Ask-Steve.com

Help solve the mystery of the excited ice cube

The mysterious excited ice cube. Click photo for a larger view. Alternate (more explicit) angle.

Sorry for the graphic photo, but I just have to try to find out what's causing random ice cubes in my freezer to behave this way. It doesn't happen every time I fill the tray and, as best I can recall, it only happens to one ice cube at a time.

Any ideas on what might be causing this? My best guess is that it's the combination of traces of Viagra and caffeine in our groundwater making it into our tap water...

Lunar eclipse seen from Mt. Tabor

Click the image for a larger view. It's worth it.

How the City of Portland sold out and dropped the ball on free wi-fi

Remember all the buzz about citywide free wi-fi (wireless Internet) in Portland? How could anyone help but be excited by the prospect? Or at least intrigued. Portland was going to not only bridge the digital divide -- we were going to fill the damn divide and put a public park in its place. With a bioswale surrounding the bus stop and bicycle parking shelter. Well, it was a nice thought. Instead of free wi-fi, we got a dial-up speed advertising channel. And for many (most?) of us, those ads come crawling onto our screens at the price of a $119 Wireless Access Gateway.

MetroFi launched its network in Portland in December 2006 following a November 14, 2006 press release that begins:

Microsoft Corp. and MetroFi Inc. today announced a strategic alliance to bring locally relevant MSN® content and services to MetroFi's advertising-supported, free Wi-Fi network throughout Portland, Ore. The two companies also plan to use the Microsoft® adCenter platform to help advertisers reach local Wi-Fi users...

Clearly a network by the people for the people. Oh wait, that would be the Personal Telco Project. (Let me make it clear that I am in no way affiliated with Personal Telco and have no ax to grind on their behalf.) But I'll get to that. MetroFi Inc. has been, from its inception, a for-profit corporate entity in the business of making money. It does this by persuading cities to give it the wireless key to the city so that they can keep up with "nearly a dozen, forward-looking cities across the U.S." The only forward-looking Portland residents are doing relative to MetroFi is looking forward to MetroFi either getting its act together or getting out so we can get back to doing it right: locally and organically.

Wait... Isn't MetroFi local? Nope. They're happily nestled on Clyde Avenue in Mountain View, California. But hey, at least they're in it for the right reasons... Right? Well of course they are! Three very big reasons:

August Capital
...our partners have financed technology companies with an aggregate market capitalization of over $400 billion. These companies generate $75 billion in annual revenue and employ 240,000 people around the world.

Sevin Rosen Funds
Over the past twenty-one years, SRF has employed a unique blend of technical vision and operational expertise to identify, at a very early stage, the potential of such companies as Compaq, Lotus Development, Cypress Semiconductor, Citrix, CIENA, and Capstone Turbine.

Western Technology
Western Technology's investment team has originated over $1.5 billion dollars in transactions with more than 500 companies.

These aren't charitable non-profits. So why is MetroFi a company that investment bigwigs like this see value in? It's called advertising -- to an audience that is literally captive. MetroFi was to be Internet access for everyone. Instead, it's Internet access for everyone that has the patience to wait for Web pages to crawl onto their screen, sandwiched between and surrounded by lucrative advertisements.

From a June 6, 2007 press release:

"This is an exciting time for our Portland network," says MetroFi Vice President of Marketing, Adrian van Haaften. "We're growing and hitting milestones faster than anticipated, and are looking forward to what the months ahead will bring: more users, more advertisers, and more applications of municipal Wi-Fi."

Ah, more users. And more advertisers! Wooohooo!

So I guess that's you and me: an affluent and influential online consumer demographic. Feels good, doesn't it? To be both affluent and influential. I'm sure that's exactly who all the good souls with great intentions had in mind when they thought of free, citywide wireless Internet access for Portland. They must really be feeling the warm fuzzies now.

So just what does this ad-supported wi-fi look like? If you've been fortunate enough to not need MetroFi, allow me to give you a brief overview -- in MetroFi's own words.

