Posts Tagged opinions
Running Shoes and Marketing Hype
Today, for the first time in years, I went to a brick and mortar running store and bought new shoes. Until this winter, I had been wearing the same make and model shoe for years. I wore the same shoe for most of my college running career and continued to wear it afterwards until I hurt my knee. Then, sometime after my knee surgery and before I started running again, the manufacturer discontinued the model.
I searched for a replacement, preferring to buy online since it’s easy to find the same shoe online for 30-40% less than in a brick and mortar store. From suggestions on Internet forums, I bought a similar shoe from an online retailer made by the same manufacturer. However, the new shoe felt like running in sandals compared to the discontinued model. It gave me no stability and very little cushioning in the forefoot.
Why do shoe companies insist on changing their shoe lineup every year? There isn’t a shoe model that either doesn’t get changed or discontinued on a yearly basis. The shoe that treated me well for so long was suddenly gone. I probably bought 15 or 20 pairs of that model, and what does the manufacturer do to reward me for my loyalty? They hang me out to dry.
There’s no functional reason to update, discontinue, or introduce new running shoes with such magnitude and frequency. Some research indicates people are better off without running shoes. However, shoes are generally made to accommodate a small handful of biomechanical differences in runners. With these differences identified, each manufacturer should make a shoe that successfully addresses these problems for most of the population and let things be. With the current cycle of drastic shoe changes, either running shoe technology is so terrible that the manufacturers are constantly scrambling to find shoes that work or human evolution is taking place at unprecedented levels.
Instead of producing something consistent and functional, shoe companies care more about generating marketing hype surrounding their products. They want consumers to crave the latest running shoe with its biodegradable materials, patented cushioning materials, and futuristic looks. I don’t care how many proprietary materials the shoe is made out of or what the shoe looks like, I only want it to keep me from getting injured. Every shoe I’ve ever bought goes from mostly white to a dirty, muddy mess in a matter of days, but as long as it keeps me in one piece, that’s all that really matters.
The constant shoe updates also force me to buy from a regular retail store since I have to try on several pairs to find a new one that works. Sizing changes from model to model, so I’m wary of buying a new pair without first trying it on. Retail stores mark up prices as much as 100% of what they paid the manufacturer, so it’s easy to find an online retailer who charges far less than the suggested retail price. Going to the store today, I’ve found that what was the $80 shoe five years ago is now the $100 shoe. Some shoes are nearly $200. All of them wear out in 300-400 miles, so what exactly is it that warrants the extra cost?
Running shoes shouldn’t be any different than a household appliance. Shoes should be something that do their job faithfully and can be replaced at the end of their lifespan with a model that performs exactly the same way.
Quotes of the week v.2
Here’s some more stuff that piqued my interest over the past week. While I find most comments on the internet to be extremely immature, the Slashdot moderation system really makes the good comments float to the top, producing a lot of good insight. I have to say that whoever came up with the Slashdot moderation system had a real stroke of genius.
Executive Compensation
Slashdot recently covered a story of a Sun employee commenting on the golden parachutes received by executives as their failing company was acquired by Oracle. Debates ensued in the story comments as to whether or not greed and apathy drives executives to place little effort into keeping their businesses afloat, completely disregarding the interests of employees and even shareholders. It reminds me of this Ambrose Bierce quote which I remember being narrated by Leonard Nimoy in Civilization IV:
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
One of the commenters of the story gave a blunt analogy:
To make it easier to understand and to make a more basic explanation, let’s replace “money” with “food”. Let’s say that the executive in charge of Sun has a machine that makes food for thousands of people. He runs the machine so poorly that it breaks down, and thousands of people no longer have access to the food it provides. In the process of breaking the machine, he manages to engineer it so that the very last time he runs the machine, it makes enough food to feed him, his family and his friends’ families for a couple hundred years if they manage the food he created properly.
It sure seems that executives certainly have the opportunity to obtain massive individual profit with little responsibility. Hopefully, for each story like this, there are hundreds of executives that run their companies well and think about their employees when making decisions.
Show me your papers…
In another Slashdot story, users commented on the heavy-handedness of Verizon blocking internet access to a popular website. Verizon alleged that a denial of service attack originated from the domain of the blocked site, which prompted comments that such attacks could be construed as terrorism and must be thwarted by corporations and governments. While I can’t really argue against the actions of Verizon or governmental involvement in stopping DDoS attacks, one commenter posted the following in response to increased governmental involvement on the internet:
When I was a kid it was popular to point to various things in the USSR like the inability to travel freely without “showing your papers” as evidence of totalitarian oppression. Here in 2010 “showing your papers” is as American as apple pie!
Oddly, I agree with the concept of this statement but not necessarily in the context of the internet. Air travel comes readily to mind. Nothing screams “show me your papers” more than flying. International travel is even worse, with arriving travelers powerless to stop searches of their computers and other electronic devices. What was once fun is now excruciating now that I’ve got to remove my shoes, take half of my stuff out of suitcases and into plastic bins, shuffle through metal detectors, and fumble for my ticket and ID. It really dampens my enthusiasm about going to Sweden in April.
