Two Slashes

Lady Ada

It’s not well-known, but today is a day that most geek calendars include.  Today is Lady Ada Day, named after Ada Lovelace, recorded in history books as the first person to write a computer program.

There’s a giant roster of people who are supposed to be posting about a female figure in the tech industry today whom they admire as a “Modern Ada.”  Considering the long time it’s been since I managed to put in some posting time on here, I figured I would take this challenge up.

Me?  Well, I never was one for following memes (which I consider this to be), and I can’t think of a woman in the tech world I really admire.  Well, that, and I’m not one to play favorites.

Sure, I could talk about some of my fellow university students and the impressive work they’ve completed, but that would get boring to everyone who has no idea what school I attend.  (And I appreciate my privacy in that matter, thanks. )  And, to be honest, that would probably be creepy for anyone to read, most of all them.

I could always cheat and pull some random tech employee’s name out of a hat, but that wouldn’t work either.  Not only could I not name-drop any reasonably-well-known females in the tech industry, but there will probably be countless other blog posts drooling about how attractive/intelligent/rich/attractive said woman is, which makes picking anybody of note instantly a poor choice.

However, I think I have a solution.  Rather than write one more post about whatever useless tech journalist/CEO/evangelista the rest of the blogosphere is, what about taking a second to thank all of the female bloggers I know for doing their thing?  After all, in a loose definition, they’re pretty in-tune with technology themselves (even if their blogs let on otherwise).  Right?

So, with that said, I’m going to suggest you spend the rest of your Lady Ada day appreciating not just female software developers and company CEOs, but female bloggers too.  And you can start with those I have in my sidebar.  That’s right, tonight looks like a great night for you to check out Keri’s Curious Cloud, daigakudeki, Geekin’ Out, Rachelskirts, Snubs’ personal blog, Splendid Mishap, and maybe even mosey over to Brooke’s or Gretchen’s blogs if there’s time left.

(There are more, of course, but seeing as even I have not talked with everyone in the universe yet, it’ll have to do.  Also, I should probably do some housecleaning, because there are a few stale links in my sidebar.)

Yesterday, during a math class, I was treated to the particularly laughable claims made by a fellow student in the class.  No, these weren’t claims of his potent masculinity or demonstrations of his intelligence.  This kid claimed that he was the mastermind behind Storm (I wonder what Fox News broadcast he’s been watching recently) and that he knows a super-secret backdoor into any Windows XP computer called the “administrator account.”  Pardon me for laughing.

It’s people like this that often make me wonder whether some mandatory licensing/certification scheme for computing is necessary, not only to prove you have skills, but to prove you can contribute to society by using the device in an appropriate way.

Among other things, the requirements could include:

• A decent grasp of a human language. None of this “im in ur dataz lolz” crap – just plain English, Spanish, Yiddish…you get the idea.
• Aptitude in interacting with others. This probably goes along with the language requirement I just mentioned above, but there should be a reasonable level of intelligence in dealing with other people.  (Regular participation in an IRC channel might be a great way to fulfill this.)
• A reasonable level of knowledge in various day-to-day applications including a word processor, spreadsheet application, and perhaps an image editor.
• An avoidance of nuisance fonts like Comic Sans. Enough said.
• An extensive vocabulary of computing terms. This also includes knowing when and what term to use.  (That monitor on your desk is not the entire computer, you know.)

I can think of other things, but I don’t want to limit the number of people who can get a license to my small circles of friends.  That just wouldn’t be fair.  (I would love to know what suggestions you have for the list, though.)

While the kid might think he looks intelligent to the rest of the people in the class, I have not yet revealed to him that I’m a computer science major.  (I’m waiting for the opportune moment to reveal that information.  Until then, I’ll have to settle with mentally calling him an idiot over and over in my head.)  Of course, doing so might make him realize just how outlandish he appears.

I’m in support of the free access to information when the information makes a worthwhile contribution to society, but I don’t consider free stupidity to be worth anything more than a chuckle or two (or a guffaw, depending upon the act in question).

So, when can we build those licensing centers?

Wow…did I actually just post my fourth thing in five days?  I…why, I think I’m in shock!  Hopefully either I can fall into the habit of posting more often (preferred) or anyone out there doesn’t get into the obsessive habit of checking for new stuff more often…well, at least let the RSS feed do that for you.

