Presidents and Technology

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Lifehacker had a poll up, asking what sort of technological knowledge we expect from our President.

One commenter argued that it’s preposterous to expect a President who’s good with computers, asking whether we also expect them to do open-heart surgery or to be able to rebuild engines.

They accidentally made my point for me, though. I don’t want a President who understands why I’m excited about SSD, or a President who’s a hardcore C++ programmer. I don’t want a President who’s a surgeon, or a President who is an auto mechanic. Nothing against any of those people (especially programmers!), but their time honing their skills to become experts in those fields probably leaves them lacking political experience.

The car analogy, incidentally, is perfect. I don’t expect the President to rebuild engines. But I’d like a President that knows what cars are, and who understands highways. I’d like a President who owns a car, and who knows how to drive. I’d prefer that he can even pump gas. It’d be cool if he knew how to do an oil change or fix a flat, but it’s no big deal if they don’t.

I think it’s the same with computers. I don’t need, or even want, really, a hardcore geek as a President. But I think technology is too important to say that the President doesn’t need any technological experience. I want our next President to be computer literate, and to own a computer. I really think the Oval Office is overdue for technology. Imagine weekly podcasts (a “virtual fireside chat” if you will) from the President, or a President’s blog. The Internet has the power to bring overwhelming transparency to Washington, and I think it’s high time for that. Presidents have advisors, true, and I won’t want the President to directly head up these initiatives. But, in the year 2008, I think we need a President who’s computer literate.

Of course, I think anyone raising this question is being somewhat disingenuous. McCain was asked a while ago, “PC or Mac,” and laughing said that he was computer illiterate. Obama carries a Blackberry and runs a campaign website with a thriving ‘social media’ aspect. I’m not necessarily saying John McCain should be dismissed because he’s computer illiterate, but that it’s high time he explored “the Interwebs” and joined us in the 21st century.

About Time

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I tend to use Google News as my primary source of nationwide news these days. It aggregates thousands of news stories automatically, and is good at making sure I see a ‘blend’ of things, versus getting my news from one source.

It has one strange bug, though: its algorithm for truncating long news titles makes no sense. Sometimes it truncates an article title way too early. Consider the above, for example. I chuckled that the WSJ would publish an article whose title underhandedly mocks Youtube for not having anything worthwhile.

Except that this isn’t the case. The article is entitled “YouTube to Offer Some Content From China’s Olympic Games,” but it got split up across two lines, so Google News only took the first one.

That said, I’d rather watch half the stuff on Youtube than the Olympics. But I’m a grumpy curmudgeon about the Olympics.

A New Take on RAM and Swap?

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A really random thought just popped into my head…

UNIX systems have their “swap” partition, a disk partition where unused stuff in RAM is “swapped out” to disk to make room for newer stuff in RAM. Of course, no hard drive is as fast as RAM, so you obviously want lots of RAM so you never touch swap. Windows has the same concept but calls it a paging file.

But what if your disk was as fast as RAM? I remain fascinated by OCZ’s new 64GB SSD, which has an almost-zero seek time, and throughput rivaling the best of hard drives. (Though I’m yet to read any actual reviews, as it seems to have still not quite shipped.) I suspect that, given factors like the direct bus between your CPU and RAM, and all the work on boosting RAM “speeds,” a solid-state disk wouldn’t literally be as fast as RAM. But I also think that the difference between having more RAM and “swapping out” to SSD would be somewhat negligible.

I think it’d be interesting to test the extent of this… Plunk an SSD (one with high throughput!) into a system, and run it on as little memory as you can. (Though I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anything less than 256MB DIMMs these days, and even those might be hard to find? I wonder if Linux has a facility for deliberately overlooking a quantity of its RAM?) And with that set up, go crazy with stuff to ensure that you’re using several gigs of “memory.”

We can sit around all day and measure bus speeds and Mbps throughput and latency and seek time, but I think the only meaningful measure would be to try this and see how it feels. I have a hunch that it wouldn’t be that big of a slowdown (compared to RAM), but that the biggest problem would be ensuring your SSD was on a separate controller/ bus/ channel, so you didn’t obliterate your hard drive performance. While it’s easy to get an affordable system with a couple gigs of RAM now, RAM remains expensive if you need a decent amount of it. Buying a system with 64GB of RAM would still be extraordinarily expensive, but with a 64GB SSD for under $300, you could imitate it fairly well.

