Kevin's Blog

Today is August 6th, 2010. The 65th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. In 3 days it will be the 65th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki. Many claim these bombings should not have taken place, or been done in different locations, specifically that a demonstration on an empty island should have been done first. I disagree, I think that these bombings were necessary both to end the at-the-time current conflict, and to provide a warning to future generations exactly what it was we had developed.

I'm not unbiased in my opinion. My father and his family were held in Japanese concentration camps. My grandfather and many of my older uncles were forced into Japanese slave labor, mainly in mining. My grandfather and several uncles died in the mines. I remain convinced that greatly shortening the war saved several of the lives of other family members.

Did the bombings really shorten the war? I think the evidence is pretty clear on this. The Japanese didn’t give up anything without losing a lot of blood over it. Every island in the island hopping strategy was a fierce battle. I think how much worse the battle in the Pacific was is just coming out now, with HBO’s “The Pacific” being a good example.

Six months of continual fire-bombing of 67 Japanese cities had killed 500,000 people, with little apparent result to the Allies. The atomic bombs killed around 123,000 in the first day and 2x total. How many more months and more hundreds of thousands would’ve been necessary to bring the war to a conclusion? Would an invasion by the allies been required, how many lives would that have cost? Great Britain never surrendered to an aerial bombardment alone, would the Japanese have done so?

Would selecting a different target have had less of an impact? Would a demonstration have proved effective? We can never know for sure, but I think the indicators are pretty good that the emotional impact the bombs produced would’ve been greatly diminished.

Many say that more military targets should’ve been selected. World War I and World War II put an end to a clear delineation between military targets and civilian targets. All major cities were housing to military manufacturing centers, ports and rail hubs are vital to the logistics of war. Major military bases are located near cities. Hiroshima had a number of military bases by it, including the headquarters of the army in charge of the defense of southern Japan. Nagasaki was a major military manufacturing center and seaport. I don’t think locations of significant military importance, but not near a civilian city would have worked; they may not have even existed.

Finally, I think there is another aspect to these bombings that is important to consider – their impact on future generations. Serving as a warning to future generations is never a justification for using wepons of mass destruction. But these bombings brought the very real power of them to the forefront. If they hadn’t been used in WW 2, I’m convinced they would’ve been used in a later war – with far more powerful bombs, and with far less true military significance. Demonstrations just aren’t visceral enough for this. The first hydrogen bomb was detonated at Bikini Atoll. This bomb was orders of magnitude larger than the atomic bombs used on Japan. It pretty much wiped out an entire island and produced radioactive contamination over many more islands. Yet when speaking of the dangers of weapons of mass destruction we point to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The dead of Nagasaki and Hiroshima must be honored and remembered. The enormous power and ease of use of our greatest weapons must not be forgotten. But I remain unconvinced there was another or better way of achieving what was needed, as quickly and with a lower cost in lives (on either side).

I'm on my 5th bluetooth headset. Two Motorola something or others, an Etymotic etyBLU which I lost, a Jawbone 2, and now a Plantronics 975.

The Motorola headsets were cheap and adequate. Not spectacular looking and the audio wasn't great. I upgraded to the EtyBLU based on reviews that it was supposed to be the best. It's an in the ear canal model. It also has a removable boom mic combined with its noise supression makes it work really well in noisy conditions. The problem I had with it was its bluetooth connection to my Blackberry was terrible. I couldn't get more than 5 feet away from my phone without completely dropping the connection. Even with it right next to the phone it was fairly poor connection. Then I lost it in an airport.

After that I got a Jawbone 2 pretty cheap on Woot. Initial impressions were favorable. It certainly had a solid connection to my phone. But in actual use I wasn't quite as impressed. It has a switch on the phone called a voice activity sensor, it's supposed to help the headset with noise suppression but i don't think it sat on my jaw correctly and actually caused problems. The button for answering calls was very hard to hit as it is hidden under the surface of the headset, but has no tactile feedback for when your finger is over the button.

Both the Jawbone 2 and the EtyBLU have custom USB chargers. I find this annoying when I travel. I'm always forgetting a cable or two, and needing special cables for each device is a pain.

