Why Rep. Speier's proposal to cut the speed limit is a bad idea

Accordig to the Mercury News, Rep. Jackie Spier is proposing to impose a national 60MPH speed limit. Here's why it's a bad idea and why there are better alternatives:

Let's do some calculations based on some of the news reports we've heard about Rep. Speier's reducing the national speed limit to 60.

Say a typical commute is 30 miles, gas is $4.50 a gallon, and a typical car gets 20MPG at 80MPH. Using Rep. Speier's numbers, slowing down to 60 would increase the mileage on that car to 25MPG.

MPG	Gallons	$ Cost	$ Savings	Speed	Time Taken	Time Savings
20MPG	1.5	$6.75	0	80MPH	22.5 min	7.5 min
25MPG	1.2	$5.40	$1.35	60MPH	30 min	0

As you can see, driving at 80MPH, it costs $1.35 to save 7.5 minutes. This works out to being paid $10.80 an hour to slow down.

So, it's really only worth it to slow down for those folks making less than about $21,600 per year.

Calculations of this sort were the reason that I supported the move to eliminate the 55MPH national speed limit back when the republicans took over congress in the 90s.

Personally, I'm saving both gas and time having recently moved so that my wife and I are both closer to our jobs, friends, etc. It would be great to see Congress encouraging people to make that sort of change as part of the solution. I really believe that this is the way we're going to have to solve this long-term (i.e. over the next hundred years): we need to adopt a more european model of significantly higher population density, shifted closer to cities that are walkable and bikeable.

Sensible Amendments?

I was just reading the post about a potential privacy amendment here, particularly the comment from "ArthurKC," where suggests that there should be an amendment to the US constitution that reads:

no person who serves in an office of public trust or authority it the United States, or in any individual State, shall recieve any monetary donations, or any other gifts from any source whatsoever, except wherein the public official must conduct a campaign for election to office

in cases where a candidate for office collects donations for a campaign, no person shall donate money or any other gift unless the person donating money is legally entitled to vote in the election in question

In no case may a political candidate recieve gifts or donations from any entity except bonified citizens of The United States who are able to vote

I think that's a good start to getting the money out of politics, but it has a few loopholes which the programmer in me wants to try to fix. The most glaring of these is that it still allows for the equivalent of 527 organizations. Here's my take to try to fix that:

No person who serves in an office of public trust or authority it the United States, or in any individual State, shall recieve any monetary donations, or any other gifts from any source whatsoever, except wherein the public official must conduct a campaign for election to office.

No person shall expend tangible resources with the intent of influencing the outcome of an election unless that person is legally entitled to vote in the election in question.

No entity shall expend tangible resources greater than those received from persons eligible to vote in a particular election with the intent of influencing the outcome of that election.

In no case may a political candidate or organization recieve gifts or donations from any entity except citizens of The United States who are entitled to vote.

There's also an interesting article on Things That Are Not In the U.S. Constitution. Some of those are definitely interesting food for thought.

Personally, I think that the proposed Privacy and Campaign Finance amendments might not be entirely bad ideas. They, and the impact they might have, are certainly interesting to think about.

Why don't Mac OS X users use Anti-Virus Products?

Recently, I've noticed a fairly prevalent attitude among people using Mac OS X that anti-virus products are no longer necessary. Frankly, this attitude scares me for the following reasons:

1) While there are not (yet) many Mac OS X-specific viruses/exploits out there, Mac OS X users can still be affected by application-specific exploits like Word Macro viruses.

2) Even though Mac OS X machines will not be affected by them, they can still act as "carriers" for Windows viruses. For example, if you receive an infected attachment to an email and forward it along, the infection will still be viable.

3) While there are many things that Mac OS X does "right" in terms of security, no operating system is completely immune to viruses, Trojan Horses, and other similar exploits. Just because there are no large exploits for Mac OS X today, doesn't mean that there won't be one tomorrow.

