FeedMe

The Barbecue Easement

I learned something important today, from the podcast “Special Sauce,” hosted by the founder of Serious Eats, Ed Levine.

Ed is interviewing writer Calvin Trillin, who explains the "barbecue easement.” According to the Rabbi in Joplin, Missouri, "a noted Talmudist and Pitmaster," it says that "any farm animal with four hooves and no scales, if subjected to more than five hours of smoke, is kosher." It applies worldwide, not just in Joplin.

Who am I to contradict?

A New Password Rant

You know what makes me crazy? Idiotic restrictions and stupid practices for logins and passwords. I ranted about this before. And before that. And this one, too.

Here's a practice I see often. Some vendor sets up access and they choose a user name for you. So, to these folks, I am MRubenzahl428. That is not what my mother meant to name me. Please let users choose their own user name. 

Then they give you a password. Which is 4vu6$tr2. To be fair, they require me to change the password. But the login is forever. You may call me Mr. 428. "I worked so hard to get that title, so I’d appreciate it, thank you.”

So: Of all the logins I have, guess which ones are on a Post-It on my monitor? Nice security, guys.

Not done yet, one more kvetch. They send an e-mail message:

Welcome to Dolts.com. Here is your Dolts login and password:
Login ID: MRubenzahl428
Password: 4vu6$tr2

What? They sent my login and password in a single e-mail. They even labeled them. Don't they know e-mail is transmitted as unencrypted text?

KFC Doubles Down

You can find a healthy meal almost anywhere, if you do a little research, even in fast food restaurants. One very difficult fast food place was KFC. (You may know KFC as "Kentucky Fried Chicken," but they officially changed their name years ago to escape the unseemly F word in their name.) Finally, a couple of years ago, they added grilled chicken to their menu and finally, they had some resonably tasty, reasonably choices.

But with one hand the Colonel giveth, with the other he taketh away. On Monday, look for their new "Double Down," reported in a NY Times blog:

"The sandwich contains no bread. Instead, two deep-fried boneless white-meat chicken filets act in bread's place. They contain a sandwich of bacon and melted cheese between them, with a splat of a mayonnaise product called Colonel's Sauce to moisten the whole."

I had to read that twice. Then I read the date. Surely this was April 1 news.

No, it's real. A sandwich between two pieces of fried chicken instead of bread. Surely Homer Simpson will be at KFC on Monday. Hey, I might be in line behind him, I'm no angel.

But probably not. This one is really over the top. In case you're wondering, it's 540 calories, the same as a Big Mac. These are nowhere near as bad as things can be. Burger King's Double Whopper is 920.

Fries with that?

Who Wants Better Internet?

Who wants better Internet?

I know, everyone. Especially those paying $50 a month for residential Internet connection that's not dependably fast. Want to feel worse? Look at how we fare against other nations. 

But help may be on the way. The FCC will announce a national broadband strategy tomorrow. Google is among the voices who support a nationwide Internet connectivity initiative. They draw an apt comparison to "Power. Clean water. The Interstate highway system."

I am guessing the barrier to this is not technology or even funding; it's the cable and phone companies who won't want to let go of their low-competition regional markets. This is politics, not technology. So sadly, the more apt comparison may be to health care, with entrenched companies in restricted markets use every means to maintain the status quo, even as other countries pass us.

Unless we, the citizens, speak up and demand our interests be out first.

Edmund Pseudoscientific

As a science-minded boy growing up on a farm, I depended on mail-order for scientific tools and toys. The most coveted source was Edmund Scientific (or as they now call themselves, "Scientifics Online"). Even as an adult, I order from them still. I have been their customer for more than 45 years.

I was surprised to read a thread on Facebook, posted by Skeptical Inquirer, in which John S. Duckering, another customer, objected to their inclusion of a Ghost Meter in their present offerings. He said, "A reputable scientific products company selling Ghost Meters?! What in hell are you doing? With the pandemic of misinformation promulgated by paranormalists, spiritualists, Creationists, seers, and other quacks and con-artists, Edmund Scientifics is also jumping on the lunatic band wagon?! ... You thoroughly disappoint me!"

To the company's credit, Tim Burns, a brand manager at Edmund, replied, openly explaining that customer objections are leading him to rethink their policy. He later agreed to Mr. Duckering's request for permission to share the thread. He sais, "...I realize now that this is offensive to some the Edmund Scientific customers, people with very strong scientific sensibilities who look to Edmund for products that promote critical, empirical thinking, and real science as a hobby. I am currently rethinking my decision on this product line. I apologize for the offense."

