The Straight Dope: Whatever happened to the "paperless office"?

Well, it's a complicated question, but the ultimate answer is, we're getting there.

The Straight Dope: Whatever happened to the "paperless office"?

A more persuasive explanation [for why the paperless office has failed to materialize], however, is that computers suck. Paper is cheap and adaptable, and, equally important, almost always works. If you’re an office drone scrambling to get a last-minute report out, one disaster you're not living in fear of is the Blue Sheet of Death. Computers, in contrast, make politicians look reliable. And let’s not forget premature high-tech obsolescence.

Having worked in the report-distribution end of the computer room, my own theory is that we just plain feel better if we have our customer data nearby in hard copy. In the old days, replacing a cabinet full of data tables was something you only did every other month or so. With handy, inexpensive computer printers that could print documents far faster than anyone could ever read them, even a small office could generate thousands of pages of new, customized reference data every day.

Coolness in Technology

APTOPIX NEWS CORP DOW JONES
Originally uploaded by photo240779

The "Zipper" has become an iconic image of New York since its introduction eighty years ago Thursday at 1 Times Square, which was then the home of the New York Times. It was given a complete face lift when it was acquired by Dow Jones in 1999, but it retains the all-amber look familiar to locals and tourists (although nowadays it's generated by LEDs, not light bulbs).

They paid good money for this

I don't know what's worse: The sloppy photo edit or the fact that the art director let it go.

You're invited to check Photoshop Disasters, where a similarly wretched example of what untrained or sloppy people can do with state-of-the-art software is posted approximately daily.

Sometimes it's too easy

In Corio, Victoria AU, a man texted a video of himself masturbating to a woman while she was at the police station in the process of filing a complaint against him.

I know, "stupid criminal" stories are all too common, and often untrue, but this one is so far over the top I had to pass it along. In addition, it appealed to me because it's a form of self-incrimination that wasn't possible, say, five years ago.

Vinyl and dust

Vinyl and dust
Originally uploaded by T1ger

AJC | Forget MP3s, some teens turning to vinyl records
On a recent afternoon 15-year-old Graham Saylor popped into Decatur CD to check out new releases. But he sprinted right past the CDs, stopping, instead, at the six bins of vinyl records.

Saylor prefers to listen to his favorite new acts, such as TV on the Radio and the Black Keys, on the black 12-inch platters. Some classmates at Decatur High School have become vinyl fans as well.

So what attracts the teens to a musical format that was proclaimed landfill fodder years before they were born?

"I just dig vinyls more. The tone is warmer. I'm not much of a digital guy," explains Saylor.

See also Wired.com: Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD's Coffin.

"Dad, what's a 'DVD'?"

Blu-ray Disc Originally uploaded by piesto

Business Wire | Toshiba Announces Discontinuation of HD DVD Businesses
Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders.

The long national nightmare is over: The next-generation home video format will be blu-ray.

As one of the Gizmodo commenters said, when was the last time Sony won a format war?

I'm a shock absorber

This time, I put the update on my LiveJournal page first, so I'm just linking to it from here. No new traumatic events, just a little more information about the last one.

Jove's Own Hiccups

Thunderbolt
Originally uploaded by mandolux

Don't you hate a story that starts out "Don't worry, I'm fine now"?

My defibrillator fired off late Tuesday morning, nine times within five minutes or so. Anyone who wishes to know what this feels like can easily simulate it at home by licking a 9-volt battery and, at the same moment, having your mortal enemy smite you with a sledge hammer.

Nine times.

Failing that, remember the little bird in Shrek that tried to hit that high note?

Spare a few thoughts for roommate John, who wasn't sure anything was going on until he heard me break the toilet seat.

I had just experienced one jolt and was sitting on the closed lid. I had mostly reassembled my wits when I felt another one, and the next thing I remember I was sitting *in* the toilet on pieces of shattered plastic.

He: "Do I need to call 9-1-1?"
I: "I'm not sure..."
ICD: *ZAP*
I: "Yes!"

Sorry, no pictures.

I will say that lying naked on the bathroom floor having Jove's Own Hiccups every fifteen to thirty seconds made me feel as helpless as little else has or can.

I know now that the first few were 5 joule charges, and the last one was 35 joules. I sorta thought it might have been a bigger wham than the ones before, but it also could have just been the emotional reaction of "Oh, God, another one". (The nurse confirmed this: People generally can't tell the difference. A shock is a shock.)

