Prior to this purchase, I had never so much as heard of Henle. (Relatively speaking, I'm not an especially talented pianist, and so I don't have a whole lot of exposure to the world of music publishers.) So I spent a few minutes poking around their website to learn, for one, what it meant that everything they sold was labeled as "urtext."
I also learned that as recently as 2000, Henle hand engraved all of their sheet music. That is, as recently as ten years ago — at about the same time I purchased my first digital camera — Henle still employed people who cut lines, staffs, sharps and other musical notation into sheets of lead with delicate metal instruments to produce printed sheet music. In fact, they still have a short film on their website documenting the process. It's almost unbelievable.
On the one hand, the fact that the company stuck to their now-antiquated methods of production for so long makes me wonder about the company's management. But on the other, there is something remarkable about a company so committed to producing the most elegant, most functional printed music that they would keep employing people to engrave music by hand, in spite of the emergence of digital publishing tools.
]]>But as I thought about it, I realized that not only do I not mind the advertisements injected into my Twitter stream in Tweetie, I actually like having those ads in my Twitter stream. For unlike most other advertising, the Fusion ads in my Twitter stream are informative; I've learned about a variety of useful software products and web services, such as WuFoo. And when I've seen a particular advertisement before, or I find the good or service it promotes irrelevant to me, the injected ads don't blink, honk or otherwise try to take my attention of off my Twitter feed.
Which leads me to propose these two criteria for determining the goodness of an advertisement:
(1) A "good" advertisement conveys novel information
(2) A "good" advertisement imposes minimal costs to the consumer
Note that a given advertisement can meet and fail the first criterion at the same time, as whether an advertisement conveys novel information (or not) depends on who consumes the advertisement.
For instance, a banner ad for the Kindle on The New York Times' website might satisfy (1) for a 40-something doctor who spends her weekends kayaking, but who can't tell the difference between a DIMM and SIM. The same ad, however, might fail (1) if it's consumed by a 30-something advertising executive who paid $399 for the original Kindle the day it went on sale, and who has since upgraded to Kindle 2. In the first case, the banner ad conveys something novel: the doctor had no idea that Amazon.com sold an electronic reading device with over-the-air purchasing functionality. But in the second case, the ad tells the advertising executive nothing he didn't already know.
It's also interesting how the second criteria manages to capture some of the differences between print and electronic media. Advertisements in print magazines generally bug me far more than advertisements online, partly because ads in physical printed magazines add additional mass. I've always wondered why people subscribe to magazines like Vogue, even if the content is interesting, just because every issues has so many advertisements that its weight is often measured in pounds rater than ounces.
If I were more adept at constructing economic models, I could easily see this developing into a nice little paper with a title like "Optimal Advertising Theory."
]]>What really bugs me about most of these would-be deejays, though, is not so much the music they play, but the quality of the recordings of the music they play. More often than not, it's apparent they either ripped the song from a CD seven years ago or, more likely, downloaded it from some metaphorical Internet back alley without looking at the encoding information.
Back in the dark ages, when dial-up Internet connections were the norm and music players measured their capacity in megabytes rather than gigabytes, this tradeoff between sound quality and file size made sense. It was impossible to squeeze more than a few dozen songs onto a Diamond Rio (remember them?) with a quarter gigabyte of storage. Even the original iPod — with 5 gigabytes of storage at $399 — would only hold about 500 songs encoded at 256 kbps. Portability and flexibility came at the price of inferior audio quality.
Today, however, when even the most inexpensive iPod comes with eight gigabytes of memory and even a basic laptop ships with a capacious hard disk whose capacity is measured in hundreds of gigabytes, this tradeoff makes no sense. In fact, the two largest retailers of digital music — Amazon.com and Apple — now sell tracks encoded at 256 kbps, and many classical labels sell tracks encoded in a lossless format. So why do people persist in tolerating low-quality recordings?
Most people I ask this question say something to the effect of, "This music sounds good enough to me." Which drives me crazy. Anyone who claims they can't hear the difference between a track encoded at 128 kbps and 256 kbps should have their hearing checked. (Or buy a pair of halfway decent speakers.) I don't see why we should settle for less when having more has virtually zero cost.
]]>On a related note, I just obtained a copy of Ellie Goulding's new album "Lights," which has just gone on sale in the UK to great success. It's actually not bad, and it's also very difficult to obtain through legitimate channels in the United States without paying $50 for an imported copy. I also recently downloaded an interesting album of world music titled "Un cri dans l'ébène" from a group called Titom, which can be found in the iTunes Store and at Amazon.com. It reminds me vaguely of the soundtrack to the British drama-comedy television series, Monarch of the Glen, though nowhere near as cliché or cloying.