Now comes the Plantronics 975. I really like this headset. Like the EtyBLU it has a boom mic (permanently attached so I'm not worried about losing it) I don't feel like I have to yell to make sure the mic picks up my voice. The answer button is easily found and activated. The bluetooth connection is solid, I can walk across my living room into the kitchen and not lose signal. The recharger is a standard mini-USB connector. This is the same as my Blackberry so one cable can recharge both.

The ear connection is really nice. I thought it was an in the ear canal model, but it actually has an interesting silicon system that hooks inside the ear lobe and the speaker sits outside the ear canal. I really like this, it doesn't block outside noise nearly as much as the in the canal ones do (this may turn out to be a disadvantage in noisy environments, but my calls so far have been great). Also I seem to have a slight reaction to silicon in my ear. After an hour or so it starts to itch (foam ear tips work better for me, which I switched the EtyBLU to, the Jawbone 2 can't be changed.) The Plantronics starts having a reaction too, but it seems to take 3 or 4 hours. Washing the silicon may help with this as well.

One final thing that really put the Plantronics ahead of the other models for me is the case. It comes with a really nice faux leather case. It's like a small solid box. The box really feels like it'll protect the headset during travel. You dock the headset in the case via the mini-USB and you can charge the headset while it's in the case via a mini-USB connector on the outside of the box.

All well and good, but then reading the instructions I found out the case actually contains an additional battery. When fully charged the internal case battery can charge the headset two more times. That's 15 hours of talk time before needing to find an outlet. Perfect for those long travel days with lots of layovers. This design is really great, and makes it well worth the $100 price ($130 list, I bought mine cheaper via Amazon.)

I'll have a better feel for how the headset itself works for me over the next few calls but so far I'm very impressed with this headset.

I do like the iPad. I think its a new category of device. Fat iPod is a visual description but I think it does the device a disservice. I can't count the number of times I've talked to people that have gone to a dual monitor on their computer. It changes their workflow, they feel more productive, etc.... Technically that's just a fatter computer but it's made them use it in a different way.

I have the same feeling about the iPad. It's a dual screen iPhone and it's going to trigger different uses and workflows. Things you don't even think of until you have it in hand.

Most specifically what the iPad ISN'T is it isn't designed to replace any device you have now. It's not an iPhone replacement (or even an iPod Touch replacement). It's not a laptop replacement. I've even seen it said that it'll fail because it doesn't replace an XBox. Well duh it's not an XBox. Neither is a netbook, neither is a laptop, neither is a Mac Pro.

I think everything left out that people complain about was left out on purpose because it actually made the product worse. Given that the original iPhone was called the Safari Pad (http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/03/safari-pad-tech-used-to-create-iphone.ars) it's obvious Apple has been working on this for a long time. My guess is they made lots and lots of prototypes and tried them extensively and if it was awkward or not working, out it went.

The use case I see for this is when you are sitting down. Recliner, couch, airplane seat, less so an office chair (unless next to the monitor of your "real" computer). iPad will spend most of it's time in your hands. Next most common will be propped up (probably by the case), the dock less than that (I'm sure there are people that will dock it with the keyboard and leave it that 24/7 but I think this will be rare outside the blogging/writer adopters.)

I also think this device will be left at home far more than smaller devices. I'll leave it on the arm of the couch when I go to work. Unless it works alot better for taking notes from the virtual keyboard then I'm picturing, I don't think i'll take to meetings with me (I do take notes on my iPod Touch). When I travel I definitely take it. For business travel I'll take it WITH my work laptop, not instead of. For personal travel I think it will be sufficient on it's own. At the bar, restaurant, bathroom I still use my iPod Touch.

Most common complaints I see are:

