Here is an interesting short video of a guy asking people if they know what a browser is, and whether they know the difference between a browser and a search engine.  Turns out only 8% of the people knew the difference.  The video includes this great quote: "Google predominates the market, obviously."

That number seems shockingly low to me, but at the same time I guess I’m not surprised.  A large percentage of otherwise-intelligent people seem to mentally freeze up when the topic of computers arises.  Couple that with the fact that people don’t actually need to know what these terms mean in order to use the internet, and the 8% result isn’t so surprising.

Still, I wonder why so many people have this kind of reaction to anything computer-related.  I’d say there’s hardly anybody who doesn’t know the difference between, say, their cable TV provider and the various TV channels that they can watch through that provider; yet a similar kind of situation with computer issues totally baffles them.  Maybe the internet is still too new for most people to understand it yet.

The video reminds me of this great article from a few weeks ago.  It’s about some changes that Facebook was making to their login process, and for a while it apparently was the #1 search result on Google when you searched for "Facebook login".  If you scroll down to the comments on the article, you’ll see that there are thousands of them, mostly like these ones:

Quoting confused people:

#5. The new facebook sucks> NOW LET ME IN.

#19. This is such a mess I can’t do a thing on my facebook .The changes you have made are ridiculous,I can’t even login!!!!!I am very upset!!!

#28. OK can I long in now

#31. I am not happy!!!,I was starting to feel comfortable with it now I am all confuse How do I sign in?

#43. Nothing like being taken hostage on our own computer :-(

#47. Why wont you let me sign in?

Apparently a huge number of people get to Facebook -- and presumably all the sites that they visit -- not by typing "facebook.com" into their browser’s address bar, but rather by going to Google and typing "facebook" into it, then clicking on the first search result.

It’d be easy to chalk this up to those people simply being clueless, but I think it also shows that, to whatever extent we IT people have tried to make our products and services user-friendly, there’s still a fundamental disconnect for a large percentage of the population which may indicate that on some level we’ve failed.  And ironically this works to Facebook’s advantage, because to many people Facebook is the internet, just as AOL was the internet for many people a decade ago.

I haven’t been to your web site in a while and I thought I would show a friend.  We both enjoyed your commentary on life and politics.

This morning I volunteered at SCALE 8x helping with A/V support.  It was at the Westin LAX hotel.  What a blast!  Representation was good (redhat, xen, google, hp, yahoo, kde).  I am definitely going to volunteer next year!

I saw a training session for health care provider management software that I have never heard about called  ClearHealth

P.S.  Be sure to let me know if you are ever coming to OC and I can finally meet you!

On Wednesday Apple announced the iPad, and it looks really nice.  Their tagline says it’s a "magical and revolutionary" device, which to me seems like a stretch even for Apple -- but everyone at the press event who actually got to hold one and use it has said that you won’t really get it until you hold it.  It’s apparently crazy fast which would certainly contribute to the wow factor.

The iPad would make a killer device for anyone who spends a lot of time flying, or on a subway.  It’ll be great for reading websites, magazines, newspapers, and ebooks.  And it’s perfect for medical professionals, insurance agents, real estate appraisers, etc -- assuming that whatever software those people are already using on laptops and desktops gets ported to the iPad.

One of the most compelling features of the iPad is its price: considering that many people were expecting it to cost near $1000, its $499 price is pretty amazing.  And just looking at the thing, how beautiful it is, and everything it does, it’s hard to imagine they’re making much profit on the $499 model.  Of course you can spend more to get models with more storage space and/or with 3G connectivity as opposed to just wifi.

The iPhone for me has certainly been magical and revolutionary; it’s hard to imagine living without one now.  It’s with me 24/7 and I use it dozens of times per day for email, web browsing, and listening to and watching podcasts -- no to mention checking the weather, making phone calls, playing music, and lots of other things.  So as cool as the iPad is, I just don’t see it having anywhere near the same level of impact on my life that the iPhone has had.

