Plus And Minus

You may have seen that Google+ was recently shut down.  You may also have forgotten what Google+ was; it was Google's attempt to cash in on the social network gold rush. It wasn't too successful. Too bad, we could use some new blood in the Social Media field. Facebook is still making a fool of itself on the privacy issue, and Twitter is still dragging its feet on the should-we-allow-nazis issue.

And frankly, this is the sort of thing I wish Google would put more effort into. My complaint about them in recent years has been that they are choosing which business to enter on a whim, rather than the classic business basis of find-a-problem-and-fix-it. We needed a good search engine, and they built one. We needed a competitor for iOS and they built one (well, bought and nurtured one, but close enough.)

Then they started going off the rails with Chrome. If they'd released it a decade earlier to counter the dominance of Internet Explorer, that would have been great. But doing it after Firefox had managed to - improbably - break the monopoly, Google just looked like bullies. Now they're bringing out a game streaming service, despite the fact that the gaming world is already a crowded business, and that people are starting to get leery of the everything-is-a-subscription juggernaut. Oh, and rural folks keep trying to point out that they're not okay with streaming everything on their antiquated broadband. And hey, that's just the sort of problem Google could solve and win lots of kudos, instead of suspicion.

So if you're not too pleased about Google's game streaming plans, just remember that it might be another Google+ instead of a Chrome. After all, I wasn't even going to comment on the passing of Google+, except that they somehow set things up so that if you had a Google+ account when you signed up for Blogger, it lost the connection with your Google account, so I just had to have a panicked run through FAQ's and message boards to try to get signed back in. And this post is my combined test/scream-of-frustration

Filtering Facebook

Yesterday the local TV station did a story on the murderer who streamed his killing on Facebook. Or, to be specific, it was about the use of the Internet to publicise the crime. I had several problems with it. For one thing, they played a lot of the video (cutting it before the act itself, of course.) But the most objectionable aspect of the filming was the making the innocent victim a prop in his game of revenge, and showing the recording plays into that.

But that was clearly not the way they were looking at it. The reporter went through some other crimes that have been broadcast on Facebook or other social media sites. That list included the case of Philando Castile, who was shot by a police officer, which was recorded by his girlfriend, who wanted to show that the killing was unprovoked. Now most people would say there is a world of difference between a remorseless killer broadcasting his crime as a twisted revenge and a victim broadcasting a crime to prove its injustice. But in this case the journalist was more concerned with the fact that violence is being spread on the Internet, than with the causes of the violence.

And that brings up another aspect of the story that I find frustrating: the apparent surprise that a person can post something violent on the Internet. To be clear, Facebook did take the video down (although they took their time about it.) But this report (and several other media outlets I've come across.) Seem to be questioning how the video got on the site to begin with. I'm not really sure what they're envisioning; Do they expect teams of people vetting everything uploaded to Facebook, or Artificial Intelligence that can make sense of videos at the level that they can tell the difference between an actual murder and a clip from an action movie.

I can't believe that we're a quarter-century into the Internet revolution and we're still having this conversation. If we're going to have a medium where everyone is a publisher or broadcaster, there is no way we can automatically edit out what we don't want. We can act to remove it when it happens, but we can't have a world where objectionable material never appears. In other media, society came to an understanding with what was possible and what was reasonable to expect. No one expects the phone company to stop people planning crimes using their system. We've made - and accepted - the idea that the reduction in crime wouldn't be worth the expense or intrusion in privacy. But we can't seem to reach that consensus with today's technology.

Just to clarify, I'm not one of those techno-libertarians who thinks the Internet shouldn't have any rules. We do need rules, and our Internet institutions could usually benefit from more of them. We just need to be realistic about what they can do. And that's part of why I'm angry about this: there are important discussions that we need to have in this society about what's going to be acceptable on the Internet, but we can't have those discussions because so many of us still live in a fantasy world where we can get anything we want just by telling the nerds to throw technology at it.

Hey Germany, We Need A New Word

So Schadenfreude is the word for enjoyment of another person's pain. Presumably, that's the pain of someone you don't like. So I'm wondering of there's a word for a kind of reverse situation:

What I mean is, with Schadenfreude, there's someone you don't like, and then you see them experience misfortune, which gives you joy. But what if you see someone experience misfortune, then they do something that makes you dislike them, thus allowing you to enjoy their misfortune?