Impressive. I am writing Mr. Burns to express my disappointment as well, and to support his willingness to rethink the policy, in public. I haven't found a direct e-mail address, so I used snail mail — letters (on paper) are a great way to be noticed in the electronic messaging era.

If you would like to write one, here's the address:

Tim Burns
Brand Manager
Edmund Scientific and X-treme Geek
60 Pearce Ave.
Tonawanda, NY 14150

Where Food Comes From

My articles here are usually happy little trees, singing about some delicious dish, a technique I like, or some culinary triumph. This article is different. It's about a serious topic: Where our food comes from and how it's made. If the darker corners of of our food supply disturb you, skip this article and I promise you a new happy little tree in the next day or three.

I think this is a wonderful time to be a foodie. We have access to greater variety and quality than ever, and food is quite a value. But we pay prices for our bounty, as documented in books like Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma.

A friend sent me a link to a video secretly shot at a chicken farm or, as they've become, a chicken factory. It's about how chicks are hatched and processed to become our egg suppliers. The males don't serve that process and are removed and disposed of in an efficient, but unkind fashion. Here's the link, but I have to warn you that it's a grisly, real look at something we would rather not think about. You don't need to view it, but if you're a foodie, you do need to think about what we eat and how it gets to us.

As it happens, this was not news to me because I grew up on a chicken farm. My uncles ran the hatchery, my Dad ran the chicken coops. It was 40 years ago and it was on a much smaller scale than what the video shows, but the practices had the same effect. It is true, the roosters are killed. Ours were tossed in a barrel, where they smothered each other to death.

The chicks were all "de-beaked" within a couple of days after they hatched. We didn't have laser-driven machines. Instead, a machine with an electrically heated blade sliced off the tip of the top beak. It prevented the birds from injuring each other by pecking.

We regularly killed injured birds by holding them by the legs (that's the way you carry a chicken), and pulling the head until the neck breaks. After a little practice, it took about a second to do. The bird flaps around like -- well, like a chicken with its head cut off -- that's not a myth. I was told they feel no pain.

The people who run these operations aren't monsters. They're farmers. On a farm, animals are products. Farmers don't go out of their way to be cruel. They're just doing their jobs.

It doesn't stop with chickens. Cows, pigs, squab, and lobsters all feel pain at some point between birth and dinner plate. And the people who work in the slaughterhouses aren't treated so well, either. But then, neither are the people who pick and process our vegetables.

If all this bothers you, what can you do? The video gave one answer: stop eating eggs and milk and meat. While it's a viable personal option, it won't stop these practices. It will make you feel good about yourself, perhaps, and it will reduce the number of farmed animals a little. It pretty much ruins a barbecue. Awareness and legislation can make a difference but it's not an easy fix because other people in other places will gain a competitive edge.

There is suffering in food, and it's not just at the hands of people. Ever see how a salmon dies to feed a wild bear? I watch the spiders in my garden. They make a web every night. I don't want to think about how their food dies. Nor how they die, when it's their time. What we see on National Geographic specials takes place a million times a day, in a million places. Mother Nature is as inhumane as any human.

Some day, we will manufacture proteins in factories without hurting anything alive. Until then, you choose what you choose and something, somewhere, shares the consequences.

Low Salt Law

The Accidental Hedonist's Food Journal reports that "the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has recently begun a campaign to encourage processed food companies to reduce the amount of sodium in their goods by more than 40 percent over the next decade." Not clear to me whether they are aiming to legislate, as they did for trans fats in restaurants. I hope not. Spending public funds to promote lower salt is fine with me, but making it the law is another matter. Here's the comment I posted.

Difficult question, but not new: Freedom vs. public good. I don't think the public benefit here is sufficient to tell people what they can buy and sell. But that said, I would enjoy seeing lower salt use because people are so used to overly salty foods that they can't taste it. Reducing all the salt use would make foods taste better for all. As it is, most reduced sodium products (e.g. chicken broth) are saltier than I like.

But that's just me and while I would like to see it happen, legislating it seems wrong to me. 

What do you think?

Steve Jobs: A Lesson for Strong Leaders

I posted a comment on this, but thought it merits a separate article, where others might wish to comment.