(Addendum: Apparently "Un cri dans l'ébène" is a collection of traditional music from the French region of Bretagne, princiapally that played at the Fest Noz. Remarkable how similar it is to traditional Scottish music.)
]]>Who would buy a pair of shoes for him or herself exclusively to help the impoverished? It makes no sense. The fact that a potential Tom's Shoes customer expects to receive a pair of shoes for herself implies that she intends to gain something from the transaction other than the "warm glow" of having given an impoverished Argentinian a pair of shoes. If all she cared about were the social good created, she ought simply donate her money to a charity.
It seems exceedingly idiotic for me to spend $70 on a pair of Tom's Shoes that are uncomfortable, not especially durable or likely to have manufacturing defects. If I never wear the shoes, I've wasted the labor and human capital inputs of the designers, marketers and managers, and the materials inputs that go into making what amounts to a pound of refuse. Not to mention I would probably go buy another pair of high-quality shoes, since I'm not a member of the barefoot movement. (Perhaps from Tod's, whose name differs by one letter, but whose ethos is perhaps the antithesis of Tom's. It's a coincidence I find amusing.)
Contrast the Tom's Shoes model to the Whole Foods model. I don't shop at Whole Foods purely because they have a philanthropic bent. I shop there because they provide superior quality foodstuffs for my various culinary concoctions, and because they staff their stores with people who don't look nonplussed and scowl when asked for directions to the lemongrass. Yet they do manage to effect quite a bit of social good — certainly more than any ineptly managed, naïve, idealistic nonprofit ever could.
I don't particularly mind companies that sacrifice some profit for social good. But I do have a problem with companies that don't produce products worth buying.
]]>But first a little background. I'm not a big fan of "scented" products. I don't want my clothes to smell like "clean breeze" (whatever that is), or my disinfectant wipes to smell like "lemon." At the same time, most products billed as unscented, while not perfumed, still have a scent, usually something I like to call "industrial solvent." Which is why I keep a dispenser of lavender-scented liquid hand soap from the folks at L'Occitane en Provence on hand. It's just scented enough to trick the mind into believing it's not some kind of horrible industrial cleaning agent, but not so scented that I feel my throat constrict when I wash my hands. (Forgive me for not choosing a more "macho" scent or product, but I have a difficult time believing anyone, let alone superficial attractive women, could possibly like — much less tolerate — a product like Axe. Frankly, I'm a little embarrassed I even know what that product is.)
Which brings me back to the story. As I entered the bathroom on my floor to brush my teeth just moments ago, I noticed that I had left my pretentious French soap on one of the bathroom sinks earlier in the day. So I walked over to the sink in question, thinking I would bring the soap back to my room after ridding my mouth of plaque. To my annoyance, however, someone had defiled my soap dispenser by spitting into the dispenser! Needless to say, that perfectly good container of soap is now in a trash can.
On what planet is it acceptable for people to spit into containers of soap? Surely not this one.
]]>First of all, there's the cost of the Kindle hardware itself, about $260, or enough to buy about 10 "real" books, even at publishers' list prices. So, right of the bat, the library has sacrificed the ability to grow its collection by at least 10 volumes. And any savings associated with the fact that the Kindle can access public domain works, like Pride and Prejudice or Othello, is offset by the fact that the library probably owns at least two copies of such famous public domain works.
Second, there's the huge opportunity cost of buying a book for the Kindle. The nature of Amazon.com's DRM on Kindle books means that only one person at a time will be able to read whatever collection of books the library purchases for the Kindle. Contrast this to the conventional arrangement, in which different books can be lent to different people at the same time. It's as if one particular shelf or stack of the library's collection had to be checked out at all at once, and only one person could check out that stack or shelf at a time.
It would make far more sense, assuming Amazon makes the technology and licensing available, for the library to purchase copies of electronic copies of books and magazines that students who happened to own a Kindle could access, much as Sony does today with many public libraries.
And all this is not to say I don't like my Kindle. It's a great device for linear reading, where one starts on page one and moves sequentially to page n. But the Kindle is a device to read content, not a piece of content itself. People don't go to their local libraries to check out televisions; they go to check out DVDs.