I suggest we call this a "Hope Solo." This weekend, much of the world got the chance to experience it, when Solo followed up the U.S. Women's Soccer team's early exit from the Olympics with an unsporting insult of the victorious Swedes. So lots of people became retroactively glad they were gone.

It seems many people around the world have an affinity for the American Women's Team. Sure, few non-Americans like cheering for the U. S. of A, but the success of this particular team bodes well for two of humanity's long-term projects: equality for women, and getting Americans to like soccer. You want to feel good about the few women who get to live the life of the American athletic idol.

But the fact is, they've been a hard team team to like. Here in Canada, we're still bitter about the last Olympics, when star Abby Wambach bullied the ref into calling the never-enforced-in-history time limit on goalies handling the ball. It was a perplexing moment: really, you're the best in the world, and you still have to resort to that? Indeed, before allowing the winning penalty kick against Sweden, Solo held up the proceedings to change gloves, in a rather transparent moment of gamesmanship. The American women bring to mind the Belichick-era New England Patriots: Admirable for their success, but also seeming like an inhuman machine.

Anyway, I was going to write more about people being angry about Solo's remarks, so I scrolled through Canadian news and sports sites looking for condemnation of her. But it turns out all the coverage of soccer here just briefly mention Solo and then talk about Canada beating France and facing Germany in the semis. So I guess I should let it go; after all, we still have another game to play.

I'm Gonna Turn This Car Right Around...

The Ninth Focus Group Of Hell

Yes, I know, I just wrote about a car ad; but car ads are like buses, there's always another along soon.

I often wonder if companies consider the implications of their ad campaigns. Take Hyundai's ads with the incompetent competitors breaking in to look incredulously at how good Hyundai's cars are. The lesson is supposed to be that Hyundais are far superior to their competitors, but the message I get is that Hyundai has really poor security. I mean, these execs who can't build a decent car never have any trouble sneaking in.

Then there are the Chevrolet ads where that guy with the beard does flimsy demonstrations to convince people that Chevys are best. Well, that's supposed to be the message; my takeaway is that Chevy are maniacal jerks who like to terrorize innocent focus groups. Like in the one where he pretended to shred a group's cell phones, or that other one where he locked a group in an elevator. That latter example was to show that the Chevy Volt's range-extended electric system is better than the Nissan Leaf's purely-electric drive. Now Chevy is contradicting themselves with the all-electric Bolt.

They also keep playing the ad with Mr. Sadist turning kids against one another over video games only one can play at a time. These "real kids" with "real reactions" say, "oh my gosh" in unison, upon seeing an SUV. No part of that sounds believable, especially when you realize that SUV's are to them what minivans were to the last couple of generations. So I'm guessing these kids were well compensated for their acting jobs. I hope so; it'll help them pay for the therapy they'll need after this experience.

But then there's the one where adults from the target market are shown a Chevy Malibu with the logos removed to keep opinions honest.

• First, they say it reminds them of an Audi or a BMW. Wow, that is quite an endorsement: In the esteemed opinion of someone who can't recognize a Chevrolet if it doesn't have the badges on it, this is like an Audi or a BMW.
• It has Teen Driver Technology, which mutes the radio until the seatbelts are fastened. This is met with amazement from the focus group, who can't believe such a thing exists. Really? You can turn on the radio by telling the car to turn on the radio, but it didn't seem possible that someone could connect the seatbelt to the radio? Personally, I would have prevented the teen from putting the car in gear until the seatbelt was fastened, but I guess the radio is good too. After all, how are today's kids possibly going to get access to music without a radio?
• But the big, I-can't-believe-they-got-this-past-the-legal-department trick is when the group is presented with the price, and someone says, "for all this technology?" That's never answered, but the answer is, no, not for all this technology, because all the things they've been showing off are options, not at the base price they just quoted.

Eat Locally, Rant Globally

I have a long history of trying to recycle things. I sorted through the blue boxes in our early recycling program in high school, I tried to get my roommates to recycle in university. Living on my own, I've done everything I can to divert as much waste as possible from the landfill.