First, there is the "Persistent Ad Banner." This "launches when a user logs on to the Internet within a MetroFi network coverage zone. The banner remains in the top 90 pixels of a network user's browser screen as they traverse the Internet, and advertisements rotate within it. MetroFi banner ads do not get lost 'below the fold,' and do not alter or rely upon the websites a user visits." Translation: It shows up as soon as you get on the network and never goes away.

Then there are the wonderful "Interstitials." This is a relatively innocuous sounding word which translates into normal English as "obnoxious, intrusive commercial." But let's let MetroFi speak for themselves about interstitials (emphasis added):

MetroFi also offers advertisers a highly effective full page ad placement, served as an interstitial several times per hour, per user, as they transition from one website to another. These ads can be in rich media format and generally display for at least 15 seconds, before redirecting to the user's intended web page. A great way for the advertiser to connect to its target audience!
- Rotated into network user's screen 1-4 times per hour
- Focuses consumer's attention to your advertising message

That last line has to be one of the best I've heard. Focuses consumer's attention to your advertising message. That's like saying that waterboarding focuses subject's attention to your question. Interstials were a very bad idea that every other major website abandoned a long time ago as it is indefensibly obnoxious and a sure way to drive customers away. But MetroFi doesn't have to worry about that. They're offering a free service.

So what exactly do we affluent and influential types look like? Well, according to the demographics data for advertisers on the MetroFi website, those of us using MetroFi in Portland break down as shown in the chart here.

- 7 out of 10 users are male
- over half are hitched
- we all have at least some college
- 90% of us have jobs
- almost half of us make more than $70,000 a year, with 10% making more than $150,000 a year
- the other 54% makes less than $70,000 a year

I just love that. The lowest income number they're willing to show is $70,000. Those poor folks. They definitely need the free wi-fi.

So what am I on about here? I want truly free wi-fi for everyone. Including those who make less than less than $70,000 per year. Including those who have less than some college education.

And I want wi-fi that works. I don't want people who make less than less than $70,000 per year to have to pay $119 for a booster so they can get free wi-fi so they can watch a page full of ads paint slowly onto their computer screen. I don't want the driver for free wi-fi to be the affluent and influential consumers who are worth showing ads to.

In short, I want Portland to get back to supporting the people who were doing exactly that: the Personal Telco Project. Never heard of them? Please change that now by visiting their website:

We are a volunteer group of Portlanders who believe that 802.11 (wireless networking, or "Wi-Fi") technology is both cool and empowering. We started out by turning our own houses and apartments into wireless hot spots (also referred to as "nodes"), and then set about building these nodes in public locations such as parks and coffee shops. Currently we have over 100 active nodes, and we eventually would like to cover the entire city of Portland, Oregon with even more.

Personal Telco Project

Portland deserves free wireless Internet access for everyone. MetroFi is the johnny-come-lately illusion of free wi-fi. Personal Telco Project is the genuine article. They've been doing it -- with no fanfare -- for years. Let's give them the attention and support that they richly deserve.

Cords, cords go away

...don't come again another day.

That's been my wish for the longest time. That devices could be truly wireless. We're only half wireless at this point. A mobile phone, MP3 player, laptop computer, etc. is wireless—until it's not. Which is when it runs out of power and becomes nothing more than a paperweight until you haul out a proprietary charger that these days is terribly overpriced and often half the size of the device itself. In addition to the hassle of carrying it, you also have to hope you can find an outlet to plug it in.

When I've complained to friends about this, they look at me like I'm crazy. Wireless data is one thing, but it's not like you can send electrical current through the air! Well, not only can it be done, but the idea has been around since the 1830s and the first related patent was registered in the 1890s. The fact is, wireless energy transfer has simply been largely ignored ever since. Lucky for mobile types like me—and people averse to clutter and ripoffs like overpriced proprietary chargers—the idea has been dusted off and great progress is being made. More importantly in terms of actually getting something into our hands, people with money who want more money are seeing dollar signs around the technology and lining up to fund further research and get products to market.

