The new voice stress lie detectors ("Voice Risk Analysis," or VRA) don't actually seem to do any better than chance in detecting lies -- but they do deter folks who are afraid of them (i.e., who don't know the above) from trying to fool them, which, for the moment, more than pays for their acquisition and use. 

Nevertheless, when American law-enforcement agencies ask Dr Sommers if they should invest in VRA, he tells them he will build them a device “that lights up and has all kinds of bells and whistles”, for half the price. He is not saying that any agency has actually sunk that low, but it raises a tricky moral question: is it all right to detect a liar with a lie?

Filed under :: Hi-Tech :: Homeland Security
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So, I got a visit by a nice young college student type from Comcast. Since I get at least one mailer a month from them saying, "Hey, you already have our digital cable and our high-speed Internet service, wouldn't you like to save money by getting our digital voice service as well?" I already had my stock answer.

We get cable and broadband outages way too often. If I can go a six months or a year without them, then I'll consider digital voice service. Meantime, I like having a dial tone whenever I pick up the phone. 

Which, if I do, I will. I mean, I'm no great fan of Comcast, but it's not like I'm profoundly loyal to Qwest, either ...

Filed under :: Hi-Tech :: My Computer
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Imagine if you bought a CD and, a few months or years later, some guy came to the door and said, "Sorry, if you ever move from this house, or buy new stereo equipment, you won't be able to play that CD any more. Too bad."

Or, perhaps, you simply downloaded music from MSN's Music Store.

Customers who have purchased music from Microsoft's now-defunct MSN Music store are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to which computers (and OS) they want to authorize forever, or give up access to the music they paid for. Why? Because Microsoft has decided that it's done supporting the service and will be turning off the MSN Music license servers by the end of this summer.

MSN Entertainment and Video Services general manager Rob Bennett sent out an e-mail this afternoon to customers, advising them to make any and all authorizations or deauthorizations before August 31. "As of August 31, 2008, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers," reads the e-mail seen by Ars. "You will need to obtain a license key for each of your songs downloaded from MSN Music on any new computer, and you must do so before August 31, 2008. If you attempt to transfer your songs to additional computers after August 31, 2008, those songs will not successfully play."

This doesn't just apply to the five different computers that PlaysForSure allows users to authorize, it also applies to operating systems on the same machine (users need to reauthorize a machine after they upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista, for example). Once September rolls around, users are committed to whatever five machines they may have authorized—along with whatever OS they are running. 

This is why DRMed (Digital Rights Management) music sucks. Because you don't really own it if it only works as long as the music servers are maintained online.

It's as if they actually want us to buy (and rip) CDs instead ...

Filed under :: Hi-Tech :: Media Moguls
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Tech support calls you don't want to get from your parents ...

11. Your father was looking at porn again and spilled 'something' on the keyboard.

10. I want you to build me a new computer, but I still want to stick with Windows ME because I'm familiar with it.

9. My cronjob doesn't work but when I grep the error logs nothing's there. Do you think it has something to do with the kernel recompile I did last night?

8. The hard drive was squeaking, so I found this site that said you could grease the hard drive bearings, and now it doesn't work.

7. How long does it usually take for nigerian millionaires to send the money after you send them your bank account information?

6. My hairdresser told me it's something to do with hardbox memory.

5. Your brother tried to fix it and...

4. It seems to rattle a lot when I shake it really hard.

3. The keys don't type the proper letters anymore.

2. Your dad set the crackpipe on the keyboard and a few of the keys melted together. Do you think you could pick us up another one?

1. I clicked on the attachment and everything started acting funny.

No, really. My parents are much better than that. Really. Love you guys!

Filed under :: Family :: Hi-Tech
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The F-117 Nighthawk never won any beauty contests, but the "stealth fighter" broke a lot of technological ground. It's being retired as of today, replaced with more recent jet programs.

According to the Wikipedia page, the plane was also known as the "Wobblin' Goblin" (because of low-speed handling problems in early models) and the "Cockroach" (because it only came out at night and hid from the sun -- and Soviet satellites -- during development).

Filed under :: Hi-Tech
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I agree with the article -- I'd have a lot of interest in a camera that had a built-in GPS, and so could flag (in EXIF data) the location of the snapshot. Sure, that would have some interesting Law & Order type moments ("You claim that's a picture of your wife's breast? Then why was it taken at the Motel 6 in Scranton, where you were checked in as Mr and Mrs Whoopie?"), but it would be nice to be able to look at, um, non-incriminating photos and determine, "Hey, yeah, that was at the Met, now I remember that." 

Or, better yet, have a photo library program automatically offer to tag the photos as being at a given locale (city, state, park, museum, etc.) based on the coordinates.

GPS stuff is one of those technologies that's going to revolutionize a lot of things.

Filed under :: Hi-Tech
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So I think I ended up volunteering for something new down at the church -- which is probably the last thing I need to be doing, given the "busy" and all that. But it should be relatively quick, not too fraught with politics, and a fun bit of community-building: creating a Cafepress page for the parish.

Of course, I'm sure there will be as-yet-unresolved conflicts between the "new logo" people and the "old logo" people. The old logo was a stylized sheep next to running waters. The new logo shows our church steeple in front of the mountains (which is a particularly nice view we get of it driving down Dry Creek). The new logo came about with our new web page, stationary, etc., and has much to advise it as a logo and all that good thing. That said, the old logo has a lot of nostalgia with it, and many of the old-timers seem to prefer it.