My biggest reservation though can be stated in one cursed word: iTunes.  I hate iTunes with a burning hatred, and I’m not sure I want to accept into my life another device that forces me to use iTunes.  As it is, I can barely stand to deal with it on the ~2 times per month that I sync my iPhone with it.  And unfortunately, with Apple, it’s iTunes or the highway.  It’s honestly hard for me to understand how a company capable of making such beautiful and amazing devices is also capable of creating and maintaining such a disaster of a product as iTunes is.

Anyway if you want to see the iPad before it goes on sale in about 60 days, you can check out the video -- but only if you’re on a system where iTunes is supported.  Apple is not interested in selling stuff to Linux users.

UPDATE: by scraping the web page’s source code and then dissecting the fake movie stubs in the URLs, I was able to find these direct links to the videos, which should play fine on all systems including Linux: small, medium, large.  But given that the actual URLs/filenames are datestamped to today, who knows how long the links will continue to work.

Extremely good insight from John Siracusa (via Gruber) about why people tend to save files and folders on the desktops of their computers:

Quoting John Siracusa:

The reason is simple: the desktop is the one "place" on the computer that every user knows how to get to.  People don’t even think of it as existing in the file hierarchy (though, of course, it does); to them it’s a location in the physical sense, and items placed within it behave almost as if they were real objects.  A file can be "lost" in the file hierarchy -- irretrievably, as far as novice users are concerned -- but finding something on the desktop will never be any worse than rummaging through the messiest real-life junk drawer.  And that bargain, that task of keeping things neat by placing, removing, and arranging, is something that people are comfortable with, and that their innate human abilities are tailored for.

Virtually every computer that I’ve seen or worked on over the past decade-plus, other than my own, has had files strewn about its desktop.  This always drives me crazy.  But looking at it from a non-geek perspective as John explains, it makes perfect sense: virtually every non-geek I know also has at least some level of difficulty with the whole concept of files and folders in a filesystem -- but the desktop is a separate, simple place unencumbered by that confusion.

I love this screen from the What is Google Chrome OS video:

The whole video is interesting and worth watching, too.

Speaking of good ideas for Windows users: if you use Windows (or Mac in this case), and you have important files on your system, you should probably use Carbonite.  It’s an online backup service with unlimited storage for $5 per month.

I haven’t personally used it, because unfortunately there’s no Linux version.  If there were a Linux version, I wouldn’t think twice about it.  But I feel good about recommending it because I trust Leo’s judgment on these kinds of issues, and I know he uses it.

Of course you should be doing backups to an external hard drive already.  But that won’t protect you in the case of a fire that destroys the backup drive too, or a thief who takes all your computer gear.  That’s why offsite/online backup is so important.

There’s also the fact that backups are only good if you actually keep them up to date, and hardly anybody does.  Carbonite solves that problem by running in the background all the time, keeping your online backup in sync with the files on your computer.  So you don’t have to worry about doing backups; they happen automatically, continually.

As an added bonus, you can also log into the Carbonite website from anywhere and access your files.

To me, all of that for $5 per month is a no-brainer, especially in light of the old adage that there are two kinds of computer users: those who have lost data, and those who will lose data.

Autoblog Green has some nice new photos of the Aptera 2e.  I love the geeky brake & gas pedals:

Writing in The New Atlantis, Rand Simberg presents an interesting and informative insider’s view of the history of our space program.  He takes a critical but rational view of the space program and presents some reasonable solutions to some of the bigger problems.

Quoting Rand Simberg:

[With a] space-refueling infrastructure, propellant would be cheaper, flight hardware wouldn’t have to be as heavy, and alternative launch vehicles would flourish. Every year that we starve the kind of research and technology that would make this possible and instead spend our money on mega-launchers like the Ares V is another year that we delay developing a truly sustainable space transportation infrastructure--and becoming a truly spacefaring people. [...]