Lowering the bar in Virginia schools
Virginia legislators have been desperate to get more Virginians into their public universities, even at the expense of revenue and quality of the student body. In the article, one legislator commented that he knew of several students with 4.0 GPAs that were denied entry to Virginia public universities. Well, when you loosen the grading scales in primary and secondary schools, there are going to be more students with higher GPAs.
I find it amusing that at one end, Virginia Beach students are whining that the grading scales are too strict and prevent them from gaining admittance to college. At the other end are complaints that too many 4.0 students are not admitted to Virginia colleges. Instead of high school students working harder to get into school or doing something that sets themselves apart from other 4.0 students, the prevailing wisdom is to just lower the bar. Fortunately, it appears as though the attempts to force 75 percent in-state enrollment is halted for now.
Those condescending liberals…
A piece written by a UVA politics professor argues that liberals are much more condescending than their conservative counterparts:
American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration.
From postings on the internet, musings from friends, and from stuff I’ve heard around my college campus, I agree that liberals seem to be increasingly intolerant of any dissenting opinions. Everyone just drinks the Kool-Aid and can’t reason independently of news columnists or political party leaders. Nobody tries to understand all sides of an argument and understand the reasoning of the opposition.
Quotes of the week…
Instead of picking a topic and writing a lengthy thesis, here are three quotes/stories that really got me going in the past week:
Windows Bug Discovered
A Slashdot thread discussed a security bug that affects all Windows versions released within the past 17 years. One of the commenters really cracked me up:
Every time I read about one of these long-undiscovered instant pwn bugs, I always have to wonder if there’s someone sitting deep underground in an NSA computer center saying “Well shit, looks like we’ll not be using that exploit anymore.”
Is this a hole nobody knew about or a hole nobody but the people who knew about it knew about, and those people weren’t talking?
Obama on Scott Brown election
The election of Scott Brown really caused a stir in political circles, prompting a comment from Obama:
The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. People are angry, and they’re frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.
Accountability much? Whatever happened to “The buck stops here?” I’m sure there will be more blaming Bush in tonight’s State of the Union. If more people took responsibility for their own actions, including the president, maybe the current political and economic climate wouldn’t be such a mess.
Budget Proposal Halts Return to the Moon
A White House budget request effectively axes the Constellation program, with a Slashdot commenter reacting:
So unless Congress steps in (which isn’t unlikely), Obama will be the President that ended America as a space-faring nation.
This comes on the heels of India’s announcement proposing a manned space mission in 2016. Instead, the Obama administration wishes to focus on terrestrial science. Yet another step backwards.
Infographics: How reliable are they?
With the social media flood comes a torrent of infographics, most of which focus on presentation instead of information. It reminds me of the “mediaglyphics” in yet another Neal Stephenson novel: The Diamond Age. In the futuristic novel, mediaglyphics are used by corrupt governments and broadcast media to inform and entertain a mostly illiterate population. Infographics aren’t much different: they blast the reader with colorful line graphs, maps, and pie charts to present an implicit and oversimplified argument.
I’ve found many of these infographics to be packed with spelling and grammatical errors. For example, try to find the error in this visualization of U.S. debt holders. With enormous font sizes and few words, any spelling or grammatical error really stands out. Such easily identifiable problems make me question the integrity of the statistics (and implicit arguments) these infographics present. Where did the data come from and how reliable are the sources? Many infographics do not provide references, so how am I to know that it isn’t just some ten year old kid making this stuff up? What if multiple sources produce conflicting results? In such cases, it’s almost guaranteed that the infographic creator just picked the result/data that best furthered his or her argument. Lastly, what information is not presented? When reading an infographic, I always wonder if I am seeing the whole picture. With so little information actually presented, I have no doubt that most of these infographics leave out plenty, especially stuff that hurts the creator’s argument.
I admit that infographics pique my interest in a subject to which I haven’t given much thought. However, with minimal content and questionable integrity, they may be no more than chartjunk.
Going Mobile: Network Neutrality
The traditional approach for implementing solutions in wireless sensor networks is to use academically designed sensor motes, which provide an open hardware and software platform. Such devices have been good for addressing fundamental problems, like radio irregularity, routing, data aggregation, and power savings, all of which require fine-grained control (open source) over the software and hardware. While sensor motes provide a good proof of concept solution to some problems, more practical solutions are needed that are more attention-grabbing than a collection of weak, low power devices with limited sensing capabilities. Basically, there aren’t a whole lot of applications for sensor motes that would be useful to most people. A more recent approach is to use cell phones, which are increasingly becoming equipped with GPS, accelerometers, and microphones, providing a platform for interesting and practical wireless sensor solutions. However, the hardware and software of most cell phones are extremely restrictive, clamped down by manufacturers and wireless providers, effectively limiting the research possibilities. For example, one can’t just perform a clear channel assessment using a cell phone’s WiFi radio without less restrictive or open source drivers (even with Android). Such restrictiveness is hindering improvements in mobile devices and many of these improvements would be welcomed by everyday consumers.