]]>As such, I began exploring the idea of buying my own vacuum cleaner. But because I like to buy quality, I have a hard time justifying such a purchase. Even a low-end Miele vacuum runs at least $300 or $400, which seems to me an excessive amount to spend given the size of my dorm room and the infrequency with which I need to vacuum. By my own rough estimates, I would spend less money by paying a cleaning service $20 a week to vacuum for me until I graduate, as opposed to investing in my own vacuum cleaner. Yes, I suppose such a device would probably prove useful for many years to come — the Miele Polaris I looked at comes with a seven year warranty — especially as I transition to a slightly less austere living arrangement.
But this really comes back to a more fundamental question: why doesn't the college provide the residents of its residence halls with proper, working vacuum cleaners? Do they want to encourage students to become slobs? The college has no problem providing all-you-can-eat printing on high-speed laser printers in the library and labs. I can't help but wonder why the College doesn't just provide or tack an extra $2 onto our already absurd "comprehensive fee" to give me the ability to clean my floor.
]]>As Bill Gates put it in his TED talk last week, if we can make carbon-free sources of energy cheaper than carbon-emmiting sources of energy, climate change skeptics will make no difference in our ability to protect the environment. Instead, when people go to buy a car or an HVAC system, they'll buy the cheaper, non-polluting option, and the planet will move closer to a climate change solution as people naturally reduce their consumption of carbon-emitting goods and services.
Admittedly, this kind of market-driven solution would be more effective with government involvement. Carbon dioxide emissions due to the consumption of goods and services are what economists call an externality; that is, the cost of carbon dioxide emitted by a gallon of gasoline or a flight from London to Madrid is not included in the cost of the carbon-emitting good. As such, economic theory tells us that we would be better off by internalizing that eternality by, for instance, imposing a "carbon tax" on goods like gasoline. This has the fairly obvious effect of accelerating the market-driven switch to carbon-free goods and services.
But, despite the best efforts of activists, I see little chance of the US government providing this sort of policy jumpstart to a market-driven solution to the climate change problem.
Which makes me think climate change advocates should be channeling their efforts toward driving down the cost of carbon-free goods and services relative to their polluting counterparts, rather than trying in vain to reach a policy-driven solution. I realize that support of business is anathema to the beliefs of many people advocating for climate change legislation. But unless the political climate changes, I honestly believe advocates would be more effective in staving off global warming by helping startups and researchers gain funding to develop and bring to market their ideas for cheaper, cleaner goods and services.
]]>At any rate, as I skimmed my Twitter feed and various news blogs, I couldn't help but notice a huge volume of people whining, moaning and groaning about the new Facebook redesign. So I visited my Facebook account — something I try to avoid — to see what everyone was complaining about.
It looks almost exactly the same. Sure, Mark and his pals have made a few adjustments to the placement of controls and to the application's design. But nothing looks so completely different that I can even begin to imagine why people feel obliged to rant and rave about the new look.
If anything, this supports my thesis that most normal computer users would prefer a computing appliance, such as the iPad, to a full-blown general purpose computer.
]]>As I've written before, I really only watch three sporting events with any real interest: the soccer World Cup, the Tour de France, and the Olympics, summer and winter alike. But yet again NBC, the official broadcaster of the Olympic games here in the United States, has decided to air almost none of the events live. According to one article I read, only curling and ice hockey will be streamed live online. Only curling and ice hockey! It's like living in 1999, albeit with higher fidelity video and audio. And on top of that, much of the content shown on NBC and its sister networks will be tape-delayed and packaged with all manner of stupid interstitial videos about the number of times some snowboarder cut open her thumb while tuning her equipment.
The tape delays aren't quite as objectionable when the games take place in a distant time zone. But there's no excuse for tape delaying events on the West Coast when cities like San Francisco and Portland are in the same time zone as Vancouver.
At the very least, the folks at NBC should put live streams of the events online for people like me who prefer to watch sports live. For that matter, I would even pay — though admittedly not all that much — to watch the games online. It's the 21st century Jeff Zucker. Wake up!
]]>Unsurprisingly, many security experts agree that trying to do client-side authentication makes for an ineffective network security policy. In particular, the Cisco NAC that Bates uses is vulnerable to numerous exploits. At a recent Black Hat conference, for instance, some researchers demonstrated that the Cisco product could be spoofed by simply having the computer assert to the NAC that it had the right antivirus and firewall settings and gain access without a hitch, despite having no anti-virus or firewall software installed. (There are many, many more exploits, which interested parties could easily track down via a simple Google search.)
To me, this means that the client-side network authentication layer is utterly superfluous.
