I was trying to figure out the relative wattages of various Apple power adapters I have–for the MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro–to see which is compatible with other MacBooks. While doing this it occurred to me that it might be helpful to provide a quick little factoid/tutorial for non-EEs who get confused by the concepts of voltage, current, and power. The electrons flowing through a conductor (wire) are a current, represented by i or I, and measured in amperes, or amps. It’s analogous to water flowing through a hose. (Note: the imaginary number i is thus referred to as j by EEs to distinguish it from current, i.) The voltage, v or V, represents the amount of “pressure” pushing the current through the conductor. These concepts are often confused by laymen, used interchangeably, etc. For example, you can be killed if a large enough current passes through your body–amps. Your body has a certain resistance R, measured in ohms, Ω (or impedance, if you take into account complex (imaginary, frequency) aspects; incidentally, the analogous concept for magnetic flux is called reluctance–I’ve always loved those three terms: resistance, impedance, and reluctance; if we need another, I suppose stubbornness might do). The bigger the resistance, the more pressure or voltage V is needed to push through a given current I. There is a simple relation: V=IR, or I = V/R.  For example, if you have 10V and a 10 Ω resistor, there is 1A of current. If you get electrocuted, it’s the current passing through you–the amps–that kills you.

Anyway, electrical power is measured in terms of Watts, and power, P, is determined by a simple equation: P=VI. That is, it’s directly proportional to the voltage and the current. When you see a power adapter that is rated to provide, say, 18.5V at 4.6A, as with Apple’s 85W MagSafe Power Adapter, you’ll notice that you get the 85W figure by multiplying the voltage times the current: 18.5 x 4.6 = 85.1. The point is, this is a very handy relationship to know, and it’s easy to remember: P=VI. If you know the V and I, you can figure out the wattage (power). In addition, because of the V=IR relationship, you can figure out, say, current, if you know resistance and power. Or say you have a 100Ω lightbulb, and it’s powered by a 110V outlet. If you want to figure out the current, it’s I=V/R = 110/100 or about 1 amp. This helps to explain why some yards use “low voltage” lighting: if there is low voltage, it’s hard for a human (say) to get shocked badly. If you touch the terminals of a 1.5V battery, the resistance of your body combined with this voltage means the current is very small. To have a decent light from low voltage, you need much lower resistance bulbs, so that you get the wattage (light) output that you want. Likewise, although homes use 110V power, this is stepped down from the higher-voltage power lines. The voltage on power lines is very high so that there is less current for a given power. P = VI, so for the same power P, if you increase V, you can decrease I. The reason you want to do this is the more current, the more heat is generated and energy wasted.

Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Segway guys sue them for patent infringement.

Last night I downloaded Magic Piano for iPad, by Smule (iTunes page; Smule page). This incredible app cost only $0.99. Several things about it startled me.

First, the sound is very good–the imitation of piano sound, and the speakers on the iPad. Second, I didn’t realize the iPad’s multitouch allowed so many simultaneous touches to be recorded–I tried all ten fingers and it seemed to detect them all.

In normal “solo” mode you can play piano in freestyle mode, or a spiral, circular, or standard-layout keyboard. You can expand or shrink the number of keys, move them around etc.

There is also an amazing “song book” mode which lets you choose one of several songs; then little note guides start gently falling, coaxing you to play the song and showing you where to put your fingers; it’s like a gentler, more beautiful version of Guitar Hero on the Wii.

What really blew me away were the Duet and World modes. If you hit “Duet” the iPad finds someone else in the world in duet mode and you can play together, with your own locations superimposed over a google-earth style globe, and the notes jumping out into little ripples over the earth. It is quite amazingly lovely. And the World mode lets you just eavesdrop over people playing on their own around the globe, or duets. Some of the duets are fun, and some of the people playing are really good. It was just astonishing. Not this app itself so much, but just the idea of all the creative things that you can do with technology and devices like this; with the Internet and connectivity.

Fundamentalist Christians are often “young earthers” who believe the Bible is literally true often think the earth and human history is only 6,000 to 10,000 years old–you get this by counting enumerated generations in the bible back to Adam and Eve. This leads to ridiculous theories about dinosaurs living contemporaneously with man, skepticism of carbon-dating techniques, etc.

Well now there’s yet another in a long line of reports that the remains of Noah’s Ark has finally been found. Support for the claims? “They claim carbon dating proves the relics are 4,800 years old — around the same time the ark was said to be afloat.” Uh oh! What’s a fundamentalist to do? Reject carbon dating, or accept it?

I’ve posted recently about Net Neutrality–see Net Neutrality Developments and A Libertarian Take on Net Neutrality. There’s an interesting discussion about this and related issues on the EconTalk podcast, between host Russ Roberts and Yochai Benkler of Harvard. Benkler really knows his stuff and it comes thru in this fascinating and informative discussion. As he explains, there is a debate about whether to impose “open access” as well as “net neutrality” regulations on the Internet-related companies. Open access means the state treats the physical communications infrastructure–fiber optic cables and so forth–that carry data signals for internet, cable TV, telephone communications, as a sort of regulated utility. Thus, it forces the owners of the physical “pipes” to sell capacity to competitors at regulated rates. This means the consumer can buy internet service from companies other than the owners of the physical networks. Net neutrality means that whoever whoever sells the service (whether it’s the fiber owner or some company that the fiber owner has to allow to use its networks to offer competing service) can’t discriminate between types of data packets, and can’t impose tiered pricing.

Now, as noted, Benkler knows his stuff, but he is clearly one of these mainstream interventionist types, talking about how “we” (the state) needs to intervene in the market to optimize outcomes, etc. etc. He is in favor of imposing open access, for example. As the podcast summary notes, “Benkler argues in favor of net neutrality and government support of broadband access.” The free market host, Russ Roberts (of Keynes-Hayek rap fame), is very diplomatic but pushes back one some of Benkler’s pro-regulatory assumptions (listen around 29:06-, 30:12-, 41:20-, where he makes the free-market case and argues against the pro-regulatory assumptions), but gets Benkler to admit explicitly that he favors the state intervening and forcing companies to use their property in certain ways (around 29:55-, ). Benkler’s paternalistic, state-trusting approach even carries through when it comes to the iPad and similar “closed” or proprietary products like the iPad (47:30-). As the summary notes, “He is skeptical of the virtues of new technology (such as the iPad) fearing that they will lead to less innovation.” He worries that consumers might like the iPad because it’s got a fantastic interface etc., but that this might be at the cost of the long-term value of “a more innovative platform” (open source) (49:50-). The typical omniscient planner mentality: there is market failure, and the state is needed to fix and tweak things, when the consumers get it wrong. Russ Roberts (48:10-) rightly interjects that all these products are great; he praises the first and second generation kindles; the progress of technology; the iPad; the diversity; the competition; Apple’s products; open-source; the Sony e-readers; the dynamism of the market.

Update: Peter Klein has some insightful comments on and criticisms of some of Benkler’s views in this review.

