We've all seen public bathrooms where the women have a line snaking out into the hall, but we guys can just "whiz" in and out. We have sympathy (but not too much, see the joke)

Here's a good solution that will probably never fly because we're uptight. Two bathrooms: One small one with nothing but urinals for men, and another one with nothing but stalls to be shared among the sexes.

In effect, it would offer most of the building's entire pool of stalls to the women when they need it, instead of the 60% or so they get now.

Why not do this? Well, some women would prefer men not use their stalls, due to certain prejudicial (or justified) opinions they might hold about our collective restroom hygene. And women might also miss the private "just for women" chat and appearance adjustment space at the sink.

These concerns could be fixed one of two ways. Have men's and women's "ends" to the line of stalls, so only when it was full would women find themselves moving into the area we've used. And possibly have two private sink areas, since there is not as much contention there, and they take less space anyway.
I can credit the idea that the sexes want their private space.

Oh yeah, the toilets could have a little pin that pokes out when the flush lever is pulled that tips down the seat if it was left up. Does that make it better? :-)

Or are we just too uptight to do this? I know women who, facing the long line, waltz into the men's room. They obviously won't mind. I don't see men minding. It's sometimes means a longer wait for a stall, but it's fair.

So what about it, ladies? Would you prefer this arrangement?

In my home I now have a "home computer", for a while in the kitchen, now in the living room. Of course I have had computers in my home since the 70s, but this one is different. It's an old cheap laptop I picked up, not powerful at all. What's different is how I use it.

I have connected a Visioneer sheetfed scanner to it. I can drop papers and business cards into it and it scans them. Then I drop them in a box. I have scans of all the receipets and other documents, but if for some reason I need the original I can see by date which ones were nearby and presumably find it quickly enough. A good idea might be to drop a coloured sheet in once a month.

This has inspired me to design a simple device which would be very cheap to build. It's a small sheetfed scanner like this one, which is the size of a 3-hole punch. It's battery powered so it can be stuck anywhere. It has no cables going into it, instead it has a memory card slot, such as compact flash.

When you scan, the data would just be written to the flash card. (Nicely this means the scans are fast.) A button or two on the scanner might set some basic options (like colour or gray, delete and rescan etc.) At most a small LCD panel would be all you get.

When the flash is full, you would take it to the computer, which would do all the real work. Scan and process the data. Convert grayscales to bitmaps at the right level as desired. OCR the text for searching and indexing. Detect orientation, tilt, business cards (by size) etc. all automatically.

And of course then let you view and organize your papers on the computer.

We've dreamed of a paperless office for some time but never gotten there (though we get a little closer all the time.) But can we get to a paperless home, or at least a lower-paper home? I find the paperwork and nitty-gritty of managing a home gets more frustrating with time and hope something can help it.

As noted, my design is extremely cheap. The scanner, a small controller and a flash interface is about all there is too it. Cheaper than the current scanners, which can be had well under $100. The flash card is the expensive part.  read more »

In general, I agree with the recommendations several security experts wrote condemning the new overseas military voting system SERVE, because voters used unsecure Windows PCs to vote.

However, in thinking over the matter, I suggest the following method and open it for criticism. It still has many of the flaws in such systems - no physical audit trail, and like all remote voting systems including mail-in absentee ballot, it allows non-secret ballot and vote buying, though it is not much worse than mail-in in that respect.

Here's the proposal. For each registered voter, generate a paper instruction book. In the book, list the choices they can vote for, and with each choice provide a multi-digit number to enter. Also provide a longer master number for the whole ballot. In addition, after each number, provide a second "ack" number.

Thus you might see a ballot with:

• George Bush: 8741 / 9832
• Al Gore: 9843 / 4382
• Ralph Nader: 0438 / 2833
• ...

The numbers are different on each ballot. The voter enters the master number and then the sub-numbers. The election server, combining the numbers can determine who the vote is for. Only the exact numbers will work (any other will generate an error, and only so many errors will be allowed.) It should not be possible for a program not knowing a secret known only to the master computer to map the numbers to a choice.

When the vote is cast, the master server responds with the ACK number, which again only it knows how to generate. The voter confirms the ACK number is correct. The voter -- if they trust the master voting web server -- can be assured that their vote was registered, as desired with the master voting web server.