Like landline phones, Internet users will eventually drop wired ISP connections in favor of wireless. This shift towards mobile and ubiquitous computing emphasizes that wireless infrastructure and usage policies will be critical in the coming years. With few exceptions, ISPs have followed the principles of network neutrality with respect to wired networks, permitting wired customers to use any device with any software using any communication protocol. However, such openness is not reflected in wireless networks with ISPs placing heavy restrictions on devices, software, and means of communication. To ensure competitive pricing, hardware innovations, exciting software applications, and available bandwidth for the surge in wireless traffic, wireless providers must follow the principles of network neutrality. Since wireless providers are hesitant do do so, the FCC’s decision to enforce network neutrality is a step in the right direction. The enforcement of the FCC’s network neutrality principles will allow researchers to push mobile computing to new and exciting levels and will allow consumers to get more functionality at lower prices.
The openness of the wired Internet has seldom been encroached upon by ISPs and rarely regulated by government, making the Internet the world that it is today. This freedom has been defined by the FCC’s four principles of network neutrality:
- A user can access any content over the network. All who access the Internet are provided access to everything on the Internet, whether it be an AP news report or the Unabomber Manifesto. No ISP restricts content: everything is available, even if it may be morally objectionable or illegal.
- A user can run any application or use any service over the network. Anyone can use any web service or application (Google, Mapquest, Facebook) without restriction from an ISP. No ISP prevents users from making Skype calls even if that ISP also sells landline telephone service.
- A user can connect any device to the network, given it does no harm. An Internet user can connect with any hardware, whether it be with a ten year old piece of junk running Linux or with a $10,000 top-of-the-line quad core processor running the latest Windows 7 beta. No ISP restricts a user’s Internet access because his or her computer is a piece of junk. Nor do ISPs force users to connect only with proprietary computers sold by the ISP.
- Competition among network, content, and application providers. A user is open to choose from one of several ISPs (if more than one are even available), and also has choice over competing web services and content providers.
This freedom has not always been maintained, even with the wired Internet. Two years ago, Comcast deliberately throttled the bandwidth of peer-to-peer protocols, limiting the upload and download speed of file sharing applications. With peer-to-peer using customers enraged over this finding, the FCC forced Comcast to abandon this policy. Other than this incident and a few others, the Internet has always been delivered equally to all who have access.
Unfortunately, such open policies of the wired Internet are not followed by wireless providers. From the very birth of cell phones, wireless providers have controlled everything:
- Unrestricted content. Wireless providers block (through restricted software) bandwidth-heavy content, such as streaming videos, voice/video communication, as well as file sharing. Such restrictions are in place to limit or prevent wireless network congestion. Improvements in wireless infrastructure could alleviate such congestion, but wireless providers have decided to restrict, rather than improve.
- Use of any application or service. Nearly all providers restrict the operating system and applications available on connecting mobile devices. Apple blocks the use of Skype when the phone is not connected to a WiFi network. Similarly, the Google Voice application was also removed by Apple and AT&T. Both applications provide features that could be seen as subversive to standard cellular voice calls. Instead of providing competing applications (maybe with better features), the ISP and application providers just block any competition.
- Connection of any device. Verizon’s network may be good, but their phones are terrible. A customer cannot just build their own tricked out phone and connect it to Verizon’s network. Instead, users are forced to choose from a handful of phones with menial features (only sold by Verizon, of course).
- Competition. Since content, applications, and hardware are restricted on most wireless networks, competition is limited. Only a handful of wireless providers offer large coverage areas, especially for data communication. Since the United States pays more for wireless than any other western country, it is clear that less restriction would provide more options and more competition for consumers.
Despite the crackdown on allowable hardware, software, and access, wireless executives somehow manage to argue that their industry is “perhaps the most competitive consumer market in America.” While unregulated competition would be great for consumers in terms of increasing wireless freedom, there simply isn’t enough competition to go around. There are only four major carriers in the United States, effectively forming a cartel that can set prices artificially high and extensively limit consumer freedom. With barriers to entry so high (infrastructure), few new carriers are likely to emerge. In cases like these, government intervention is the only solution. Fortunately, the FCC is investigating the lack of competition in the wireless market with respect to insane billing rules and lack of consumer freedom in comparison to the wired Internet. Of course, their latest decision to enforce network neutrality will also provide a strong push.
The end result should allow anyone to build their own phone, install a custom operating system, and connect it to the wireless provider of their choice without issue. Such a user should be allowed unrestricted access to the entire Internet without throttling or restriction of streaming video, large file downloads, or VoIP calls. Ultimately, text messaging and voice calls will be merged into wireless data plans, removing such unreal and confusing costs like $.25 to send a 160 byte message or “anytime” minutes, which are anything but anytime. Unrestricted hardware, software, and access will bring increased competition among existing wireless providers, fostering the development of better mobile hardware and cool applications.