Politicians

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Have you heard about McCain’s new ad? It’s on his main page, though there seems to be no way to direct-link to it. Somewhat bizarrely, it starts off with video of throngs of cheering Obama supporters, and calls him the biggest celebrity in the world, flashing images of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. (By the way, Paris Hilton apparently had no knowledge she was being used in the ad; using one’s likeness in commercials is generally illegal, though I have no clue if political campaigns are exempted.)

It then goes on to say, “But is he ready to lead?,” before attacking Obama for opposing offshore drilling (I’ll save that rant for another time), but, more significantly, talks about his plan to raise taxes on electricity. Yipes, that’s bad! Raising taxes now? On electricity?!

There’s one problem, though. It’s not at all true.

Newsweek has a good article explaining where McCain’s campaign got the quote about Obama wanting to raise taxes on electricity. In an interview, he was asked, “Have you considered other funding sources, say taxing emerging energy forms, for example, say a penny per kilowatt hour on wind energy?” You can read the quote for yourself, but his answer was essentially that taxing renewable energy was an awful idea; taxing ‘dirty’ energy would make more sense, but even that isn’t the real solution to funding education. And yet, if you quote just one sentence from the middle with no context, you can make it seem like he’s saying that we need to raise taxes on electricity. Except that he was making the exact opposite point.

When Obama’s campaign criticized the ad as baseless FUD, McCain then went on to accuse Obama of “playing the race card.”

Unreasonably Much Information about Batteries

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A few things I’ve learned about batteries lately:

  • Rechargeable AA’s are 1.2V, whereas normal alkaline AA’s are 1.5V. I didn’t believe this at first, but it’s usually printed right on the battery (in unreasonably small print). Where this generally matters is things that take many batteries (in my radio that takes 4, it’s the difference between 4.8V and 6V, for example), although most things will work just fine. (The rechargeables often have much higher capacities, though, so it works out… Unless you get something that’s very nitpicky about voltage.)
  • Almost all “normal” alkaline batteries: AA’s, AAA’s, C’s, and D’s, are 1.5V. The typical capacity of a AA is somewhere around 1,000-2,000 mAh, but did you know D-cells are often around 15,000 mAh? (Which is 15 Amps if I’m not mistaken, which means it’s got about 25WH of juice.)
  • As a consequence of the above, as far as voltage is concerned, you can use a AAA where a D is called for, or a D where a AA is called for, and they’re all the same voltage. It’s just that, as the batteries get bigger, they last a lot longer. (And good luck sticking four D-cells into your camera so it last longer…)
  • “Digital” devices will stop working below a certain voltage, which is usually before the battery is fully drained. Unlike a flashlight, which will just get dimmer and dimmer as the battery drains, electronics (think of cameras, for example) will continue working until there’s insufficient voltage, at which point they shut down. Thus the “dead” batteries from a camera (etc.) may continue to work in other things, like a remote control or a flashlight, though the flashlight would, of course, be dimmer than usual, since the batteries you put in would be low.
  • It’s possible to recharge alkaline batteries if they’re not completely flat. But don’t try this at home (unless you have the aforementioned charger or a desire to have boiling battery acid in your eyes): alkaline batteries were never meant to be recharged, so ordinary battery chargers will cause the batteries to overheat, ooze acid, or just flat-out blow up. But if you get a charger specially designed to recharge non-rechargeable batteries, it can be done!
  • There’s a AAAA battery, and it’s exactly what you think it is. The AAA is a smaller version of the AA, and consequentially doesn’t hold as much of a charge; the AAAA, then, is a smaller AAA which holds less of a charge. You probably haven’t seen many AAAAs, but that doesn’t mean they’re rare. That’s because…
  • 9V batteries are just 6 AAAAs in series. (That said, cut batteries open at your own risk!)
  • Your 12V car battery should actually be around 12.6V; a true 12V indicates that it’s largely drained. (Your car’s alternator should recharge the battery by providing ~13.8V when the car is running.)
  • There’s a lot of information out there about “memory effects” and such, and thus all sorts of confusing, contradictory information about recharging batteries. NiCd (Nickel-Cadmium) batteries suffered from a strong memory effect: if you routinely recharged them before they were completely drained, you would drastically decrease the charge the battery could hold. NiMH (Nickel metal hydride) batteries reduced this effect, and LiIons (Lithium Ion) eliminate it. Thus “topping off” most newer batteries isn’t in and of itself a bad thing. However…
  • Batteries still have a limited “charge cycle,” the number of times you can recharge them. Thus recharging your battery any time it dips below 95% charge is going to wear it out prematurely. Where this really matters is laptop batteries: you charge your battery fully, unplug and shut down to bring your laptop to a meeting, and then plug in there. This is murder on the battery. Some laptop battery systems are “smart” about this and will simply not bother charging a basically-full battery, but as a general rule, if you’re discharging a battery, don’t recharge it until it starts to get low…