The manufacturer says that someone who's touching me when it goes off might feel a charge of about 2 joules. (This is conveyed in answer to the questions everyone asks, "Can I still have sex?") But what I hadn't been able to learn is "What does 2 joules feel like?"

I thought about that when John was looking for my pulse. I was half afraid it would fire off while he was trying, and, I admit, half hoping it would. It didn't.

Well, now I know what 5 joules feels like, and can extrapolate. It ain't like touching a metal doorknob. It's ultimately harmless, but you'd know you'd been slapped pretty good.

By the time that 35 joule kick happened, the novelty had completely worn off.

I had finally had the sense to lie down on the floor, modesty be damned. I was in the middle of the hall, having made barely a token attempt to get my pants on, when John returned from the 911 call and found me. I'm afraid he thought the worst before I had a chance to speak and tell him that I was still awake and (relatively) lucid.

That 35 joule kick was, it developed, the last. Laying on the floor had helped calm my heart. It never did happen that John was actually watching when I received a jolt. It's a shame. I wanted to know what it looked and sounded like. It sounded like thunder to me, but I suspect it was silent. Except, of course, for me yelling.

Something In The Blood

I'll have to skip over the blur of the arrival of the ambulance and the trip to Emory Crawford Long (where my doctors are). I traveled alone in the ambulance, but I hadn't been there long before my wife (with my daughter) and John (with my son) caught up with us. By then, with the liberal application of modern pharmaceuticals (let's hear it for modern pharmaceuticals!), I was feeling well enough to be snarky about my own condition (it's a coping mechanism), something the nurses and doctor picked up on and responded to. If it's possible to have fun in an ER, I think we did.

One of the really unexpected things discovered in the ER was that my system was all but depleted of potassium. The nurse there had mixed a "cocktail" with the potassium supplement in its liquid form, ice and orange juice -- at least she said it was orange juice, but the potassium liquid must have a really powerful taste. It tasted like-- well, like nothing I'd ever had before. The medicinal equivalent of a Lovecraftian creature that the human tongue cannot describe because it exists in dimentions we cannot perceive. The Pharmaceutical Horror, the Drugg From Out Of Space.

I Have Been Assimilated

Now I have a fourth doctor writing prescriptions for me, another cardiologist, Dr Whelan. He was present when the nurse with the australian accent downloaded my ICD data. That's the only reason I know it fired nine times: I had lost count.

The doctor's official description of the incident was that the ICD had fired "inappropriately". (Not quite the word I might have chosen.) By this he meant that the situation to which it was intended to respond, ventricular fibrillations, had not occurred. It was confused by my rapid heart rate at the time, although there is no particular explanation for the rapid rate in the first place. (Probably the combination of low potassium and a missed dose of toprol.)

After it had fired once, the anxiety it created kept my heart rate elevated, which served to convince the ICD that its job was not yet done. It's programming giving it no alternate course of action, it kept firing.

That won't happen again. While she was reading the ICD's records, the doctor and nurse-tech tweaked the unit's programming to allow it to more easily tell the difference between atrial fibrillations, ventricular fibrillations, and "mere" high heart rate, and react accordingly. The unit's logs stored detailed information about my heart's day-to-day activity not available any other way: They used that information to recalibrate some of the defaults the ICD uses to decide what an extraordinary event is.

That is, the ICD is pretty capable straight out of the box, but the better configured it is to its particular circumstances and environment, the more effective it will be. As a computer geek myself, I find this fascinating, and not just because the gadget is in my chest. I'm awestruck that not only is this degree of care possible, but it's available to pretty much anybody who needs it.

No sense of rhythm

My heart rate was not just elevated, but irregular. As the machines reported a "rolling average", the numbers jumped all over the chart, from 90 to 160 beats per minute. Which is not to say that a minute ever went by in which my heart beat 160 times. My heart sounded pathetic when I was hooked up to a monitor that actually sounded each beat.

And all of this we learned before we ever left the ER. By the time I had a room, it was pretty much all over but the shouting. They kept me topped off with medicines, to keep my heart rate controlled until my system recovered from the trauma and my heart calmed to a regular, normal at-rest rate (60-70 bpm). There was talk of a "plan B" if it didn't do so, but the doctor was confident that it would do so after a night's rest.

And it did.

That's about all there is to tell.

Oh, and there's a new champion. The potassium supplement I now have to take is, without question, the biggest pill I've ever had to swallow. It's about an inch long, the circumference of a piece of chalk, and not half as yummy.