An article entitled Cutting the cord in the latest Economist magazine has some great information on the subject:

The most ubiquitous accessory for wireless devices is the wire used to power them. That limitation could be overcome by using electromagnetic waves to transfer energy. The idea has been around since soon after their discovery: Michael Faraday found in the 1830s that changing a magnetic field induces an electrical current in a nearby wire. One of the first patents registered in the 1890s by Nikola Tesla, one of Edison's former assistants, was for “radiant energy”. The pioneers of radio were also those of electricity; the two disciplines were initially one.

Much of the research on wireless energy transfer lay fallow for a century. It was difficult and dangerous, and there was no immediate need. But the proliferation of small wireless devices has sparked new interest in the idea.

The article goes on to touch on the several kinds of wireless energy transfer: radiative, magnetic, inductive coupling, environmental harvesting and fuel cells.

Technorati Tags: wireless energy

Are we blinding them with science?

Enjoy looking at this photo. It's capture may be the last thing the subject ever saw.

A friend of mine sent out a link to a page called Animals in the depths of the sea on the site ReaDigg.com. The page contains 26 photos of, as he put it, cool creepy fish. It's a great way to describe the creatures shown. Some of them, like the football fish, look like shady characters you wouldn't want to run into in a dark alley. Others, like the fanfin seadevil and the scaly dragonfish, would probably make me turn around and run screaming for my mommy. But then there's the dumbo octopus — a funky little thing that would look perfectly at home on a shelf of the latest toys from Japan. They really do look otherworldly. I don't think the most imaginative science fiction writer could come up with creatures more exotic and outlandish than these.

The first thing I thought of when I saw the brightly lit shots of their large eyeballs and Seattle-resident-like untanned skin was, "I wonder what these lights are doing to these poor guys..." So I Googled it and found more information than I expected to.

Determine of whether deep-sea benthic species being blinded by science
There has been recent concern that repeated visits to deep-sea benthic sites with brightly lit submersibles and ROVs may be causing irreparable damage to the very large, presumably very sensitive, photoreceptors of some of the major motile predators in these ecosystems (Gaten et al, 1998; Herring et al. 1999). On this mission, we hope to obtain, for the first time, deep-sea benthic crustaceans intact photoreceptors. These eyes will be studied electrophysiologically to determine how sensitive they are to light. In addition, some of the animals will be exposed to lights that are identical in intensity and duration to what they might experience when hit by the lights of a submersible or ROV, and their sensitivity will be compared to that of unexposed animals. Some of the animals that will be exposed to light will be allowed to recover in the dark for various periods of time, to determine if they can recover from this intensity of light exposure, or are permanently blinded.

I'm glad to see serious studies being done on the effects our observation is having on these deep sea creatures. I'm glad to know they're there and to have these photos. If we're doing them harm, though, we should limit their exposure to us and aggressively pursue the most harmless possible ways of observing them.

A lot more info here:
Operation Deep Scope 2005: Mission Plan

Other info on developments around studying these deep sea dudes:
Marine Visual Ecology Research

Mind-controlled games, devices becoming a reality

A few years ago I was fooled by an April Fools Day article in one of the dotcom magazines of the time. It detailed a new device that would allow people to dictate text into their computer by simply thinking what they wanted to say. During that time of explosive innovation, anything seemed possible. Well, it's not an April Fools joke anymore.

An article in the Economist today looks at the technologies of two California companies who are making it possible to interact with computers by simply thinking what you want to happen.

The Economist article requires a subscription, but there is a similar story in the San Jose Mercury News.

Mind Games | The Economist | Mar 15th 2007

The Brain as Joystick | San Jose Mercury News | March 7, 2007

A brilliant comic for geeks and those who love us

I typically don't post entries that do nothing more than riff off someone else's blog entry. And certainly not entries that do nothing more than riff off someone else's blog entry talking about another website. But I'm going to do just that.

A huge thank you to PAgent over at PAgent’s Progress for the heads up on xkcd, an absolutely brilliant webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

If you have any kind of geek streak in you at all—or know someone who does—I predict you'll appreciate it.

