, but what surprised me is that this woman was in the full cycling-specific shirt and shorts.  

They make them in maternity sizes?  I mean, sure, you see parents cycling around with their kids in those adorable little trailers behind them.  And those cycling-family kids have to be the result of a pregnancy at some time.  But still, you bought those just to stay on the bike - to look professional on the bike - for the full nine months?  

Sports clothing is never cheap, and you know she had to have them shipped special from Europe because no way they sell them off the rack on this continent.  Okay, if she doesn't own a car, she has plenty of extra money.  But still, you are never going to be able to sell those.  So if the plan is to trade them in for an adorable little trailer, don't hold your breath.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About The Future, #8

Poker, Stock Car Racing, and something called “Mixed Martial Arts” have all become mainstream sports.  Americans still don't care about hockey.

Cut It Out

The latest trend that all the cool kids are doing: cutting the cord.  That is, cancelling your cable, and getting all your filmed entertainment from Netflix or DVDs or YouTube or piracy.

I'm not surprised this is happening.  In fact, I'm surprised that it's taken this long.  A few years ago, Apple introduced its AppleTV, which would allow people to buy TV/Movies with the ease of iTunes.  I figured that was the beginning of the end for broadcast Television; it would decay slowly over the next decade, just as we'd already seen from the music industry.

But it didn't happen, at least right away.  Apple ran into the problem many companies have had with reinventing television: it's hard to talk people into paying for a box to plug their TV into, which they don't really need because their TV works fine as it is.

Now it's finally starting to happen.  There's plenty of downloadable video on the Internet - a lot of it legal - and plenty of people have some sort of set-up they can watch it on, whether that's a TV with a video game console, a tablet, or anything in between.

And once again, the threatened industry is only dimly aware of the threat.  Today, HBO and ESPN announced apps that will allow people to watch their content on AppleTV.  That sounds good, but it's only available to people who already subscribe to those channels on cable.  So this service will appeal to cord-cutters, but you can only get it if you're not a cord-cutter.

So having gotten my first prediction about the end of conventional television wrong, allow me to make another.  The big catch keeping many people from cutting the cord is live sports, which are still not often available anywhere but plain-old-TV.  But you know that the sports leagues are fretting over the thousands of (disproportionately young) viewers no longer able to watch their product.  It'll be difficult for sports leagues to distribute their content over the Internet, since they'll be screwing the networks that pay big bucks to show their games.  But I think they'll be the ones that push the TV world towards confronting the problem.

Charge It

Lately, Visa has been running these ads in Canada to encourage people to make all their small purchases with their credit cards, with "smallenfreude" as the key word in the campaign.


First of all, let me say that this ad just doesn't work.  What did they do wrong?  Well, building it around a word people don't understand, the similarity to schadenfreude, the subtext of weird sex practices among your suburban neighbours, and the guy's grinning stare that's supposed to be funny-creepy, but is really just creepy-creepy.  I haven't seen such a collision of bad ideas in a single commercial since the infamous "baby got squarepants" Burger King ad that I literally had to look up on the Internet a few hours after I first saw it just to convince myself it wasn't some bizarre dream.  (Remember, you cannot un-see this.)


But the thing about small purchases on credit cards: I'd heard that retailers don't like you to pay small amounts with a credit card, because they have to pay a bigger fee for transactions than with debit cards.  So I assumed that if Visa is making a big push to change how people use their credit cards, they must have changed how they assess their fees.

Nope.  As you may have seen on CBC news, small businesses are furious because Visa orchestrated this whole campaign without changing a system that screws retailers on small purchases. 

This brings up the question: do we even need credit cards any more?  It used to be that credit cards were an awkward agreement between customers and the credit card companies: they give us a convenient way to pay without carrying around huge amounts of cash, and in return, they get to take advantage of people who are stupid enough to spend money they don't have.  But now we have debit cards, which give us the same convenience but without the temptation to overspend.  The credit cards do offer some protections like warranties and some protection from fraud.  And if American Express is to be believed, they can also turn three-star into a-million-star dining, whatever the hell that means.

Poorly Dressed Superman

With this new Superman movie, some people are complaining about the liberties they've taken with the traditional costume.  The colours aren't as bright, and he no longer has the red shorts.  I'd prefer to think that after his many years on Earth, Superman has finally figured out that humans prefer to wear their underwear on the inside.  And if he can eventually get the problem with red shorts and clashing bright blue and red, then there's hope for the rest of us.  In particular, there's hope for the New York Rangers, who have made the same fashion faux pas for a similar period of time.

But the big problem with the lack of red underwear is that, well, it's clearer that it's not just his muscles that are bulging.  That confuses me: wasn't it a big part of Superman II that he couldn't "love" a woman unless he became human?  But it is ironic that the traditional Superman costume actually disguised his masculine features; that would surprise those folks in the 50's who though that superhero comics were promoting homosexuality.