On a personal note, we all of course wish Steve Jobs the best and hope his health improves. But this is about the professional issue of how a prominent leader affects the organization's health. Jobs' leave of absence places the future of the company in question. The real question is, how could their management not have prepared for this?

Having a strong, well-known CEO is a double-edged sword. The company benefits from his fame and his "reality distortion field," which makes the company and its products into celebrities. But he is mortal and Apple has never made visible any structure to take his place. When Bill Gates stepped aside, he did so wisely and the company's direction (such as it is) was never in question. Apple (and Jobs's ego) has never allowed that. Oracle and Larry Ellison is another example. Starbucks and Dell are recent examples of companies that faltered so badly when their well-known leaders took lesser roles, that in both cases the CEOs took it back a couple of years later.

The company I work for was led by a force of nature not unlike Jobs, but he clearly and publicly had a couple of very able lieutenants. When he retired suddenly for medical reasons, they were ready. They stepped in and the company continued its course. His succession plan was an act of maturity, wisdom, and humilty that are apparently lacking at Apple and Oracle.

I expect Apple's stock will be clobbered until such time as investors see evidence that the company can weather his absence and they see if product and marketing strategy will remain as focused without Jobs at the helm.

Investors and the company management should have been considering this all along.

Read the Question? What a Concept!

OK, my new pet peeve: Customer support organizations that reply without reading the question. Today's is Long's Drugs. I asked:

Nature of Comment: Longs Web Site

Comment: My eFills prescription list has several old prescriptions that are irrelevant (e.g. an old antibiotic prescribed for a single illness years ago). How can I remove them?

The answer:

Please feel free to contact your local Longs pharmacy directly so they may further assist you regarding your prescription concerns. If you have any other questions, concerns, or need a pharmacy number please feel free to contact us directly at 1-800-To-Longs (800-865-6647).Hope you have a nice day.

Last week, it was PayPal. Three exchanges so far, and little evidence they are reading the question.

Grumble.

Just. Read. The. Question. Please.

Password Evil

Pet peeve: Idiotic rules placed on passwords. Current example: brightidea.com.

"Password must contain at least one upper case character"

"Password must contain at least one symbol (!#$%&()*+,-/[email protected]{|}~)"

They make it maximally irritating by not telling you these rules until you violate them. So you type a password. Twice, of course.

They balk and you type a new one. Twice.

They balk again. You have typed the damn thing six times now.

Oh, wait, the rules are there. There are five rules!! Gray on gray -- way over to the right, not near where you enter passwords and only when you click on the password box:

And it even contains a typo.

This is not the stupidest. That award goes to the morons in IT at Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Texas for the restriction that no password can contain the first three letters of any month!

IT people everywhere, please: We know you were the smallest one the playground and you never got your way. We know you like being in control. But your customers have hundreds of passwords and why should they need to have a separate Post-It with your site's password just because you think you're wiser than any banking or securities site and you have such smart rules for how to make a "stong" password.

Stop being an idiot.

Live, from New York

If you didn't see the Palin-Hillary bit on Saturday Night Live -- here you go. Brilliant, especially Tina Fey as Palin.

Windows Mojave: Better than Vista

Microsoft knows they have a reputation issue with Vista. Buggy, crashy, bloated, slow.

But what if Vista is really good and all of this is just perception?

In a high-tech version of the old Folgers commercial, Microsoft showed people who were critical of Vista a next-generation version of Windows called Mojave. They later reveal that it was really good old Folgers Crystals — I mean, Vista.

Can this slick campaign put Vista back on the map? See for yourself.

If Microsoft really believes that people will like Vista, if they would only try it, how about a money-back guarantee? (Of course, if you don't like it, you them have to figure out how to uninstall it and go back to your old system.)

Leo Laporte says Vista has had a bum rap, that it's actually quite good, and way more secure than previous versions of Windows. But you do need recent hardware — don't run it on your old 800 MHz Pentium.

And by the way, I admire the polish and skill of this campaign but worry not: I still hate Microsoft. None of those reasons have changed.

Microsoft

Why do I dislike Microsoft? They're really a great company, with smart people, and have contributed a great deal. As much as people dislike Bill Gates, I never did. I really admire his charitable work which is precisely what he said he was going to do a decade ago. Their trade practices haven't been pristine but for the most part in recent years, it's been legal and mostly ethical. They're ruthless competitors but that's not, in itself, evil.