Okay, enough from me. Go check it out!

xkcd - webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language

More info on telephone directory waste

Lelo in Nopo posted another great comment on my blog, this time on my January 6th entry entitled, Qwest DEX telephone directories: 2,162 pages of waste.

Hey, I just came across this information and thought you'd be interested. It sounds like there's some good effort towards stopping this incredible waste.

Check out the work of the Product Stewardship Institute and the project with King County in Washington:
Product Stewardship Institute > Phone Books

First of all, I have to say that I'm glad my home turf of King County (home to Seattle) is getting some good press. Federal Way, a giant strip mall of a town with a what-were-they-thinking name, situated between Seattle and Tacoma, garnered some rare national attention when a nut-case parent by the name of Frosty Hardison, a father of seven, successfully lobbied the school district to ban the film An Inconvenient Truth. Of course, he had a very sound argument:

"No you will not teach or show that propagandist Al Gore video to my child, blaming our nation -- the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet -- for global warming," Hardison wrote in an e-mail to the Federal Way School Board. The 43-year-old computer consultant is an evangelical Christian who says he believes that a warming planet is "one of the signs" of Jesus Christ's imminent return for Judgment Day.

(Uh oh, did I digress? Psychopath, delusional fathers of extremely unfortunate (and no doubt equally embarrassed) children will get me going every time... ANYWAY...)

Lelo pointed me to an organization that's doing more than just whine (like yours truly)—they're working "to develop a national solution to the problem of unwanted phone books."

Led by King County (Washington) and the National Waste Prevention Coalition, PSI successfully leveraged funding from over 10 federal, state, and local government agencies and began work on this issue in July 2006... This project is focused primarily on source reduction, and only secondarily on increasing the recycling infrastructure.

The Product Stewardship Institute page on the Phone Book Project has a few links to press coverage—including a video clip about phone book waste from the Far Out Extremist (FOX) right-wing propaganda machine.

Gore Film Sparks Parents' Anger | The Washington Post

Technorati Tags: birth control, evangelical, Federal Way, global warming, media, neoconservatism, overpopulation, politics, religion, science, recycling

Biodiesel is the right thing to do - but it's only the beginning

I borrowed a friend's car the other day and decided to put gas in the tank. I know that she uses biodiesel whenever she can so I went to Ray's Garage on the corner of SE 7th Ave. and Morrison in Portland, Oregon. It definitely wasn't cheap—$3.30/gallon compared to $2.69/gallon for super unleaded. But it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Stumptown Girl has done a few excellent posts about biodiesel in Portland.

The New York Times ran a piece last July comparing ethanol, produced from corn, with biodiesel, produced from soy. Bush has been trumpeting ethanol, but biodiesel appears to be a far better way to go:

The study, done by researchers at the University of Minnesota and at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., points to the environmental benefits of the biodiesel over ethanol made from corn, stating that ethanol provides 25 percent more energy a gallon than is required for its production, while soybean biodiesel generates 93 percent more energy.

The study’s authors also found that ethanol, in its production and consumption, reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 12 percent, compared with fossil fuels. Biodiesel, they said, reduces such emissions 41 percent, compared with fossil fuels.

Ethanol is far more efficient to produce, yielding 420 gallons of fuel per acre of corn compared to 60 gallons of biodiesel per acre of soybeans. That's seven times more ethanol per crop acre than biodiesel! But that efficiency comes at a cost.

The researchers in the latest study question ethanol’s environmental benefits, noting that despite the 12 percent reduction in greenhouse gases, ethanol has “greater environmental and human health impacts because of increased release of five air pollutants and nitrate, nitrite and pesticides.”

Biodiesel, on the other hand, "is much cleaner-burning fuel and much less harmful to the environment.”

Neither biodiesel nor ethanol are going to be the magic solution to our dependence on foreign oil, though:

Indeed, the study published by the National Academy of Sciences found that neither ethanol nor biodiesel can replace much petroleum without having an impact on food supply. If all American corn and soybean production were dedicated to biofuels, that fuel would replace only 12 percent of gas demand and 6 percent of diesel demand, the study notes.