[Mises]

In recent years the “Net Neutrality” movement has gained steam. This is an effort by various statists, interventionists, do-gooders, meddlers, and techno-ignoramuses who seek to have the government forbid network providers (e.g. cable companies, telcos, and wireless carriers) from selectively blocking certain types of Internet use–for example, to require companies to give Web users equal access to all content, even if some of that content is clogging the network. Of course, as I noted on A Libertarian Take on Net Neutrality, the network neutrality movement is unlibertarian. There is nothing wrong with price discrimination or with charging different prices for different levels of service. As some anti-corporatist types are only too eager to point out, without state intervention the major telcos might well not have as much monopolistic power as they currently do. But it doesn’t make much sense to urge that the state engage in further intervention to fix the problem of previous state intervention. It is state intervention that is the problem.

In the latest development on this front, as reported in U.S. Court Curbs F.C.C. Authority on Web Traffic, cable company Comcast Corporation had challenged the F.C.C.’s authority to impose Net Neutrality rules. Last week, a federal appeals court ruled in Comcast’s favor, holding that F.C.C. regulators have limited power over Web traffic. As the article notes, “The decision will allow Internet service companies to block or slow specific sites and charge video sites like YouTube to deliver their content faster to users.”

Libertarians should not leap for joy, however. The court merely held that current federal statutes do not happen to give the F.C.C. quite enough authority to regulate Internet companies in this manner. They didn’t say it would be unconstitutional or even unwise. So all Congress has to do is pass a law. And they’re good at doing that.

[TLS]

Jeff, re your post LvMI Kindle editions, as I noted there, the Kindle app does not, as far as I know, natively support ePub files. However, the new iBooks format on iPad does. All you do is click on the ePub link for a given book (several are listed here)–or download the ePub file and then open it with iTunes, and iTunes automatically copies it into the Book section of your iTunes Library. Then you can sync you iPad and get whichever books you want. (I suspect iBooks is coming soon to the iPhone and iPod Touch, so you’ll be able to do it then very easily. Yes yes, I know some people use Stanza, Calibre, Bookworm, and all that jazz but it’s very buggy and complicated–italics don’t always carry over, Calibre is difficult to use, etc. ITunes makes it easy.)

I did this with 10 ePub books on Mises.org in about 30 seconds. Then I synced my iPad and got them all. They look great–full color covers, etc. I captured on the iPad the iBooks library’s bookshelf, and a few shots from Guido Hulsmann’s Mises biography in both portrait and landscape mode, some in the middle of page-turns. Enjoy! (My review of the iPad on LRC is here: Thoughts on iPad from a Slightly Disappointed Fanboi.)

[Mises crosspost]

I’ll admit: for the last 3 years or so I’ve become an Apple fanboi. My first computer in 1984 was an Apple II+ clone–a Franklin Ace (unfortunately, Apple was able to use copyright law to get this competition squashed). But after that I was in the PC world, for almost 20 years. Until about 3 years ago. I was tempted to get a MacBook but was leery of the change. Finally my wife got a Macbook and one thing led to another–I now live a blessedly PC free world except for the one remaining PC I still have to use at work–and I have plans for that one too. Now I have iPods, iPhones, iMac, MacBooks. I guess I’m a fanboi except I don’t pretend that Macs don’t crash–all my computers crash. They are all too complex not to. People who say their computers don’t crash are either lying or don’t really use them. (Linux-fans–please don’t pester me. I’m glad the market has diversity and tinkerers like you have something you can tinker with. I have two degrees in electrical and computer engineering but I just want a computer that works–a nice tool I can use. I also prefer automatic transmission cars even though I know how to use a stick shift.)

So naturally I could not resist getting an iPad. I had ordered the 3G version which does not arrive till later this month. But finally the temptation to get one won out so I persuaded my wife to let me get a wifi version for her and my son. After all, I told her–we all read books. One won’t be enough! On the other hand, we won’t need two 3G models! Whoever is traveling for work can take the 3G one, I said. So, I nabbed one Monday morning at a local Apple store.

I’ve developed a variety of impressions and views since having gotten it. They are bit jumbled but here they are. I agree with some of the comments of those praising it, though some of it is over the top. Andy Ihnatko (2) and Walt Mossberg raved about it–Ihnatko calling it “one of the best computers ever”, Mossberg said it was a “game changer”. One of the most balanced reviews was Farhad Manjoo’s You Don’t Need an iPad — But once you try one, you won’t be able to resist. There are critics, too–see, e.g., Cory Doctorow’s Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either). The critics have some good points but many of the criticisms I find silly. Doctorow complains that you won’t be able to trade old comics any more. Well, so what. I get books to read them, not to trade them. The quality and convenience and availability will be so much better in digital form. So the rest is a question of price. If the price is low enough, that compensates for the lack of a secondary market. And if the price is too high–hey, that’s the market (okay, distorted by copyright law, but still–there’s competition).

And many critics point to things it doesn’t have. It has no USB. The battery can’t be removed. No multitasking. Well this is silly, in my view. You don’t buy something for what it can’t do but for what it can. And it can do many cool things, so it will find buyers. As is clear by now. Everyone who sees my iPad oohs and ahhs, wants to touch it, and says they want one.

So what is my view of the iPad after getting one? Well, it is gorgeous and well made. It is fun to use. It is useful. But like Apple’s co-founder Steve Wozniak, I was hoping I might be able to use it as a laptop replacement. And I think–probably, it can’t be. The basic reason? It has no (real) keyboard.

Look, I used to love my Blackberry. Like HP calculators, they have great buttons and keyboards. I was initially reluctant to get the iPhone because it had no keyboard. When the 3G model came out, I was finally sold. I figured the advantages of the iPhone were worth that one tradeoff. And it is. In fact the touch keyboard has advantages–it can reconfigure for different contexts, for example. And the fact is you can’t do a lot of typing on a Blackberry either. So it’s not a big problem to have a similarly-limited touch keyboard on the iPhone.

But on the iPad the lack of a real keyboard is a much more severe cost. Especially for people, like me, who can touch type proficiently. Yes, the touch interface on the iPad has its advantages. But I can’t type any faster on the larger touch keypboard on the iPad than I can on the iPhone. So it’s good for short notes, but for any real writing or editing, it’s impossible. Yes, you can get an external keyboard–to attach wirelessly by bluetooth, or via a dock. But I don’t have it with me all the time, so time and again I find myself putting off some email replies or blog post comments etc. until I get to a real computer with a keyboard.

Now that I have the iPad I feel the lack of a keyboard is a huge cost. You can make up for it somewhat but it is a big limitation. I don’t think that will stop the appeal of these devices–they have their niche uses–but it could limit the broader use of them as laptop replacements. Which is not a huge problem, but there it is.

