The MBTA's transition away from monthly passes and tokens to the Charlie Card is so far a complete fiasco. I'll save my rant about the Rube Goldberg-style gates for another day, but the way they're managing the switchover has to be about the least optimal way they could have done it.
The stations are being converted in a seemingly random order, with no posted information on which stations are converted and which ones aren't. This wouldn't be so bad, except that other than monthly passes there is no common fare between the stations that are converted and those that aren't. Did you do what the MBTA ceaselessly bothers you to do and buy a token for your return trip? If your return trip starts at a Charlie Card station, you're out of luck. Same with the poor tourist who buys a "stored value card" and discovers it's useless at some of the most popular stations on the T.
I honestly can't believe they thought this was something consumers would appreciate, especially in summer: Boston's tens of thousands of tourists have enough trouble figuring out the T when it's not partitioned into two totally incompatible fare systems.
There have got to be half a dozen completely practical (if slightly more expensive) ways to deal with this. Why not have a single portable Charlie Card reader at every station that hasn't been converted? You could put it by the gate used for senior/student fare and exact change, where the collector could monitor its use. We know they have these portable card readers on all the Silver Line buses (and soon all buses, presumably), so why not order a dozen or two so there's a universal payment system. Ditto for leaving a temporary gate at converted stations that still takes tokens.
I want a modern system: stored value cards will save me money since I buy a monthly pass mostly for convenience. But the way the transition is being handled makes me wonder if this conversion isn't going to end up as a white elephant.
8.03.2006
4.07.2006
Yelp and Dodgeball
I'm having a lot of fun writing and reading reviews on Yelp, a well-done personal reviews site focused on metro areas. The target market of young, urban, dare-I-say professionals who go out a lot seems to line up pretty closely to what Dodgeball (now owned by Google) is going after, and certainly it would be nice to tie Dodgeball's messaging infrastructure in with Yelp's community and reviews.
You could pull up Yelp reviews via SMS, send messages out to yelp.com to set up impromptu meetups, etc.
The problem is that this is unlikely to happen, even in the "Web 2.0" world, unless Yelp gets bought by Google and integrated on their end.
There's just way too much redundant work going on when every site with a social dimension has its own "friends" system: both the development cost to the site, and the cost to the users who have to reestablish their social networks over and over again just to use cool new features like Dodgeball's messaging stuff.
Maybe Google should develop a basic "friends" API similar to their now ubiquitous Maps API? Orkut seems to have crashed and burned outside of South America; I certainly don't hear much about it. But there have got to be dozens of "Web 2.0" startups who would love to be able to say, "Log in with your gmail account and we'll show you all your friends that are already using our service, and let you invite the others."
You could pull up Yelp reviews via SMS, send messages out to yelp.com to set up impromptu meetups, etc.
The problem is that this is unlikely to happen, even in the "Web 2.0" world, unless Yelp gets bought by Google and integrated on their end.
There's just way too much redundant work going on when every site with a social dimension has its own "friends" system: both the development cost to the site, and the cost to the users who have to reestablish their social networks over and over again just to use cool new features like Dodgeball's messaging stuff.
Maybe Google should develop a basic "friends" API similar to their now ubiquitous Maps API? Orkut seems to have crashed and burned outside of South America; I certainly don't hear much about it. But there have got to be dozens of "Web 2.0" startups who would love to be able to say, "Log in with your gmail account and we'll show you all your friends that are already using our service, and let you invite the others."
3.31.2006
Foodie heaven
A new addition to the blogroll: The Boston Globe's new Dishing. Pretty snooty, as you might expect, but just about every entry is tempting in one way or another.
Hopefully they'll have more entries like great cheap eats in Vermont than how connected food writers get free premium steaks. OK, I'm just envious!
Hopefully they'll have more entries like great cheap eats in Vermont than how connected food writers get free premium steaks. OK, I'm just envious!
Scare science
Isn't it useless to know that 85 of 905 Swedes with brain tumors were "high users" of mobile phones without knowing what proportion of the Swedish population overall are "high users" of mobile phones? It's hard to believe it would be so much less than 9% that it would justify the claim of a link.
The study wasn't even posted on the "National Institute for Working Life"'s web page before they blabbed to Reuters, so it's hard to take seriously.