Edit: An alkaline battery, being, well, alkaline, won’t actually leak acid, but potassium hydroxide.

Main Ideas

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Do you remember standardized tests, especially in grade school and middle school, where they’d have you read a passage of text and you’d have to identify the “main idea” of the writing? Most of the choices were things that were in the passage, but only one of them was plausibly the main idea, whereas the rest were trivial details.

My takeaway from this WaPo* article? Phthalates is a really funny word, but virtually impossible to pronounce. You can make the “Ffff” sound, and the “Thhhh” sound, but there needs to be a vowel in between. The two sounds can’t be put together. It’d be like starting a word with “qb”—a bunch of valid letters strung together to form something nonsensical. (Realistically, I imagine it’s pronounced “Fih-thal-ates,” but note that the pronunciation adds in a vowel sound that’s not actually there.) If you attempt to pronounce the word, be careful that you don’t spit on anyone.

So what is the main idea of the article?

(a) Congress is considering banning phthalates, a toxic chemical in children’s toys. (b) The move is seen as evidence of a shifting tide, swinging to the side of consumers and away from manufacturers. (c) Phthalates is a really funny word. (d) President Bush has said he opposes the bill banning poisonous children’s toys.

Hint: remember the old “When in doubt, guess C” adage about multiple-choice questions? They say that for a very good reason.

  • I spent 5 whole days in Washington. I’m allowed to use the “WaPo” abbreviation, because I’m an insider now.

Iraq

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I keep hearing people on the right reiterating that “the surge worked,” so that withdrawing from Iraq would be surrendering. To me, this is a non sequitur.

First of all, there’s the simple question of why we’re at war. We went in as a pre-emptive strike against Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction. We took him out, and although we never did find evidence to support that he was building up his WMD arsenal, we did take out a cruel tryant. I’m a little unclear why we’re still there: the Iraqi threat has been neutralized, and Iraq’s got a sovereign government in place. Al Queda keeps coming to try to attack our troops, but the fact that our troops have become targets is hardly a reason to stay in Iraq.

Now here’s the thing! If the Iraqi government wants us to stay, I’m all for allowing our volunteer troops to keep helping them. But it’s being widely reported that they want us out. While I trust this was an unfortunate accident, it suggests that Iraq has wanted us to leave for some time: “It also bolstered calls from Iraqi politicians to pressure the American military to leave Iraq after this year, when a United Nations mandate expires, unless the United States agrees to permit its soldiers to be subject to criminal prosecution under Iraqi law for attacks on civilians.”

I’d ask: if we’re at war, who are we at war with? It’s the Iraq War, but we’re supposed to be helping Iraq. We’ve taken out Saddam, and most of the violence is directed at our troops: staying in Iraq isn’t going to fix anything.

It’s not “surrendering” or “giving up” to recognize that you achieved your goal a long time ago, and that all you’re doing now is making things worse. It sounds great to try to attack your opponent for that, but it’s simply not true.

Strange Call of the Day

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As the massive thunderstorm came in, I flipped on the scanner to listen to local public safety, as there are often interesting things going on.

I don’t know the background, but here’s what I heard:

“Engines 2 and 3, you can cancel… The caller stated that he thought he had been struck by lightning, but he has not.”