I also credit them for fixing the Macintosh! If Microsoft hadn't launched Windows, the Mac would totally suck.

And yet, Microsoft makes me nuts.

Standards

This is their biggest offense, in my book. Microsoft pretends to follow industry standards and common practices, while really co-opting, or even sabotaging, them. Under the guise of enhancement, they add "features" in a way that damages competing products. The best example is their web browser. Generation after generation sought to derail web standards, adding elements (such as ActiveX controls) designed to get web developers to write sites that would not work well on other browsers. It is a pleasure now to see them outfoxed.

Another example: Their Exchange mail server uses a Microsoft-proprietary format for attachments and text formatting. Non-Outlook e-mail programs can't read them. There are standard methods for doing this, but Microsoft does not adhere to them. You can configure the server to not do this, but you should not have to.

One more: SharePoint is the most popular collaboration system for companies. It works pretty well if the user has Windows and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Other browsers and systems are supposed to work but it's a hair-pulling experience. As far as I can see, everything they're doing could be done in an industry-standard way that works universally. I can't tell if the Explorer-dependence is deliberate sabotage or incompetence.

It makes me crazy because it is arrogant, anti-user, and predatory. It's one area where they exploit their leadership in a way that damages the community.

Taste

Steve Jobs once said about Microsoft that they "have no taste." Say what you will about Jobs and his arrogance (I would not argue) but he is right. They are successful — and Jobs does not begrudge that, a least in this video — even if their products and strategies are artless. He says, "they don't think of original ideas and they don't bring much culture to their product."

It's obvious to me that engineers design their interfaces and graphics. I recently saw the new release of MS Office 2008 for the Mac. It was demonstrated for me by a Microsoft program manager, who proudly showed me 3D charts in PowerPoint. I was horrified by the amaterish 3D. They had added shadows and highlights that were blocky and unrealistic. The colors were Crayola basic. Labels were improperly centered on shapes. To many business users, I am sure these look fine, but any top-tier company would have them redrawn before using them in any material that goes outside the company.

There is nothing evil or badly intentioned about this: I think it's because they're unaware, like the engineer who dresses in plaid and dots and is honestly befuddled when it's pointed out.

Interface

Then there are the user interfaces. Microsoft has some of the most advanced user interface labs in the world and a large UI staff. Yet, their interfaces are consistently confusing and convoluted.

MS Office is a case in point. It has tons of functionality, but finding and performing a function is often painful. The worst part is that with each revision, it becomes more painful! Why? Because their UI labs are very good at identifying user complaints, very poor at fixing them. When they find a function people can't do, such as mail merge, they never seen to think that the user interface is fundamentally in need of ground-up redesign. Almost invariably, they think the answer is to add something. They added a mail merge palette. A help system. Then that paper clip animation. Then a wizard. Then a "ribbon." A sequential palette. Now they have a bar thing that has no name that brings up a series of icons that, um, does something. Like a wizard. But they can't call it that because the wizards, um, didn't help.

They seem to toss solutions at the problem, never quite figuring out that the problem is underneath all these wizardly layers.

The project manager who demonstrated Office 2008 for me showed me the wizard-like bar thing they had added for special user operations, like mail merge and templates. It takes up about an inch-high row of the document window. I asked if it could be made vertical. "We thought about that," he said. "Especially with displays tending to be wider. But no, it's horizontal only."

Duh. Even when they know they're making a mistake (and they usually don't), they proceed and make the mistake.

Code

And then, there is the underlying stuff: The code. It's bloated. It's buggy. Year after year, release after release, many bugs remain. It's slow and inefficient. The new Office 2008 for the Mac takes longer to load (a lot longer) and is not noticeably faster than the six-year-old, two-revs-ago version I had.

Someone did an interesting comparison between the open-source web server, Apache, and Microsoft's server, IIS. These "call graphs" hint at the underlying structure and you don't need to be an expert to see the difference.(thanks to Paul Rako's Anablog — which presents his own case against Microsoft — for showing me these.)

Is this typical? Meaningful? I wouldn't know, but I would bet it is.

I Don't Hate Microsoft

I don't hate Microsoft. I certainly don't hate their people. I don't even hate their products or what they have done for the industry. But I hate using their products, I hate being slave to their manipulations and incompetence.