So I know just how hard it is to get people to understand what is and isn't recyclable. Many don’t consider that there has to be someone somewhere who sorts everything you put in the blue box. Or they just assume that putting other stuff in there will somehow make it magically become recyclable. Or they have bizarre reasoning, like assuming that if paper is recyclable, then wood is also recyclable.

But now I find myself on the other end of things whenever I eat at a food court in a shopping mall. In a commendable effort to be responsible, they’re introducing recycling. And they’re doing the best they can in an industry - fast food - that doesn’t try to hard to minimize waste.

Having said that, whenever I try to throw things out, I feel like I’m taking a test. There’ll be several categories, like paper and plastic, but then there’s also a “garbage” category. There are pictures to give examples of each category, but the pictures of the garbage also include plastic and paper things, so I’m still confused. What about a straw? I have no idea what kind of plastic that is. And you have cardboard in the paper section, but does that include waxy paper cups? So there I am looking back and forth at the different pictures, nervously grasping my Subway cup, while people line up behind me. I’m sure they’re quietly cursing me, with the final judgement coming when I make a decision and become a terrible person for either adding to the landfill unnecessarily, or for making life harder for some sorter.

The frustrating part of all this is that there’s only so many types of waste at a food court. Waxy drink cups, sandwiches and burgers in paper or foil, paper napkins, plastic cutlery, cardboard boxes, and the segmented plates from the chinese place. So you could just have a photo of everything people are going to throw out, and it will be nice and simple. And I’m sure whoever empties the recycling will be glad to take the photos for you.

Pictures Of "U"

What you're reading right now is a "text file." Essentially, it's a list of numbers, with each number representing a letter.  That may seem like a lot of numbers, but keep in mind that computers can store an astounding quantity of numbers; a gigabyte is essentially a billion numbers.  Looking at it that way, you realize that text files are downright insignificant for modern computers.

Now consider this picture of antique pig statuettes:

There are different ways of storing graphics, but most involve one or more numbers for each pixel, to describe the colour of that pixel.  There's usually some sort of mathematical trick to shorten that big list of numbers, but even if that trick can reduce the list by 90%, that's still a big list of numbers.  If you compare the number of letters in this post to the number of pixels in the picture, you'll realize that pictures take up far more space in a computer than text.

Go ahead, do your "picture is worth a thousand words" joke now.  I'll resist the temptation to point out that it's far more than a thousand in this case. Why am I taking you through Computer Principles 101? Consider the possibility of a picture of words.

It may seem to you that this is no different than the words around it.  But it's quite different for the computer.  The text you're reading now was shipped across the Internet letter by letter, then drawn on your screen by your web browser.  The picture of the words was drawn on my computer, then shipped to you, pixel by pixel.  The amounts aren't large in the grand scheme of things, but I'm always amazed at how many people don't realize that one is orders of magnitude larger than the other.

I first noticed it in university, when a physics professor posted the answers to a quiz on the web in the form of a huge scan of a printed page.  This was over twenty years ago, when such a large file choked the pitiful computers in the undergrad lab.  I couldn't figure out how he typed up the answers on a word processor, printed them out, and ran them through a scanner without thinking there had to be an easier way.

This misunderstanding about computers has reappeared from time to time, and the latest instance is on Twitter.  Of course, Twitter is weird in a lot of ways, but none more than the self-imposed and totally arbitrary 140 character limit.  The concept of posting graphics with your tweets was added later on, despite the fact that the pictures are much bigger than tweets.  And next thing you know, the graphics capability has become a way of overcoming the character limit; when people want to quote a larger amount of text, they can attach a picture of it to their tweet. Of course, for many people this inefficient way of communicating is not a problem. But when I'm stuck using a slower connection, it's hard to believe this is how we send text across the Net.

Flipping The Board

There should be a measure of the bugginess of software. I mean, you could just count the number of problems a program has, but that would be misleading since some apps do more than some others. At the risk of driving people away with an esoteric example, I've done a lot of work with Eclipse, an application for software development. There's a lot of things I don't like about it, and I could spend all day listing the errors and poor design choices I've found. But even a hater like myself has to temper his criticism by acknowledging that Eclipse is a big and complicated piece of software that does many things, so it's inevitably going to have more bugs than your average Candy Crush ripoff app.