With many people lacking virus protection, when (not if) someone writes one for Mac OS X, it will be a very large problem and will cause all kinds of grief, lost data, lost time, bad press, etc. Just keeping our heads in the sand won't protect us. Some people may argue that the Mac's small market share makes it unappealing to virus writers, but (1) the market share appears to be growing (e.g. Merrill Lynch's recent report summarized at http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/05/02/merrill.lynch.apple/) and (2) it only takes one malicious virus/Trojan Horse/exploit to wreak havoc.

The best defense against this is to keep your software (OS, anti-virus, and firewall, in particular) up-to-date. For more information, MacWorld recently published a good overview of security on the Mac--see http://www.macworld.com/2005/02/features/macsecurityhome/index.php.

(5/12/05) Lary Seltzer just wrote a great eWeek column on this same topic. It and the reader comments that follow it are well worth reading.

Electronic Blue Books

Last September, I finished a MSc in HCI, and one of the things I found toughest was hand-writing my responses to the final exam questions. It's not so much that I had trouble writing (though I did end up with a near-crippling case of writers cramp), but that I've gotten so used to composing on the computer. I've become totally addicted to the fact that I no longer have to compose in order and that I can rearrange things at will. Because of this, writing all in one long stream in a blue book was tough for me, and slowed me down. That's why I was so interested to find out about a product called "Electronic Blue Book" from CompuTest, which allows students to use their own laptops to take a test by locking out all other apps and internet access, then securely transmitting their answers to a server. Now, if we could only convince universities to actually USE this product! Check it out at http://electronicbluebook.com/.

Fun with iPhoto (rant)

I've been using Apple's iPhoto for a while now to manage my digital photos. In general, it does this quite well, and recent versions have greatly improved a lot of things (like the incredible slowness that used to occur once you got over 1000 files in your library.)

<rant>
I just recently, however, had my first experience with printing a book with iPhoto, and it's clear that it leaves something to be desired My wife and I used it to assemble our wedding album (our one-month anniversary is tomorrow), and there were a bunch of things about it that left us scratching our heads or grumbling in frustration. A few of the better ones:

1) If you have a picture that's not of high-enough resolution, you get a small, yellow warning triangle (with a "!" in it) in the upper right hand corner of the picture. This is generally good, as it's a commonly-used universal symbol for a warning (and has the added benefit of not requiring translations in foreign-language versions of the product). The only problem with it is that there's no easy way for a first-time user (like me) to find out WHY the warning is happening. It does turn out that there's an explanation in the online help, but it would be much better to have the same explanation also appear as a tool tip when you hover over the triangle.

2)The same warning triangle (above) is used to indicate when text might go beyond the edges of a text box in the layout. This has two flaws--first, it's a use of the same icon to warn about two completely different things (again with no easy way to find out what). Second, it gives you the same warning about empty text boxes, if the font size for that text box is set too large (even though there's nothing there)! Again a tool tip or a warning message below the display of the page would go a long way to fixing this. Apple also has some remarkably good icon designers--couldn't they come up with more informative icons than just the universal warning sign?

3) There's no explicit way to save/export your work on a book. According to the help, "Saving changes
iPhoto automatically saves changes to a photo, album, slide show, or book as you work, so there's no Save command." First, things get really annoying when this doesn't work (as it doesn't seem to be on my computer right now--and I have no idea why). I think it's because some file somewhere is corrupted (I had to force-quit iPhoto once while I was working on the book), but because of this auto-save feature I have no idea where this data is. If I did, I might be able to fix it, because of Apple's sensible decision to store most stuff in XML files. Sigh. Second, it gives me no way to back up an earlier version of the book or to transfer it to another computer to work on it elsewhere (like on my laptop as I ride BART to work). A simple Save/Save As mechanism for iPhoto (like what already exists in iMovie, for example) would be the perfect solution to all this.