There's nothing a man-in-the-middle, including a trojan program that has taken over the PC, can do to circumvent this. They can't change the vote, see who the vote was for, or stop the vote from being recorded without the secrets known only to the master vote computer.

And thus it should work from any unsecure web browser and in fact would work fine from a telephone. As long as the numbers are long enough to avoid any guessing attacks.

Though again, we are completely trusting the master web server and its security.

Vote buying is easy with all mail-in ballots. Just ask the bought voter to give you the ballot to mail (or to fill in) and you can check it first. It's also easy to do here. It is slightly easier because you can provide software to confirm it but it's really not a lot easier.

To the system, voting can still be anonymous, as there is no need to connect a registered voter with a particular ballot card. Let them, once confirmed, pull a random ballot card from the pile, or mail them one. Of course the ballot cards with the magic numbers must remain secure, as must all mail-in ballots.

Anybody find a window into this system?

Ok, so the USA invaded Iraq with fear of WMD the announced reason for the extraordinary step of a pre-emptive war. The White House doesn't plan to apologize or say oops as evidence mounts the reasons were bogus.

Question: Would it be a wise move for the Democrats, for example, to issue their own apology. To say, "We voted for this war because we were told there was a serious threat. Learning there was not, we are deeply saddened, sorry and ashamed. How could we have done this?"

Saying this would ask the other side of the aisle, "Why aren't you ashamed, too?"

However, saying you're sorry or ashamed is, for better or worse, un-american. It's weak, too many feel, to admit remorse for errors. You don't do it unless you're forced into it.

You can still feel removing Saddam was the right thing to do. And you can still blame the bad intelligence you were given. But if I make a grave error, even if I make it in good faith because I trusted the wrong people, I still feel remorse over the error. Can the USA? Can some of its politicians?

Back in 1984 I participated in the World Debating Championships. (My team just missed the quarterfinals, alas.) During the finals, the proposition being debated was "The USA should apologize for the American Revolution." One of the most amusing "pro" arguments was that the USA should indeed apologize, and just not mean it. That this was the true American way.

Perhaps I am too cynical, and after this you're going to think I hate MoveOn, but I'm wondering if the publicity over CBS's refusal to air their anti-Bush ad in the Superbowl isn't the result of very clever strategizing.

CBS claims they don't air controversial ads like election ads during the SuperBowl and never has. As far as I know, that's true. Not that I'm approving of the policy, I think they should take almost any ad that pays the fee.

However, the cyncial part of me wonders, did MoveOn know this all along? Did they try to air the ad during the Superbowl knowing they would get turned down, and that getting turned down would provide immense amounts of publicity for the ad campaign?

Perhaps not, but being turned down has definitely been the best thing that could have happened to the ad, which as I pointed out in an earlier post, was not the best pick from their contest. And even so, I hope CBS relents though I doubt it. (They only relent when airing a show about the Reagans.)

I recently read it costs about $150,000 to put in traffic lights here in California. That's a heavy duty pole, the lights, the power, the connection to other lights and the vehicle sensors. Seems to me modern technology should be able to make that a lot cheaper. New lights are all LED (the energy savings pay for themselves quickly) but that should also mean smaller safer power lines with special digging under the road. (Wonder if they could do it with light pipes and have no electricity up there.)

However, as it turns out, we want electricity up there. It seems there would be a natural marraige between traffic lights and a wireless data network. Years ago I tried to suggest to Metricom that they buy a traffic light control software package and offer free traffic light computerization to any city.

That's because you could then mount your wireless nodes on the lights. You get everything you want -- you are at the major intersections (by definition, almost) and there is power there. A tiny amount of your bandwidth can control the lights from a computer. You're up reasonably high. Metricom used streetlights for their power and altitude.

And while I am loathe to suggest putting cameras at the intersections, ones watching the cars and not the people don't bother me nearly as much and are already there. These could allow human beings to direct traffic at important intersections during rush hour and unusual traffic flow.

A temporary light with wireless camera and control could also do this for special locations that need traffic control on weekends. Police forces can't afford to send an officer out, even though the time saved by the drivers would be huge, and besides it's risky work. However, remote tele-operators could easily do the job and save lots of time and bad traffic.