I paid $350 or so for my first useful* laptop (I say that with quotes for a reason, see below) during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school, with my first MP3 player just a short while before that.  I’ve only had possession of a personal cellular telephone for a year.  I’ve had an account with AOL since the second grade (which, although I personally refuse to use the AOL client anymore, I still have).  And I’ve been really only establishing my online presence (with forums, websites, and the like) since the end of middle school.

Why do I tell you this, seemingly randomly?  I was perusing through the New York Times website today, and came across an article discussing the recommended ages children should be introduced to the very same technologies I just mentioned.  And obviously there’s some disagreement between what the article suggests and what I believe to be more appropriate, or I wouldn’t be bothered enough to write about it.

For ages 0-2, I can generally agree with the author.  I don’t see a reason your kid should be messing with anything electronic with more complication than making noise or blinking lights.  They’re way too young to understand cause-effect scenarios, and I certainly don’t foresee anybody’s newborn being able to “Press Enter to Continue…”

Sure, maybe all the fake toddler-toys are probably 1/4 as mind-stimulating as they’re advertised to be, but are they really ready to play online games?  No offense, but it seems to me like they want to train the next generation of WoW addicts from an early age; they’ll be more tolerant to the obsessive clicking and typing and random key-pressing it takes, and their vision will already be so screwed over from staring at the screen that they’ll have a 6000-strength glasses prescription by the time they’re eight.  Pardon me, but how about giving them their Playskool MP3 boombox thingy and sending them out to the sandbox?  And suggesting a Wii as a console for kids still trying to figure out why the cat doesn’t go in the washing machine, and that Hot Wheels are more collectible when the wheels aren’t on the other side of the room?  I really don’t need any more bologna-in-the-CD-tray service calls, thank you very much, so I’ll just say “That’s stupid” and continue on my merry way.

Moving towards the second half of the article, I really disagree more with their thinking.  For starters, explain to me why six-year-olds are eligible to be playing games that require interaction with people you don’t know but are connected to instantly?  I fail to see one instance where they won’t be talking to strangers at some point.  (And even if the parents are paying attention, can you really be certain that crazyboy2834 isn’t this guy (potentially NSFW)?  Your son/daughter claiming that it’s the friend from down the street doesn’t count.)  I have a brother that fits this age bracket, and I’ve watched him play similar games.  If someone sends him a friend request, his instant reaction is to accept it…no questions asked.  “But wait, that’s not Kyle?”  Stranger danger, indeed.  What happened to responsible parenting?

I can see maybe a shimmer of reasoning behind giving a twelve-year-old a cell phone…but only a shimmer.  Why, even my high-school-age siblings failed to understand why text messaging wasn’t included in their plan (it is now) and managed to rack up a rather exorbitant bill.  The point is, if you give them something that has the ability to do more than you pay for, it’s going to come back to bite you.  If you really need to give them the phone, get the blasted unlimited messaging plan…$30 per month is a lot more reasonable than $600 (trust me).  Perhaps towards high school would make better sense here.

High school would also be a prime time for these kids to get laptops and other “considered-essential” devices, not as they’re herded off like cattle to college.  Not only does this free the family computer from constant use by the IM- and MySpace-crazed teen, but it gives parents (as if they needed it) yet another thing to take away for groundings.  And has the benefit of teaching them about how to take care of more expensive equipment earlier on.

And I scoff at this comment:

In fact, cellphones are now more or less mandatory for children at this age. Besides providing a social advantage, phones can reduce parental stress in a crowded mall, get children in touch for homework help, serve as a call to dinner — and be withheld as punishment that really works.

Parenting skills for this age include reading phone bills. Lori McCoughey of Mahwah, N.J., a mother of two, saved $200 a month by switching to Verizon’s friends and family plan. There are also pay-as-you-go plans like those from Tracfone (www.tracfone.com). For $50, you get a working LG 225 camera phone, preloaded with 100 minutes. A meter counts down the remaining time.