4) The first time we tried ordering the book, we thought everything was set--we submitted our order, got a confirmation email, and figured that the books would be on their way soon. It was only when I went to check our order 3 days later that I found out that it had been mysteriously "Cancelled" with no explanation. I knew we hadn't violated anything about copyrighted or professional images (it's a book of snapshots that my mother took at the wedding), so I was mystified why it would have been cancelled. After reading several support pages, I found nothing that would talk about reasons why this would happen, so I sent them an email to ask. (Aside: For customers that are spending literally hundreds of dollars on iPhoto books, you'd think that there'd be a phone number to call and ask this sort of thing, but there isn't. Sigh.) It turns out that the upload of our book did not work properly (even though the software said it did). Quite aside from the obvious rant about implementing communications protocols so that they are reliable, why couldn't the web page have told me "Data file not received completely, please re-submit?" In addition, after doing some searching, I discovered that iPhoto actually creates a PDF of the book and uploads that to Apple for printing. Why can't that PDF be linked from the order status page so that I can check that everything went through correctly? After all, they do give you 90 minutes after an order to cancel it, which is more than enough time to log in and look at the PDF as they have it to make sure it is correct.
</rant>

So anyway, the book is finally ordered, and is "printing" according to the order status page. Because of #3 above, I have to leave iPhoto running to preserve the layout of the book until I get confirmation that it has shipped. I'm hopeful that that will happen soon and we'll get a very nice book to remember our wedding day. (After all this trouble, it had better be! )

In summary, I think Apple has set themselves a laudable goal in making photo management, printing, and publishing very simple and easy to use in iPhoto, and they have gotten a good deal of the way there, however, there are a few instances where it's over-simplified, making it harder rather than easier to use. (In HCI terms, there are places where the user does not have enough information to form an accurate mental model of the operation of the program.)

CHI '05: Portland's public transportation system

I recently returned from CHI '05 in Portland, OR (more about the conference later), but wanted to comment a bit about the public transportation system in Portland. While it is far better than most, as with systems of any kind, there are a number of good and bad things about this one:

GOOD: The "free square" in the center of town and out to the convention center is a brilliant idea--it makes it so much easier for those of us in town on a visit.

GOOD: The people in the tourist information office at Pioneer Square are REALLY wonderful and helpful with any questions about visiting the place.

GOOD: The MAX system seems to work very well (clean, reasonably frequent, etc.)

GOOD: It's really easy to catch public transit into town from the Airport (I wish this was true in more cities)

NOT-SO-GOOD: It's essentially impossible to read the route maps posted in the MAX cars while you are sitting down. Portland would do well to take a page out of London's book on this one--in the London Underground, there is a system map posted (showing all the lines), as well as a larger strip that lays all of the stops on the line you are on out in a single row so you can figure out how many more stops it is till you have to get off. (This would be particularly useful coming in from the airport with luggage to wrestle to the door.)

NOT-SO-GOOD: As with many bus systems, there's a real lack of information at the stops for Portland's busses. My wife and I only made it to the Japanese garden on our second attempt, as there was no indication on the stop for the bus leading up there that it only comes once an hour. Again, London does this well, with schedules/frequencies that each route will arrive at a given stop. (Aside: It's worth figuring out the bus schedule to get up to the Japanese gardens--absolutely gorgeous!)

NOT-SO-GOOD: The stops on the MAX are awfully close together (there are 3 stops on the same line within maybe 300 yards outside the convention center), which means that it takes a bit longer to get places than it might. In some places I could come close to keeping up with it while walking. Eliminating a few of the stops would speed things up a good bit (as well as giving everyone a bit more exercise, which is never a bad thing.)

I didn't get a chance to see the results of the pre-conference tutorial on fieldwork/ethnography (where they went out and interviewed users of the system), but I'd be interested to see if the people doing this tutorial came up with any of these same issues (after all, the above is just one user's opinion and therefore isn't a good sample.

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