• No phone - duh, it's a 10" device. You don't want to put this up to your face (by the way, I believe VOIP will work on the device.)
• No back facing camera for taking pictures. Really? You want to pull out a 10" device to take pictures. Give me a break. Your phone is faster and more portable.
• No foward facing camera. I thought about this one for awhile. On the surface it makes sense for things like iChat and Skype, but think about my use cases. If the most common use case is sitting down with the iPad in your hand, it's going to be in your lap. A camera would be angled straight up your nose. Even if you're tilting your head down the angle makes your head look huge. Next use case is propped up on a table. In landscape mode the camera would point at your chest (unless you angle it back more, then you're back to up the nose.) Portrait mode, on a dock might work, but unless you're very short I think this camera would shoot. your chin. To me a video chat works best with the camera at eye level. Which is a rare position for the iPad.
• USB/firewire/HDMI - I don't want cables dangling all around me on the couch. The camera connection adds a USB to connect a camera will be curious to see how useful this is.
• No 1080p - duh, the device is 10". 1080p at 10" is stupid waste of disk space, and you're already limited to at most 64 GB on
• Only up to 64GB memory - it's thin and cheapish device. More memory is expensive, and the device has to be thicker, and heavier. This one will change over time. I'll never argue against more space (my iTunes library is over 500 GB, so the more I can put on a portable the happier I am).
• No tethering from iPad to iPhone - this would be nice to avoid another data charge. I'm hoping for a wifi tethering mode in a future iPhone OS (similar to mifi functionality.) I'm guessing this was more a carrier decision than an Apple decision. I'd also like to tether to the iPad if it has 3G.

So what I see is Apple has come up with a nice device that supplements your other devices. It isn't designed to replace any of them, especially not combinations of them. Apple wants to sell lots of devices so their design is specifically set to be an additional device, not a replacement for existing ones. I can clearly see a use for Computer, iPhone/iPod Touch, and an iPad as a group of devices. Those whining it isn't awesome because it doesn't let them dump their existing devices don't know what they're talking about.

Got into a debate about the future of the Mac Pro on twitter. I believe this all started from an article Ted Landau wrote for Mac Observer

I haven't read the whole thing but that hasn't stopped me before. Here's what I think it would take for the iMac to be able to replace the Mac Pro. Do I think this is likely? Not really, I do think it's got an outside possibility of occuring. I'd give it about 30% chance of happening in 5 years. Also note that I do assume both lines will continue to be updated.

So, the Mac Pro has several advantages over the iMac. Most of them would have to be overcome for the iMac line to bypass the Mac Pro.

1. Multiple cores

   Currently the Mac Pro maxes out at 4 core Xeon (the Xeon means it's capable of hyper threading where each core can act as 2 cores, effectively making the current Mac Pro an 8 core system). The next update will probably double this.

   iMac matches the current Mac Pro. Top end iMac is a 4-core i7 which has hyper threading. Will the next iMac update be able to match the Mac Pro's next update again? My guess is yes, in a year. but the real question is: does continually throwing cores at your software scale linearly or is there a point where no additional processors will improve your speed. My guess is there is a maximum but it's probably more limited by drive speed than anything else. 128 core processes seeking to store their work on the same drives simultaneously will probably choke waiting for drives, while 2 64 core processor machines (with separate drive systems) complete the same task faster.

   This is going to come down to the nature of the work. Fortunately for the Mac Pro, it's primary use in video and science research are easily parallelized on to multiple processors. It may be a lot of iterations of processor upgrades before the a peak is hit on these systems.

2. Maximum RAM In 2006 the differential between max memory in the iMac line and the Mac Pro line was 16x (iMac - 2GB, Mac Pro - 32 GB). Today it stands at 2x, and after the next Mac Pro update will probably be 4x. It appears the iMac is closing in on the Mac Pro. If the next update jumps to a 128GB max instead of 64GB, then it may be able to keep it's advantage a lot longer.

3. Maximum video displays iMac is at 2, Mac Pro is at 8. Will future upgrades add more to the iMac, will users demand more than 8 on a single computer? This is will be doable in the near future and mostly comes down to: Apple will do it if they really want to replace the Mac Pro line with an iMac Pro line instead (and if Apple wants to do this is completely up to Apple, who hasn't asked me.)

4. Maximum drive space The only way the iMac can compete here is if there is some new external bus speed, faster than eSATA and Firewire 800, that enable the iMac to access an expansion system faster than an internal system. Rumors abound Apple will be going to the Light Peak interface, replacing all Firewire and USB connections, but Apple rumors gather like flies and are about as reliable. I think a new external bus sufficient to overcome current internal drive speeds is likely, but 1 year, 2 years, 10 years?

   Also this assumes there won't be some new internal bus system that is far superior than the internal. I actually think this will be true. SATA/eSATA point to systems going to the same bus technology internal/external and I think that will continue.

5. Specialty expansion cards Want fiber channel cards or speciality rendering cards? Mac Pro is your only hope. Only 2 ways an iMac could over come this: some brand new, super fast, not even rumored, external card system comes along (express card is insufficient), or the iMac gains so many processors that dedicating them to some of these speciality tasks is a no brainer.