If parenting skills require reading bills, why must you suggest a pay-as-you go plan on a cell phone, which defeats the entire purpose of reading bills?  It might reinforce and encourage the idea of having your child budget their usage (especially if you add a specific amount per month, and refuse to add any more until the next) in preparation for giving them access to your “big-person”, post-pay plan, but really I can’t see a prepaid phone as being anything more than a cash-cow and waste of time otherwise.  But “serving as a call to dinner?”  Although I’m pretty sure I can see through the poor language there, how is ringing your offspring anywhere near a reinforcement of the “personal nature” of dinner?  (Yes, I realize this is America, where ‘dinner’ is another word for vegging out in front of a television with McDonald’s, but cut me some slack.)

Of course, even my recommendations are just that, recommendations.  In reality, the parents should be capable enough to judge whether their kid actually has a need for the technologies of tomorrow, a need that outstretches the desire to “fit in” – because there’s always going to be someone else without it, and a lesson in not getting everything you want is perfect fare.  Nevertheless, any parents who take tips from that article and apply them probably could use a little help as a parent themselves.

Parenting is about guidance and helping a child to prepare themselves for an adult/parental role, not stepping in and going “Here’s a shiny new electronic toy that I bought; go have fun.”

*Useful in this sense refers to the sense that it could be used for more than running Windows 95 or browsers with the rendering support of an 1800s cash register.  My real first laptop was a 486 obtained long ago from one of my father’s co-workers, with a failed battery and a garbage-picker’s heaven of data left on it.  As most people know, I particularly enjoy older/restored computing equipment and so I keep this machine around for occasional use.

Before I begin, I just wanted to thank everyone involved in my sudden spike in traffic over the past few days as the result of that “pci32b.exe” article; it’s still up for anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, but it’s responsible for tripling my 24-hour unique visit numbers.  Go figure.

Thanks to (as usual) my habitual Digg surfing, I came across a rant describing why Asus, the PC manufacturer (also known as ASUSTEK) is the most hated company in all of the PC industry.

Before I even get started with what I really want to say, I just want to play devil’s advocate for a second and point out that the EEE PC did probably just make an impact in the way future devices are going to be developed?  And hey, I’m game for a laptop with no moving parts.

Anyway, I find it interesting that someone could call such an out-of-the-way company the “most hated” corporation in the entire computing industry.  For sure, there are plenty of more worthy candidates (did I hear “Microsoft”?), and at the least more popular and well-known ones.  How can you claim the public hates a company that has very little brand recognition; if I walk up to any typical consumer and ask them to name me all the brands of PC they can think of, I guarantee that among them small brands like Asus and Falcon Northwest are not going to be on that list.  The list they give me might list Apple, HP/Compaq, Dell, and perhaps Gateway or Alienware (you’d be surprised how many know about Alienware but not FN or other “gaming-specialty” companies, but I digress).  In short, you can’t claim a company is hated simply because it changes the way things are developed.

Okay, so Asus got to market with something before several other manufacturers did.  But let’s time travel back to when the iPod was introduced.  The audio player was a new market back then too, no?  And Apple came out, showed off a device with a scroll wheel and the “Apple-intuitive” interface (*cough*Creative*cough*) , and after that every media player to follow had to be based on a menu system.  It’s just another drop in the bucket, and there’s plenty of time to change things.

Sure, iPod may still be around and going strong, but it also has the name recognition behind it to carry it in the first place; Asus, on the other hand, has a strong but belittled following of people, and without the proper advertisement and word-of-mouth, they’re going to stay that way – paving the road for bigger behemoths like Dell and Apple to do as they want with the market.  I’d like to slightly sidestep here for a moment to point out that when the EEE first started shipping from sites like Newegg, it wasn’t CNN broadcasting news about the people who got too many in their shipment; it was aggregated along the usual “geek” channels like Digg and Slashdot from originators like Engadget and Gizmodo – never once did I see a mention of it on “mainstream” news.

In truth, Apple isn’t all that concerned because they’ll do what they do, and the masses will respond. But poor Dell. That company’s flash-based mini-laptop will probably cost five times as much as the ASUS. It will be 10% better and 500% more expensive than the ASUS Eee PC. Good luck with that, Dell!

