Bing Bunk

Hey Microsoft? Ever considered that maybe, just maybe, we're not looking for what you're providing?

I speak of the news that Microsoft is going to overhaul its search engine. Going to call it "Bing." Because Microsoft wants its search engine to do comedy routines with Bob Hope? Because this new search engine will sing? Because Microsoft supports child abuse? Sorry, that last one wasn't fair.

Bing? Really?

Bing has a much softer, less clinical feel than previous Microsoft search engines and rivals, with a daily changing backdrop image.

Right. Okay, so when I go for search, I go for soft. And changing background images. Wake up, Microsoft. I don't care if your search engine offers me products for free, so I sure as hell don't care if it's softer and offers a changing background image. Frankly, you're not winning any awards in the background image department anyway. Who doesn't love the eye-candy that makes up the Microsoft Wallpaper package?

"Google haven't been able to innovate a lot of the UI (user interface) because they have to display their ads as that's how they make their revenue. We can try things a bit differently," said Mr Stoddart.

Or not. Because the Google UI may have its own issues, but it really has very little to do with the ads. Google has changed the way they display ads, but their UI hasn't changed. QED. That was too simple. Google's UI is deliberately the way it is, not based on ads. I can't prove it, but Google certainly goes out of its way to make its UI the way it does, and it doesn't mention ads much. I often forget they're there.

The bottom line: Microsoft is, in this quote, acknowledging that search is, to them, a loss leader. In other words, it's free candy they give out to get you into the store. Google, on the other hand, makes a business out of search, ads or no. On the one hand, we have a company that is eating what is no doubt a huge loss (remember those free products they were giving out to get people to use the search engine) just to try to capture a market (and one wonders why it wants to capture that market, since until recently it wasn't in that market). On the other, we have a company that's doing well because it does what it sells well.

I may be sounding like a sniveling Google fan boy, and rest assured, I'm not. I like Google, I use Google, but I don't love Google. Nor do I hate Microsoft. I just think that the idiocy level of changing backgrounds and names is pretty high. I'm sure it will work, because people are dumb on the Internet, but really, you're going to flock to Microsoft because of a pretty picture and a strange name?

I guess the real bottom line is that Microsoft apparently wants to be all things to all people, and sometimes I wonder if that's because it wants money, or control, or simply because it wants it. There may be no good reason. And that's not good. When all Microsoft did was make certain types of software, they weren't perfect, and they're spreading themselves ever thinner.

Historical Reenactments

This isn't really about one thing so much as it is about a genre of things. Specifically, the History Channel, and more generally, historical documentaries. Let's get the general thing out of the way first.

When you have perfectly good archival footage of an event, in particular a battle, using historical reenactments to "heighten the drama" is lazy. It's also disrespectful to history. There have been a spate of "reenactment" documentaries recently which purport to show new information about battles, or to show the battle in new ways, but in the end, it's basically a lazy movie. I am completely in favor of the use of computer imagery to show maps, movement, diagrams, models of technology, etc. But if you're doing a film about the battle of Tarawa, for instance, where there was a large body of footage from said battle extant, and you use reenactments, you're just being lazy.

That being said, I don't dislike reenactments when there is no extant footage or images. The Civil War, obviously, doesn't have any film. The Roman period doesn't even have any photos. Reenactments can serve a very useful purpose, and be pulled off successfully. I tend to prefer more understated reenactments, but still, if there's nothing to show but recreation, show the recreation... or write a book, which honestly is an avenue not pursued often enough.

However, there's a bigger problem I have: history shows that aren't history. We've got loggers and ice-road truckers and other reality garbage, and while they may be perfectly acceptable television viewing, they're not history. I know the History Channel says that it's history in the making, but really, it's just that they want to show things like all the other "learning" channels. Which means mostly crappy reality TV. The actual Learning Channel seems to show nothing but shows about weddings and shows about fashion. I'm not sure how those relate to learning, really.