Most of all, I hate it when I have no alternative.

Gaaaa! Microsoft!!!!

Morons.

In writing the article on HealthVault, I tried to log in. Won't let me.

I tried "Forgot Password" and it tells me the e-mail address I am using is not a valid login. So I try to register anew using that login. It tells me that it's already in use.

Click for help and I get a non-helpful FAQ that resizes the browser window to a tall, 1-inch wide window. Huh?

Anyway. It doesn't recognize my login except when I try to use it to register and then it recognizes that it's taken (yes, I know!!). Stuck. How much you want to bet their customer support doesn't respond?

---

Postscript. I went back to request support. There is a Feedback link. Guess what it gave me:

OK, that's funny.

--

P.P.S. Microsoft, to their credit, responded to my tech support request within the promised 24 hours. They suggested going to the Windows Live ID site and managing the login there, where I was able to reset the password. But that password is not strong enough for HealthVault and a stronger form (which I use on financial sites) also was not strong enough. In fact, a random strings of letters and numbers, like frt67h8j98I is not strong enough!

I clicked their tips for making a strong password and it goes to a Help page (after resizing the browser window to that ridiculously narrow window again) that did not talk about making a strong password.

Shrug.

Stupidest Password Restriction

One of my pet peeves is stupid login or password restrictions. What it means is that for this login only, I have to use a different password. Some require you include numbers, some require numbers be between letters...

The stupidest one ever came up today. Blue Cross / Blue Shield requires:

Your password cannot contain the first three letters of a month (for example: Jan, Feb, Mar). Please try again. Thank you.                             

WHAT?

So if your password is Janet32puppy or imamartian, you're hosed?

Morons.

End rant.

Logo Love: O Ain't for Oprah Anymore

I saw a comment in one of my favorite comics about Obama's logo:

"I like Barack Obama pretty well, but I’m in love with his logo. What a brilliant, versatile asset. The attention to detail and sheer number of variations are amazing and the typographic choices very distinct. The only thing I like as much as comics is a solid design identity system. (Can you guess what I went to school for?)" — R. Stevens, author of Diesel Sweeties

Me too.

I love logos. Embodying a brand in 100 milliseconds of attention span is an achievement. And if you have ever designed one, you know it's hell. Capturing a feeling in a memorable swatch is hard, hard work. Many logos are tacky and amateurish but when done well, they approach high art.

I am especially fascinated by presidential campaign logos which have terrifying design limitations. First of all, you get three colors. Red. White. Blue. And second, they mostly are trying to say the same things: Solid, competent, forward-thinking, hope for a new day, that kind of thing. And most succeed pretty well.

Do check out this piece on the Obama logo and don't miss the many variations, official and not, further down the page. Very nicely done. His website, by the way, is also really nicely designed.

What Have They Done to My Newspaper?

I am pretty close to ending my subscription to the San Jose Mercury News. I've been reading it for 30 years. It was once one of the finest half-dozen or so in the country. Really. (Even today, it's still number 34 according to  "2007 Top 100 Daily Newspapers in the U.S. by Circulation" (PDF), from BurrellesLuce. But the quality and quantity have been degrading in the past couple of years. Each morning I wonder if it's finally time to move on.

Part of the decay is just inevitable: Younger readers get their news from the Internet, and many don't read the news at all. Some don't read at all. All newspapers are struggling.

Part of it has to do with the passing of the baton from Knight-Ridder to McClatchy, then to MediaNews.

But I think the Merc has contributed to their own decay. As each owner trimmed staff and expenses, they de-featured the paper, contributing to the downward spiral. Meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle seems to me to have increased quality and content.

I think that most newspapers are in a quandary. Phil Bronstein of the Chronicle has talked about how many years newspapers have left as we know them and the fact that most papers know they need to go to the 'net but don't know how to make a business of it.

As a marketer, I think about what I would do with this product and the answer is what it usually is: Figure out what you have and what you can do that's special. The answer, to me, is in your local content and local voice. What can you say that's special for your community? And who do you have with a face and voice that people know? In the Mercury, they have a few columnists with a personality and special contribution. Gary Richards, Mr. Roadshow is the best example. If I owned the paper, I would have been all over my people to develop a voice, a following, something special that makes people look for them. Their TV and movie critics, for instance were easily replaced by syndicated content. Newspapers should seek quality and distinctiveness that makes their people the ones who are syndicated. Like the Merc used to.