The Brain Drain of Public University Funding
Every few months I get an email from the college president at William and Mary concerning the governor’s new proposal for budget cuts. Every time, state funding for higher education takes a hit. This has gone on and on and on ever since I arrived in Williamsburg seven years ago. Undergraduate tuition is now twice what it was when I started as a freshman and it’s hard to believe since I’m still a student here (albeit two degrees later). There’s been a lot of talk of a “college bubble,” where droves of potential students don’t even bother to apply anywhere since the costs are too high and reasonable financial aid is scarce. Why is tuition outpacing inflation at such a ludicrous rate? What can be done to ensure the quality of the American higher education system while making it affordable to all who are qualified?
The rise in tuition for public higher education is coming from two directions: reduction in state funding and increases in administrative costs. Both government and individuals no longer see the benefit of higher education. At the government level, governors and legislators have put higher education on the back burner while focusing on nebulous agendas such as “job creation.” At the individual level, students no longer see education as a priority when attending college; it’s now about the “experience”, prompting administrative bloat to handle the demand for more university-run social programs.
The most obvious cause of tuition increases comes from the never ending cuts in state funding. With UVA and William and Mary receiving a respective 6 and 13% of total income from state sources, it’s hard to believe they are considered state schools. As state revenue sources have dried up, the state government has decided that higher education is no longer a priority. Emphasis in the fall elections are on the economy and the environment, not learning. Specific issues include vague terms such as “job creation” and “sustainability”, as well as more concrete problems like transportation and K-12 education. Higher education is hardly mentioned. It’s assumed that regardless of the winner this fall, state funding will continue to dwindle for “publicly funded” colleges, ensuring de facto privatization.
William and Mary placed fourth on the Forbes Best Public Colleges ranking for 2009. Contributing to this are its small class sizes, nearly all of which are taught by professors. Because of this, professors who are leaders in their fields are readily available to students of all levels. It is the small school size, relative intimacy between the faculty and students, and enthusiasm exhibited by students and professors alike that make William and Mary what it is. As funding is cut, education quality will suffer. Tenured professors will leave for higher paying jobs. Class sizes will increase and will be taught by less qualified instructors and grad students. Consequently, good students will look elsewhere for a solid education. Until the state government decides to make higher education a priority, the future of public colleges in Virginia is doomed.
Falling in lockstep with the state government, college officials and students alike are de-emphasizing the value of a college education, leading to further cost increases. While reduction in state funding is well known, it’s the administrative cost increases that are the most unnerving. It’s a real kick in the face to hear the budget situation at William and Mary described as “deadly serious” while administrative costs have increased by $5 million from last year. Next to several articles about the latest round of state funding cuts is a piece on yet another new administrative position: a full time employee in the Committee on Sustainability. I can’t see how “helping to streamline and facilitate the College’s ecological ambitions” provides any benefit to students in terms of attaining a degree and starting a meaningful career. It’s but another brick in the wall of tuition increases, and it’s all because even students and staff no longer consider education a priority.
In the past 20 years, colleges added more full time administrative jobs than teaching jobs, with positions in areas such as the aforementioned sustainability office, counseling, admissions staff, and social programs. College seems to be no longer about getting a degree and using newfound expertise to get a job or make an impact. Today, college is becoming some kind of fantasy camp, with students surrounded by an increasing number of staff whose job it is to keep them entertained. It’s no wonder that many recent graduates just wind up flipping burgers since the emphasis isn’t on learning anymore, but on some kind of poorly defined college experience. Regardless, more and more people are willing to pay for that four year fantasy camp despite the lack of increased education or income once they graduate. When students place their education first and experience later, perhaps tuition will become more affordable.
How can the brakes be applied to the out of control tuition increases? The answer lies in reprioritizing education above more nebulous concerns. The current governor and gubernatorial candidates have been yakking on and on about reviving the economy. What better way to do that then to provide more affordable higher education? More affordable college education will yield a larger pool of graduates ready to make significant contributions to the economy. The state government has direct control over this and the answer is clear: restore state funding. Until then, the Boards of Visitors at state schools can raise in-state tuition to near out-of-state levels, accounting for the tiny difference in state funding. Since many legislators want in-state students to get even more privileges, such a move will be quite the wake up call to the state government.
On the flip side, students must also reorganize their priorities. Without placing education first, students will simply fall back to meaningless jobs with low pay and low contribution to society. Students must realize that the flood of social programs, support staff, and spanking new facilities is meaningless compared to studying hard and earning a degree in a valuable field. In order to rein in costs, students must demand fewer frills while demanding more elements of a high quality education.
If the current trends run their course, the college bubble may become a reality, forcing a massive decline in the quality of higher education. Students will not pay out the nose for overloaded classes, terrible instructors, and few course options. Four years in such conditions will provide no benefit in terms of education or job skills. The best solution is for government and individuals alike to reprioritize higher education.