PBS could be the sole bastion of actual good documentary/educational programming, except they spend far too much time with children's programming. There are many, many shows out there for kids which are supposed to be educational, and I guess the fact that they aren't simply advertisements for collectible toys is something, but not much. Then there are the hours of pledge drives. And eventually, you're left with another not-too-good outlet for "edutainment."

I like edutainment just fine, I just question its value. So I've complained about pretty much everything I wanted to now, and this post has become a mongrel incompetence, and I'm okay with that.

Weasel Words

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8043647.stm is the relevant article.

The relevant sections are as follows, discussed one at a time.

Groups representing hospitals, doctors, drug companies and insurance firms said they intended to cut spending by $2 trillion... over 10 years.

Exactly how big a cut is that? And what do they mean by "$2 trillion... over 10 years?" Because, as we find out later:

The US currently spends $2.2 trillion a year on medical care, which amounts to 16% of the overall economy.

Wow, that would be a pretty big cut, right? I mean, that means that after 10 years, the hospitals, doctors, drug companies, and insurance firms would only be left with $0.2 trillion. That's a big cut.

Hey, wait a minute.

The six industry groups delivered a letter to the president outlining their voluntary agreement to cut spending increases by 1.5% a year until 2019.

So I guess that means that they'll eventually have spent $2 trillion less than they otherwise would... over 10 years. Which is a cut, sure, but... 1.5% isn't so big. The way they present it, it sounds like 1.5% a year over 10 years should make a 15% reduction. Actually, assuming they keep spending constant and reduce it by 1.5% a year, that's actually a 14.0269557740856928778818359375% reduction, since you keep taking 1.5% out of a reduced whole. So at the end of 10 years, they'll be spending slightly more than 14% less than they were 10 years ago. Feel free to chime in if my math isn't right.

Bat that's not the half of it. According to my numbers, the savings per year are as follows:

1. $0.033 trillion
2. $0.065505 trillion
3. $0.097522425 trillion
4. $0.129059588625 trillion
5. $0.160123694795625 trillion
6. $0.190721839373690625 trillion
7. $0.220861011783085265625 trillion
8. $0.250548096606338986640625 trillion
9. $0.279789875157243901841015625 trillion
10. $0.308593027029885243313400390625 trillion

For a grand total of $1.735724558370869022420041015625 trillion. Again, that's taking all the numbers in the article at face value, a reduction of 1.5% on the total every year, and $2.2 trillion a year, winding up with spending about $1.89 trillion a year.

So their numbers don't add up according to my 20 minutes of work. So what if they don't. I'm just saying that they're trying to sell this as a big deal, when in fact it's 7.88965708350395010190927734375% of the total $22 trillion that would have been spent over those 10 years. Hell, even $2.2 trillion savings, more than they're offering, is only a 10% reduction of the total.

But I didn't come here to bore you to tears with those numbers. I wanted to prove a point that numbers are pretty much what you make of them, and these numbers, without any context, make very little for me. Percentages and "savings" are weasel words. They say what they want them to say.

But that's not all, folks! For you see, if you read carefully, you see the real weasel. Those groups are going to "cut spending increases." Remember our discussion about growth and calculus? No? Well, suffice to say that in the world of business, what this language means is that they're not going to cut spending. In fact, they're going to increase spending, but they just won't increase it as fast as they want to.

Let's take an example, simplified for the sake of not having such ridiculous numbers. Let's say your lemonade stand (I like lemonade stands, as you might have noticed) spends $100 per day (those lemon prices really went through the roof). Now, you need to expand, maybe hire another small child to watch the stand while you use the bathroom, purchase some better signs for the stand, maybe even branch out into limeade or freshly-squeezed orange juice. So you spend $110 the next day. That's a spending increase of $10, or 10%. If you keep going this way (spending $10 more each day) after 10 days, you'll be spending $200, or 100% more. It's getting expensive.

So you promise your stockholders (it's a big lemonade town) that you'll cut costs. You could reduce spending, perhaps even past your original levels. Eventually, you'd be spending less than $100, and you would actually have reduced your costs. But instead, shrewd business player that you are, you promise to "cut spending increases." Your shareholders, sheep that they are, believe that this means you'll be spending less money. Sadly for them, they didn't read this article, and thus you are free to continue spending more and more, because you not only promised to cut spending increases, but you said you'd only do it for 10 days.