This excerpt in particular irks me, because it’s inaccurate.  As of late, I’ve thought Dell to be a very affordable solution, at least for the lower-to-mid-range systems.  As long as they can continue in this path, the Dell offering would be very affordable indeed, not to mention the support offerings would far outstrip those of the foreign “invader”(‘invader’ is too strong a word here, but it’s close to what I mean).  Sure, you can go to Walmart and pick up one of those extremely cheap offbrand PCs they have, but they’re from a brand that (again) has no consumer recognition and that is going to be picked up by someone with a bit of know-how that realizes parts are parts are parts.

Not to mention, there’s the reverse side of the coin here too:  Yes, Asus was first-to-market.  Yes, Asus is also currently the only person offering such a slim laptop on the market.  Yes, they have a device that has geeks who know about it twitching and itching to get their hands on one.  No, the average consumer doesn’t know about it.  And that’s good, in a way.  Not only can Apple, or Dell, or any of those other companies put something out, but they can spin their advertisements to point out some random flaw in the Asus design…it wouldn’t matter what it was; it could be something as trivial as the location of a USB port.  But by pointing out the mistake, they make themselves look like the better machine…and what do people do in that scenario?  Look at the two, and pick the one that works better, not only in this case because the (potentially) “invisible” problem is missing in the name-brand version, but because it’s name-brand.

So all I’ve done to this point is rebuke the “most hated” part of the article in question.  Asus is indeed not the most hated in the industry.  Some clarification would qualify the headline (i.e. “Most Hated by Computer Industry Corporations”), but it doesn’t work as it’s written.

And this is going to sound like a flipover from everything else I just said, but I do believe that Asus is underestimated.  Their machines (at least, what experience I’ve had with them) are functional, and by slipping into a new market niche ahead of everyone else, they’ve lined themselves up to be the brainchild behind the R&D in this new category of devices.  It doesn’t take a million PCs sold to make a statement about what features people want; in a way, Asus is better-suited to handle this because of their smaller size – they make the development jump adding new features, and the bigger corporations tack it into their later models in a monkey-see, monkey-do approach.  It’s win-win, and it’s competitive marketing.

And by the way, I’ll just admit it…I was rather waiting to get my hands on a Foleo.

A question was posed in the TechCentric IRC channel about why Linux seems to have taken a backseat to other, more graphical alternatives. Of course, Windows. Yes, Mac OS X. Hell, throw OS/2 in there for measure. Well, funny thing I mention graphics, because that’s what it’s all about.

Take a trip back to the age of the Apple II. Yeah, remember? Well, even if you don’t, or had little experience with one, it’s part of my point. If you noticed, they never had mice. Everything was keyboard-driven. There was no such thing as “point-and-click”; the monitor simply couldn’t sense what part of the screen you were pointing at. Think of it as talking to a blind, deaf person; they can’t hear or see you, but they can feel your touch – a la, you can’t dictate orders to it, and (like I said) you can’t just gesture at something and expect the computer to comply. You actually had to touch the thing in certain ways (typing commands, anyone?) to get it to do anything.

This form of input had a few limits to it. For example, you had to know how to instruct the computer to do what you wanted, whether it be some funky acronym for the Canadian French word for the command you wanted, or whether the command wanted to know your pants size in addition to what it needed to do. This required memorization, and a certain amount of brainpower (which is proving to be a really finite resource in today’s world). You couldn’t just type “Move File A on Disk B to Disk C as File D.” and expect the computer to comply with anything other than the DOS equivalent of “WTF?”.

There were some benefits to doing things this way. If you wanted to be anywhere near productive, you had to be able to provide input to the computer as quickly as possible. And if you can follow where I’m going, this isn’t a place for hunt-and-peck typing. Ah, yes…you actually had to LEARN the sacred art of touch typing, with as few mistakes as possible. You never know when one mistyped command makes your 200KB of hard-written letters disappear. (Oh wait, am I jumping ahead past the invention of the software word processor? )

So, fast forward to the introduction of the Graphical User Interface. And the mouse. “Hey! Look over here! I’m making gestures with this newfangled pointing device…and the computer’s following along! I don’t have to type the name of my programs anymore; I just ‘click’ their name and the computer starts them for me!” If you don’t get it already, this is where the trend starts to fall. People are no longer “learning” to use a PC by throwing commands at them or typing; they simply move a bloody box around and watch as the computer does all the important stuff like figuring out what the devil they’re trying to do in the first place.