I often read in the morning when I wake up, and at night, in bed, on my MacBook Air. I was trying this with the iPad. It is very good for most of this. But not for all. Someone sent me an email this morning with a change to make on a file on a website. On my Air I would have opened Word, changed the relevant file, and uploaded the file using FileZilla to a website via FTP. I could do none of this easily on the iPad. I had to table it until later. Someone else sent me some graphic files to put on a website directory–on my Air I would have downloaded the attached file, unzipped it, opened it, opened FileZilla, and so on. Again, I had to table it.

Other thoughts:

• The powered belkin USB hub I use by my iMac–does not power the iPad. Some people are whining about this. I don’t think this is a big deal. Most new computers require their own power supply. Not a biggie.
• There are some initial glitches and bugs–scrolling problems in gmail online, etc. But these should improve quickly over time.
• Some people are complaining that some apps are–gosh!–$10, like Pages and Scrabble. It seems high compared to $1.99 for many iPhone apps, but compared to typical software prices it’s perfectly reasonable.
• It’s incredibly fast–when you are browsing and click the button to go to another web page, the one you have open just flies closed in like a millisecond. It’s breathtaking. I don’t think I’ve ever seen computers respond like this. They did that part right.
• The battery life is incredible. It’s incredibly liberating. Especially for those of used to dealing with the very limited batteries in laptops (especially the stunted Air). It’s not weeks like the Kindle–it’s only 10 or so hours–but then this does so much more than the Kindle. You can carry it around all day and plug it back in at night. It’s better than laptops, and smartphones, in this respect. I don’t think people care about being able to replace a battery like this.
• People whine that there is no multitasking. Well, there is limited multitasking. But the limits on multitasking help it achieve its wonderful battery life, and also its amazing iPhone-like stability. Even these things have glitches and crash, but compared to modern bloated operating systems–Windows, Mac OS, even Linux–the iPhone/iPad OS is bulletproof.
• Kindle and iBooks are both great book readers. Weird mismatched advantages/disadvantages: iBooks has in-app shopping, and cool page turning, and a dictionary, and is epub compatible, but it has no iPhone counterpart! (I’m sure Apple will remedy this soon); Kindle has Mac, PC, Kindle device, and iPhone counterparts, and whispersync, but no epub, no dictionary and no in-app shopping (but opening up Safari to buy a book is no big deal at all). Anyway, just get them both. Both are free.
• Various apps for media are great–movies, iTunes, photos, Netflix, USA Today, WSJ, Pandora, Sirius; there’s a cool picture frame app that lets you turn it into a digital picture frame display slideshow. The origami transition is fun.
• There is no heat at all coming from the device–cool as a cucumber. A nice surprise given that I could fry bacon on the back of my MacBook Air.
• The Apple case is simple, slim, elegant, ingenious. Protects it, serves as a stand (horizontal, vertical, and elevate for typing), while adding almost no bulk and weight.

One problem is I have gotten used to my MacBook Air over the last couple years. That computer is extremely light and small, very portable, and has a SSD drive so that it’s quiet, fast, and durable. The Air has problems: the battery life sucks, and it gets way too hot and then very sluggish. I have a feeling the next Air might improve all this. An improved Air may be close to being my perfect computer. If you could add a touch screen, and perhaps make the screen so that it could swivel around so you could use it in tablet mode. Should it be Mac OS or iPhone/iPad OS? I’m not sure. Not sure it matters, once apps for iPad mature. If you can get enough functionality from among the hundreds of thousands of sophisticated apps coming, iPad OS may be better–slimmer, faster, more stable, less battery juice used.

I am not sure if multitasking is really necessary on the iPad; not sure it would address the previous deficiencies as a laptop replacement. Even if I have a nice keyboard attached to it, I simply must have the ability to alt-Tab (or Command-Tab) and easily cut and paste between apps to get real work done. Maybe this doesn’t require real multi-tasking; maybe it just means that each app remembers its state and can open and close fast enough to simulate the multitasking effect, because the screen is hardly big enough for multiple windows to be displayed together anyhow. To do real work I need a keyboard, I need to flip back and forth between apps, easily cut and paste, and also, I need to be able to easily handle files–to save, download, attach them. In Mail on the iPad I could not even see how to attach a photo from the photo library. They will probably fix this, since there is obviously a way to do it–you go to Photos and send one as an email. I’m sure this will come over time.

As the iPad improves, it will become more and more of a contender to replace most or all of a laptop’s real functions. In the meantime it’s still a useful device. Yes, now you have a third or fourth device: a smart phone, laptop, desktop (maybe–they are fading away), and, between the first two, an iPad. So what. You sometimes carry a book, or a kindle. Why not an iPad? My iPad fits inside the little external zipper pocket of my briefcase without adding any noticeable weight or bulk, with the laptop nestled inside. Look, I was on the verge of buying a Kindle, but just hated the idea of monochrome, for heaven’s sake–my last monochrome computer was the Franklin Ace in 1984–green or amber, what’s your pleasure, sir? And the sluggish screen… lack of touch. Ugh. And no light! I know people who clip itty bitty book lights onto their Kindle. Ridiculous. A battery powered book reading device without a built in light? No way.

I prefer a color LED screen. People say Kindles are easy on the eyes don’t cause eye strain. What? I don’t get eye strain from computers. I don’t like having to turn on a light or clip on a light to the Kindle to read in a dimly lit room, I’ll tell you that. I’ve been reading books for months now on the Kindle app on my iPhone. It’s a bit small but it’s fine. And it’s got a built in light. So for book reading alone the iPad is almost worth it–though a bit pricey at $500. So it’s two or three times as expensive as a Kindle… but does so much more. Great games. Thousands and thousands of apps. Movies. iTunes store. Music (the speakers are surprisingly good on it). Photos. Calendar. Address book.  Apps, apps, apps. I am just starting to see how I’ll use this… I think I’ll use it often for family gaming, for reading books, around the house, when going to lunch. If I go on vacation or a business trip, I’ll probably take my laptop along still, unless I’m sure I have nothing complicated to do, and I’ll also take the iPad along. On the plane I’ll leave the laptop alone. I’ll keep the iPad out. I’ll probably leave the Macbook in the hotel, and take the iPad it’s so small and book-like that it’s so easy to do.

Another note: I am not a gamer (I had to go cold turkey on video and computer games in law school, as I was getting addicted to Zork and Robotron). But this thing is great for games. You know, I hear a lot of the old fogie and crusty types whining about how people are less social nowadays with being immersed in their computers. Nonsense. They are more social than ever. Just in different ways. They are writing more than ever–emails, blogs, etc. On vacation recently the kids with us and even the grownups sometimes used our iPod touches/iphones to play monopoly and scrabble and chess. With each other, over wifi. The new iPad has a great Scrabble app (only $10) that puts the whole board in front of you… and each player can use an iPod Touch or an iPhone as his private tile tray, networked via bluetooth with the iPad… you just flick your tiles up off the iPod touch and they appear on the iPad screen where you can play them. This may seem trivial but it is whimsical, fun, and creative. And what’s wrong with a dad playing Scrabble with his 6 year old on an iPad? I think it’s cool for a kid to know what bluetooth and wifi are. And this is just the beginning–that app was released the day the iPad was released. Who knows what else is in store for us with all the thousands of apps in development?