So, you promised to cut spending increases by 5% every day for 10 days. That means that, at the end of 10 days, you'll be spending 50% less, right? Of course not. That means that, every day, you spend more, but less quickly. Walk through it with me.

1. On the first day, you spend $110 dollars. That's the spending increase of $10 we were talking about. You get your shareholders to agree to your plan, and promise that, on the next day, you will reduce spending increases 5%.
2. Today, you spend $119.50. "Wait a minute," your shareholders are saying. "That's more than yesterday." But you can prove that you only increased spending by $9.50, which is, of course, 5% less than $10.
3. Today, you spend $9 more, or $128.50, because you're too young to understand compounding percentages and I'm too lazy to work out what you'd actually spend if you spent 5% less of $9.50. Okay, so it's really $9.02, but I made my point earlier about weasel percentages. You're honest about percentages; when you said 5% less per day, you meant from the original spending increase. It still doesn't change the fact that you're spending $128.50 or 28.5% more than your original $100.
4. Today, you spend $8.50 more, or $137. Catching how this is working?
5. Today, $145.
6. $152.50
7. $159.50
8. $166
9. $172
10. $177.50
11. $182.50, the last day of your little "spending reduction."

Wow, that really worked. You're spending 82.5% more than baseline, and everyone thinks you reduced spending by 50%. Because that's what you did, progressively and only on increases. See how you tricked those foolish stockholders?

Now, I'm not saying this is actually what's going on. I'm just saying that it's all about growth in business, and reducing growth doesn't mean reducing spending or much of anything else. I could come up with numbers that allowed me to "cut spending increases" by 1.5% over 10 years that would have me saving quadrillions of dollars, if you call not spending more, "saving." Which is why all my math went to waste, really, because it was trying to prove that even if all the numbers are correct and they're being scrupulously honest, the reduction of an honest, non-compounded 1.5% per year is only a savings of $1.815 trillion, which I suppose can round to $2 trillion. But those numbers have no bearing on the actual situation, which has nothing to do with cutting spending.

I would imagine that the government has checked these figures, and probably has access to information that makes my math wrong. But it doesn't make my central point wrong, which is that a "cut in spending increases" is no cut at all. They'll be spending more.

In closing, one last quote.

The White House believes the industry groups' proposals could eventually save families as much as $2,500 a year.

I believe that lots of things could "eventually" save me money. Perhaps even "as much as" 100 billion dollars every second. Especially if you count savings as decreases in growth of spending, the way business seems to. For one thing, I could die, which would result in a spending increase reduction of an infinite amount. Thus, I would be saving so much money being dead, it almost makes me wish death on certain people I could name, so they don't have to worry about their savings any more.

Speak Up, Pot

No, this isn't about marijuana.

Sometimes, the pot needs to call the kettle black. Sometimes, even if you've got a bit of sin, you need to cast, if not a stone, maybe an indictment of behavior. Not being perfect may not give you a right to criticize, but it doesn't give them a right to get away with it.

Basically, that's what a lot of finger-pointing has devolved to at this point. Either the pointer of fingers must be totally without blemishes, or what they say is discounted.

Guess what? If I'm a mass-murdering jerk, if I say that you shouldn't kill people, that's hypocritical. But if you did kill someone, and I'm the first person to point it out, while I may have no business denigrating you for it, I do have business calling you out on it.

If we wait until we're utterly blameless before pointing out other people's shortcomings, no one will ever get called on anything. International diplomacy seems to consist of one country saying, "Hey, you're treating your people terribly," and then the other country replying, "Oh yeah, well so do you." Maybe that first country should reexamine its own rights record, but the point still stands that the second country is treating its people terribly, whether or not it can be judged by the first country. If the United States tells China its human rights record is lousy, China can't simply improve its human rights record by saying, "Jim Crow!" really loudly.