Some of my pills I can just pop 'em down without water. This one, I'll need a *lot* of water and a bit of mental preparation too. I almost didn't manage it in the hospital, and the nurse had broken those in half.

But it is over and I am here to tell the tale, and even laugh at parts of it.

SEE ALSO: LiveJournal.

What is a hero?

The gentleman pictured right is Thomas J. Tauke, executive vice president for public affairs at Verizon. He may look like the love child of Don Rickles and Voyager's "Doctor", but just at this moment he looks like a hero to me.

"Hollywood" (by which the New York Times means "the entertainment industry") has been asking the big players in home internet service to "stand alongside them in their fight against online piracy" (by which they mean "monitor what your customers download and tattle on 'em if it's our music and movies").

The big players in home internet service, for their part, have seen where their civic duty lies (by which I mean "quake in fear of Congressional oversight bought and paid for by the entertainment industry"). Comcast is reportedly going so far as to actually alter the data the user thinks he's downloading with the intent of making torrented (by which they mean "illegal") material download so slowly that it won't be worth the time.

"AT&T ...is talking about developing a system that would identify and block illicitly copied material being sent over its broadband network," says the Times. By which AT&T means "We still remember what happened the last time somebody said 'boo' to us." Or, more succinctly, "You got it, boss."

But Verizon, through its spokesman Mr Tauke, says this: “We generally are reluctant to get into the business of examining content that flows across our networks and taking some action as a result of that content.” By which, surprisingly enough, he appears to mean "No."

Yes, there's a healthy percentage of self-interest in his reasons. But at least the customer's privacy is on the list. It may not be the reason, but it's a reason.

(See also the Consumerist.)

But that wasn't the point...

You mean Mythbusters actually did the airplane-on-a-conveyor-belt thing?





Wait, the pilot didn't think it would fly? That's not very reassuring. Look, dude, the plane doesn't get its forward motion from the landing gear. The wheels don't drive the plane, OK? The propeller does. That's why they call it that. It propels the plane. The plane won't sit still just because it's sitting on a moving surface. I thought the Navy doped this out years ago before they spent so much money building aircraft carriers.

(While filming "Six Days, Seven Nights", Harrison Ford [who actually can fly a plane] had to explain this to the director, who wanted Ford to taxi around without starting the propeller. He's good but he's not that good. While you're at it, see about holding the tide back too. Let me know how that goes for you.)

The question I thought this was about, which I think probably still is a good question (and is probably what some people thought the stunt was actually about), is whether the propeller, all by itself, can move enough air over the wings to generate enough lift to fly the plane without actual forward motion. I'm reasonably sure the answer to that one is "heck, no", but wouldn't it be neat to be proven wrong?

It's a shame he won't live. But then again, who does?

After two years, the Dickbot is still at large...

Sydney Morning Herald | Robot goes missing
Philip K Dick is missing.

Not the American science fiction writer whose novels spawned hit films such as Blade Runner and Total Recall -- he died more than 20 years ago -- but a state-of-the-art robot named after the author.

The quirky android, was lost in early January [2006] while en route to California by commercial airliner.

...The irony of the situation -- a missing replica of the very author who championed "replicant" freedom -- is not lost on Phil's creators.

...Along with an eerie likeness to the author, the robot features award-winning artificial intelligence that mimics the writer's mannerisms and lifelike skin material to affect realistic expressions.

Top-of-the-line voice software loaded with data from Dick's vast body of writing allows the robot to carry on natural-sounding conversations, although it does come off as a bit doddering at times.

Biometric-identification software and advanced machine vision allows the robot to recognise people -- even in a crowd -- read their expressions and body language and talk to them sounding a lot like a normal, albeit slightly senile, author who likes to quote his own books when he gets confused.

That pretty much makes him indistinguishable from every author I've ever met.

"Dad, what's a 'single'?"

Early Single
Originally uploaded by Tavallai.

Wired | Jan. 10, 1949: A Brand-New Format for the Shirelles, Drifters
1949: The 45-rpm record is introduced by RCA. Can rock 'n' roll be far behind?

Flat disc records began replacing the cylinder for reproducing recorded sound as early as 1887. The original standard, what we know as the 78, had a 10-inch diameter disc with a rotational speed of between 75 and 80 rpm.

The 78 remained the standard for portable recorded sound until the mid-20th century, despite some severe limitations. For one thing, the disc didn't hold much, meaning that longer works, typically classical music, had to be broken in mid-composition (which makes the 78 seem a little like the vinyl forerunner of the four-track tape).