What I'm trying to get at is this: Flipboard for Android is the worst program ever written. It's the software equivalent of that "You Had One Job" meme. Flipboard's one job is to display news articles. There's no animation, no interaction, just text and the of photo. In other words, it's a web browser from 1994.

So what's wrong with it? Well, aside from downloading about as a web browser from 1994, there's also:

• The pages blank out randomly. Flipping them back and forth causes them to reappear for some reason. 
• It shows me the same article again and again. 
• It sometimes shows empty articles. 
• It occasionally decides to restart itself for no reason while I'm reading an article.

 So that does it; I'm looking for a new personalized news aggregator. I see there are lots of alternatives.  But I think I'll try Mosaic; I've heard good things about it.

They Paved Paradise and Put Up Politics

As you might guess from the title, I'm going to compare politics to parking lots: both seem to have a supernatural ability to make people stupid. They lose what sense they already have, and back-up without looking or vote for the candidate with the nicest smile.

Of course, I don't have great confidence in people's common sense. So if political stupidity were just a matter of people failing to successfully work towards their own self-interest, I would not be disappointed. But politics is the only place where you see people actively working against their own interests, then congratulating themselves for a job well done.  A great example is this poster I saw in downtown Kitchener:

Yes, it's another in the long list of people who think that politicians will change as a result of low voter turnout.  I'm assuming that they imagine the politicians changing their ways out of a sense of personal disappointment in how few people vote.  But it's really not likely that political candidates - at a time when they are working hard for their job and their political ideology - will take time out to do something for a group that had already made it clear they will not help elect anyone. If you believe a boycott would work, ask yourself about young people: they mostly don't vote; do politicians for harder for youth concerns in a bid to entice them?  A quick look at modern-day tuition rates would indicate they don't.

I don't know if you can see it in the condensed version of this picture - I didn't see it at first - but someone has written a note on the next sign down expressing disagreement with this boycott campaign, for the same reason.  That remark uses some colourful language, but is still more politically aware than the poster.  Then again, so is the ad for strip-club beer on which it is written.

Of course a real cynic would suggest that this sign was put up by someone cleverly campaigning against pro-working-class politics, to dissuade their opponents from voting. But I doubt that explanation, again on the principle that no one would be that clever in the political arena. It wouldn't occur to them to communicate through photocopies taped to a lamppost. They'd be more likely to create BoycottTheElection.com and then wonder why they aren't reaching any poor people. Or more likely, they're busy organizing their own campaign to boycott the election on the grounds that no parties defend the interests of the rich. In short, I'm embarrassed to admit that the most likely explanation for this poster is that a fellow member of my species is actually trying to encourage their own voting bloc not to vote, thinking that it will advance their cause.

But there is one positive I can take from it: If, like me, you have a concern for the plight of the poor, and worry about the consequences elections have on them, then you can take some solace in knowing that for at least a few of them, they deserve all they get.

Uncivil Twilight

That's it! I can't take it any more!  Every daylight savings shift, people start saying we're just kidding ourselves, we're moving time around and thinking we're getting more.  I've become accustomed to that, but I expect better from Neil deGrasse Tyson:

What would aliens say if told that Earthlings shift clocks by an hour to fool themselves into thinking there's more sunlight
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) March 9, 2014

Sure, he's probably intellectually exhausted after weeks of talking Seth MacFarlane out of writing fart jokes into the new Cosmos.  But still, usually he's the one convincing the great unwashed that experts know what they're doing. Now he's contributing to it.

So let me explain.  Here's a chart showing how the hours of daylight change through the year.  Daylight hours are in orange, night in blue.  This is based on New York, but the principle is the same anywhere:

Now I'll overlay the typical person's waking hours (represented by the black striped hours.) I've picked 7:00am to 11:00pm.

As you can see, that has the effect that in the summer, there is a fair amount of daylight that goes by before this person even gets up.  That's rather unfortunate, given that the person also has several waking hours after the sun goes down.  How can we take advantage of that extra "wasted" daylight?