You can look at it another way: it takes one to know one. It's a common childhood rejoinder to insult, but guess what: all you're doing when you say that is acknowledging that you are. If someone accuses you of being a liar, and you say, "Takes one to know one," then you're admitting that, well, fine, you may be a liar, but the other person is also a liar.

Not good enough. In fact, if someone who's a huge jerk says, "Man, you're a jerk," you might want to consider that you must be a pretty big jerk if someone who is a massive jerk thinks you're one. Sometimes it does take one to know one, and no matter what that says about the person making the accusation, it still says that the accused is guilty as well.

It shouldn't be tit for tat. If everyone has to be perfect before anyone can be... well then, no one will be perfect. It's the classic, "I will when he does," dodge. Frankly, international diplomacy is sounding more and more like the schoolyard. I'm surprised anyone takes it particularly seriously. It would be amusing, if it weren't so important.

Neo-Cons

It's funny. Well, not funny, so much as perplexing. And not so much perplexing as it is frustrating, infuriating even.

I'm talking about neo-cons, of course. Specifically, their bizarre extroversion in terms of interference.

Let's cut right to it. Neo-cons believe that the US should reach out and improve the world. We should intervene in foreign situations, stick out noses in other people's business, because we know what's best for truth and freedom.

But since all these neo-cons are conservative (hence the "con" part of the name, although I guess it could also stand for "convict" or "confusion") they also believe that the US, in the person of the government, should stay out of people's business. The government should butt out and let the free market take care of it. The government handles things poorly, and thus should be minimized or eliminated.

Now I know there are weird, convoluted ways of reconciling those two beliefs. And not all of them involve simply ignoring the hypocrisy and hoping it goes away on its own.

But mark ye: the neo-cons care more about other countries' welfare than they do about their own. They're willing to throw their own people to the wolves because it's destiny, or freedom, or whatever, but other people, they march in, dollar-signs blazing. Spend, spend, spend.

Welfare is bad. It encourages people to rely on corrupt government, to suckle on the government teat.

Military intervention is good. It encourages people to rely on freedom-bringing government, to suckle on the teat of freedom.

I could go on, but I'm sure the point has been made elsewhere. Besides, neo-cons are, at the moment, something of an old hat. At least, they've gone to ground, to continue their struggle in a more guerrilla-type aspect. One might almost call them freedom-fighters, underground resistance. Everyone will eventually forget that they were dead wrong about pretty much everything, and then they will rise again and embroil us in another pointless land war in Asia.

I'd just never cut through this particular knot of cognitive dissonance before. It was there; it simply hadn't occurred to me.

Tell, Don't Show

I was going to be cute and start out obfuscating my point, but I'm just not up for it. So here goes:

Hey Internet, if I want a video tour, I'll ask for it.

Okay, that's not true. Hey Internet, chances are good that there is a better means of communicating that information than a video. That's better.

See, right now, everyone seems to think that everything needs to be a video. Ask a question? Get a VIDEO ANSWER! Looking for features? Get a VIDEO TOUR! Interested in what happened in the news? Here's a VIDEO!

Well, videos are great for some things. How-to, for instance. Or illustrating movement. Basically anything animated. And I believe that videos of news events are important, just as I believe that video documentaries can be a great way to learn about subjects. I genuinely believe in good documentaries. There are a few.

But frankly, if I ask a question in text, I want an answer in text. If I'm looking for a features list, I want a list, not a video tour. And if I'm looking to catch up on the day's news, I'll read it.

Why? Well, for one thing, I can skim a paragraph of text in about 10 seconds, whereas that same text read aloud takes much longer. And if we're talking about a large amount of information, I want to be able to skip to the parts that I care about. Can't do that with a video. Plus, I can read it faster than I can hear it even if I'm reading all of it and reading it closely.

Plus, what if I were deaf?

In that vein, because I'm not but there are many people who are, how about offering transcripts of videos which contain valuable information that you seem to feel is worthy of video format? How about even just a summary of what the video says? Too often are you taken to a video which has nothing but a title without any explanation. I don't care to watch videos most of the time. News in particular; I don't want televised news programs because in half an hour, they give me the same news I could get in ten minutes with no commercials.