Given that the device effectively does nothing to keep really determined hackers off the network, it essentially just serves to inconvenience and annoy normal people. If Swedish intelligence officials decide they want to join the Bates network to wreak havoc on our course database, they'll have no problem. But Ellen T. Student will panic when she can't connect her laptop to the network to print an important paper due to an authentication malfunction, and John T. Student won't be able to share the latest video of his dog surfing in Nantucket with his cousin from his iPhone.
Not to mention, the college likely spends more than a few dollars to keep this ineffective layer in place. Of course, there's the huge cost associated with the purchase of the hardware and software. But there's also the labor cost of maintaining that hardware and software over time. Further, the college has to hire lots of employees for its technology "Help Desk," largely because no one can figure out how to install the parasitic client-side authentication software and the mandated (and equally impotent) Sophos anti-virus software.
It's almost comical. In the midst budgetary problems, the college continues to spend thousands of dollars to inconvenience people to no benefit, while my professors feel compelled to make fewer photocopies.
This doesn't really strike me as the kind of policy consistent with the very liberal values of the college, nor, as I've written in the past, does foster an open, generative computing environment. Yuck.
]]>Bearing that in mind, I've now begun to ask myself whether I should buy one of the standard WiFi-only models or spring for an iPad with a cellular radio. Apple managed to strike a great deal with AT&T — no contracts, low prices — and the device is unlocked.
But as I began to consider the matter more closely, I realized I may need to buy the 3G-equipped model more out of necessity than an occasional desire for ubiquitous Internet access on a third portable device (see iPhone, Kindle).
As I initially considered it, I figured a 3G iPad might be worth buying just in case I ever wanted a month or two of service. I like the idea of popping in an Orange SIM card in Paris and killing time on the train to Lyon or Cannes on a trip to France. But then it occurred to me that the inane Bates network security scheme would prevent me from doing such routine tasks as checking my email on the iPad via WiFi, as is the case with my iPhone and the Bates network. As it stands now, I can only check my email on the iPhone thanks to the spotty coverage provided by the fine folks at AT&T.
Not that our charming IT people make it easy for me to connect to the Bates WiFi network on my phone in the first place. Regardless of the number of times I tell my phone to remember and automatically connect to the auxiliary BatesGuest SSID, it can't seem to pull it off. And when I manage to connect to the network, I'm forced to authenticate in the browser with my username and hard-to-type 15 character mixed-case alpha-numeric-symbolic password every single time. Not once every 24 hours, or even once every hour. If I were to authenticate right now, visit a website and put my phone to sleep, I would have to re-authenticate in five minutes if I decided to open Tweetie.
In case the previous two paragraphs didn't make it clear, I feel strongly that these policies are ridiculous and utterly absurd.
I already have a more or less unfettered Internet connection from the college on my laptop. If I wanted to break into a secure database or launch a cyberattack on the Defense Department, preventing my benign mobile phone from joining the WiFi network won't provide any defense at all.
Of course, the people in IT also like to argue that allowing just any device onto the network creates the possibility that I or someone else will spread some horrible virus to the rest of the campus. But I fail to see how locking devices out of the network does anything to stop this. First of all, as I already mentioned, my laptop, which poses a far greater risk in that regard, is already on the network. Banning my iPhone or iPad does zilch. More importantly, though, most viruses and malware are spread through the Internet! So if I were just to send people on campus a virus-laden email from a cellular modem, just as many computers would be infected. Beyond that, the tightly-controlled environments like iPhone OS are, to my knowledge, not even capable of launching some kind of sophisticated attack.
What rationale do these people have for keeping my iPhone off the proper WiFi network? I say none whatsoever.
I'm sick of being treated like a criminal. Give my iPhone unfettered Internet access!
]]>The book is not illuminating solely because it does a good job of walking the reader through the events leading up to the big bank bailouts and breaking down the complicated chain of events that led to the bailouts. Too Big to Fail avoids the petty politics that have colored the debate over the bailouts and bank regulation. It also helps one form a more nuanced view of the government intervention and the role of banks. Rather than painting executives like Lehman's Richard Fuld or firms like Goldman Sachs, purely as incompetent or villainous, Sorkin more or less sticks to the facts.
Highly recommended.
]]>But I have recently come across two excellent recordings of the song played by musicians who do not take orders from the cabal of musically ignorant wedding planners. One is from Daniel Hope's excellent album "Air: A Baroque Journey." (For whatever reasons that album is only available in the US via the Deutsche Grammophon online store.) The other is from Reinhard Goebel's recording of Pachelbel, Bach, Handel and Vivaldi.
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