Today, the U.S. Agriculture secretary issued a call that nations not ban beef imports from a country (like the USA) just because a single cow has been found with Mad Cow disease.

In other words, exactly what the USA did to Canadian beef when a single cow was found in Alberta with the disease.

And let's not get started on the Weapons of Mass Destruction question.

For the second year in a row, I'm having a "Superbowl Commercials" party featuring my Tivo. Since the Tivo lets you watch a program while it's being recorded, you can watch the football at 20x speed and slow down for the commercials, and be finished when the game finishes.

To start and give the Tivo a chance to buffer up some game, we head for the hills in a renunciation of the couch potato for a hike. Then we return for the commercials and party.

Of course these commercials are hugely expensive and thus pretty good, and much more fun to watch with a crowd of cynical friends and perhaps some alcohol.

Have you got a Tivo or similar device? Hold a party of your own. I was asked, tongue-in-cheek, whether skipping the football part was unamerican. What could be more american than watching commercials?

Update: Party was a grand success, big crowd, all had a good time. After 2 years this is already a tradition. Tivo, bless their Orwellian hearts, tracks user clickstreams and reported in their press release that the Janet Jackson nipple was the most replayed event in their history. And yes, the folks at my party also wanted a slo-mo rewind.

Update: A new superbowl commercials party is planned for 2005. This time, it will be in HDTV, using the open source MythTV software. I'll blog a more detailed entry about it after the party.

I often talk about Challenge Response spam filters because I wrote the first one. One complaint people make is that the filters will challenge even forged mail, causing a challenge to be sent to the forgery victim. While this is not a DOS attack window as some people believe (since you can as easily DOS the target directly as get others to do it for you) it does need more consideration.

However, there are some autoresponders who have no excuse in this, and it is them I am railing on today. With the latest worm program, I am getting "bounces" back from anti-viral mail filters which tell me, "The mail you sent contains a virus and was not delivered."

Of course I didn't send the mail, my address was forged. What bothers me is that the anti-virus program clearly knows there is a virus, and presumably then should know it is the sort of virus which puts in a fake address.

So why it feels the need to send an error to the address it knows is fake, I don't know. The bounces I can tolerate, the bouncing software has no way to know it was a virus, but the anti-virus software has no excuse.

Addon: I'm going to promote a note from the comments because naive me didn't think of it. The virus companies may be happy to send this "your virus was bounced" mail to the wrong address because it's an ad for their anti-virus service.

I seem to be thinking a lot about the future of automatic cars these days. Already we're seeing cars in Japan that can park themselves in a tight parallel parking spot, and this leads me to think that the next market for the technology, after the basic automatic highway, won't be the city street but the parking lot.

Parking lots eat a lot of space, and where the land is expensive, automatic cars will offer automatic valet parking. Drive to the mall/office/whatever, enter the automatic lane and be whisked to the door. Get out and your car will run off and park itself efficiently, possibly some distance from the building. (In the future with more fully automatic cars trusted on city streets, it might rent itself out as an autotaxi.)

When ready to leave, use your cell phone to tell the car to come to the nearest door, and it will be waiting there. Obviously that's a great convenience, but the real reason this will happen is it saves a bundle for the building/parking lot, because they can park more cars in the same space, or even park cars offsite. Whatever cost is needed to bury guide-wires or other transponders is easily justified by the efficiency gain, especially in downtown multi-story lots, many of which already justify the cost of humans to do the work.

Later, however, I will reveal the big catch that may keep us from this.

I went around and counted that we seem to have around 30 birick and wall-wart DC power supplies plugged in around the house, and many more that are not plugged in which charge or power various devices. More and more of what we buy is getting to be more efficient and lower power, which is good.

But it's time for standardization in DC power and battery charging. In fact, I would like to move to a world where DC devices don't come with a power supply by default, because you are expected to be able to power them at one of the standard voltage/current settings.

One early experiment is on airplanes. I have an adapter that takes the 12v from the airplane, and has many tips which put out different voltages for different laptops. These are expensive right now, but on the right track.

Our other early venture is USB, which provides up to 500ma at 5 volts. Many small devices now use USB for power if that's all they need. There are devices that plug in to USB only for power, they don't use the data lines. Some come with a small cigarette lighter plug that has a USB socket on it for car use. This includes cellular chargers, lights etc.