Columbia introduced the 33-rpm disc in 1948, which mostly solved that problem, and its rival, RCA, was right behind with the 45. Despite a diameter of only 7 inches, the 45 could hold as much sound as the 78, and was far more portable and cheaper to produce.

The beauty of this technology is this: You could watch it play and see how it worked. Every bit of the science that made sound happen was visible.

With an iPod, on the other hand, there are no moving parts larger than electrons. The basic parts are still there (data storage, scanning, conversion from physical to electronic form, transportation to vibrating surface, conversion from electronic form to vibrating air) but there's nothing you can see going on. And a common phenomenon of everyday life gets a little more obscure.

It might as well be magic.

Happy Public Domain Day!

music piracy
Originally uploaded by Slider22.

Boing Boing and Copyright Watch are celebrating Public Domain Day, or January 1 as the rest of us call it. As of today in the United States, the unpublished works of authors who died 70 years ago will enter the public domain.

Just imagine what nuggets of literature must reside in that collection.

As for me, I'm thinking, as I so often do during the holidays, of that besieged agency that fights for the rights and money of musicians everywhere, the Recording Industry Association of America. Seeing that millions of American music consumers no longer know what they can legally do with the CDs they've bought or received for Christmas, the RIAA, with its lawsuit against Jammie Thomas, has clarified its position beyond any possibility of misunderstanding.

What can I legally do with this CD I just bought?

Why, you can listen to it on a CD player.

Can I copy it to...

Nope.

But wait. I didn't tell you how I was going to copy it, or where.

Doesn't matter. You can't copy it. At all. Period.

But I got this new iPod for Christmas...

My, yes, that is a handsome model. I'll bet it sounds terrific.

I wouldn't know, there's no music on it.

That's a shame.

I'd like to listen to these songs.

You can.

But you just said...

All you have to do is buy them from iTunes.

But I bought the CD!

*blank expression* Yeah?

So I thought I'd copy the songs to...

Ah ah ah. That would be stealing.

But I bought the CD!

But you didn't buy a license to make a digital copy of the music.

But I bought the CD!

You keep using that word, "bought".
I don't think it means what you think it means.

Welcome to music in the 21st century.

"God is in the details. But there are no details anymore."

waveforms, precious little waveforms
Originally uploaded by altemark.

Rolling Stone | The Death of High Fidelity
David Bendeth, a producer who works with rock bands like Hawthorne Heights and Paramore, knows that the albums he makes are often played through tiny computer speakers by fans who are busy surfing the Internet. So he's not surprised when record labels ask the mastering engineers who work on his CDs to crank up the sound levels so high that even the soft parts sound loud.

Over the past decade and a half, a revolution in recording technology has changed the way albums are produced, mixed and mastered — almost always for the worse. "They make it loud to get [listeners'] attention," Bendeth says. Engineers do that by applying dynamic range compression, which reduces the difference between the loudest and softest sounds in a song. Like many of his peers, Bendeth believes that relying too much on this effect can obscure sonic detail, rob music of its emotional power and leave listeners with what engineers call ear fatigue. "I think most everything is mastered a little too loud," Bendeth says. "The industry decided that it's a volume contest."

Producers and engineers call this "the loudness war," and it has changed the way almost every new pop and rock album sounds. But volume isn't the only issue. Computer programs like Pro Tools, which let audio engineers manipulate sound the way a word processor edits text, make musicians sound unnaturally perfect. And today's listeners consume an increasing amount of music on MP3, which eliminates much of the data from the original CD file and can leave music sounding tinny or hollow. "With all the technical innovation, music sounds worse," says Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, who has made what are considered some of the best-sounding records of all time. "God is in the details. But there are no details anymore."

Ah, you young people. You don't remember.

Way back when FM radio first began to crawl out of its niche and into the mainstream, it sounded beautiful. Compared to the tinny crackle of AM, FM was clean, pure sound, with clear, dynamic highs and quiet lows -- and, almost unheard-of (so to speak) today, the occasional moment of true silence.

Today, I can't hear the difference between AM and FM. The sound I used to associate with FM one must now buy satellite radio to get. The conspicuous exception is public radio. I can't tell for sure if they are actually maintaining the same standards they always have, or have simply not drifted as far downwards, but compared to it, listening to other music stations is like being beaten with a blunt instrument.

Happy Sputnik Day!