Fixing the frustrations of the digital nomad
Current computing technology consists of a mishmash of devices, ranging in size, portability, usability, and design lifetime. Users are tied to their desks no longer: the future lies in mobile devices, and improvements to increase mobility and usability are key in the coming years. Without the following improvements, I think most users’ computing experience will become very frustrating. I’m hoping we’ll see:
A holistic computing solution
Everyone splits their computing time between a whole pile of devices: cell phones, media players, laptops, netbooks, desktops, and gaming consoles. Even typical cable TV boxes have a hard drive and user interface. The purposes and capabilities of such devices is becoming increasingly diverse and will probably continue to do so in the short term. However, it’s becoming a real pain to use a standalone device for a different task. Carry a cell phone for voice and text messages. Carry a laptop or netbook for working on the go. Carry a media player to listen to music. When at home, many people switch from a laptop to a separate desktop PC. It would be great to see some consolidation in order to reduce frustration with dragging around multiple devices and learning the quirks of each.
Since most people aren’t running weather prediction simulations, a single small mobile device would be sufficient for most people’s computing needs. Ideally, something the size of a cell phone would combine the functionalities of a phone, camera, media player, laptop/netbook PC, and even desktop PC. No longer would people with multiple devices need to synchronize information or become familiar with multiple interfaces. A single device would provide a user with most of the computing power and capability that he or she would need without the hassle of dragging around a separate phone, media player, and laptop. The device would be designed such that it could easily support and interface with different user input and output methods.
Improved user interfaces
Improved interfaces in mobile devices would make for a better user experience and improve productivity. With multiple gadgets to haul around, each comes with a different interface with varying levels of usability. For the most part, the smaller the device, the worse the user experience becomes. A desktop computer with a keyboard, mouse, and giant monitor provides a solid experience for most, with both ease of input and output. A netbook, however, may satisfy a user’s computing needs, but may cramp usability and productivity with its tiny screen and uncomfortable keyboard. Even worse, web browsing and writing emails or text messages on some cell phones can be nearly impossible. Personally, my experience with multi-touch phones has been horrible, since most of the time the phone selects something other than what I intended. Rethinking and improving the physical and software interfaces would permit a shift to a cell phone-sized holistic computing device.
Improvements to both physical and software interfaces would provide huge benefits for the end user. With respect to physical interfaces, improving multi-touch surfaces would be a big step in the right direction. Input methods that are simple and accurate would make phone calls, text messaging, and web browsing on mobile devices much more enjoyable. Output methods should extend beyond a tiny three inch screen, such as a wearable HUD or projector similar to that used in MIT’s SixthSense. With regards to software interfaces, most cell phone operating systems provide horrible user interfaces which make the simplest tasks a real pain. Most of these software designs inherit from heavyweight PC interfaces where input is made easy with keyboard and mouse. Mobile developers should focus on increasing usability by making tasks require the fewest amount of user inputs possible.
Behavior and activity recognition
Computing systems of tomorrow could predict a user’s intentions and act upon these predictions. With the introduction of accelerometers, GPS receivers, light sensors, cameras, and microphones in cell phones, plenty of research has provided ways to recognize user behavior and activities. Such research can help provide an augmented reality for users, pointing out suggestions as to what a user could do based on his or her surroundings, current activity and learned preferences and behavior. For example, a user traveling in an unfamiliar city could get instant suggestions as to where to eat when he or she normally takes a meal, with a mobile device providing directions to restaraunts that match the kinds of foods the user normally eats. A HUD would allow the device to paint a path directly on the streets to take without the user staring down at his or her phone. A device could automatically perform Internet searches and return data relevant to what a user is doing, whether it be retrieving a weather report before a user heads to the beach or providing real-time flight delay information as a user drives to the airport. Such intelligent systems could interact with the physical world and turn on the lights or adjust the temperature at a user’s home before he or she arrives. Also, behavioral and activity recognition would eliminate the need for user-generated Twitter and Facebook posts, performing automatic updates whenever a user changes activities or does something unusual.
Better inter-device collaboration
Figuring out how to get cell phone pictures off the phone and onto a computer can be a monumental task. It’s even more enjoyable to get a projector to correctly display a presentation on a laptop. Nearly every slideshow presentation I’ve witnessed, in classes and in conferences requires each presenter to wage war with his or her laptop and the projector to get the presentation to display properly. Improving inter-device communication would make everyday computing more seamless and a lot less frustrating. For example, a slideshow presentation could be loaded on a mobile device and a user could walk into a room with a projector, with the mobile device automatically connecting wirelessly to the projector and displaying the presentation. There would be no cables to plug in, no display settings to modify, and no buttons and inputs to fidget with on the projector. Synchronizing and moving data between different devices stands to gain significant improvement, for people are constantly upgrading their cell phones and laptops as well as sharing their data with others.