So… this thing is probably not a laptop replacement for most people. Yet. But it’s gorgeous and fun. It’s a winner. It’s great to see capitalism produce such great advances in technology.

[LRC]

Oh yeah, oh yeah, I’m the king:

Stephan Kinsella is the King of Technology (KOT)

From various Mises and LRC posts:

US Court Sides with spammer

September 19, 2006 9:14 AM by Stephan Kinsella (Archive)

Yet another ridiculous result of the US legal system: Spamhaus fined $11.7 million; won’t pay a dime reports the case of the heroic UK spam-fighting blacklist site Spamhaus, which was sued in the US by spammer e360. Spamhaus simply refused to participate and let e360 win a “default judgment,” since default judgments are not recognized in the UK. As Spamhaus notes:

Although meaningless for Spamhaus, which as a British organization not subject to Illinois court orders is listing … E360 … on its SBL spam blocklist as usual, the Illinois ruling shows that U.S. courts can be bamboozled by spammers with ease …. As spamming is illegal in the United Kingdom, an Illinois court ordering a British organization to stop blocking incoming Illinois spam in Britain goes contrary to U.K. law which orders all spammers to cease sending spam in the first place.

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More on Spam

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Re: Spammers face “mail fraud” charges and 20 years in the federal pen!

The beginnings of my love-affair with Apple–I’m not a complete fan-boi! Squee!

re: Apple’s Mean-spirited ad campaign

Apple’s Mean-spirited ad campaign

At the recent CES, Intel gave a demo of its vision of a future smartphone. This reminded me of my 2004 LRC post, The future of technology, about an NTT DoCoMo video forecasting the future of mobile communications. I’ve updated the links in that post; it’s interesting to see the forecast for the 2010s made in the early 2000s (NTT DoCoMo Vision 2010 video, on YouTube here); the most recent DoCoMo video I could find is The Road to Hokusai’s Waterfall. One interesting thing about these videos is they illustrate the Austrian view of forecasting and certainty. As noted in Verstehen and the Role of Economics in Forecasting, or: If You’re so Rich, Why Aren’t You Smart?, the future is uncertain, but not radically so. We can know some things about the future, so that we are not faced with radical, kaleidic uncertainty; but the future is not perfectly predictable either. Both the ability to make some predictions, and the inability to make perfect predictions, is illustrated in the 2004 technology forecast of 2010.

[LRC]

The future of technology

My reply to Kevin Carson’s post Libertarians for Junk Science:

Whatever the sins of libertarians re junk science the statists are 100x worse. And in my view the libertarians (and fellow travelers) have been very good on junk science–Bruce Ames (of Alar fame), Peter Huber (Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists A Conservative Manifesto, Galileo’s Revenge: Junk Science In The Courtroom and others), Elizabeth Whelan (Toxic Terror), Petr Beckmann.

And various libertarians have been good on critiquing the pseudo-scientific enviros, e.g. Lew Rockwell and Bob Bidinotto (as much as we might disagree w/ Bidinotto on other issues like war, Ron Paul, statism v. minarchy, IP, etc.)

As for AGW — it’s a mystery to me why anyone would believe this has been established. First, there is little doubt we are between ice ages–we are in an interglacial period. The earth will start cooling again–even if for some reason it does warm up a bit more before it finally starts to cool.

Second, it’s a mystery why people think change per se is bad, or why change in the warmer direction is bad.

Third, as to the idea humans are causing it — well I refer you to various material, et.. by Jerry Pournelle and physicist Freeman Dyson, and see also this by physicist Howard Hayden and MIT Professor Richard Lindzen.

Fourth, even if we are causing it, it’s not clear that we can stop it, or that we should stop it–better to live in a world of energy and AGW problems, than to live in a world without energy (to put it starkly).

As I wrote here:

I’m against the state. I’m against junk science. I’m against science used by liberal arts and women’s studies majors from Brown who now infest the state to advance their anti-capitalist interests.

I believe we are in an interglacial period. I believe the evidence trotted out so far by global warming advocates is spotty and selective, and almost always insincere and agenda-driven, or driven by pure ignorance. I believe that global warming would probably be good, but is not going to happen. I suspect that even if it were happening and even if it were bad, the cost of stopping it would far exceed its damages–that is, that it’s not worth it to stop it; that human survival is more important, ultimately, than environmentalist concerns; moreover, I would never trust the state to make this assessment or to impose the “right” regulations to ameliorate the “problem.”

I think that the global warming advocates are not interested in real science or real debate–they want to just take their temporary popularity in the polls and among the arts & croissant crowd, among the DC jetset bored housewives and ditzy Hollywood stars and parlay that as quickly as possible into legislation sponsored by corrupt pols like Nancy Pelosi. I.e.., they just want to win, right away, as quickly as possible before the public starts to catch on or yet another pseudo-science fad catches its eye.

The primary enemy is the state. Any scheme that involves them as a part of the “solution” to a posited problem is obviously flawed. I have no wish to cooperate with or endorse that criminal gang’s legitimacy. Period.

An acquaintance passed on to me this PDF file of a Powerpoint presentation on global warming by MIT Professor Richard S. Lindzen. As my friend said, “it is a powerful rebuttal to those who are sure that humans are causing global warming.” The file is: Global Warming: What is it all about?, Rockhurst University, February 11, 2009.

The late, great Dr. Petr Beckmann was editor of the great journal Access to Energy, founder of the dissident physics journal Galilean Electrodynamics (brochures and further Beckmann info here; further dissident physics links), author of The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear (Amazon; PDF version) and the pamphlets The Non-Problem of Nuclear Waste and Why “Soft” Technology Will Not Be America’s Energy Salvation. (See also my post Access to Energy, and this post.)

I just came across another favorite piece of his and have scanned it in: Economics as if Some People Mattered (review of Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher), first published in Reason (October 1978), and reprinted in Free Minds & Free Markets: Twenty-Five Years of Reason (1993). Those (including some libertarians and fellow travelers) who also have a thing for “smallness” and bucolic pastoralism should give this a read.

Some excerpts:

Small is Beautiful is the title of a book by E.F. Schumacher. It is also a slogan describing a state of mind in which people clamor for the rural idyll that (they think) comes with primitive energy sources, small-scale production, and small communities. Yet much–perhaps most–of their clamor is not really for what they consider small and beautiful; it is for the destruction of what they consider big and ugly.

… The free market does not, of course, eradicate human greed, but it directs it into channels that the consumer the maximum benefit, for it is he who benefits from the competition of”profit-greedy” businessmen. The idea that the free market is highly popular among businessmen is one that is widespread, but not among sound economists. It was not very popular in 1776, when Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations was pulished, and it has not become terribly popular with all of them since–which is not surprising, for the free market benefits the consumer but disciplines the businessman.