(Admittedly, the Apple II did have graphics capability – very limited graphics capability – and you still needed a keyboard to control what you were doing. So call my mistake if you want, but you’re forgetting that there’s more than just a pretty red square at stake here.)

Ooh and ahh all you want, but like I said, this is where intelligence begins to lose importance as a prerequisite for computing. You don’t have to memorize commands; you don’t have to lay a finger on the keyboard unless you want to write a note at all. The mouse, with far fewer buttons than a keyboard, is part of the reason.

I’ll stop assuming you’re thinking about old copies of Mac OS a minute and lead you instead to earlier versions of Windows. Yes, my friend, there were Windows before 95. Again, people were dumbstruck by the simplicity compared to previous computers. Not only could people use their blasted mice like with the Apples, but (in the case of those who could remember what a console app was) console apps could be run too; a true case of having your cake and eating it too, if you will. Along comes good ol’ ’95 – “Oh look! All my programs are accessible from this one gaping button, and all the stuff I’m doing shows up on this bar here!” – and people are further retarded by “technologies” such as Autorun. No longer do people have to browse to the blasted CD, find the appropriate application, and launch it; instead, they sit back and watch as the computer brings the contents of the CD to THEM. Same thing with getting a new peripheral; plug the thing in, and instead of installing anything (in most cases), Windows goes through that hurdle all by its lonesome.

So, returning to the question at hand. Why isn’t Linux or some other alternative operating system mainstream? You want the truth? The keyboard…it scares people. When they’re not using it to type letters to their grandmother (which by the way, is now so advanced that the letters can move, show up blue and big and bold, and appear as if on a wooden tabletop), most users don’t want to be hassled with it. It’s a reminder of times past; times where people could only make their computers go as fast as their little fingers could move (which in some cases was not all that fast at all). And with the surging downfall in the mental capacity of most people today, it’s becoming harder and scarier for people to actually have to do more than click a box and watch their worries disappear with the contents of their Recycle Bin.

You see, it isn’t just eye candy that draws people. Compiz Fusion (or whatever the heck it’s called), transparency – anything extra isn’t the primary focus, it’s just a benefit to make things look better while things are (purportedly) getting done. It’s simplicity and automation; being able to walk up, move the mouse as little as possible and avoid the keyboard at almost all cost, and go 1/8 of the way while the computer does the remaining 7/8 and then some. If people actually wanted to put physical movement into anything, would there be such a market or demand for dictation software? Would operating systems even need to include something like that?

People want the computer to follow the fallacy that it brings information to them, rather than bringing them to the information. This isn’t Google…its the operating system, and it’s supposed to make things easy, right? Perhaps we’ve gone too far, and people are just too lazy now to understand that to get the most out of anything, you need to put some of the work in yourself as well.

In short, it isn’t about what you can duplicate from another operating system that draws people to it (since they can get their calculator anywhere), it’s how much work they have to put in to get some sort of benefit to using the OS in the first place. The more maintenance, typing, or dabbling people have to do or hear others doing, the less they become interested in following that footpath.

This is the place where we have our major split. The average Windows users are lazy, and assume they are like magnets in that everything comes to them, be it the Internet, their music, viruses (you have to admit, most viruses DO come TO you), or a girlfriend (I wish. ), and that as far as they’re concerned they don’t care about their keyboards – they’re second class input devices. Mac users, well, they’re not as lazy, since there is still the extremely occasional typing to do, and the keyboard helps out in some of the applications they have. There are 10 types of Unix users as well: GUI users who have no idea what a shell is and are probably only using the OS because a relative with computer savviness realized that they had thirty installed copies of Bonzi Buddy and needed an out badly, and those people who don’t like their mouse, but prefer navigating around a system using all ten (eleven, if you somehow have an extra) phalanges and avoiding the mouse (aka the opposite of the average Windows user).

To sum everything up nicely:  to get the more “common” lazy man, you simply need to provide enough cupholders, and make sure there’s a built-in auto-sensing back scratcher too.  That’s all everyone really wants.