UPDATE: As always, the British have the right response.
The study wasn't even posted on the "National Institute for Working Life"'s web page before they blabbed to Reuters, so it's hard to take seriously.
UPDATE: As always, the British have the right response.
3.15.2006
The Horror: Fooling Thunderbird's Spam Filter with Stephen King
I really like Thunderbird, the Mozilla mail client, but the spam filtering is not particularly useful. I keep getting the same luxury watch and prescription drug emails over and over, and maybe 5% of them are actually filtered, despite training the Bayesian "learning" filter for months.
The spammers seem to be fooling it by including invisible text of a non-spam-sounding nature. At least in the one I looked at this morning, it was a sequence of rarely appearing words ("operatic hermaneutic escherichia") followed by some text from Misery:
I have to say this is pretty clever, in that it's not obvious to me that there's a good solution, short of filtering any HTML message with a certain percent content of "hidden" text (figuring that out would be a little tricky, as they vary the font color in a range of "invisible"). And even if Thunderbird did that, there are probably lots of places to hide text that doesn't scan like spam. Has Bayesian filtering failed? What say you Paul Graham? Or is Thunderbird's implementation just broken because it doesn't pay enough attention to my "good" mail and is too concerned with false positives filtering things I actually want to see?
The spammers seem to be fooling it by including invisible text of a non-spam-sounding nature. At least in the one I looked at this morning, it was a sequence of rarely appearing words ("operatic hermaneutic escherichia") followed by some text from Misery:
With Annie Wilkes that is a question which has no sane answer. Being such a straight arrow was part of the reason for this amazing fecundity, but Annie herself was a bigger one. "You don't want to write my book and so you're making up tricks not to start."
I have to say this is pretty clever, in that it's not obvious to me that there's a good solution, short of filtering any HTML message with a certain percent content of "hidden" text (figuring that out would be a little tricky, as they vary the font color in a range of "invisible"). And even if Thunderbird did that, there are probably lots of places to hide text that doesn't scan like spam. Has Bayesian filtering failed? What say you Paul Graham? Or is Thunderbird's implementation just broken because it doesn't pay enough attention to my "good" mail and is too concerned with false positives filtering things I actually want to see?
2.22.2006
World of Warcraft
Dead-on assessment of the barriers to fun in World of Warcraft.
I'm grinding my way up to level 60 now, and while there's certainly an addictive aspect to the "get quest, kill monsters, gain level, get harder quest, kill harder monsters..." cycle, I really wish I could spend more time just wandering around "doing" stuff. The in-game economy seems kind of stale, since low-end skills are so common, what they produce is next to worthless. High-end skills and patterns require jumping on the 40-main raid train. I agree with the article: that doesn't seem particularly appealing.
On the other hand, maybe it would be a good thing to walk away before it's too late.
I'm grinding my way up to level 60 now, and while there's certainly an addictive aspect to the "get quest, kill monsters, gain level, get harder quest, kill harder monsters..." cycle, I really wish I could spend more time just wandering around "doing" stuff. The in-game economy seems kind of stale, since low-end skills are so common, what they produce is next to worthless. High-end skills and patterns require jumping on the 40-main raid train. I agree with the article: that doesn't seem particularly appealing.
On the other hand, maybe it would be a good thing to walk away before it's too late.
Repeal the Massachusetts "Happy Hour" laws
Since Governor Romney ended the "blue laws" banning of liquor sales on Sundays, and is interested in a real, consumer-oriented repeal of out-of-state wine shipment laws, is it too much to hope that the silly 20-year-old "Happy Hour" laws could be repealed?
These regulations hurt responsible consumers by restricting price competition in the marketplace, keeping beverage prices artificially high. They hurt small business owners, who can't fill their restaurants or bars during off-peak hours.
They hurt our sense of community by encouraging us to head home after work rather than enjoying a drink with friends or coworkers in a public space.
I'm sure no one is lobbying for this, but it's one of those little ways the state house could get off our backs and make life more enjoyable.
These regulations hurt responsible consumers by restricting price competition in the marketplace, keeping beverage prices artificially high. They hurt small business owners, who can't fill their restaurants or bars during off-peak hours.