If I owned the Chronicle, I know what I would do: I'd cannibalize business from neighboring papers and the Mercury, in its weakened state, would be my primary target. I would be developing content for the South Bay and promoting it. I would be pushing the Chron all over the area, with intro deals, advertising, and friends-and-neighbors promotions. I would be trying to convert Merc readers en masse.

And I don't think it would be hard to do because even today, quality sells.

Behind the Politician

Did you see Hillary's emotional moment? I never saw the actual video, I just read the reports. I wanted to see the real thing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EahseKxvBoc

Reporting about an emotional response can't capture it. If you haven't seen it, please do. A rare look past the public persona into what drives a public figure.

It's easy to be cynical about our political system but I think most politicians are motivated by real caring and a desire to make a better world. It's true for the few I have met (except Darrel Issa who was a bigger ass in person than he is in public.) I think that in order to withstand the hurdles of major politics, one has to have extraordinary motivation, which means either a deep caring, or a needy ego, and I prefer to think there are more of the former than of the latter.

Health Records Online: A Matter of Trust

A new online service, HealthVault.com, provides a single, web-accessible repository for all your health records. There is much here to like, but — there are a lot of buts.

It has always bothered me that every new doctor or medical service asks the same questions, and each with a separate form. Dentist, specialists, emergency clinics, labs, pharmacies — same questions, again and again. What drugs are you taking? Which of these diseases have you had? Family medical history. It's inconvenient but more important, it compromises one's health care: I'll bet I have answered these 100 times and there are certainly differences, either because things have changed or I don't remember every detail.

This can be important information: A doctor's diagnosis and treatment depend on what the doctor knows about you. And in an urgent situation, or when the patient is not lucid, having accessible medical records can be life and death. I really want better online medical records.

As a technologist, it makes me especially crazy. Everyone else, from the DMV to the grocery store, has an online record system that is better than the medical community's. There are legitimate issues but nothing that can't be solved — and that have already been solved. Every medical office can readily access my credit information already. Clearly we can solve the privacy and networking and access issues.

Some worry about the security issue: Having all your medical data in some centralized database worries people. But do you really think your privacy is more guarded when there are 25 uncontrolled, unencrypted copies of your records, in 25 medical offices all over the county, immediately readable by 100 office staff?

Along comes HealthVault. It's a good start. It keeps all the information for you and your family under what looks like tight security. It holds contact and profile information, medical records, etc. You can upload image files and documents. The sharing facilities seem robust — you can invite someone to view the information and choose what they may see.

Two issues are access and trust. In terms of access, will my doctors accept a HealthVault login as a substitute for their form? Not yet, but they have a few partners who are using the date.

The bigger issue is trust. Note that I did not say "security" — that's a technical issue. It's the human issue of trust that will make or break this, and other, medical automation solutions.

HealthVault is owned by Microsoft. Do you trust Microsoft? I don't share the common distrust of of their corporate intent — I think they mean well and their corporate ethos is that technology is powerful medicine to help people. They also believe that profit and benefit go hand in hand. So I trust their intent.

I am not sure if I trust their technology. They're competent technologists. They certainly are capable of making an accessible, trustworthy, secure system. But will they?

Every Microsoft product is full of defects. Even after years of refinement, glitches remain — sometimes the same issues for year after year.

I worry about bloat. Huge applications mean more opportunity for bugs and functional flaws and Microsoft often seems to not know how to say no to a feature. Worse, they keep adding rather than fixing — a palette, an assistant, a wizard, a "ribbon" — layer upon layer of new things to repair incomprehensible interfaces only a programmer could have designed.

This all affects usability. I am always in awe of what they spend on usability testing and redesign. They seem incapable of simplicity. The continuous repair tells me they know there is a problem but don't know how they are causing it.

Then there are the bugs. I registered and in the process discovered four bugs. Some were cosmetic or minor functional issues, such as a spray of Javascript across the top of one page. There were many user interface oddities. Right now, it logged me out and won't let me log in. Most people at this point would give up. I went in through the top of the application and found a screen that let me sign in.

I tried to edit my contact information. There is no link to let me do that. I think I know why. I haven't confirmed my identity by replying to the e-mail, but guess what: It's not telling me that. There is no Edit link and they give the user no clue. It's programmer-think: If a capability is not available, don't show it. Would Apple or Amazon or Yahoo have done this?