One way is to change your waking time through the year, getting up with the sun.  But that's inconvenient, since we are creatures of habit, and many parts of our days can't be easily shifted (like working hours.) 

Another way would be to shift our entire day forward.  Wake up at, say, 4:00am each day throughout the year, then going to bed at 8:00pm, and splitting our non-working hours between before and after work.  But that doesn't seem to fit human nature: for whatever reason, we have a strong preference to doing our work first and recreation afterwards.

So the only remaining approach is to shift our day forward in the middle of the year.  That moves our waking hours earlier, so that we're awake for more of the daylight.  Here's what that looks like, again with the black-striped area representing a typical set of waking hours:

See?  Now less of the daylight hours goes unused.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying daylight savings time is perfect, or even that it's a good idea.  For instance, one could argue that we should just shift the day an hour or two forward and leave it there all year, and we just learn to deal with getting up in the dark in the winter.  Just stop it with the obtuse arguments that science/the government/Ben Franklin thinks we're getting free daylight.

Now Let Me Tell You How Hard It Was To Publish That Last Post

I haven't posted in a couple of days, since my difficulties getting the last post online had me close to throwing the computer out the window.  See?  I'm so mad I couldn't even come up with less clichéd way to describe my anger.

I won't recount all of it, but it began with my not being able to upload the flow chart graphic directly from my computer.  That is likely due to the security set up of my browser, so I don't blame anyone for that.  But I then launched into an hour of bouncing the file between my computer, phone, and tablet, using Google's Drive online storage, the Blogger app and website, and the phone and tablet photo galleries.  Something as simple as moving files around is made difficult by both bugs and sparse touch-screen interfaces.

This is all in spite of the fact that Blogger, Drive, and the Android operating system on my phone and tablet, are all Google products.  So let me be the first to say it: Google has turned into Microsoft.   A company that turned a good product from years ago into an empire of buggy software, spreading itself too thin by trying to take on all markets at once, resulting in applications that are supposed to work together but don't, and never get fixed.

It's The One-Eight Weekend!

Family Day?  That's the best we could come up with?  The most history-ignorant country on Earth, and we couldn't come up with an under-appreciated dead guy to honour with a day? 


What makes it particularly galling is that this is really just our counterpart to Presidents' Day in the U.S. (Or as it's officially known, Washington's Birthday.)  That's right, the people who know the most about celebrating themselves and their history have a day dedicated to their great leaders.  But do we take the hint?  No, we name our holiday after the blandest, most agreeable thing we could think of.  What's our counterpart to Martin Luther King Day going to be called?  I predict, "Community Day."

Why not just have a Puppies And Ice Cream Day?  At least that wouldn't be as dull.  Even making Groundhog Day into an official holiday would have at least shown some inspiration.  Sometimes I think we deserve our reputation for being boring. 

A Stroller Tantrum

You know what I hate?  Two-wide baby strollers.  A double-size stroller is sometimes unavoidable - if you have twins, what else can you do?  But get one of the twice-as-long models, so you can get through crowds or down hallways more easily. 

Why would you feel the need to put your kids side-by-side?  It could be that you're showing them off.   Admittedly that is faster and less annoying than showing baby pictures.  But a more likely explanation is that you're just avoiding the argument over who gets the front seat and who is stuck staring at the back of their sibling's head.  The idea that it is all due to wimpy parenting also helps explain why I always seem to see parents pushing empty double-wide strollers chasing kids that are running wild ahead of them.

Don't make the rest of us pay for your spineless parenting, switch to a more aerodynamic (or "crowd dynamic") inline stroller.  Or better still, find a double-decker stroller.  Though that would likely only be safe if the lower kid is much heavier than the other.

If You're Looking To Start Your Own Country

With the Euro soccer tournament on now, and the Olympics around the corner, we're getting a refresher course in the symbols of nationhood.  To prove I'll criticise anything, here are some of my national pet peeves.

Names

There are about two-hundred countries around the world, with different customs and cultures, but nearly all of them have one thing in common: they have names.  The Czech Republic doesn't; it has an adjective.  That would be like if we didn't call ourselves Canada, we just called it, "The Canadian Country."  Come on Czechs, it's not that hard, let's run through some possibilities: Czechland, Czechia, Czechistan.  Get back to us on it.