They hurt our sense of community by encouraging us to head home after work rather than enjoying a drink with friends or coworkers in a public space.
I'm sure no one is lobbying for this, but it's one of those little ways the state house could get off our backs and make life more enjoyable.
1.26.2006
Rendezvous Redux
Indeed the bourbon cocktail at Rendezvous is terrific, as is the hot toddy.
I didn't sample the menu, but the Boston Globe liked it quite a bit.
I didn't sample the menu, but the Boston Globe liked it quite a bit.
1.19.2006
Rendezvous
Central Square is a lot of fun, and I don't get there nearly as often as I should. This drink at Rendezvous ought to motivate me...
mmm..caramelized orange oils...
(Thanks Hallsey!! Get a blog so I can link to you!)
mmm..caramelized orange oils...
(Thanks Hallsey!! Get a blog so I can link to you!)
1.12.2006
¡Pensamientos al Azar del Tequila!
- Cabo Wabo - Tastes great going down, but what ever Sammy Hagar puts in it messes with your head!
- If you're looking to sample a lot of great tequilas cheap, Fajitas & 'Ritas in downtown Boston is a great place to be. Ask for the tequila list and go to town. Just be prepared to smell like nacho chips for the next three days.
- If you actually want to eat something, the current champion Mexican place in the Cambridge area has to be José's, tucked away on Sherman St. near Mayor Danehy Park. Incredibly hospitable staff, even when the place gets busy. Margaritas are pricey but perfect, and the food is authentically delicious. Try the Burrito en Adobo, or the black bean soup.
- Is it wrong that I want to go to San Diego just to sneak across the border to the Cabo Wabo Cantina? See... they must put something in the stuff...
1.09.2006
Worse than Stale Bread
Is it my imagination, or do the 21 finalists in the Service Employees International Union's SinceSlicedBread.com "new ideas" competition sound quite a bit like the policy wish-list you'd expect from these guys? I mean, did SEIU really need to survey the countryside to discover, "Wow, we think single payer health care, a constantly rising minimum wage and huge government jobs programs are terrific ideas!"
Not to mention that even this layman sees serious economic problems with most of the finalist proposals:
The ultimate organized labor candidate, Dick Gephardt, was flogging many of these ideas in his ill-fated presidential campaign (so ill-fated, the SEIU endorsed Howard Dean!), e.g. he described SSB's "Ownership of Retirement Assets" as "Portable Pensions". It's hard to believe a clever website is enough to turn stale bread big government into gourmet public policy.
The "ordinary people" who devoted far more time than I to this foregone conclusion of a PR stunt seem to agree.
Not to mention that even this layman sees serious economic problems with most of the finalist proposals:
- Making college tuition tax deductible doesn't make college more affordable for the poor. If you hand everyone who wants to send their kids to college $10,000, colleges will just raise tuition by $10,000, and the same people who could afford it before can still afford it, thanks to the tax deduction, and colleges are $10,000 richer per student. Not to mention that the deduction saves more money for the middle-class and rich, who are in higher brackets! Many of the poor pay no income tax at all, so the deduction for them would have no value.
- Pulling the youngest (and on average healthiest) people out of the private health care pool would result in truly skyrocketing costs for everyone else.
- I don't even want to think about what would happen when a government-chartered corporation is in the business of allocating capital, deciding which small businesses should and shouldn't exist.
The ultimate organized labor candidate, Dick Gephardt, was flogging many of these ideas in his ill-fated presidential campaign (so ill-fated, the SEIU endorsed Howard Dean!), e.g. he described SSB's "Ownership of Retirement Assets" as "Portable Pensions". It's hard to believe a clever website is enough to turn stale bread big government into gourmet public policy.
The "ordinary people" who devoted far more time than I to this foregone conclusion of a PR stunt seem to agree.
12.01.2005
Lost and the Cartesian Demon
At last, my promised theory on how to explain much of the strange goings on of Lost without resorting to (too much) mysticism.
The problem: there are too many random coincidences in the memories of the survivors to be explained consistently. How is it that the "numbers" and variations thereof turn up repeatedly in what would otherwise be meaningless minutiae? How is it that horse that Kate saw in a field in the middle of nowhere years ago is now on the island? How to explain the seemingly random encounters and relationships between the survivors months or years before they arrived?