   We'll probably see some advances to express card, but not enough to overcome internal slot advances. Only hope here is for the the need of speciality cards to be reduced via additional processors, more memory and

6. Heat dissipation

   When you have a big open volume of space and lots of fans you can run things hotter. Which means they can either run faster or you can run more of them. Rejiggering the case a bit to make it bigger (something Apple hates doing, they much prefer going smaller) might help. That might lead to a product line like the laptops, where MacBooks are the small ones and MacBook Pro are the big. iMac and iMac Pro, with the iMac Pro form factor being slightly larger.

   Better power dissipation and higher efficiencies help as well, but that just lets you pack more in the larger case too. Moving to an internal SSD hard drive,with the large capacity drives being stored external would be a benefit. Assuming the SSD drive capacities expand as expected (pretty likely.)

So after all this, the summary -- the only real hope for the iMac to overcome the Mac Pro is if there is a point where the hardware is so ahead of the software that throwing more cores at it won't help, and new technologies come out that the advantage of external vs. internal is significantly reduced.

Likely? As I said, not really. Possible? Yeah, a faint possibility.

Mac rumor site Think Secret recently shutdown as part of an agreement with Apple. Apple sued Think Secret on January 5, 2005 after they published rumors about Apple’s plans to announce the iPod mini at the 2005 Macworld. Think Secret wasn’t the only rumor site at the time publishing rumors about Apple’s announcements, but Apple sued them to get the names of those that had leaked the information, and no one else, before actually making their announcments. This of course immediately lent credence to all of Think Secret’s claims, including claims that were wrong (such as price).

Many people have ventured opinions on the news, some claiming victory for Apple, some claiming Apple is a bully, others expressing disappointment in Nick Ciarelli (Think Secret’s publisher) for seemingly caving in to Apple and “damaging” the First Amendment.

I think both opinions are wrong. First, we don’t know the full extent of the agreement. All we know is Think Secret is shut down and Apple failed to get the names of those that disclosed information to Ciarelli. No information on if Ciarelli is prevented from stating another site, or working for another site. No information on if Apple paid Ciarelli any money.

I don’t think any damage was done to the First Amendment. This never went to court and no precendence setting decisions were rendered. You can’t cite agreements of this sort in a legal brief. So the First Amendment is where it was before the case began. The only precendence that might be claimed is that after 3 years a college student might get sick of a court case getting in the way of his studies.

Apple didn’t set any new claims for what is a trade secret. I’m not sure the information Ciarelli published could be considered a trade secret. The report simply stated: “Reliable sources inside and outside of Apple have confirmed Apple will announce the new pocket-size iPods in a number of capacities and in various colors, including stripes. Capacities will be 2 and 4GB — meaning users could store some 400 and 800 songs, respectively. Prices will start at around $100US”

David Zeiler at the Baltimore Sun believes Think Secret violated trade secret law because Ciarelli received information (citing the trade secret law) “knowing the same to have been stolen or appropriated, obtained, or converted without authorization”. The problem is that Zeiler doesn’t examine what a trade secret is. The law defines a trade secret as:

(3) the term "trade secret" means all forms and types of financial,
business, scientific, technical, economic, or engineering information,
including patterns, plans, compilations, program devices, formulas,
designs, prototypes, methods, techniques, processes, procedures,
programs, or codes, whether tangible or intangible, and whether or how
stored, compiled, or memorialized physically, electronically,
graphically, photographically, or in writing if?
    (A) the owner thereof has taken reasonable measures to keep such
information secret; and
    (B) the information derives independent economic value, actual or
potential, from not being generally known to, and not being readily
ascertainable through proper means by, the public;

So is what Think Secret published a trade secret? I don’t think so. Part of it was finanical information, but that information was WRONG? So is wrong information a trade secret? I don’t think so, it might be harmful to Apple, but not a trade secret.

Part of it could be considered technical information, it mentions 2GB and 4GB sizes, but does this information “derive independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to…the public”?

Adam Engst contends that rumor information can be harmful to Apple by causing Apple customers to delay purchasing items. The problem is that close followers of Apple already KNOW Apple announces new products at Macworld and are waiting for that anyway. Personally I doubt those that aren’t close followers of Apple would be following Apple rumor sites, so I don’t see how they would even know to delay their purchase. At least not until Apple sued a rumor site and brought it to national attention.