If the free market is so popular with business, what are all those business lobbies doing in Washington? The shipping lobby wants favors for U.S. ships; the airlines yell rape and robbery when deregulation from the governmental CAB cartel threatens; the farmers’ lobby clamors for more subsidies. Whatall these lobbies are after is not a freer market but a bigger nipple on the federal sow.

And also Lew Rockwell’s Rockwell’s Anti-Environmentalist Manifesto, George Reisman’s The Toxicity of Environmentalism and Environmentalism Refuted, and Robert James Bidinotto’s Environmentalism or Individualism?, and other piece mentioned in my post Environmentalists Are a Cancer on the Earth.

[Mises blog cross-post]

The cool, hip techno-pundits are usually reliably Obama-liberal/libertarian-lite types. A bit California-smug, engineer-scientistic, anti-principle, anti-”extreme.” But okay overall. A soft, tolerant, whitebread bunch.

On the last This Week in Tech, I was pleasantly surprised to hear the always interesting Jason Calacanis voice support for nuclear power; and even more surprised to hear soft-liberal host Leo Laporte echo mild agreement with this. Good for them!

But then they had to revert to form when they, along with Natali Del Conte and Patrick Norton expressed unanimous disapproval of McCain’s Internet Freedom Act, since they are all–”of course”–in favor of net neutrality rules imposed by the FCC. McCain’s proposed statute would block the FCC’s proposed net neutrality rules, which would forbid network providers (e.g. cable companies, telcos, and wireless carriers) from selectively blocking certain types of Internet use.

Got that? The techno-pundits are against regulation (by cable companies) … so they favor regulation (by the FCC) of the cable companies … so they oppose government legislation regulating a government agency. They sit there fuming about how disgusting McCain’s draft legislation is. So they see that the state is terrible. Yet it doesn’t occur to them that it might be a bad idea to trust the government to oversee the Internet. They are against regulation of the Internet, so they support ceding power to the government to … decide how and whether the Internet should be regulated. It doesn’t occur to them that we should simply favor property rights, individual freedom, and the free market. The closest any of them come to this position is John Dvorak, who has a libertarian and contrarian streak, and who often observes on TWIT that there’s nothing wrong with tiered pricing–charging more for a fatter pipe, etc.

Is “no regulation of network providers” the libertarian position? It clearly would be if the network providers were purely private. In the libertarian view private property owners determine how their property may be used. There is no “right” to access the Internet. A private network provider ought to be able to offer service on whatever terms he wants; and consumers to accept or reject it. Tiered services, deep packet inspection, prohibition of certain types of uses or even certain types of content–that’s up to the providers and customers and whatever deal they agree to. We libertarians believe in “capitalist acts between consenting adults,” to use Nozick’s phrase (see Rothbard’s earlier formulation).

But because of various degrees of corporatism–state favors and protectionism, tax funding of infrastructure, etc.–the service providers are arguably not 100% private. But the solution is not to regard them as essentially part of the state and thus fair game for regulation, but to pair our call for no state regulation of the Internet (no net neutrality regulations) with a call for the abolition of all forms of corporatism, such as various laws that work out protecting larger companies (tax funded subsidies, IP law, wage and hour legislation, mandatory worker benefits, labor union legislation, minimum wage, incorporation statutes [note: this does not mean I think that limited liability is a privilege conferred by the state on corporations], and so on).

This is my take, anyway. I am not aware of much informed libertarian analysis on the net neutrality issue. Kevin Carson pointed me to Jim Lippard as “one of the better libertarian writers on net neutrality”–I’ll have to take a deeper look, but from a quick glance I’m not sure he’s a libertarian; here he writes, e.g., “providers shouldn’t be able to block access to competitors’ services”–should be able? This seems to presuppose the legitimacy of an overarching state regulation, which is certainly not libertarian.

Update: Leo Laporte must have gotten a lot of flak in the past week for supporting the FCC imposing net neutrality rules on Internet network providers. In TWIT 220, he expresses genuine concern with this. And he seems to get that the issue is not what rules the FCC should impose–which most of his technocratic guests in that episode focus on–but the issue of the danger of empowering the state itself to regulate at all. Most of the panelists at least seem leery of state regulation, but are concerned there is not enough competition in the network provider industry to ensure self-regulation. This concern is understandable, but the pundits should pause to ask: what is the state’s role in causing the industry to be the way it is? In addition to being leery of state regulation of the Internet, they should oppose state policies that subsidize and prop up large companies or reduce competition; one of them even brings up the issue of how utilities are given monopoly status by municipalities. So they are almost there. It might help if we libertarians could elaborate the various state regulations and laws that have given current network providers more market power than they would have on a truly free market–taxes, minimum wage laws, implicit and explicit subsidies, the legacy of government-granted monopolies, pro-union legislation, and various other regulations that disproportionately shackle and hamper smaller companies and potential competitors; regulations that help the existing, larger companies by increasing barriers to entry into that field; state taxes, IP laws, and regulations that stifle dynamic change, innovation, and competition.

Laporte also mentions some kind of split on this issue among EFF board members. I looked at the EFF site and can’t find much explicit about net neutrality–no categories, etc. They seem to be trying to keep a low profile on this issue, maybe because they have some pro-state-regulation board members. I did find this recent EFF article by Corynne Mcsherry, “Is Net Neutrality a FCC Trojan Horse?,” which expresses the concern that if the FCC just grabs “ancillary jursidiction” to impose net neutrality regulations, who knows what other regulatory powers it might just unilaterally decide to assme the power to impose regulations pursuant to an “Internet Decency Statement.” But though McSherry here seems to display healthy skepticism of state regulation, she is obviously trying to leave open the door that some state regulation of network providers might be favored by EFF: e.g., McSherry writes, “If ‘ancillary jurisdiction’ is enough for net neutrality regulations (something we might like) today, it could just as easily be invoked tomorrow for any other Internet regulation that the FCC dreams up (including things we won’t like).” Note the bolded language. And she notes that one possible solution to the FCC’s “ancillary jurisdiction” power grab is: “Congress could limit the FCC’s power by authorizing to regulate only to ensure network neutrality.”

The EFF, if it is to remain principled and a proponent of individual, Internet-related freedoms and “digital rights,” must be clear on the enemy of such rights: the state. The moment EFF supports any state agency’s regulation of private companies or the Internet, they have succumbed to their leftist confusions and statist sympathies and become worthless as principled defenders of individual freedom.

[Mises blog cross-post; against monopoly cross-post]

An edited version of my reply to a global warming alarmist on another thread:

I’m against the state. I’m against junk science. I’m against science used by liberal arts and women’s studies majors from Brown who now infest the state to advance their anti-capitalist interests.