I think a good goal would be a standardized data+power bus with a small number of standard plugs. One would be very tiny for small devices and only provide minimal USB-level power, a couple of watts. Another would handle mid-level devices, up to a couple of amps. A third would be large and handle heavy duty devices up to say 20 amps, replacing our wall plugs eventually. There might be a 4th for industrial use.

In full form, the data bus would be used for the components to exchange just what power they want and have. Years ago that would have been ridiculous overkill, today such parts are cheap. However, to make it simple there would be a basic passive system -- perhaps as simple as a finely tuned resistor in place of the data components -- to make it easy and cheap to adapt today's components.

A fully smart component would plug into the smart power and get a small "carrier" voltage designed to run the power electronics only. A protocol would establish what power the supply can provide and what the component wants, and then that power would be provided.  read more »

Another transportion item, because last night the train I was on hit a car stalled on the tracks (the occupant is OK, though was hit by the car when the train bashed it.)

Since trains do hit things, why aren't solutions to this more common in our data network world? A laser detector over the grade crossings would be simple enough.

At dinner, my friend Kurth Reynolds made a suggestion that I have improved. How about a small robot, equipped with camera and other sensors, which travels far enough in front of the train that if it sees a problem on the track, can send a signal back to the train in time to stop it. Trains take a while to stop, which is one of the reasons they can't do anything when they see a car or person ahead on the tracks.

You can't be too far ahead or you enter the "space" of the earlier train on the track, though during any tight conflicts you can of course give up this "foresight" and bear through (or slow down.)

If you have a human driving the train, you can show them video of what's ahead of the robot and give them time for a decision. Some decisions (Robot hits something or derails) would be automatic. Of course the robot might hit the car stalled on the tracks (though it can stop much, much faster than a train) but do far less damage.

The robot would be tall enough to go over the suicides who are "sleeping" on the track, but light enough so a car hit by it would survive.

Simpler for shorter runs like commuter trains would just be cameras along the track beaming to the oncoming trains. The engineer could be seeing a mile ahead at all times. Hey, if x10 can sell 2 broadcasting video cameras for $80 (WARNING: Don't buy from their web site, you will be spammed to death) I bet this can be made affordable.

This is important because some people don't think we should have rail with grade crossings. Without grade crossings, rail becomes vastly more expensive.

Some updates five years later: Some have worried the robot could hit workers or cars. Today, we are more comfortable we can build robots which would use LIDAR and never hit anything that wasn't running onto the track. The robots would also be light and perhaps have airbags to soften the blow against something rushing onto the track. When coming to a grade crossing, the robot would actually stop at the crossing and wait for the guard to come down (for the train, if the path is clear) and continue to monitor the crossing and report if something stops in it. Then it would speed up again and start going down the track to assure it is far enough ahead of the train.

I'll be writing more in the future on ideas for auto-drive cars (both plus and minus) but let me start by asking the question of why the oil companies haven't jumped up to foot the bill for the development of automatic cars and highways?

It seems a big win for them. Given the availability of a car that would drive itself on the freeway and perhaps a few major roads, people would be much more willing to tolerate longer commutes, and that seems a win if you sell gasoline. A multi-billion dollar win.

Not completely -- the automatic cars will be more fuel efficient (simply driving at constant speed is more fuel efficient, but they will also be more likely to be hybrid designs.) But that's coming anyway. Given the ability to read, work or sleep during the commute would easily make people willing to commute for longer. In fact, for those who can easily sleep, they might welcome a longer commute to get the chance to have a decent sleep period. (Though there are those annoying people who are asleep before the plane starts its taxi. I hate them.)

We're also talking about a car where, while in it, you can have a decent speed internet connection and phone. The commute time effectively could become fully effective work time. Or TV watching time, or reading time.

Of course, in theory an automatic car in special lanes would also not get subject to traffic jams, so a longer commute would take the same time, and a longer commute sells more gas -- though admittedly traffic congestion also sells more gas.

But once again, the upside for oil companies is huge, and it's also high for the automakers, and the highway planners. It's mainly not good for public transit, since it takes away one of its advantages. We already know the basics of how to build an automatic car on an automatic highway. One of the big remaining barriers is money, and this could be the source.