The Bush administration might have done well to establish an Office of Space Development (with "exploration" being merely a means to an end) that could draw on other federal resources--not just NASA, but the Departments of Defense and Energy--as well as the private sector.

Of course, an independent space development organization with such power would be politically unfeasible. But that is part of the problem: our sclerotic space agency is subject to forces of legacy politics; it protects existing bureaucratic structures and emphasizes jobs over achievement; and it perversely rewards failure with more funds and punishes success with budget cuts.

He makes a persuasive case for the need to reform the space program.

For a decade I suffered this piece of junk -- or a different but essentially identical one.

(Hat tip; Flickr pool; my comparison album)

Quoting Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman:

"This is the CNN’s schedule.  They officially trained the people to come and hack Iran’s government Web sites.  This is the English text, I can give it to you.  This is a cyber war.  This, with, isn’t it a cyber war of the media with an independent government?  They asked people to use the DOS system to hack our Web sites," Qashqavi said.

I hear what you’re saying, but honestly, if they’re trying to use the DOS system to hack your Web sites, you’re probably OK.

Sweet video here.  The hangtime on that jello is amazing.

I would download the 720p or 1080p version, rather than playing it in your browser, to avoid skipping and stuff.

If you’re a Mac or Linux user, and you want to learn about the command line that powers much of your system; or if you’re stuck with Windows but you secretly wish you were a Mac or Linux user who wanted to learn more about the command line; then PeepCode’s new Meet the Command Line video is for you.  It looks to be extremely well done and super informative.  Check out the 3-minute preview to get a feel for it.

Cabel Sasser has a little review of the Canon SD960 point-and-shoot camera, but the best part is the short video he put together.  It’s amazing what you can do nowadays with iMovie and a $299 camera -- not even a video camera, just a camera.

We finally ditched our stone-age TV and got an HDTV.  I thought it’d be fun to take some before and after photos.

Here’s an angle-shot from before (click for after):

Here’s a head-on shot from before (click for after):

Here’s the input/output panel from before (click for after):

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Dood!  Jen and I just got a VW Jetta TDI.  You’d be so proud.  We’re part of the VW fold again.  Plus we’re environmentally conscious now.  We used to get 5 miles per foot in my H1 Humvee but now we get over 40 MPG.  Plus plus, we don’t look lame doing it (see Starship Enterprise Shuttlecrafts: Prius and Insight).  Plus plus plus, we got a $1300 tax credit.  Crazy!

This product is annoyingly hard to find.  I just want this keyboard but in a light color.  It costs $7, has a wired USB connection, and has a standard key layout, which is to say, single-height Enter key, double-wide Backspace key, 1.5-wide backslash key, inverted-T layout for arrow keys, and 3x2 horizontal layout for the Insert/Home/etc keys.  Why the frig did Logitech have to mess with a perfectly good layout and introduce all these stupid "hip" key rearrangements which everyone else then copied??

Interesting piece by Cringely, who was apparently involved in the investigation of the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown of 1979.

Quoting Bob Cringely:

Here’s how it was supposed to work.  Something went wrong.  The computer noticed what went wrong, set off audible and visual alarms, then sent a description of the problem to a line printer in the control room.  The operator would read the print-out, check the trouble code in one of many manuals, then make the adjustment specified in the manual.  Simple, eh?

Too simple, it turned out.

What happened at Unit 2 was a little more complex.  A cascading series of events caused the computer to notice SEVEN HUNDRED things wrong in the first few minutes of the accident.  The ONE audible alarm started ringing and stayed ringing continuously until someone turned it off as useless.  The ONE visual alarm was activated and blinked for days, indicating nothing useful at all.  The line printer queue quickly contained 700 error reports followed by several thousand error report updates and corrections.  The printer queue was almost instantly hours behind, so the operators knew they had a problem (700 problems actually, though they couldn’t know that) but had no idea what the problem was.