I think that’s when you need an officer and an ambulance to respond for, as the Boston PD would call it, “a psych eval.”

Edit: These people tie with the people who called in a “past lighting strike” to report that they’d had a lightning strike in their yard earlier… They stated that their bugzapper, on their propane tank, had been struck earlier and exploded. I’m slightly confused about how their bugzapper got struck (maybe it was mounted to a tall tree, and the plug provided a nice ground?), more confused about why they thought it was a good idea to keep their bugzapper next to their propane tank, and most confused about why their home hasn’t been replaced by a large crater.

Nas’ Black President

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Rapper Nas has a new song, Black President [obscene lyrics, NSFW]. I don’t give it high marks musically, but it’s interesting to me for two reasons. The first is that rap music actually addressing contemporary issues is rare. (Though it’s not entirely unheard of: Changes, for example.) The seconds is that the song is about Obama.

As I said, don’t set your standards too high if you listen to it, and don’t even waste your time watching the video, which seems to just be a montage of images of Nas. Do take care to read the lyrics carefully: a lot of people seem to miss the leading “They said…” and interpret the song as being against Obama. And the “Although it seems heaven-sent, we ain’t ready to see a black President” is actually from Tupac’s Changes, not an assertion that Nas is making.

What troubles me about the song:

Whats the black pres thinking on election night, Is it how can i protect my life? Protect my wife? Protect my rights? … KKK is like what the f—, loading they guns up, loading up mine too, Ready to ride ’cause I’m riding with my crew, he dies we die too

I read an article a while ago, citing absolutely no evidence, saying that there’s a persistent belief among African-Americans that Obama would be assassinated if elected. Hillary played into it, too, if inadvertently, both when some speaker in NH at a campaign event made a comment to the effect of, “Some have compared Obama to JFK, but let’s not forget what happened to him” (which Hillary denounced), but also when she said the same thing about Bobby Kennedy to explain why she was staying the race when it was clear she couldn’t win. It’s creepy how often it comes up, and then you add in the creepy amount of parallels to Lincoln…

And I find this snippet interesting, too:

Gotta do what we gotta do, We ain’t got no governors comin’ through to help, Anything we need, we gotta do for self, New improved JFK on the way…

You may recall Kanye West’s spontaneous George Bush doesn’t care about black people remark during a Red Cross fundraiser, which then led to the (highly profane, thus NSFW) video, song. While I’m not necessarily supporting the claim that Bush was overtly racist, I think it’s historically significant: not only was the whole Katrina event horribly mismanaged (the lyrics to the song include, “If it’d had been Connecticut, he’d have been there twice as fast”), but the whole deal with shooting looters (who were inevitably black) makes it entirely understandable that African-Americans may have felt a tad bit alienated.

Again, I’m hardly in agreement with everything put forth in the song, but I think it’s culturally significant. It’s not an advertisement or a campaign song, but just his perspective on the state of affairs. And I think it was interesting to look at.

Missing the Point

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As I research candidates, I keep coming across a past proposed (U.S.) Constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration.

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m hardly for flag desecration, and would be appalled if any American did so. But do people not see the irony that the flag represents our freedoms as Americans, especially our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, and thus freedom of expression? To protect the flag from trampling, people are trying to trample the First Amendment. And I wouldn’t vote for anyone who values the flag itself more highly than what it stands for.

Wikipedia lists the times it’s come up as a Congressional vote, which is frighteningly often. There was H.J.RES.12 (“House Joint Resolution 12”) in 2007, introduced by PA’s John Murtha, with 70 consponsors: no local politicians cosponsored it, but Tom Tancredo and Marilyn Musgrave both supported it. It had a parallel in the Senate, but with only one sponsor. Neither bill appears to have come to a vote.

In the previous (109th) Congress, House Joint Res. 10 passed 286-130; the vote rolecall is here indicating that Charlie Bass and Jeb Bradley both voted for it. Its parallel, Senate Joint Res. 12, failed in the Senate, though it failed narrowly at 66-34; it’s not clear to me exactly what it needed, but it seems like it may have been one vote shy of passing with 2/3. Rollcall for that vote is here: Judd Gregg, John McCain, Harry Reid (!), and John Sununu all voted for it.