I've added some extra notes below...  read more »

Like many, I am interested in reputation systems, and eBay has built the largest public reputation system. Many have noted how feedback on eBay is overwhelmingly positive — a 97% positive rating would be a reason to be wary of a seller.

It’s also noted that people do this because they are scared of revenge feedback — I give you a negative, you do it back to me. One would think that since the buyer’s only real duty is to send the money that the seller should provide positive feedback immediately upon receipt of that money, but they don’t.

Some fixes have been proposed, including:

• letting you see the count of total auctions the party has been buyer or seller in, so you can see how many resulted in no feedback at all. Right now only eBay knows how large that number is.
• double-blind feedback. That is to say that feedback is not revealed until both parties have entered it, or if only one party enters it, after the feedback period has expired.
• Marking revenge feedback, ie. putting a mark next to negatives that were a response to an outgoing negative.

Thus you could have very low fear of revenge feedback and there would be no argument about who should go first.

This idea’s fairly obvious, so like many other obvious ideas about eBay one wonders if eBay doesn’t feel some benefit to themselves from not doing it, though it’s hard to see. I’m also curious as to why eBay doesn’t offer a “going, going, gone” auction where the auction closes only after 5 minutes with no bidding. That seems to be in the interests of sellers (and eBay which gets a cut of the selling price) and it’s certainly not something they are unaware of.

The only proposition I’ve heard is that eBay has decided that there is a positive value to itself (and possibly sellers) from bid-sniping, the process of bidding preemptively in the last minute of an auction to not give other live bidders (who didn’t use the automatic rebidder) a chance to come in with more. The only way this could be good woudl be if Snipers deliberately overbid in order to trump anything. Any research or thoughts on this? It may also be the case that the sniped auctions are more “fun,” or more of a contest. And finally having fixed closing times does facilitate participating in multiple auctions for the same thing.

I have also posted updated eBay thoughts and an even simpler system which eliminates revenge and in fact now have an eBay tag for all eBay related posts, including thoughts on eBay’s solution to all this.

Please Note: This thread is for discussion of philosophical or abstract aspects of the feedback system. Please do not post stories of your own particular problems from a particular seller or transaction. Keep it abstract.

Thinking more about the future of mobile audio (see Tivo for Radio Entry) I start to wonder if XM and Sirius satellite radio are doomed propositions. They seem like a good idea, nationwide radio, 100 channels, many commercial-free.

But how many of the stations does any given listener actually use? I would guess most people only listen to a few of them, just as they only listen to a few on the local dial.

And more to the point, how many need to be live? Very few. Certainly not the classical stations or other music stations. Generally only news, sports and (localized) traffic and weather need to be truly live. Political talk shows should be current though need not be live.

So what this means is that the satellite systems may be way overdone for bandwidth. One might attain all one wants from Satellite Radio with the hard disk based car-audio system, which by 802.11 sucks down all the new content it needs when in the driveway (or when near an authorized 802.11 node.) The live content can come from conventional radio, or the sideband on a TV station or other local transmitter.

(The local radio stations might not be willing to assist so readily in their own demise.)

The selection of Internet Radio blows away even satellite radio. Combined with your own personal music collection it's a no-brainer. The quality is just fine for use in a car. XM an Sirius proudly boast they have 3 classical stations, 3 jazz stations, whatever. Internet radio has hundreds of each type of station, as well as custom stations.

One could build an equivalent satellite network buying just a few hundred kilobits of bandwidth (for all the live talk, sports and news stations, which can use higher compression codecs as they are just talk) from satellites if you need the coast to coast coverage on the live data, or piggyback on other platforms if you just need the major areas.

You could also cut deals with 802.11 hotspot owners to let cars driving by quickly pick up more live news and talk. You laugh, but if you are in range of 5 megabits for 10 seconds, that's enough for 40 minutes of 20kbit talk radio.

XM and Sirius need to pay for a hugely expensive satellite infrastructure. Did they overbuild?

I plan for this to be mostly an essay blog rather than a link blog, but I could not resist this story of yet another nightmare at airport security, as a student is ordered to "dispose" of her pet fish while trying to take it home with her on the plane.