I believe we are in an interglacial period. I believe the evidence trotted out so far by global warming advocates is spotty and selective, and almost always insincere and agenda-driven, or driven by pure ignorance. I believe that global warming would probably be good, but is not going to happen. I suspect that even if it were happening and even if it were bad, the cost of stopping it would far exceed its damages–that is, that it’s not worth it to stop it; that human survival is more important, ultimately, than environmentalist concerns; moreover, I would never trust the state to make this assessment or to impose the “right” regulations to ameliorate the “problem.”

I think that the global warming advocates are not interested in real science or real debate–they want to just take their temporary popularity in the polls and among the arts & croissant crowd, among the DC jetset bored housewives and ditzy Hollywood stars and parlay that as quickly as possible into legislation sponsored by corrupt pols like Nancy Pelosi. I.e.., they just want to win, right away, as quickly as possible before the public starts to catch on or yet another pseudo-science fad catches its eye.

The primary enemy is the state. Any scheme that involves them as a part of the “solution” to a posited problem is obviously flawed. I have no wish to cooperate with or endorse that criminal gang’s legitimacy. Period.

Physicist Howard Hayden, a staunch advocate of sound energy policy, sent me a copy of his letter to the EPA about global warming. The text is also appended below, with permission.

As noted in my post Access to Energy, Hayden helped the late, great Petr Beckmann found the dissident physics journal Galilean Electrodynamics (brochures and further Beckmann info here; further dissident physics links). Hayden later began to publish his own pro-energy newsletter, The Energy Advocate, following in the footsteps of Beckmann’s own journal Access to Energy.

I love Hayden’s email sign-off, “People will do anything to save the world … except take a course in science.” Here’s the letter:

***

Howard C. Hayden
785 S. McCoy Drive
Pueblo West, CO 81007

October 27, 2009

The Honorable Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC 20460

Dear Administrator Jackson:

I write in regard to the Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, Proposed Rule, 74 Fed. Reg. 18,886 (Apr. 24, 2009), the so-called “Endangerment Finding.”

It has been often said that the “science is settled” on the issue of CO2 and climate.  Let me put this claim to rest with a simple one-letter proof that it is false.

The letter is s, the one that changes model into models. If the science were settled, there would be precisely one model, and it would be in agreement with measurements.

Alternatively, one may ask which one of the twenty-some models settled the science so that all the rest could be discarded along with the research funds that have kept those models alive.

We can take this further.  Not a single climate model predicted the current cooling phase.  If the science were settled, the model (singular) would have predicted it.

Let me next address the horror story that we are approaching (or have passed) a “tipping point.” Anybody who has worked with amplifiers knows about tipping points.  The output “goes to the rail.” Not only that, but it stays there. That’s the official worry coming from the likes of James Hansen (of NASA­GISS) and Al Gore.

But therein lies the proof that we are nowhere near a tipping point.  The earth, it seems, has seen times when the CO2 concentration was up to 8,000 ppm, and that did not lead to a tipping point.  If it did, we would not be here talking about it. In fact, seen on the long scale, the CO2 concentration in the present cycle of glacials (ca. 200 ppm) and interglacials (ca. 300-400 ppm) is lower than it has been for the last 300 million years.

Global-warming alarmists tell us that the rising CO2 concentration is (A) anthropogenic and (B) leading to global warming.

(A) CO2 concentration has risen and fallen in the past with no help from mankind.  The present rise began in the 1700s, long before humans could have made a meaningful contribution. Alarmists have failed to ask, let alone answer, what the CO2 level would be today if we had never burned any fuels.  They simply assume that it would be the “pre-industrial” value.

• The solubility of CO2 in water decreases as water warms, and increases as water cools. The warming of the earth since the Little Ice Age has thus caused the oceans to emit CO2 into the atmosphere.

(B) The first principle of causality is that the cause has to come before the effect.  The historical record shows that climate changes precede CO2 changes. How, then, can one conclude that CO2 is responsible for the current warming?

Nobody doubts that CO2 has some greenhouse effect, and nobody doubts that CO2 concentration is increasing. But what would we have to fear if CO2 and temperature actually increased?

• A warmer world is a better world.  Look at weather-related death rates in winter and in summer, and the case is overwhelming that warmer is better.
• The higher the CO2 levels, the more vibrant is the biosphere, as numerous experiments in greenhouses have shown. But a quick trip to the museum can make that case in spades.  Those huge dinosaurs could not exist anywhere on the earth today because the land is not productive enough.  CO2 is plant food, pure and simple.
• CO2 is not pollution by any reasonable definition.
• A warmer world begets more precipitation.
• All computer models predict a smaller temperature gradient between the poles and the equator.  Necessarily, this would mean fewer and less violent storms.
• The melting point of ice is 0 ºC in Antarctica, just as it is everywhere else.  The highest recorded temperature at the South Pole is –14 ºC, and the lowest is –117 ºC. How, pray, will a putative few degrees of warming melt all the ice and inundate Florida, as is claimed by the warming alarmists?

Consider the change in vocabulary that has occurred.  The term global warming has given way to the term climate change, because the former is not supported by the data.  The latter term, climate change, admits of all kinds of illogical attributions. If it warms up, that’s climate change.  If it cools down, ditto.  Any change whatsoever can be said by alarmists to be proof of climate change.

In a way, we have been here before.  Lord Kelvin “proved” that the earth could not possibly be as old as the geologists said.  He “proved” it using the conservation of energy.  What he didn’t know was that nuclear energy, not gravitation, provides the internal heat of the sun and the earth.

Similarly, the global-warming alarmists have “proved” that CO2 causes global warming.

Except when it doesn’t.

To put it fairly but bluntly, the global-warming alarmists have relied on a pathetic version of science in which computer models take precedence over data, and numerical averages of computer outputs are believed to be able to predict the future climate.  It would be a travesty if the EPA were to countenance such nonsense.

Best Regards,

Howard C. Hayden
Professor Emeritus of Physics, UConn

[LRC cross-post; Mises blog cross-post]

Solar energy is too dilute to ever be the main energy source, even if we got 100% efficient solar cells. See Beckmann, Petr, Why “Soft” Technology Will Not Be America’s Energy Salvation; other material by Beckmann here.

As noted here (see also here, here, here),

Texas Instruments has issued a DMCA notice to United TI, a group of enthusiasts. They had been cracking the keys that sign the operating system binaries in an attempt to gain access and possibly expand on the features.

Suing your own most dedicated fans of your increasingly outmoded device (its calculators), for trying to modify it to make it more useful to them. It’s hard to decide what’s more ridiculous: IP law, or the way companies use them.
[AM cross-post; mises cross-post]

Or at least, my arm. I’ve noted before his nuggets of wisdom–his Rules of Thumb for Living. The latest concerns mouse usage. I’ve always had a bit of skepticism about people who whined about “carpal tunnel” syndrome. But over the last year my right arm has gotten worse and worse, from typing and mouse manipulation. Jeff told me to switch to my left arm for mouse usage. I briefly tried it, about 6 months ago, and gave up. But the problem got worse; Jeff told me again recently to switch to the left hand, and that his switch was one of the best things he’s ever done. So the last few days I’ve tried it, and have largely switched. At first I would give up and switch to the “good” hand when I got frustrated. But now I’m almost exclusively left-hand mouse. Still slower, and it’s frustrating, but already I’m feeling better. And one advantage: your right hand can do the arrow keys while left can do mouse at same time. Jeff: I love you, man!!!