So, will I use this? Even without my doctors' buy-in, there is enough functionality for me to get started. But that's mostly because I am a tech geek. Others would not likely try this, yet.

And then there is the trust issue.

I expect that the underlying security is fine. But it's like the president of United Airlines once said, "If the tray tables are dirty, the customer has to be wondering about the condition of the engines." As much as I may want this service, I am not going to be uploading my data, given how dirty their tray tables are.

Makers

A buddy of mine was griping:

Have we become a nation of observers?  Non-participants?  We don't make/build anything anymore. ...

It's something I have been thinking about for a while. I used to think, as my friend said, that we watch, we buy, but we don't build and do. I heard some parents talking about his kid who made a computer -- all the kid did was buy a chassis, supply, motherboard, and processor and plug them together. I was worried about our creativity. But then I started looking harder.

I started tuning into the Makers. There are huge communities of kids building things, doing extreme sports, making videos and tunes with their computers, making fun with fire. Look up catapults, siege engines, potato guns on the web. Here is one I saw just two days ago -- a guy wanted to build a solar reflector and got carried away. Bought a satellite dish (the huge ones) and outfitted it with mirrors.

Check out MAKE magazine, published by O'Reilly, and their annual Maker Faire. I went this year and it was awesome. Must have been 1000 exhibits of stuff people are making and doing.

Do you know about Lego Mindstorms? The son of the Lego founder did a Lego-based robot kit and people started hacking it. After some soul-searching, they decided to open the architecture and the result is a fantastic network of clubs doing Lego robotics.

And likewise for the Roomba -- the company, iRobot, has developer kits and people are making robots out of them.

And you don't have to go to geekland to see it. It's all over -- Home Depot, Food Network, Martha Stewart, and the mall stores where you paint pottery. The lady who runs a coffee shop I visit is making a quilt and told me quilting is big! And the web itself is swarming with words and images and music produced by ordinary people.

Seems to me creativity is alive and well.

Gotta go now. I need to go make something.

Waste

Canon sent me a wrist strap. Here is how they sent it:

That's the wrist strap, at the lower right. It was in a bag inside a bag inside a large bag, inside a 12 x 10 x 8-inch box filled with packing paper.

Memorial Day

Quote from Don Mayer of SmallDog Electronics. I love what he says here because regardless of politics, we all want peace and it doesn't happen without tremendous work by everyone.

Memorial Day is celebrated to honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our freedom. While the parades and celebrations are tributes to the brave men and women who have fought to protect us
from tyranny, a lasting and real commitment to peace is the highest honor we can pay to soldiers. In these dangerous times, it is more important than ever to honor those who are on duty right now sacrificing so that we can enjoy a free society. We may not all agree with the policies that have put our sons and daughters in harm's way, but honoring their service, sacrifice, and commitment is the duty of all citizens.

"How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes! " - Maya Angelou

"Destruction is not the law of humans. Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him. Every murder or other injury, no matter for what cause, committed or inflicted on another is a crime against humanity." - Mohandas Karamachand Gandhi

"True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost." - Arthur Ashe

"It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle." - Norman Schwarzkopf

"When we say "War is over if you want it," we mean that if everyone demanded peace instead of another TV set, we'd have peace." - John Lennon

The Search for Truth

Someone sent me a link to one of the several videos and PowerPoint files out there that point out some shocking "truths" about the events of 9/11. It led me to draw together some thoughts about conspiracy theories.

Conspiracy theories fascinate me because they illustrate how malleable the human mind is. One of the great talents of a our brains is to discern patterns -- a key survival skill. But we are so good at it, we can discern information that's not there.

The theories also illustrate the durability of myths. "Thomas Crapper invented the toilet!" You will find thousands of references to prove it, in print as well as on the web. But one problem: It's not true. All those references stemmed from one source which was passed around until they had the appearance of multiple sources.

I just learned that the power of coincidence to create the appearance of truth has a name:  "coincidence theory." If you want to find a coincidence, you always can, especially if you are willing to scour the planet for evidence that supports it. You have probably seen the one that talks about the "amazing" coincidences between the assassinations of Kennedy and Lincoln.

• Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
  John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
• Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
  John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.
• The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.
• Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
• Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.
• Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.

There are dozens and dozens of these. Do we believe there is a real relationship?

More on "coincidence theory": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coincidence_theory