So we cannot live by soy alone. Or even corn and soy combined. We need to dramatically cut back our consumption of fuel, not view the increasing availability of alternative fuels as carte blanche for all of us to run out and get SUV's. (Or for everyone in Lake Oswego and Beaverton to keep their SUV's). It's the thing that few Americans want to talk about: cutting back. Reduced consumption. I see it as the same tendency that has people lusting after a magical diet pill that will let them sit in front of the television all day stuffing their faces with potato chips without gaining any weight. It just isn't going to happen. Curing our addiction to foreign oil is going to have to happen the good old fashioned way: by simply enduring the initial pain of withdrawls, then following through with self control. If that doesn't work, it'll mean strict government controls. Unless there's a republican in the White House. Then it'll mean more hot air about alternative fuels while our dependence on foreign blood crude continues to skyrocket.

It’s Corn vs. Soybeans in a Biofuels Debate | The New York Times

Technorati Tags: alternative fuels, biodiesel, biofuels, ethanol, global warming, greenhouse gas emissions, Oregon, Politics, soybeans, corn

Look out, Microsoft. The people are organizing.

There is a confluence of events happening that could mean the end of Microsoft's two and a half decade long stranglehold on the computer desktop. Microsoft Windows and Office applications have long been plagued by security holes. This has been, in my mind, largely due to their refusal to improve upon existing products rather than being constantly obsessed with getting the newest, coolest application out the door. When you're a publicly traded corporation in need of daily press releases and new, shiny toys to show investors, it's easy to fall into this trap. Microsoft is a money-making machine first and a customer-focused software company second. Or maybe third or fourth.

In addition to the history of buggy, non-secure software, the company has become increasingly heavy handed in their attempts at monitoring and controlling the use of their products. From forced product activation to digital rights management (DRM) enforcement, Microsoft has been the subject of an increasingly loud outcry from its customers that the company has crossed the line.

Don't get me wrong. My stint working for Microsoft was one of the most rewarding of my career and I have a lot of fond memories from my time there. They've done for personal computing what Starbucks has done for coffee; almost singlehandedly created an entire industry. Microsoft is the sun around which an entire solar system of affiliated companies rotates and generates tens of thousands of jobs. But Microsoft has grown too big and has far too many mouths to feed and investors to placate—at the expense of its paying customers.

One of the events that will eventually unseat Microsoft as the dominant desktop operating system happened on October 20, 2004. It was on this day that the first release of Ubuntu, the most user-friendly version of Linux to date, came out.

Ubuntu is a widely used Linux distribution predominantly targeted at personal computers. Based on Debian GNU/Linux, Ubuntu concentrates on usability, regular releases, ease of installation, and freedom from legal restrictions.
- Wikipedia

I visited my brother in Seattle recently and he showed me his installation of Ubuntu. I was floored. I'm going to dump Microsoft Windows on every computer I own except my IBM ThinkPad where I'll run my work-related applications that require Windows XP. I could even do a dual boot with Ubuntu on that machine, but probably won't bother for now. Ubuntu is beautiful and it's secure.

The other event (that I'll mention here—there are certainly many more) that will humble Microsoft in short order hit the news today. An article in the New York Times entitled Group Formed to Support Linux as Rival to Windows reports an event that should have happened years ago:

Linux... has gone from an intriguing experiment to a mainstream technology..., helped by the backing of major technology companies like I.B.M., Intel and Hewlett-Packard, which sponsored industry consortiums to promote its adoption.

Those same companies have decided that the time has come to consolidate their collaborative support into a new group, the Linux Foundation, which is being announced today. And the mission of the new organization is help Linux... to compete more effectively against Microsoft, the world’s largest software company.

Microsoft has faced incredible odds many times before and surprised the marketplace by coming out ahead. But unless the companies and organizations that comprise the Linux Foundation completely screw up, Microsoft is in big trouble. And it's about time.

Group Formed to Support Linux as Rival to Windows | New York Times

Ubuntu Linux distribution | Wikipedia

Related post and inevitably long, interesting discussion on Slashdot

Technorati Tags: Linux, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Open Source, Microsoft Office, Ubuntu