So they guessed.

Interesting piece by Scott Adams regarding energy-efficient building techniques.  Noted mostly for future reference, but I’ve found it interesting to follow along as he’s been working on getting this house built (for ~5 years now, I think).  The builders generally have no incentive to put time & effort into making a new home energy-efficient, because that makes it more expensive up front, which goes against the builder’s goal, which is to sell the house.  So it’s not just a matter of having to pay more for an energy-efficient house; it’s hard to figure out how to design that way in the first place, since most builders don’t really know much about it.

It’s gonna take me a while to save up $109,000 for a Tesla.  In the meantime, I may have to make do with an Aptera 2e, due out in October for around $35,000:

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Once or twice a year I see a new article about passive house design, and wonder why I don’t hear more about the idea.  It seems like such an obvious and simple concept:

There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in.  There is, in fact, no furnace. [...]

The concept of the passive house [...] approaches the challenge from a different angle.  Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, so that barely any heat escapes and barely any cold seeps in.  That means a passive house can be warmed not only by the sun, but also by the heat from appliances and even from occupants’ bodies.

And in Germany, passive houses cost only about 5 to 7 percent more to build than conventional houses. [...]

But the sophisticated windows and heat-exchange ventilation systems needed to make passive houses work properly are not readily available in the United States.  So the construction of passive houses in the United States, at least initially, is likely to entail a higher price differential.

I guess it can’t help already-built homes, though, so it’s not much good for most people.

The other day on Car Talk, they suggested that now is the time for a (higher) gas tax.  The idea is that now, when gas is only $1.70 per gallon, an extra 50 cent tax would only bring the cost up to $2.20 -- still less than half what we were paying a few months ago.

According to the Car Talk guys, a 50 cent tax would bring in $50-$100 billion per year.  They suggest this could be used to help fund high-speed rail projects between major cities.  They also suggest the big 3 Detroit car companies could lead these projects.  Considering how well they run their current enterprises, though, I’m not so sure they’re the best candidates for the job.

It seems to me that getting lots of cars running on something other than gas should be a higher priority than setting up high-speed rail service between major cities.  When the gas runs out, people who live in cities aren’t going to have much trouble getting transportation to their jobs, since mass transit within cities already exists.  The real problem will be the huge amount of people who live in the suburbs and have long commutes to their jobs.

The best investment might be to work on upgrading the nation’s power grid.  Whether you’re talking about alternative energy from wind and the sun, or powering a large and growing fleet of electric vehicles, there seems to be consensus that the current grid isn’t going to be able to handle it without serious upgrades.

But whatever we would spend the money on, is the gas tax a good idea to begin with?  I’m not anxious to hand over more money to the government, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and the "desperate times" case can certainly be made right now.  There’s also the added bonus that when gas prices go up, people buy less gas, and of course reduced consumption will make the gas we have last longer.

Yesterday, a large number of Microsoft’s Zune portable music players spontaneously died in their owners’ hands.

After spending much of the day digging into the problem, Microsoft said that it had traced it to a software bug "related to the way the device handles a leap year."  Apparently the Zune was expecting 2008 to have 365 days, not 366.

Though this does suck for Microsoft and for their customers who bought the Zunes, it makes me feel a little less bad about any bugs I’ve had in any of my applications.

The fix for the glitch?  Patience.  The company said the internal clock on the players should reset itself at 7 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday.  [...]  Those who were hoping to provide the soundtrack to New Year’s Eve parties had no choice but to find a friend with an iPod.

Realistically though, there’s probably not much overlap between "people who’ve bought a Zune" and "people with enough friends to host a party."

At least the Zunes came back to life a day later.

After absolutely dominating the portable media player space, Apple no doubt hoped to be able to do the same thing in the mobile phone space.

By now it’s probably safe to say they’ve done it.  The iPhone became the best-selling smartphone in October, and the best-selling phone period in November.