Sputnik cup holder
Originally uploaded by m5.

Thanks, Ron, for reminding me of this landmark.

New York Times: It's difficult to recapture the sense of paranoia and self-doubt that Sputnik created in the U.S., but the New York Times' coverage of that week helps a bit.

Ron adds:

The ‘New York Times’: Spreading paranoia and self-doubt for fifty years! :) (At least.)

And counting.

New York Times: After all, the first step into space was an achievement that transcended politics.

Bwah hah hah, I say, and furthermore, chortle. Ron observes:

Tell that ‘un to Wernher von Braun. He probably could have put ‘Explorer 1’ up a coupla months before ‘Sputnik,’ except that Dwight Eisenhower insisted America’s first satellite go up on a ‘civilian’ booster.

Why people hate tech support

There is nothing unusual about this tech support call. Thousands just like it happen every day.



From The Consumerist.

Oops

The downside of moving to the new post-beta Blogger template is that I have no way to display old comments. I've archived them all, but Blogger gives me no way to import them into its comment engine.

Sincere regrets for any inconvenience this may cause.

Best Buy Acquires Speakeasy

Huh? Did I read that right? The internet service provider with possibly the best reputation of any ISP, better in fact than most computer manufacturers I could name, is being acquired by the retailer with the second most ignorant sales force on the planet? (CompUSA holds the title, but they're closing stores left and right and not likely to spread their seed.)

You know, this makes sense

I don't think anyone who knows me would accuse me of being a rabid environmentalist. That said, though, I certainly see the wisdom of minimizing the consumption of resources when practical. Most of the lighting in my house is compact-fluorescent instead of incandescent, which lowers both my electric bill and the average room temperature. I'm sold on the utility of low-power LEDs (which appear to be widely used in traffic lights in the area). Heck, I even find the dark-sky arguments quite reasonable. (I remember when I could lie on the grass at night and watch the stars. I sure can't do it now.)

But I didn't think of this:

Treehugger.com | Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-Hours a Year
From the lights out department - did you know that a cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor uses about 74 watts to display an all white web page, but only uses 59 watts to display an all black page? ...

Take at look at Google, for instance, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let's assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop. Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode, the shift to a black background will save a total of 15 (74-59) watts. Now take into account that about 25 percent of the monitors in the world are CRTs, and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that's about $75,000/year, a goodly amount of energy and dollars for changing a few color codes.

Okay, $75,000 a year divided by however many million visitors doesn't amount to enough difference for any one user to notice. I'd certainly grant that. Nonetheless, it would be a strong, conspicuous gesture toward an attitude shift. Why burn what you don't have to?

No, you won't find me leading any "Internet Goes Black" movements, but (as Treehugger points out) there are many dark colors that still represent energy savings compared to white. I spent years perfectly content with green-on-black 80x24: The screen resolution and color palettes available now offer a tremendous improvement over that.

I suppose it's possible for me to override any page's default colors, but this isn't the kind of thing that would be effective as a user-by-user grassroots movement. The hosts of the internet's most popular pages would have to buy into it.

Of course, as the world upgrades to LCD monitors, the issue may take care of itself.

The FBI's Magic Lantern

I can't imagine why the FBI has publicly revealed this, but they are developing a trojan-horse-like program with which they can "infect" a computer they suspect is being used for illegal purposes. This program will allow them to monitor communications and computer usage.

The big deal with this one is that they don't have to achieve physical access to the computer they want to monitor. They can e-mail it to you, just like the authors of "ILOVEYOU" and "nimdA" did. Think of it as slipping your landlord a fifty to let the FBI into your apartment.

Oh, no, the FBI would never abuse this tool. ``Like all technology projects or tools deployed by the FBI it would be used pursuant to the appropriate legal process.''

Well, fine, but the above statement was delivered as a response to the question "Would it require a court order to use it?" Response it may be, but it ain't an answer.

This also puts the anti-virus companies in a difficult position. Such a trojan clearly falls into the realm of destructive and invasive programs that anti-virus software is designed to disable. Would an existing product catch it? Do the anti-virus companies have an obligation to update their product so that it will? Can the FBI, in the name of the War Effort, forbid the companies from doing this?

Will the FBI be able to preserve the secret of their "back-door"? Will other hackers be able to discover and exploit it? And if they do, will the FBI insist that this door be left open regardless?

Am I too paranoid? Is there such a thing as "too paranoid"?

Have I used too many question marks in this comment?