Update: Jeff also highly recommends this task chair. [Update: he was wrong about that: it sucked]

Followup: some replies:

If you ever get tired of using the mouse with your left hand, I would suggest a different solution that worked for me. Try a wireless optical or laser mouse, and use it on a book or other surface that you can put on your lap. This way you can keep your arm at your side and your hand resting comfortably on your lap. I used to get pain in my right arm, and this solution made it go away in about a week. Just a suggestion.

and

Use two mice, and make your right-hand one a rollerball.

[From LRC blog, Oct. 2006]

From LRC, below. And an update: another reason I expect Kindle to fail: it’s not color, no touch, slow refresh, and unsuitable for any browsing. Media pads/tablets, like the rumoured iPad, the CrunchPad, even things like Archos 5 Internet Tablet, will be the book reader of choice, in my view–many people already use iPhones and iPod Touches for this, despite their small screens.

Re: Kindle v. Netbook v. ePub, Bookworm and Stanza

As Gary North noted in M.I.T. Calls Academia’s Bluff,

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has begun the most revolutionary experiment in the history of education, stretching all the way back to the pharaohs. It now gives away its curriculum to anyone smart enough to learn it. It has posted its curriculum on-line for free. These days, this means a staggering 1900 courses. This number will grow.

It’s now available on iTunes U. This is so amazingly incredible.
[LRC cross-post]

Great post:

Open Letter to Linux Geeks

Technology drives me nuts. I have gone 100% Mac at home, and love my iPhone, but I still have a PC at work. So the Outlook calendar needs to be on my iPhone and also preferably on my Macs (an Air and an iMac). Until recently what I did was use google’s sync program to sync Outlook with google calendar; and I synced iCal on my two Macs with google calendar too. And the iPhone uses exchange to get to my Outlook calendar.

One problem with this is that google calendar is limited in some of the recurring events functionality; so I need to create it in Outlook or iCal.  Anyway now I have Snow Leopard and got Exchange working with that–see red lines. So now in iCal I see the same event twice: once locally, and once in the exchange account. That’s fine because I can not show one of them. If I cut the google sync between Outlook and Calendar, then my local calendar evens on iCal will not sync any more to Outlook, and thus won’t show up on my iPhone. So I have to keep using google sync between Outlook and Google Calendar anyway … rendering Snow Leopard exchange (for calendar) superfluous. I have thought about using Mobile Me (green) to sync all this together too. It’s just a mess. Auuggh.

For now I think I’ll skip Mobile Me, and use Snow Leopard’s exchange only for local address book and mail syncing, but not for calendar, since that’s handled already with the above approach.

A friend on an email discussion mentioned Carl Sagan and noted he was good on skepticism of pseudoscience and mused about whether he was good on politics. Alas, no. As is typically the case of engineers and scientists brainwashed with scientism (The Trouble with Libertarian Activism, Libertarian Activism-comments, Yet More on Galambos, Engineers’ Syndrome and C.P. Snow’s “The Two Cultures” and Misesian Dualism), he was a clod on this issue. From a review of one of his books:

My second critique is with regard to Sagan’s contradictory political views. On the one hand, he argues against authoritarianism of any sort, he points out government waste, discusses how the government shouldn’t be anti-choice, and is upset that politicians only work for the short term since they are only working to get elected again. I agree with his assessment to this point. However, then he seems to argue out of the other side of his mouth that the government should be there to provide ever larger social safety nets (i.e., welfare, social security, entitlements, etc.), collect more taxes in some cases, give U.S. tax dollars to other countries, and fund projects that don’t justly benefit those doing the funding (taxpayers). I don’t understand how someone can reconcile the seemingly opposed views. If the government can’t do its current jobs well, why give it more to do inefficiently and ineffectively? If individuals should be the responsible party, why shift all the burdens (in the form of more tax dollars and more government spending) to governments?

And another friend stumbled across this amusing anecdote, which illustrates what a statist and/or arrogant jerk he was. From the Wikipedia entry on Sagan:

In 1994, Apple Computer began developing the Power Macintosh 7100. They chose the internal code name “Carl Sagan”, the reference being that the mid-range PowerMac 7100 should make Apple “billions and billions.” Though the internal project name was never used in public marketing, it did come up in Usenet postings and news of the name grew from there. When Sagan learned of this he sued Apple Computer to force the use of a different project name. Other models released conjointly had code names such as “Cold fusion” and “Piltdown Man“, and Sagan was displeased at being associated with what he considered pseudoscience. (He was at the time writing a book discrediting pseudoscience.) Though Sagan lost the lawsuit Apple engineers complied with his demands anyway and renamed the project “BHA” (for Butt-Head Astronomer). Sagan promptly sued Apple for libel over the new name, claiming that it subjected him to contempt and ridicule, but he lost this lawsuit as well. Still, the 7100 saw another name change: it was finally referred to internally as “LAW” (Lawyers Are Wimps).

This reminds a bit of the story in Shades of Galambos!

I reprint below (with permission) an email from Prashant Singh Pawar:

Hi Mr Kinsella,

I am a long time opponent of patents and Intellectual Property rights (to a great part because of your work), but something always bothered me and that was the ‘innovation’ argument by the patent supporters. I could always see both the sides of the arguments, yet was never sure which side is right. I can see that without patents there is no incentive to develop a technology with a large investment, on the other hand, without patents, there is probably no need of a large investment.

I can see that patents make companies develop new things which without patents they wouldn’t do, but at the same time patents prevent companies from doing things which they would have without patents. I found this thing common across all the anti-IP and pro-IP work I have read that they both talk about the kinds of innovations they would promote and other side would demote, but there is no clear distinction between the kinds of innovation they are talking about.

So I finally came up with the terms ‘Horizontal innovation’, and ‘Vertical Innovation’. Horizontal Innovation is when a parallel technology is discovered (usually to avoid patent infringement). For example if a company develops a flying car using (say) hydrolic expansion, and they get a patent of it, another company develops (or has to develop) a flying car technology by using Thermo-plazma radiator engine. Both these technologies achieve the same end, they enable a car to fly, so this is horizontal innovation. This is what patent proponents talk about being squashed when they say innovation will be reduced when patents are removed. There will not be Google G1 phone,Blackberry and iPhone if there were no IP rights.

Vertical innovation is when a technology is built top of another technology merely by adding a new element to it. For example if you develop a Car which can travel on water, and I take that car, and add a Sail to it to make it use wind then that’s called a vertical innovation. With patents, only the patent holder can think of adding a sail on the boat-car and sell it, without patents, innovations will be done all over the world by every kind of boat and car enthusiast. There will be only one smart phone in this world, but it will be having numerous variants, such as a Google gPhone (synced with google services), a Microsoft mPhone (synced with microsoft services), and so on.