But the change that no one is talking about is the fabric.  Back in the Christopher Reeve movies, the suit material seemed to be featureless and smooth.  Then in Superman Returns, it acquired a rough texture.  Now it's some sort intricate chainmail.  The same thing happened in the new Star Trek movies, where the Star Fleet uniforms have some sort of thick weave.  Is this the new fashion, or are the movie makers just revelling in the detail afforded by high-definition?  Or maybe this is how we see the future now.  It used to be that the future was smooth and shiny, but now it's rough and intricate.  I blame carbon fibre.

Helmet Head

Today I saw a woman walking around a drug store wearing a bicycle helmet.  I really should have asked her what brand of helmet it was.  Why?  Well there's a couple of explanations for her wearing the helmet:

• She is a really hard-core cyclist, so much so that she wants to display her cycling culture to everyone.  In that case, she must know a lot about cycling equipment, and would know the best helmet to buy.
• She's forgotten she's wearing the helmet, in which case it is easily the most comfortable helmet on the market.

Talking Turkey

In case you're wondering, Turkeys (the bird) were named after Turkey (the country) even though the birds are native to the Americas.  But the birds were named after similar birds that were sold in Turkey (the country.)  I don't know why they didn't just call them "Turk Birds" or something; it's not like "French Hens" are called "Frances."  Can you imagine the embarrassment if beavers were just called, "Canadas?"

Anyway, Turkey has been in the news lately, with what seems like the low-impact version of the Arab Spring protests.  Instead of a troops shooting protesters who are standing up to a dictator imposing an ideology, we have troops tear gassing protesters who are standing up to an elected leader imposing a shopping mall.

I hate to insult entire countries, especially a generally forward-thinking state like Turkey, but how backward and antiquated!  Imagine, in the year 2013, the Turks are building shopping malls.  Come on people, if you want global respect, you've got to move on to big-box stores.

Also, there seems to be a pattern with government protests and the fixation on a square.  Cairo's Tahrir Square became world famous when the protesters used it as a base, we all remember Tiananmen Square in Beijing and now we're learning the name Taksim Square, the Istanbul focus of protests.  So, dictators, the lesson is clear: make sure your major cities have no big squares in them.  That further begs the question of why Prime Minister Erdogan wants to bulldoze a beloved park to build his mall.  Why not build it over Taksim Square so the protesters have no place to go next time they want to complain.

I Like That Old Time Usenet

Continuing the trend of talking about new movies I haven't and probably won't see, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are in the new movie The Internship, in which they try to get jobs at Google or something.

The reviews haven't been good (currently 33% on Rotten Tomatoes.) Complaints are that it's clichéd, too long, and just a big ad for Google.  But one criticism is interesting because it relates back to a problem our whole society is having with the place technology has in the population.  Apparently a lot of the humour in the movie is built around the generation gap (since Vaughn and Wilson are much older than the other Google recruits)

But that doesn't really add up.  If their characters - like he actors themselves - are in their forties, then they would have grown up with computers and video games, and the Internet would have blown up in their early twenties.  So although they likely wouldn't be as immersed in connectivity as their twenty-something colleagues, they wouldn't be comically out-of-touch either.
I know that sounds like a minor quibble when it comes to dumbed-down comedies.  But for myself, having seen the Internet hit the mainstream as I entered my twenties, I've been told by the media that I'm on different sides of the generation gap at different times in my life. At first I was told that the Internet was on my side but it scared the Baby Boomers, but now I'm being told that I'm being alienated by the technology that millennials are at home with.

We're going to have to acknowledge that technology doesn't fit into our usual generation gap template.  Usually there's a clear distinction between generations and their tastes.  Even if the divisive element ends up lasting more than a generation (e.g. Rock n Roll) it changes enough as time goes on that there's still a separation between generations (These darn kids and their folk/glam/punk/metal/grunge/emo).

The internet isn't really like that, since there's a big difference within generations as to how much technology they adopt.  You can't assume a person's tech use based on their age (isn't that right, Mom?)  It all comes down to the speed at which the world is changing.  It used to be that the culture-changing technologies came along, made a big change, and that was it.  For instance, TV appeared, there was a distinct difference between life before TV and after TV.  There weren't more changes when colour TV came along, or stereo broadcast or something.  On the other hand, since the Internet became public, we've been continuously adapting to one change after another.  There is no all-or-nothing before and after culture gap.  We're all on one big spectrum of technological adaptation, but there isn't much broad comedy to be made about MySpace vs. Facebook.

Better Living Through Anarchy

So there's this movie out this weekend called The Purge.  It's about a future America where everyone is happy and well adjusted because they have twelve hours a year that they can invade Ethan Hawke's house, where he lives with a French woman he married nine years ago.  Okay, I may be a little confused, but the idea is: twelve hours, no laws, everyone's happy (the rest of the time.)

That's an interesting idea.  Although it's in danger of being the simplistic sci-fi idea I complained about a few days ago, I'll give it a pass since it is at least a dangerous and challenging idea.

But really, it's pretty far fetched, like something Freud would have believed in.  For one thing, I don't think there'd be much left of the world after twelve hours of anarchy.  Or maybe that's the idea:  The economy is doing great because we have to rebuild everything once a year.  Another question I've heard people raise about the premise is whether twelve hours a year is really enough catharsis to let people release their pent up energy and frustrations.  If that was all it took, Burning Man would have fixed society years ago.  Really you need a release from societal rules and responsibilities far more often.  And now you understand how Canada needs hockey.