Longer design lifetimes
I’m guessing I’m not the only one with a pile of old hardware that’s worn out from too much use or discarded due to obsolescence. More robust devices with longer expected lifetimes would reduce the pile of useless junk in the closet. This would be especially helpful for mobile devices, which often wind up in mud puddles, toilets, or under someone’s steel-toed boot. Modular construction would allow for periodic upgrades without throwing away the whole device. An effort towards longer lifetimes and upgradeability would also significantly cut down on the amount of toxic e-waste.
Longer battery life
Most cell phones don’t last past a couple days of standby or two hours of talk time. Most laptops don’t make it past three or four hours. With an increased focus towards mobile and ubiquitous computing, improvements in battery technology, power savings, and battery recharging would do wonders. Apple has a new battery design in its latest laptops that double battery life, but more strides in this direction are needed. Efforts on power-conscious radio communication and CPU utilization will contribute to power savings through better software. Lastly, harnessing available energy sources such as motion, body heat, and the sun will also allow mobile devices to run unplugged for longer periods.
In general, these issues are what I think mobile computing needs in order to really take off. The current experience is haphazard and lacking, requiring a mobile user to carry multiple devices with poor interfaces and short battery life. With future applications, mobile devices will do a lot more than allow phone calls, web browsing, and text messaging. They will further the integration of the cyber and the physical world, helping a user interact with the environment and the Internet in ways currently unimaginable.
Road Races: Less Passion, More Money
Last weekend, my girlfriend ran the Rock N’ Roll half marathon at the oceanfront despite admitting that she barely trained for it in recent months. Afterwards, it was as if she could barely walk. “Why run it?”, I asked. Apparently, she paid $90 for the entrance fee and decided that the money to go to waste. So, what happened here? Why did someone force herself into doing something that she clearly would not if the cost was less? Increasingly, races are organized to make money, not to provide competition and/or enjoyment among the participants. It appears to be part of a larger trend to care less about making a difference and to care more about the bottom line. It isn’t about doing what you love, it’s about doing anything you can to get some green. When the dollar signs loom larger than passion, you get unprepared runners suffering through 13 miles to recoup their costs.
Years ago, the biggest road race in the area was the Shamrock marathon and 8k with a modest entry fee. The turnout was smaller, but the fastest finishing times were still comparable to today. Recently, the local running club handed over control of the Shamrock to a for-profit company. Volunteers were replaced by paid staff. Prize money for elite finishers was increased. What was a well organized regional race was turned into a full blown production with all the frills. Consequently, entry fees skyrocketed. The hype induced a similar increase in turnout. However, the fastest finishing times also only showed marginal improvement.
What does the average runner stand to gain by paying $90 for a race? As bad as $90 sounds, it was only the registration fee several months in advance of the race; the fee increased to $110 three months before. So, does that $90 get you better competition? At a smaller (and probably cheaper) race, there may be fewer runners, but the average half marathon runner will still find plenty of people to try and chase down. Is the $90 worth the dry-fit t-shirt or extra junk that comes in the race packet? Maybe the finishing medal is better. Or, maybe the experience is somehow intrinsically better just because the race was expensive. Clearly, the average runner stands little to gain by running in a large scale production-style road race orchestrated by a for-profit company rather than running in a local road race staffed by volunteers. Somehow, people still pay anyway and all the backhanded marketing hype draws them in record numbers like mosquitoes to a bug zapper.
The increased registration fees only really benefit two groups: the elite runners, and of course, the organizers. With increased entry fees at large races, elite runners are often provided with free travel and hotel rooms. Naturally, they don’t have to pay an entry fee while the increased costs to all other participants provide a larger pile of prize money to the elites. That $90 provided by 20,000 participants also does well in providing the organizers with a nice chunk of change. Those who were once volunteers and provided a great service to the community are now ransacking their fellow runners’ wallets for every last dollar.
It’s bad enough that the registration fee is so high for many of these races. It’s even worse that these high profile races don’t even allow registration transfers in case of injury, lack of training, or sudden employer-mandated travel plans. As a result, some strange things happen as people struggle to cope with a significant monetary loss. Some will trade numbers under the table, throwing off the results when a supposed 55 year old blows away the masters division with a near record time. Others who didn’t prepare or who suffered an injury may force themselves out on the course and punish themselves because they want to get their money’s worth. Others still may decide not to run altogether, leaving several thousand non-starts that could have been filled with ready participants.
I could never justify the cost of such a race, even after I had recently exhausted my college eligibility and was looking for races to run. I had considered slapping down a few massive entrance fees to run a few half marathons or marathons. Before I got that far, my knee gave out. It just isn’t worth it to fork over the $90+ for a race several months in advance that I might not be able to run because of injury. To me, it’s not the hype or the junk that comes in the race packet. It really isn’t even about the competition anymore. If my knee were to withstand a race, I would do it only for enjoyment and I don’t think I need to pay $90 to get that. Even if I had to pay for all of my college races, I don’t know if I could justify the cost if I had to pay extortionist entry fees at each one. I can get much more than $90 worth of enjoyment just by running on my own.