So now the essay. Like many of you, I have read tons of these crazy security stories. Stories of cruelty, stories of pointless security that simply gives the appearance of security without making things safer. Innocent people harassed. Pilots arrested over nailclippers. People groped. People kept off planes for reading the wrong book.

Now, you might be firmly of the mind that we must increase security and make some sacrifices. But if that's the case, there need to be checks and balances on the security decisions.

Right now, when people go overboard on security, there is no negative consequence for them when they get it wrong. They have no reason not to go overboard. We're too afraid that if we discipline them at all, they might let something slide and let Al Qaida on the plane.

But it can't work that way. There needs to be a consequence for going over the top. People should be able to lose jobs, get fined or disciplined. Security workers need to think twice about whether they should do something.

This should particularly be true if it's obvious that what they are doing gives only the appearance of security rather than real security, unless we decide it is our policy that the appearance of security is more important.

(And while I see the argument some might make for that -- that the public has to feel confident that they are safe in transit or they won't travel -- I don't buy it long term at all.)

The men who made the fish policy, or the men who enforced it, should be called to account. If they have a reason for it, they should have it ready for the passenger. If they don't, somebody should be disciplined.

No, I'm not saying don't give them any discretion or let them make any mistakes. But the mistakes should be noted, explained, and if repeated, punished.

We're not there yet, but let me write my notes about what future digital cameras might do to help us organize our huge collections of photos:  read more »

• GPS and compass in the camera knows where it is, and where it was pointing. Thus, if standing on the south rim of Grand Canyon and pointing north, probably a picture of the Grand Canyon. Organize your photos on a map.
• Record audio said while taking photo if special button pressed. Later, upload audio to PC where it's able to do speaker-dependent speech to text at its leisure to caption the photos.
• Face recognition. No, I'm not kidding. While this is Big Brother technology, and not very useful in airports, one thing it can do is try to find similar faces. So once you tag your mother, it will be able to search your photo collection for other shots with your mother. This is much easier than trying to take a random person and see if they are on the FBI wanted list.
  

The USA and Canada have agreed to tell each other before deporting citizens to third countries.

In theory, that's to not repeat the horrific story of Maher Arar, the Canadian programmer, born in Syria, who, while changing planes in New York on a flight from Europe to Montreal, was grabbed by U.S. agents, grilled and then deported to Syria, allegedly so the Syrians could torture him in ways the U.S. could not.

Arar wasn't even trying to get into the USA. He had been investigated on some fairly weak connections and cleared, but his name got on the lists. The Syrians tortured him for suspicion of membership in a Muslim organization opposed (like the USA is opposed) to the Syrian regime while he was a teenager in Syria.

Instead of being deported to Canada, his nation of citizenship, he went to Syria.

This is a particularly nasty story which you should know about if you are a U.S. citizen. Arar was cleared, but the hard truth is the USA shouldn't be setting even the guilty up for torture, let alone the innocent.

Recently, we picked up a Rio Karma, which is a 20gb handheld jukebox that plays MP3, WMA and Ogg Vorbis. Particularly nice things about it include the Ogg support and the fact it has Ethernet, so that any machine on our net can transfer music into it. That's about all it does with the ethernet (it also has a small web server to serve the manual and a java transfer app) but I expect it will do more later, like be a streaming media gateway when docked on the stereo, allowing control from anywhere.

We've also used it a lot in the car, where we get to use it a bit like a Tivo for Radio. The Tivo is the hard disk video recorder I have for TV, and is the only way I watch TV now. Every Tivo owner has probably wished they could pause their radio as well.

To start, I download radio shows with some simple linux scripts. Some programs like NPR's "On the Media" and the CBC's Quirks and Quarks let you download shows directly. Kudos and Huzzah to them.

For other shows, you must capture streams and listen later, which is legal. For example, each morning I capture a 32kbit MP3 stream of 2 hours of "Morning Edition." It syncs to the player, and can then be played during the commute. The newscasts are 2 hours old but you can fast-forward, pause and rewind, which is great.  read more »

For some time I have been musing over the design of an ideal home A/V system using digital technology. Sadly it's not coming, in part because it's illegal under the new Broadcast Flag rules.

To read my design of this system, and the musings of the legality of it and why that presents a problem, see a draft on an Ideal A/V digital system