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Current Affairs

Earthquake

UPDATE: Turns out it was a 5.8 a few miles east of Diamond Bar. That's the most shaking I've felt in quite a while, though.

UPDATE UPDATE: I guess I should report that everyone here is fine, and there wasn't any damage. This is going to turn out to be not much of a news story, but it sure felt like something. It went on a while; I'm hearing 20-30 seconds, but reports are all over the place right now. Every local news outlet, and then some, are talking to anyone who will tell their "this is what I was doing when it happened" story.

UPDATE^3: Reports have now downgraded the magnitude to 5.4.

MathTrek: Spoil-Proofing Elections

The MathTrek blog from Science News has a brief article that provides a good quick overview of problems with election methods. It's called Spoil-Proofing Elections:

Complaints about the obscure Electoral College system are common, but the mathematicians' objection is even more basic. Presidential elections in the United States are decided using a variation of a method known as plurality voting: each person votes for one candidate, and the candidate with the most votes wins.

Seems like the obvious approach—but obvious doesn't always mean effective. "The plurality vote is pretty much the worst voting system there is," says Donald Saari, a mathematician at the University of California, Irvine.

One more interesting excerpt: "69 percent of the time, an election result can be changed by changing the voting rules." The problem is that it's not clear which set of rules produce a "true" result. They all produce results that reflect the voters' wishes as defined in some fashion. The argument is about which definition best serves the purpose of the election in the first place.

Writers Guild Strike

Here's a video the WGA put on YouTube describing the reasons behind their strike. Obviously this presents only one side of the dispute, but if you're unclear on what this is all about, this might help.

Over the weekend, the WGA took the DVD issue off the table, essentially saying, "Fine, we'll stop fighting you on this point, so now maybe you can give a little on this other point." Nothing doing, at least not yet.

I've heard two arguments against producers giving residuals for Internet distribution, at least as it pertains to this strike. The first is that Internet distribution is really just promotional, and not, I suppose, true distribution. This seems just silly to me. Maybe if you never paid $1.99 on iTunes to get a TV show, or if no ad space were sold on web sites that distribute the shows. But you do pay on iTunes, and ads are sold. That's distribution, not promotion.

The second is something that seems less insane, but doesn't really make a great argument: the studios say they don't make any money on Internet distribution. This could be true; at this still early stage of internet video distribution, broadcasters (or should I say "distributors") are spending plenty in development costs just trying to figure out what models are going to stick. Seems quite credible that thus far these ventures are money losers.

But the thing is, some will eventually make money. If the distributors didn't believe that, they wouldn't be investing the money up front. That's just logic.

So say the you're developing one of these online distribution ventures. You probably lose money, but say you have, or hope to soon, managed to work hard and build up so you start to turn a profit, even if it's just few percent of revenue. Obviously you aren't going to thrilled if you have to pay a few percent in residuals to writers (and, soon, actors and directors). Those could add up, and significantly hamper the growth of a venture that is experiencing fragile beginnings.

To be clear, I ultimately side with the creative folk here: of course they need to get residuals from distribution of content; TV or internet shouldn't really matter. I wonder if there isn't a compromise that allows the broadcasters to have the flexibility to grow these new ventures, but guarantees the appropriate residuals will kick in, perhaps after a set period of time, or after some revenue or profit target, etc.

I don't know the business side of the industry well enough to conjecture any further. Specifically, I'm a little unclear on the producer/distributor relationship here. If you're reading this and have any additional insights, or additional facts, please add them in comments.

Fuel Efficiency - Great idea, but only if I have to.

Very interesting article.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2007/07/23/070723ta_talk_surowiecki

The very, very short version: Although only a small percentage of people make the choice to buy more fuel efficient vehicles, a large majority of people are in favor of higher fuel efficiency standards. The author discusses why this might be.

[Side note: The first paragraph talks about the industry being resistant to change, to the point of declaring the death of the industry itself:

"In the nineteen-twenties, Alfred Sloan, the president of General Motors, insisted that the company could not make windshields with safety glass because doing so would harm the bottom line. In the fifties, auto executives told Congress that making seat belts compulsory would slash industry profits. When air bag came along, Lee Iacocca told Richard Nixon that “safety has really killed all our business. "

This same cycle has played out, and is playing out now, in the music ("record") industry. I think something similar is happening with real estate and the emergence of online tools which, as the Freakonomics authors would say, reduce the information asymmetry.]

If Public Libraries Didn’t Exist, Could You Start One Today?

An interesting post on the Freakonomics Blog. The hypothesis is that if we didn't have libraries, and someone today proposed establishing locations in cities throughout the country which would buy content once and then lend it out to multiple users at no incremental charge, the publishing industry (and maybe authors) would fight against the idea, or at least set up elaborate payment structures.

If Public Libraries Didn’t Exist, Could You Start One Today?:

iPhone: Here at last.

After getting up at 3:45 am to wait in line to see Steve Jobs deliver the MacWorld Expo keynote address this morning, I'm finally relaxing a bit this evening. Jessica is asleep, and I have a chance to collect my thoughts about today's biggest announcement: the Apple iPhone.


(image from Macworld.com)

Let me start with the bottom line: I want one.