When I ran competitively, I only paid for a handful of races, most of them when I was unattached in college. I think I paid $15 for a cross country invitational at UVA, another $15 to run a 3k at George Mason, and about $50 to run the 5k at Penn Relays. That $50 at Penn Relays got me in a race with plenty of competition, including Alan Webb, who ran 13:30. I ran about a minute slower, just barely getting lapped by him at the end, but it was him and the other runners that helped me drag myself around the track towards the end. In that case, the extra costs of the entrance fee and travel may have been worthwhile, but such cases are outliers. Today, I’m no different than the average recreational runner and I don’t have to pay $50 – $75 more and travel hundreds of miles to race when similar competition could be found right where I live. That is, if it’s competition I want.
I consider myself very fortunate to have crossed paths with people who found that satisfaction didn’t always come from making money. I had high school and college coaches that gave most of their time to me despite earning little or no money. I ran plenty of local road races staffed by volunteers who came just because they loved to be there. It was this passion that came from people like these that helped me go a long way with my running career. Ironically, it was from the same people that I realized I could never run professionally. Like someone who forks over $90 for a race, there would be too much external pressure from a sponsor to run through injuries, train harder than I felt comfortable, and to turn a daily release into a daily grind. Money and love don’t always mix.
It appears as though things that were once steeped in intrinsic value are falling to the marketers. Road racing is only one example. Even coaching for these expensive races is now being offered at an equivalently steep price. Those who once freely gave their time and effort are now turning their passions into profit, raking fellow enthusiasts over the coals. Those who may have run for pure enjoyment are now forking over cash to attend pre-race expos, get race packets stuffed with “free samples”, and get hyped with bands blasting music along the race course. It’s one less thing that’s done because it’s fun. It’s one more thing done only for the money.
“When you control the mail, you control information”
Newman had the right idea: with a communication infrastructure, the end users aren’t alone in leveraging control over the information they communicate. Intermediaries have just as much control as the creators and the intended recipients. This might be true for mail, and it’s increasingly becoming an issue with the internet.
The most visible privacy issues have been raised with the introduction of social networking: Facebook’s Beacon being one of the most infamous, with Facebook secretly collecting your online activities to generate targeted advertisements. More recently, software designed to control and monitor children’s internet usage was revealed to actually transmit all internet activity, including instant messages, back to the companies that designed the programs. The list of abuses and potential abuses goes on and on and will only get worse. The introduction of cloud computing and the shift to thin clients mean that third parties are handling more and more personal data. The more opportunities others are given to handle our personal information, preferences, photos, browsing habits, and documents, the more opportunities exist for the abuse of that control.
Social networking and the monitoring of internet habits is only the tip of the iceberg. The social networking concept is quickly moving beyond the confines of the Internet and integrating itself with the physical world. The concepts of participatory sensing, body sensor networks, and smart homes/offices will see the introduction of internet-linked sensors placed everywhere. Cameras and microphones will soon be on every street corner. Temperature, humidity, and other energy monitoring sensors will be commonplace in every home, all linked to the internet. Even now, most cell phones come equipped with GPS, accelerometers, and microphones, allowing for activity recognition and localization. This “information saturation” will allow any developer to design an application that makes all kinds of weird discoveries: with body sensor networks and smart phones, rush hour traffic can be monitored in real time, local nightlife hotspots can be easily discovered, and suggestions can be made on how to save energy based on water and electricity usage in your home.
While the integration of the internet into the real world sounds cool, imagine what someone could do if your sensing information got into the wrong hands. Would you really want your health insurance company to know your heart rate or blood pressure at any time of day? Would you really want everyone to know that you waste the most water out of everyone who lives on your block? Would you want a crazed stalker to know where you were at any moment or to learn your daily activities or routines?
Privacy and security is going to be an increasing concern as sensor networks become more commonplace and integrated with the internet. While I was at UVA two weeks ago, Prof. John Stankovic mentioned that security and privacy in sensor networks is a huge problem and unfortunately, little is being done in this area.
A recent article by a UCLA student illustrated some of the problems with participatory sensing and presented some general solutions. Disclaimer: as part of the lead-in on her article, she says: “the developers I work with might say [my research area] is about telling them what they should be doing—which I must admit is the goal of this article.” When someone says they know better than you, it’s time to run, not walk, to the nearest exit. That said, I do agree with some of the things she says. The author argues that a general framework should be designed for all participatory sensing applications that allow for user privacy management. The frameworks should allow a user to easily understand how the systems work and how to control the release to the outside world of personal sensor data and inferences. Ultimately, the author argues that data generated by a sensor network that you own is yours to control and distribute. Third parties must respect the wishes of the content generators.