Nobody's actually brought the two groups into conflict as yet -- but I'm sure if we end up with a just-new-logo web page, someone will raise the question. And if we do two connected stores, then there will be those who wonder why we're watering down the "brand" with both, and whether it promotes divisions within the congregation ...

When given the opportunity to argue about stuff, Episcopalians seem to be great leaders.

Hmmmm ...

On the other hand, doing a Cafepress thang would be fun (contention over logos aside), and, once set up, minimum effort to keep up. Just the sort of volunteering I like to do! And, honestly, if we can get over the (probably hyperbolized) conflicty bits, I think people will really like it. And we can make a small amount of money to be used for good things, too.

Filed under :: Hi-Tech :: Religion - My Parish
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Actually, I can see my house from the "Street View" here, on Google Maps, once I enter in my home address. Not an overhead shot, but an actual from-the-street view, just like someone drove past and took a picture (which they did). 

I can also see my folks' house (hi, Mom!). And Jim & Ginger's house (looks like it was a KOA weekend when Google did the drive-by).

Not quite as creepy as this ... yet ... but still ...

I need to remember this next time I'm going over to someone's house I've not been to. One thing to know the address, another thing to know what the house looks like. Though the precision of the address functionality seems to be limited -- my folks' addy is off by a house, and we're down the street a bit from our picture, too.

I've heard about this functionality, of course -- and of amusing anecdotes about people being "caught" in the pictures who didn't want it known they were ever at a particular location. But to see it for personal examples is a bit ... interesting.

Filed under :: Hi-Tech
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It seems everything is available these days powered by USB -- the little rectangular connection ports on your PC. Not only a communications channel to your printer and other peripherals, the USB port can provide power -- thus we have USB powered hard drives, USB-powered fans, and, now, USB-powered ... pregnancy tests.

No info on whether you can speed up the pregnancy if the port is USB 2.0 compliant.

Filed under :: Hi-Tech
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Interesting article here on Waste Management suing SAP based on promises broken. Which is leading some to think that "IT Malpractice" suits are just around the corner.

Which, honestly, might not be that bad a thing, despite the gloom and doom:

Even when the project fully meets the specs, it rarely meets the user’s needs, since it is so hard to write a perfect project specification and requirements document. In other words, even the most perfect project could be wide open to these kinds of lawsuits.

Even worse, “programming malpractice” suits could drive out what little innovation is left in IT. Programmers will not be willing to write new software unless their company has the deep pockets and slick lawyers to protect them. Open source projects will collapse, since the lack of incorporation will make the individual contributors legally responsible.

Perhaps it's because of the industry I work in, but I really don't see the big deal. The model is not like doctors (suing the snot out of individual practitioners), but engineering companies. You perform to the agreed-upon requirements and specifications, you get paid. You don't, you either negotiate to settle or you go to court. The individual practitioner (engineer) isn't usually party to such suits, because the agreement is with the company involved.

It all boils down to specifications and change management. If either side in a relationship doesn't do that well, you're in trouble, whether it's a kitchen contractor or a CRM consultancy. I well believe that the requirements and specs agreed upon may not make the customer happy. That doesn't mean you can't write solid specs -- it just means the customer doesn't always know what s/he wants. That's not (and isn't being proposed here) actionable.   Saying that writing good specs is impossible, though, is just laziness.

Actually, using the term "malpractice" is misleading -- this is basic contract law we're talking here, or should be. Developers are more like a service provider than an "expert" artisan/scientist like a doctor or lawyer. We're not being hired for our expert opinion or our one-man performance, but to provide something specified by the client and certified by us to meet those specs.  It may be hard for folks to hear this, but we're carpenters and masons with bits and bites. The guy who builds your house doesn't get sued for malpractice -- he gets sued for breach of contract.

And, honestly, given the costs and potential impact on lives of major development projects (and the dismal failure of so many of them), I think a bit of "Jeez, we really do have to do what we promise, so we should only promise what we can do" might make the world a better place in IT. If we can be considered as reliable (and responsible) as engineering firms, that's a good thing.

There's really two types of IT things being talked about here:

1. Off the shelf software - This should be held to the same standards as anything else you buy off the shelf, from a car to an apple pie to a How To book. This isn't (shouldn't be) new law. The only "innovation" I see vanishing is among software publisher advertisers. Regardless, that's not what's being addressed in this suit, or in the idea of "malpractice."

2. Implementation projects - SAP offers to come in and install their software and implement it for our company and make our life So Happy. Why is that different from what any other contractor would be offering us? If they were building us a new building, or selling us a fleet of cars, or anything else, we'd reserve the right to get them to fix stuff that was broken, and sue them if they didn't live up to their obligation. Why should it be that an IT project is somehow magically exempt from the same considerations? Write good contracts with appropriate caveats and recourses and you should be golden.

The doom-saying about Open Source is also wrong. It's perfectly acceptable to write a contractual disclaimer offering the software "as-is" and that downloading it means you accept you have no resource if it blows up. That's pretty much what's already done, and if you bet the company on something like that, it's your lookout. 

What about small, one-man independent programmers? Again, it's all a matter of contracts. Granted, an individual "malpractice" suit could be very expensive to fend off, even if contractually protected, but that's true for any sort of individual contractor. 

In a way, this is all the IT business "growing up" -- seeing the services and products provided as not inherently different from any other services and products. "Free" gets you what it gets you. Small providers carry risks (and advantage). Big companies have to live up to what they promise.

It's not the end of the IT world as we know it -- it's actually the beginning of its maturity. That's a good thing.

Filed under :: Hi-Tech :: Job Jollies :: Politics & Law
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