Basically in the end I don’t think Apple or Ciarelli think they had an open and shut case and that is why they compromised. There are probably tangential reasons for the decisions on both sides for deciding to settle. I don’t see the First Amendment as being harmed in any way, it certainly has slowed down the flow of Apple rumors. Apple does come out looking like a bit of a bully, but it would’ve been even worse if they’d continued the law suit. I actually think Apple did the most harm to itself by filing the lawsuit to begin with, and then even worse by filing before Macworld commenced making everyone believe all the rumors Think Secret posted, including the wrong $100 price point.

More updating of the site. I’m still goofing around with the RSS Feeds section. There were some things I didn’t like about the old one. I like the new one a bit better, but I think I need to tweak it a bit more.

I’ve also setup a gallery for photos I’ve taken. Currently I’ve got some images from my trip to New Orleans and pictures of my cats. Thrilling stuff.

Kevin’s Photos

Read stories about what we knew about the 9/11 hijackers before 9/11 and most of them read like this:

Moussaoui Trial

Over and over again it is shown that red flags were thrown up about people taking airline training, interested in flying but not take-offs/landings, etc….

Pretty clear that we had the information in front of us that something was going on but that we failed to connect the dots and see what was being planned.

Unfortunately since 9/11 all the administration wants to do is gather more dots, not actually spend time putting the dots together. More dots actually clouds the pictures, especially when most of the dots gathered aren’t relevant to the picture.

Information gathering is certainly needed, but that isn’t what we’ve been lacking. We’ve been lacking good analysis of the information we do have. Why the administration insists it needs the ability to spy on anyone/anywhere without warrants when they can’t even analyze the current information they have is beyond me. Add in the bogus information gathered from library records and internet search data and e-mail sniffing and the system is going to bog down in unuseful data and miss the next plans again!

There is an episode of South Park where the Underpants Gnomes explain business to the boys. The Gnomes have a business plan that consists of 3 steps:

Step 1 – Collect Underpants
Step 2 – ???
Step 3 – PROFIT!

Unfortunately nobody knows exactly what step 2 is, only that it leads to profit, and that it will occur.

Underpants Gnomes

Equally unfortunately the more I observe the operation of the Bush administration the more I think their planning is equally inept. Their planning for Iraq seemed to be:

1. Defeat Army!
2. ???
3. Democracy!

When they got to step 2 they just kind of assumed we’d be the heroes and liberators of the populance and ignored any non neo-conservative planning that had been done, and the neo-conservatives had done none of their own planning other than protecting the oil ministry. So while the military stood around with its thumb up its butt (not the military’s fault, they aren’t supposed to do anything without orders) the looters take over and all the good will and momentum we had build up faded away.

The plan for disaster recovery seems to be:
1. Catastrophe!
2. ???
3. Medals for everyone!

Again, no real plan after the very first initial stages. Mostly just standing around waiting.

I’m not sure why they are so bad at this. Sometimes I think they’ve watched too many after school specials where, at the last minute, something miraculous occurs and everything turns out ok in an hour.

Other times I think they’ve got too much religion. A little praryer and everything will turn out ok. I guess they’ve forgotten that “God helps those that help themselves.” We’ve got to exert some effort, it’s not like prayer takes anything away from physical exertions.

Then I get totally cynical. FEMA seems to be doing a pretty good job elsewhere, New Orleans is a democratic strong hold in Louisana, all of Bush’s appointments are based on political favors, not ability, maybe this is how politicalized disaster recovery works — your “friends” get help, your “enemies” don’t. I don’t really belive this, but to be honest nothing freaking surprises me about the Bush administration anymore.

I found a neat program tonight. It dumps an iTunes Library to a lovely HTML formatted series of pages.

iTunes Publisher

So of course I dumped out my listing of 13,352 songs. Peruse the list at your leisure.

My Music Library

and no, you can’t download the MP3s. And my collection is legally obtained. Either ripped from my own CD’s or from emusic.com.

emusic.com

Widmer Hefeweizen

Excellent beer. Had this in Seattle with a very pleasant crab fettucini. If I hadn’t been so tired I would’ve enjoyed more than the two I had. Next time I’m in Portland Oregon I’ll need to do the tour of the place.