The author doesn’t go into fine-grained detail about how to ensure the preservation of an end user’s privacy wishes. I could imagine some kind of CA could help verify that those third parties which access a user’s content/sensor data are who they say they are. Some kind of feedback mechanism could allow a user to see where his or her sensor data went and how it was used. If a third party abused a user’s data, the CA certificate could be revoked, effectively tarnishing the reputation of that third party. Most likely, encryption would have to be introduced to ensure nobody but the permitted third parties could access a user’s data. Unfortunately, encryption is very energy and bandwidth heavy for low power wireless sensors.
We all know the wrong way to go about privacy with the experiences of Facebook and its tacked-on privacy measures. Initially, Facebook provided little privacy controls with no framework at all to allow a user to control access to his or her information. Even now, the privacy controls for Facebook are hard to access and even harder to understand what they do. A user has no fine-grained control over adjust who can access what content and exactly how your information is being shared with third party applications and advertisers. A comprehensive and user-oriented privacy framework installed from the ground up would help stop the mishaps that are common with social networking. Such a framework would come into its own with the increase in participatory sensing.
On that note, it’s time to get a few cell phones and start a participatory sensing application of my own to provide motivation for some research problems. The possibilities are limitless and I can throw privacy to the wind (for now). Unfortunately, as the author of the ACM article mentioned: researchers and developers don’t think about privacy, they think about research problems and cool applications. In a small-scale research environment, the information is mine to control since I control the sensors, the application, and the release of any data or inferences from the data. But, if anything were to be released into the wild and become popular, a framework for end user privacy control would be indispensable. I certainly don’t want some nutcase knowing when and where I’m sleeping.
Are cyclists really to blame?
The city council in Virginia Beach recently discussed adding bike lanes to new and existing roads within the city. Nothing will probably come of this, but it would sure be nice to see something on Shore Drive. The prevailing attitude against cyclists is too great for the city to provide any bike-friendly infrastructure. Infrastructure, as in bike lanes and traffic sensors that can detect bikes on the road, not debris-strewn, manhole-pocked “bike paths” separated from the road. Not to mention that such paths are usually filled with pedestrians and no self-respecting cyclist would risk hitting one at 20+ mph by using the path instead of the road.
The prevailing attitude of drivers comes in two flavors. First, they argue that the speed differential is too great to make cycling safe. This may be true, but shouldn’t drivers be paying enough attention to deal with any potential obstacles? Any driver should prepare to see a downed tree around the next corner or be aware that an oncoming car could turn left in front of him. As a cyclist and driver, I think about these things constantly on the road, but it seems that most drivers do not. Despite being the most dangerous method of transportation, most drivers think that accidents happen to other people but not to them.
The second argument is that cyclists do not obey the traffic laws. Several of the comments in the above article whine about cyclists blowing through lights and turning in front of cars. I admit I started out as one of the cyclist mavericks drivers complain about. It wasn’t long before I realized that if I wanted to stay alive, I couldn’t just go through a light despite the lack of cross traffic. A car I couldn’t see would more than likely appear out of nowhere. Even as I follow the rules, plenty of cars come out of nowhere and now I pretty much expect oncoming cars to turn in front of me and to pull out in front of me when I approach an intersection.
There seems to be a double standard when it comes to drivers and cyclists. If I so much as tear through a yellow light, someone will yell or honk. I could almost guarantee that driver probably blew through several red lights himself in the past week. Just sit at a busy intersection in Virginia Beach and just count the cars that go through red lights, turn right on red without stopping, or don’t use their turn signal. I’ll bet that within a few minutes there would be more violations than those performed by all cyclists in the city for that day.
An ad-hoc report linked from the Freakonomics blog seems to back this up: in studying over 2,500 cyclist-involved accident reports, vehicles were at fault more than 90 percent of the time. Most cases occurred when a car stopped at a stop sign or red light would pull out in front of a cyclist who had the right of way. This happens to me at least several times per week. The study was performed by a Canadian physician and the police reports were from Toronto, so I could only imagine the situation is worse in the United States. The report goes on to say that Toronto cyclists are six times more likely to die than a cyclist in the Netherlands. It also reports that despite the existence of poor weather, Ontario non-cyclists are most discouraged from getting on their bikes due to the lack of bike-friendly infrastructure and antagonistic drivers. Lastly, the report cites evidence linking the lack of cycling to an increase in health problems and obesity.
Of course, the study was performed by a cyclist, posted on a cycling team website, and was not peer reviewed. The statistics may be an upper bound for the number of driver-induced accidents. There is also the DOT-endorsed Hurt Report, which was a similar study involving motorcycle accidents in the Los Angeles area. In the Hurt Report, drivers were at fault 66 percent of the time in motorcycle-involved accidents. In this case, all of the investigators just to happened to be motorcyclists, so it also may be difficult to draw valid conclusions.
Regardless of whether or not the statistics are valid, it pays to be extra careful when cycling in the age of texting and driving. As drivers have become more distracted over the past years, I definitely have experienced more near misses. The extra vigilance I have gained while on the bike has also been a significant help as a driver. If today’s antagonistic drivers had spent more time on their bikes as kids, they probably would make the roads a much safer place.
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