In the months leading up to this announcement, there have been wild rumors and speculation about a cell phone/iPod thingy from Apple. My opinion then, as now, is that I'll probably always want a dedicated iPod anyway, so if my phone can play music (or even video), that may come in handy now and then but it's not a feature that I have to have. However, there is one area ripe for improvement: cell phone software interfaces and synching. I said before today that if Apple could apply their magic touch and really make contact and calendar synching work, and make an interface that is intuitive, easy, and pretty, then they could really have something.

Well, it sure looks like they did just that.

Interestingly, the widescreen iPod with touch control features on their own are pretty sweet. I would upgrade to a standalone iPod with those features, though maybe not for $499 plus a service contract (more on price in a moment).

I've been thinking about getting a "smartphone" recently, because I would like to be able to check for emails now and then while out and about. I've never had one, so I can't speak to the ease of use of the keyboards, but I'm inclined to believe Steve Jobs' claim that the touchscreen keyboard on the iPhone is as least as easy to use, if not easier, than the keyboards on Blackberries or other smartphones.

Even with all this, I'm not head over heels in lust. First, use of the internet features relies on data over the cellular network, which in this case uses EDGE. I still get confused by 3G cell phone technologies, but I'm pretty sure this is the slower of the ultra-modern data options. I suspect the reason Apple would go this way is simple: for other reasons they've ended up partnering with Cingular (soon to be AT&T), and EDGE is the technology Cingular uses. Why did they go with Cingular? Steve Jobs says "they're the biggest and the best". Maybe true, I don't know. I'm guessing they were the partner willing to bend and not enforce the kind of demands on Apple that wireless providers typically enforce on cell phone manufacturers.

So I'm curious to see what data access is really like on this phone. I'm also curious to get beyond the demonstrations and see if the interface and usability, which look amazing, hold up to actual, everyday use. I wonder if scrolling through long lists by "tossing" the list with a flick of the finger is really efficient, or if you'll end up overshooting and coming back and forth to find a given entry.

And what about the price: $499 for a 4GB model, $599 for an 8GB model, both with a 2 year contract with Cingular. I don't know yet what a Cingular plan would cost that would allow for decent data use. I will say this: if you're willing to pay $500 for the phone, you may as well pay an extra $100 and get twice the storage space. If you're going to keep a fair amount of music or photos on the phone, and any TV or Movies, you'll want the extra space.

Why is the price so high? Well, I wouldn't be surprised if it is expensive for Apple to make, at the moment. If it's very popular, they'll probably be able to bring down the cost. For what it's worth, the original 5 GB iPod was introduced with a price of $399, followed shortly by a 10 GB model for $499. They sold a few. These prices certainly came down. I also think there is value for Apple in having a product priced at a premium. They don't want consumers thinking this is just another cell phone. Better if it's understood that it's more; enough people will pay the premium for the superior product, and Apple's "coolness" and "gotta-get-one" factors are enhanced.

I was a little disappointed today that there wasn't more immediate gratification. No glimpse at Leopard, the next Mac OS, no new iLife or iWork. The AppleTV is kind of cool, but nothing that makes me drool. Maybe the AppleTV would move me closer to the tipping point where I would buy more video content from the iTunes Store. (Owning a video iPod, or iPhone, would also move me closer.) The iPhone was really the news, but there aren't any out at the Apple booth to play with.

When I got back to the hotel room, my initial explanation of the iPhone was tempered, I think, by the lack of anything to play with and the fact that being up since before 4 AM was catching up to me. The possible success of the iPhone may be portended by Dana's reaction when I showed her the demo movies at apple.com: "I can't believe you weren't more excited by this. This would be great for people like me. We should get 5."

Elections and voting systems

Forgive me if I've already chatted with you about this, but I find voting systems pretty interesting. Steve Krause has a nice write up of some of the most common, and some of the important differences. The takeaway is this: given a set of voter preferences, different voting systems can result in different outcomes.

For example, Steve talks about a system used in some local San Francisco elections: Ranked Choice Voting with Instant Runoff Voting:

  • You rank multiple candidates for an office, indicating your first choice, second choice, and so on.
  • If no candidate attains a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated.
  • Those who voted for the eliminated candidate have their second-choice votes added to the remaining candidates' totals.
  • If that reallocation does not create a majority for one candidate, the process continues until a majority is reached.

There was an article in the March 2004 issue of Scientific American by Partha Dasgupta and Eric Maskin that went into a more detailed analysis. They spoke to the question of "Which voting system is really the most fair?" by asking, in each case, how many of the voters have their preferences reflected in the outcome.

Just some food for thought. The important thing is to make the effort to get out and vote. I'll admit I don't make it to every single ballot date, but I do take it seriously and try not only to go but to show up with at least a basically informed opinion. If you weren't thinking of voting, please do. If you were planning on it, remind someone you know.

An Inconvenient Truth

Check out the trailer for "An Inconvenient Truth", a film about the life and environmental message of Al Gore (who "used to be the next President of the United States of America").

I've read and heard from people who have heard Gore give recent talks featured in the film, and the consensus is something like "expected a dry speech, but found it captivating and motivating." Seems hearing this message can get you fired up.

Judging from the trailer, it's definitely something I'll try to see.