We could assume that these are all coincidences, but that's dramatically unsatisfying and unrealistic. The same is true of assuming that some all-powerful force has manipulated the destinies of the survivors for years: Either it's a mystical or religious force (fate, God) that can never be explained, or we have to assume that the agency behind the island is nearly omniscient and omnipotent (and concerned with what looks like trivia for fans).
Instead, it's far more promising to assume that the "flashbacks" we witness are memories that are not entirely reliable, at least as reflections of what actually happened in the real world outside the island. Suppose the agency behind the island is playing with their recollections in subtle ways (either constantly or between when the crash happened and when they woke up on the beach). This isn't hard to imagine, given what the filmstrip discusses about the connections between the island and experimental psychology. With this manipulation in play, many "coincidences" become much easier to explain. I theorize that there was no horse in the field where Kate crashed, the memory was invented, so producing the same horse (by whom and for whatever purpose) was easy rather than magical. The same is true with all the trivial appearances of the numbers: injecting those false memories makes perfect sense if the goal is to ensure the residents of the island remember them and keep keying them into the computer. One could suppose that Hurley actually won the lottery with a totally different set of numbers, and had a string of bad luck, but now falsely remembers the numbers he used as "the numbers".
I suspect that none of this kind of memory manipulation is unheard of in today's psychology.
I don't know if this theory has been proposed before, since I don't read a lot of the speculation forums, but I think it makes a lot of sense. It's a subtle form of the "Cartesian Demon": the idea that you can't trust your perceptions because you have no way to distinguish between a genuine sensory experience and one created for you by a demon (or a holodeck, or the Matrix ... this idea has gotten a lot of pop culture play in the last decade).
Of course, what the ultimate purpose of all this manipulation is (assuming it's more than getting a bunch of total strangers to sit around typing numbers into a computer every two hours) I can't say, but at least it doesn't require suspending too much disbelief to suppose what's happening on the island could "really" happen.
The problem: there are too many random coincidences in the memories of the survivors to be explained consistently. How is it that the "numbers" and variations thereof turn up repeatedly in what would otherwise be meaningless minutiae? How is it that horse that Kate saw in a field in the middle of nowhere years ago is now on the island? How to explain the seemingly random encounters and relationships between the survivors months or years before they arrived?
We could assume that these are all coincidences, but that's dramatically unsatisfying and unrealistic. The same is true of assuming that some all-powerful force has manipulated the destinies of the survivors for years: Either it's a mystical or religious force (fate, God) that can never be explained, or we have to assume that the agency behind the island is nearly omniscient and omnipotent (and concerned with what looks like trivia for fans).
Instead, it's far more promising to assume that the "flashbacks" we witness are memories that are not entirely reliable, at least as reflections of what actually happened in the real world outside the island. Suppose the agency behind the island is playing with their recollections in subtle ways (either constantly or between when the crash happened and when they woke up on the beach). This isn't hard to imagine, given what the filmstrip discusses about the connections between the island and experimental psychology. With this manipulation in play, many "coincidences" become much easier to explain. I theorize that there was no horse in the field where Kate crashed, the memory was invented, so producing the same horse (by whom and for whatever purpose) was easy rather than magical. The same is true with all the trivial appearances of the numbers: injecting those false memories makes perfect sense if the goal is to ensure the residents of the island remember them and keep keying them into the computer. One could suppose that Hurley actually won the lottery with a totally different set of numbers, and had a string of bad luck, but now falsely remembers the numbers he used as "the numbers".
I suspect that none of this kind of memory manipulation is unheard of in today's psychology.
I don't know if this theory has been proposed before, since I don't read a lot of the speculation forums, but I think it makes a lot of sense. It's a subtle form of the "Cartesian Demon": the idea that you can't trust your perceptions because you have no way to distinguish between a genuine sensory experience and one created for you by a demon (or a holodeck, or the Matrix ... this idea has gotten a lot of pop culture play in the last decade).
Of course, what the ultimate purpose of all this manipulation is (assuming it's more than getting a bunch of total strangers to sit around typing numbers into a computer every two hours) I can't say, but at least it doesn't require suspending too much disbelief to suppose what's happening on the island could "really" happen.
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