Is The NSA Spying On Me? I Could Use The Readership

I'm glad people are talking about this "scandal" in which the NSA has taken a bunch of information on people's phone calls from Verizon.  But I'm still not clear on how this is a news story.  After years of expanding America's security agencies, and expanding law-enforcement powers in the name of the War on Terror, pretty much everyone should know this sort of thing is going on.

And the story isn't going to have any effect on American politics: Democrats will continue to half-heartedly defend the government, and Republicans are too married to the philosophy that everything is expendable for national security.  So here we have a story which tells us something we already knew, won't have any effect on the world, and isn't being pushed by any special interests.  So how did the media decide that it's worth talking about? 

I'm not complaining; I'm just surprised.  Really, it's a relief to know that the news media can still run with a story that deserves the public's attention yet serves no political entity.  We just need a British newspaper to start it for us.

And Now I Complain About A Car I Could Never Afford

You might be surprised that a car guy could run a blog for more than a year without dissing the Porsche Cayenne, their popular but controversial SUV.  Well, here it goes.

A lot of people defend it, by pointing out that it allows Porsche to keep up their financially-iffy business of building sports cars.  Though fans may not realize just how much the Cayenne props up the company: almost half of all Porsches sold worldwide are Cayennes.  As some have sarcastically pointed out, Porsche has become an SUV company that also makes sports cars.

It's sort of like a concept in the auto business known as the "halo car."  That's a car model that doesn't necessarily make the company much (or any) money, but is worth producing because it changes people's perception of the brand, because it’s sporty, luxurious, or technologically advanced.  The Corvette is probably the best-known example.  But Porsche has turned this concept on its head.  Instead of using a cool car to make a stable of boring cars more palatable, they make a bunch of cool cars plus a practical car to make money.

What I find odd about the Cayenne is how far it stretches the brand concept.  We're all used to the idea of using coolness to sell ordinary products to people who don't need the product’s capabilities.  I'm thinking of say, a person who wants to seem athletic, so they buy Nike shoes, which they just use to walk around Wal-Mart.  That's silly, but at least there's some sense to it.  Those shoes could conceivably be used for sports, and the customer is buying a sporty shoe to associate themselves with sports.

The same concept works in the car biz.  There are plenty of sports cars that have never seen a track, and SUVs that never leave asphalt.  But with the Cayenne, you're trying to feel sporty by buying a vehicle made to go off road, but was designed by a sports car company.  That would be like the aforementioned shoe buyer trying to feel athletic by buying Nike Crocs.

Simpler Fi

I've been seeing the promos for this new show Under The Dome, which is built on the premise that a small town suddenly finds itself cut off from the rest of the world by an invisible dome.  It's an interesting concept, but it gives me mixed feelings.

On the one hand, it's great that science fiction is becoming widely accepted enough to be the basis of mainstream entertainment.  Essentially, it's crossed the point of no longer being scary to the average person, so an unusual sci-fi/fantasy premise can be just another tool in the storyteller's arsenal.

On the other hand, I'm getting tired of these really pedestrian premises.  They take an idea that would have been one episode of the Twilight Zone, and turn it into an entire series.  Having grown up with Star Trek, where you got a new mind bending idea every week, this just doesn't excite me.  What's next, an entire series about a guy wondering a post apocalyptic library with broken glasses?

Scientific Proof This Blog Sucks

Psychologists say that in order to become really brilliant at something, you need to spend at least 10,000 hours doing that something.  (To put that in perspective, that's about five years of 40-hour weeks.)  I've always had my doubts about that.  I bring this up because of a Wired article on the topic.  Specifically, it's an excerpt from a book by abattoir designer extraordinaire/autism advocate, Temple Grandin.

The article complains that the 10,000 hours concept has been blown out of proportion by people.  Rather than seeing these hours of practice as merely a prerequisite of genius, they've gotten the idea that you just need to put in all those hours and you'll be the best in the world.  Unfortunately, it's not that easy: you need "nature" to go with all that "nurture."

If you think about that, it makes sense.  Most of the workforce has at least five years of full-time experience in their current job, and not many of them are geniuses.

But it seems to me that there are plenty of other problems with this theory.  For instance, the idea of spending 10,000 hours doing something to get good at it may make sense for, say, playing a musical instrument.  But what about something harder to quantify.  Take a writer.  Does a writer have to spend 10,000 hours actually typing?  Because they do spend a lot of time just thinking about what to write.  And what about time reading?  That contributes a lot to their writing prowess, does it count?  Or scientists.  I hope they don't have to spend 10,000 hours actually doing experiments.  But if 10,000 hours thinking about science is enough, then just about everyone who has tried reading A Brief History Of Time would qualify.

And then there are activities you really can't rack up 10,000 hours at.  Can anyone really be an expert skydiver?  And that brings me to blogging.  Assuming you only blog in your spare time, blogs haven't been around long enough for anyone to become an expert blogger.  So what hope is there for the entire community?  Consider that if there is a blogging genius out there, it's Perez Hilton.