Patents promote horizontal innovation, but restrict vertical innovation. Without patents we will have more vertical innovation but less horizontal innovation. Even if Horizontal and Vertical Innovations are equally good in terms of their merits, one thing is clear, without patents, a lot more people will be able to use the technology, this is some place where a patent-less society will beat a pro-patent society hands down.

Just like if words were copyrighted, and you required a license to use the words, we would have had a LOT of innovation (horizontal) in terms of development of language and you required a license from John Locke’s estate to use the term ‘liberty’, there would have been billions of words in English (a lot of them doing the same thing what others do), but a lot less number of people would be educated, and most of our brain cells would have been wasted on keeping track of 15 different terms for ‘liberty’, and ‘passion’.

I described everything in detail in my article (its completely different from this mail). Please take a look at it, and let me know of your thoughts on it.

Patents: Horizontal vs Vertical Innovation

[AgainstM. crosspost]

This is fairly incredible: the USAA Deposit@Mobile iPhone app lets you deposit your check by simply taking a picture of it with your iPhone…. whereupon it’s instantly credited to your account. Unbelievable.

O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beautious mankind is!
O brave new world,
That has such [iPhone apps] in’t!

See John C. Dvorak’s article — Special Report: Is US Chief Information Officer (CIO) Vivek Kundra a Phony? and “No Agenda” piece The Vivek Kundra “Hollow” Deck. It’s also discussed on this week’s TWIT (see also Om Malik’s Dvorak Raises Doubts About U.S. CIO Kundra. White House Calls the Report “Highly Inaccurate” & “a Lie.” Kundra Speaks up). Dvorak seethes with justified scorn at this obvious case of cronyism, where some guy is anointed by the New York Times as some kind of “techno-wiz”. Dvorak says he got suspicious when he heard Kundra talking like an amateur about things like Twitter and Google Docs: “During one of his testimonies before a Congressional committee he even talked about the future being something like the Star Trek holodeck. His clichés and commentary was that of a 18 year-old blogger who just got their first Macintosh.” Hahahah.

When Dvorak looked more deeply into Kundra’s background, he noticed several anomalies: he claimed he was “CEO” of his own one-man company that he ran out of his living room (CEOs manage people; legitimate one-man companies don’t have “CEOs”); he claimed to have received “his master’s in information technology and his bachelor’s in psychology and biology from the University of Maryland,” though, as Dvorak notes. “The biology bachelor’s comes and goes from his bio, but the University has no record of his biology degree either.” Apparently he has no biology degree despite having claimed this in the past. And his psychology degree apparently came from the University’s “University College” location, which is apparently not the same as the University of Maryland itself (more resume fudging?).

But as Dvorak notes, even if Kundra is “squeaky clean he has no business being the USA CIO controlling billions and billions of dollars in government contracts. …He hasn’t done anything to warrant this appointment. There are no great policy papers. There are no books. There is no invention. There is nothing but vague tech positions in city and state governments.” And what has he done so far? Blew $18 million of taxpayer money on the “recovery.gov” website. As Dvorak notes, “What website[] costs $18 million? … The incredibly popular Digg.com, one of the most advanced news gathering sites in the world was initially coded from scratch for between $1200-2500 according to one of its founders. Tools to develop fancy websites have improved drastically over the years and now it costs less for fancy sites, not more. So where is the $18 million going? I can assure you that people who pay attention bugged out their eyeballs at a website expense of $18 million.”

[Cross-posted at LRC]

I find that I use a nice blog post quite often as a sort of linkable reference for use in articles and blog posts and comments. So I will throw a lot of information and references in one blogpost, and it can be supplemented from time to time. Then the links to it always link to a nice little mini-article or post with further information to back up the point being made.

A recent MacBreak Weekly podcast had a very cool recommendation: The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time, and I learned about a nice iPhone/mobile phone app, Shoot It!, in a recent GeekBrief episode.

Forbidden City is an application for all platforms, providing an amazing “3D Virtual World of the Forbidden City in Beijing.” China and IBM apparently spent $2M developing this free application.

Shoot It! allows you to create a postcard from your iPhone from any picture in your phone, and have it mailed to whoever you want, for a modest fee. I plan to use this from now on, on vacation, instead of buying a postcard, addressing, buying a stamp, and finding a post office. The only drawback that I see is they don’t include a way to upload a picture from your computer to your account — you have to use your phone. That’s stupid. If I have a nice pic I took with a camera on vacation, I have to first put it on the computer, then sync with the iphone to get it on there, or email it to myself and save the email attachment to my iPhone photo library, and then use Shoot It!. I can’t see why they won’t let you do it from the website interface as well; but this will probably be fixed and in any event is just a minor annoyance.

RepRap–the Replication Rapid Prototyper–may be on the way. It’s a “3D printer” which can be used to fabricate useful plastic items which would otherwise have to be mass produced–and even replicate itself. So if you make one using the open-source plans, you can print another for a friend. And so on. As Google’s Chris DiBona says, “Think of RepRap as a China on your desktop.” It’s been talked about for a long time but looks like it’s nearing reality.

Update: Reader Tommy Montgomery writes: “Computer technologies have created virtual miracles in our time! The RepRap is amazing but rather primitive compared to commercial versions that are on the market for a reasonable price that a real shop can afford. Jay Leno demonstrates a 3d scanner and a working part made from the scan with a 3d printer in his own shop on his Youtube channel.”

(Thanks to David Blackstone; LRC Cross-post)

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=adf_1245828170

HT Manuel Lora

Good Math: The Orgasmic Calculator is worth trying, at least once, but not at the office…

Good article on blogging: Time to blog on, The Guardian.

Are we headed toward a technological singularity? The end of life as we know it, in 40-50 years, due to the unpredictable and ever-accelerating pace of technological “progess”? See: Vernor Vinge’s The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era; A Critical Discussion of Vinge’s Singularity Concept ; and Kurzweil’s Law. Food for thought…

Nice Fox News/ifeminist article by Wendy McElroy, Good Will Toward Men.

I’ve come across something pretty cool–favicons. This is an icon that replaces the default Microsoft Explorer “e” in the address bar of Interent Explorer next to the URL. For examples of some nice ones, see: FoxNews, Amazon.com, Google, and Slate. If you have trouble seeing the icon, try “dragging” it with your mouse to a blank space in the address bar, and “drop” it there; doing this once or twice usually makes it show up. Favicons only display when using Internet Explorer 5.x and above; for more info on how to see Favicons that are not appearing, see this Webmonkey page. I just downloaded the new Internet Explorer 6, which also handles them well. For more information on favicons, see the Webmonkey icons tutorial; to design your own, see Favicon.com; and for samples, see Favicons.com. My new favicon () was prepared by Favicon.com; they will design one for you for $75.