The same goes for the Dominican Republic, but it gets a pass because there's already a Dominica, and they seem to be alright with "The Dominican."  Though that brings up the next problem:

"The"

It's really pretentious if you're not just Placeland, you want to be called The Placeland.  I understand The Ukraine now just wants to be Ukraine, Sudan dropped "the" years ago.  I'll give the United States, United Kingdom and other countries with descriptive names a pass.  But The Phillipines and The Gambia, you just sound self-important.

Flags

There are so many flag cliches (three stripes, red-white-and-blue) and flags that look too similar (Poland/Indonesia/Monaco.)  Lets see some originality.  This is especially frustrating for countries that use different colours for their national teams.  For instance, take (the - damn-it!) Netherlands.  Their flag commits the two biggest cliches, and it's the same as Luxembourg.  Yet their athletes wear orange.  Now wouldn't an orange flag be refreshing?  Come on guys, surely this isn't asking too much of a radical country like you.  

And how about New Zealand.  Your flag is almost identical to Australia's.  I know you hate getting mistaken for Australians, so why not get a new flag.  You wear black in athletics, and use that fern thing as a logo. I've seen some people wave a flag with the fern on a black background.  Would that not be the coolest flag in the world? 

A Better New Zealand Flag (graphic by Bamse, used by creative commons)

You could have a big ceremony where you adopt it as your flag and give Henry Rollins honourary citizenship at the same time.  And of course we in Canada would feel much more confident if we weren't the only people on Earth with a leaf on our flag.

Here She Comes Now Sayin' Kony Kony

Likely by the time you read this, someone will have produced a spoof song with same the title as this post.  I'm actually surprised no one has done that yet, given the speed with which Konymania is sweeping the net.  But when I Googled "Kony Kony," no such Jankovician satires were found.

(I just made up that word.  Would "WeirdAlian" Sound better?)

If, however, you have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, Joseph Kony is a Ugandan warlord with a messiah complex and an army made up of abducted children, and Kony 2012 is a video condemning his actions.  Social media and celebrity endorsements have made the video and awareness of its issue spread fast.

Oh, and full disclosure:  I haven't seen the video.  All my information comes from reliable sources like Wikipedia and the mainstream media.

On the one hand, the issue is painfully predictable: There's a wave of awareness and righteous anger, followed by a wave of backlash.  No one in direct defence of Kony yet, but lots of you-haven't-heard-both-sides.  Yes, that's how stagnant public debate has become in our society: even in the case of a maniac enslaving children, a large enough group of contrarians will rise up to defend you, and nothing will get decided.  Society is just one big U.S. Congress.

But on the other hand, the issue is really odd in the way it's spreading.  I'm not hearing about it from my politically aware friends.  I'm not hearing about it from media outlets that I usually get world political information from.  Instead, it's mostly coming from friends that aren't politically active.  It's been endorsed by celebrities that aren't usually the activist types, and it's spreading by media that isn't usually the source of earth-shattering political discussion (meaning, Facebook.)

I'm left with a weird kind of mixed feelings.  I'm glad people are concerned about a major injustice, and that more people are caring about the state of our world.  But at the same time, um, what took you so long?  More to the point, didn't you know that there are monsters like this in the world?  See, I always assumed the reason everyone was so complacent about the world's injustice was because we just couldn't get passionate about the fate of people on the other side of the planet.  But apparently it was just because you hadn't heard about any of it.  What about Kim Jong Il?  He just died, you had to have seen it, it was on every channel.  Right next to Uganda is Rwanda.  Plenty of guilty people to bring to justice there.  How about Bashar Assad in Syria?  You don't have to wait for someone to pass you the link to the video, you just have to turn on the news.

So there you go: lots of terrible things in the world you can dedicate yourself to.  And if you used to be uninvolved because you were uninformed, now I've probably made you uninvolved because you're overwhelmed and burned out.  Sorry about that.  And welcome to my world.  And sorry to all of you who found this article because you were looking for the "Kony Kony" song and video, hope it's funny.