But Apple isn’t finished yet.  They most likely sold another boatload of iPhones in December during the Christmas shopping season.  And now, 3 days after Christmas, they will start selling iPhones in Walmart stores.  There are over ten times more Walmarts than Apple Stores, so this move will put the iPhone in front of millions of new customers.

My younger sister and niece, both in their early-mid teens, got iPod touches for Christmas.  It’s hard to imagine that they’ll get any cell phone other than the iPhone when their current cell phone contracts run out.  I think within the next couple of years, for anyone under say 30 or 40, not having an iPhone will be like not having an iPod: possible, but not very likely.

Over the weekend we were in Maryland for Travis and Megan’s wedding.  Before the wedding, I had to go to Best Buy, and this Best Buy was in a mall, which was so packed that I had to park about a quarter-mile away.  As I walked towards the store, I thought, "At least I’m getting some exercise."

What I needed at Best Buy was a battery for Kim’s camera, because hers was dying and the charger was back in PA.

It occurred to me that humans and batteries are constantly dealing with the inverse of the same problem.  For humans, the problem is that our bodies are so good at storing energy that we need to go out of our way to get rid of it on a regular basis.  For batteries, the problem is that they can’t really store very much energy, so they need to be recharged often.

The solution is obvious: we need a way to plug our phones and other gadgets directly into our stomachs and our butt cheeks.

Let’s be honest.  This proposed 25 34 billion dollar bailout is a bailout for the United Auto Workers union.

The UAW has utterly failed at what is ostensibly its primary duty: to protect workers.  It has artificially inflated the wages of those workers to the point where they’re being paid far more than their non-union competition at other automakers.  Pricing your workers out of the market, out of their jobs, and driving their companies into the ground is hardly a good way to protect them.

Quoting The Wall Street Journal:

To put it concisely, the [other automakers] operate under conditions imposed by the free market.  Detroit lives on Fantasy Island. ... Hourly labor costs are $44.20 on average for the non-Detroit producers, in line with most manufacturing jobs, but are $73.21 for Detroit.  This $29 cost gap reflects the way Big Three management and unions have conspired to make themselves uncompetitive... Both management and unions chose to sign contracts that let them live better and work less efficiently in the short-term while condemning the companies to their current pass over time.  It is deeply unfair for government now to ask taxpayers who have never earned such wages or benefits to shield the UAW and Detroit from the consequences of those contracts.

Every dollar spent on labor is a dollar that the automaker can’t spend on R&D to improve its products, and can’t put towards lower prices to attract buyers.  So it’s not hard to see why Detroit is getting hammered by its competition.  And that competition isn’t so "un-American" as the UAW would lead you to believe:

Quoting The Wall Street Journal:

These are the 12 "foreign," or so-called transplant, producers making cars across America’s South and Midwest.  Toyota, BMW, Kia and others now make 54% of the cars Americans buy.  The internationals also employ some 113,000 Americans, compared with 239,000 at U.S.-owned carmakers, and several times that number indirectly. ... A government lifeline for Detroit punishes these other companies and their American employees for making better business decisions.

One person who knows how to run a business is Bill Gates; here’s his take:

Quoting AFP:

"If no one else is willing to invest, why is that?" Gates told CNN ... "What is it that investors are seeing about this business model or cost structure that makes them unwilling, and why, in that case, is the government alone stepping forward in this way?" Gates asked in the Wednesday evening broadcast.  "When you don’t have any private investors you really have to say, is taxpayer money going to have the desired effect?"

We’ve already given Detroit automakers $25 billion; do we really want to give another $34 billion to them, and then however many more billions they ask for after that?  The law offers bankruptcy protection for businesses for exactly this situation, so let them use it.

If we the taxpayers are going to be forced to fund automotive development, the funding should not go to failing companies; it should go to companies that are successful and innovative like Tesla, which is already delivering pure-electric cars with proven technology and putting us on a path towards energy independence.