So please, Internet, remember that you were originally designed to transfer text. Remember that not everyone thinks your brand-spanking-new-ness is the greatest. Remember that there are deaf people who can't necessarily hear what your video is saying (and forget about trying to read lips in online videos what with the frame decimation and lagging). Stop giving us videos as the only way to get the information.

And then improve the quality of the information you give, video or not. Because a lot of it is garbage.

An Open Letter To Hollywood

Dear Hollywood,

It's often said, "There's nothing new under the sun," but you didn't have to take it so literally. Seriously, we could stand it if you decided to make even a thinly-veiled rehashing of a story that's not new under the sun.

But no. We get sequels, and we get remakes. Sequels we can dismiss out of hand. But a remake takes balls.

Remaking a movie is basically saying, "I know better." Really, Hollywood? You really know better? Remaking a lousy movie suggests that it was a good premise but lousy execution, and I don't hold a lot of faith in a second try making any difference in that regard, even if I buy your premise, which I usually don't. See, a lot of movies are bad because they're lousy premises. Even with great execution, epic execution, they're still going to be lousy movies because they are built on faulty bedrock. Your foundation's got cracks all through it, Hollywood. I'm afraid that a giant gaping sinkhole has opened up underneath some of your movies. Gonna have to dynamite that sucker, move to higher ground.

Instead, you've decided to pull down the trim, maybe knock down a few walls (pray they aren't load-bearing), paint the outside a new color, and sell it as a new house. "Stick a few sugar packets under that table, it'll be level," you tell prospective buyers. Problem is, you can't let them see the basement because it's all crazy and tilted down there, with groundwater bubbling up from between the concrete slabs and doors to the outside that no longer function because there's two feet of earth over one side of them. The house is a dump, Hollywood, and even if we could get a sub-prime mortgage on it, we wouldn't.

To set aside the metaphor for a moment (or perhaps forever), Hollywood should look into film piracy and cinema attendance. See, I posit that, if you really want to see a good movie, you should see it in the theater. There's something about that screen that almost makes selling a kidney to get in worthwhile (yes, I know, low-hanging fruit, but prices are a big factor here). So if fewer people are going to movies in the theater, I believe it has less to do with the availability of other (lower-quality) options and more to do with the fact that the movies aren't worth seeing in the big screen, which means they're not good movies.

But stick with me here, because it gets better. So there are a lot of people saying, "Eh, whatever, I'll see it in DVD." But there are people saying, "Eh, whatever, I'll pirate it from the Internet." I'm not sure that any movie execs have gone to the trouble of researching their competition, but frankly, a lot of pirated movies are crap. They require a certain amount of effort and time to procure, and the quality is hardly DVD-worthy. If I would watch something in a pirated video, it's because not only would I not care to see it in the big screen, but I'm not even willing to spend the money to see a decent version in the small screen.

I understand that there are some pirated copies which are leaked, a la the Wolverine movie. But the vast majority of piracy comes from people who want to watch the flick, but not so much that they're willing to pay for it. If there's a choice between crappy and cheap (free but with investments of time and energy, not to mention a degree of risk) and good and expensive, there are a lot of people going with the former, which says something about the level of quality present in the product in the first place.

I've seen some pirated movies. Some I've seen because they're not available in any other form. But mostly, I've seen them (notice how I'm winking at possession) because I sort of wanted to see the movie, but not enough to do anything strenuous.

Film buffs don't pirate movies. People don't pirate movies they love. They pirate movies which are so-so, or which were awful but they had to see them for whatever reason. The fact that attendance is down and piracy is up says more about the quality of movie being put out by Hollywood than I ever could.

But Jesus, Hollywood: make some new movies. It's not just remaking the old crappy movies. It's remaking old, decent movies. Just because it was made back in the days before the ability to computer-generate a 10-ton gorilla having sex with a two-headed Angelina Jolie clone while blowing up inside the Death Star in Technicolor with particle effects, that doesn't mean it needs to be "improved upon."

Sincerely,

A Guy Who's Tired of Remakes and Sequels