INTERNET-ON-A-DISK #62, November 2004

The newsletter of electronic texts and Internet trends.

edited by Richard Seltzer seltzer@samizdat.com, www.samizdat.com

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Table of Contents

Off-the-Wall Ideas by Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com

Web Notes by Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com


Off-the-Wall Ideas by Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com

Second life idea for AOL -- become a gated community, at least for email

I just heard the AOL is planning layoffs because you're losing members to higher-speed services and lower-cost dialup providers.At the same time I've been inundated with AOL ads.

It occurred to me that the ad messages are off-target.

You have an enormous advantage that you haven't tapped yet.

Today Internet users are frustrated and fed up with spam and email-based viruses.

AOL could offer an alternative -- a separate email protocol for the use of AOL members only. Members could exchange email with one another, with minimum risk of spam and viruses. (Any instances of misbehavior could be tracked down and eradicated.)

If members wanted to correspond with Internet users outside of AOL, they could do so as they do now. But millions of members might choose to restrict their email activity to other members, and encourage individuals and companies that want to reach them by email to use AOL.

In other wise, in an environment that users now perceive as dangerous and polluted, AOL could provided the email equivalent of a gated community.

Arafat's funeral and burial -- an opportunity for peace

I heard on the news today that Yassar Arafat was being kept alive artificially while family and politicians negotiated regarding where he will be buried. Apparently, they would like to bury him in Jerusalem, but Israel (Sharon) refuses. I can understand that if Arafat were buried in Jerusalem, his grave site could become a flash point for future protests and violence. But this occasion seems like an opportunity to open the door toward peace. Regardless of where he is buried, Sharon and other high-ranking Israeli officials should be gracious and statemanlike, expressing their condolences and respectfully attending the funeral. If you can't make peace with a dead man, who can you make peace with?

Interestingly, Sharon may be the best hope for peace in Israel. When a hardliner negotiates, both sides know where they stand, and the nation is more likely to back the result than if a dove does so. Nixon and China. De Klerk and South Africa. Treating Arafat and his followers with respect at this time of mourning would be an important first step.

Need for new kinds of baseball statistics

The traditional baseball statistics (won-and-lost record and saves for pitchers; batting average and runs-batted-in for hitters; and errors for fielding; and stolen bases for runners) are very subject to random factors and hence can be very misleading. They made sense in the days before videotape and computers, when scoring judgements had to be made live. But now it should be possible to analyze tapes after the fact and to be far more precise about the quality of  players' performance, not for the record books, but rather making possible more accurate assessments of players' worth for assembling winning teams and fair payment for services. Such information would help in assembling the best possible team for the least cost. It also could help managers make good tactical decisions, striving to make every at-bat count, every pitch count, every play count for as much as possible.

For hitting, we need to be able to record:

For fielding: For pitching: For running: Individual teams probably keep such stats for their own private use. It would make sense to share such data and make it public.Perhaps the players' union might want to fund such a project as a way of enhancing the value of their members and helping them in contract negotiations.

Washington Monument as site for deep-underground bunker for president and Congress

On a recent tourist visit to Washington, DC, I was surprised to see that an area of about a quarter mile square around the Washington Monument is blocked off from the public, purportedly for construction. Security in the area is extremely high, the blocked off territory is far greater than the area in which any construction-like activity is happening.

I couldn't imagine what they were trying to do until I realized the strategic location,

Draw a line from the White House to the Washington Monument (about three blocks) and from the Capitol building to the Washington Monument (maybe five or six blocks), and the lines form a right angle.  This would be a natural place to locate a deep bunker for protection of high-ranking government officials in case of terrorist attack.

Forty years ago, when I visited DC as a student, back before terrorist threats and high security, tourists were able to go down under the Capitol building and ride the special subways designed to shuttle Congressmen among the various nearby governmetn buildings. All of Capitol Hill was riddled with a maze of subway lines.  Now, it occurred to me that such private (and now highly secure) subway lines might run under the streets from the Capitol Building to the Washington Monument and from the White House to the Washington Monument, moving important people to secure quarters very quickly and without alerting the public. With just a couple minutes of warning, important people could be rushed to safety, deep under ground.

If that isn't what they are working on now at the Washington Monument, that's something they certainly should do.

Service exchange as a way to finance long-term care

We had some dinner guests last night, one of whom is a Chinese lawyer. He immigrated to the US about 6 years ago. In China he studied law as an undergradate. In the US he went to law school and passed the Mass. bar. I wound up brainstorming with him about a number of ideas.

He indicated that the concept of the extended family is pretty much dead in China today, because for so long each couple could only have one child.  I reminded him that in the US families that had immigrated from China seem to have maintained some semblance of the old family ties, that insurance-like family associations are legendary (though I know no details about them).

I got to speculating about business opportunities. It struck me that a family-based insurance association might be a good approach to Long-Term Care Insurance, since there would be some level of personal tie between the insured and the group of insurers -- not just an exchange of money. I wondered if some combination of Chinese tradition and modern insurance know-how might lead to creative solutions.

I was thinking in terms of associations that at their core were based on extended families, but that could be expanded, becoming "virtual families" with the consent of the membership, and following some logical set of rules.

Then I speculated about the possibility of making such an offering in China itself -- a cross-fertilization of ideas, with the descendants of those who had left China before Communism injecting a bit of the old traditions, helping to establish "virtual family" associations there, perhaps geography-based in addition to some family element.

Then in the middle of the night, I woke up with another idea, that heads in a very different direction -- service in/service out.

Might it be possible to establish a mutual insurance group which deals in services as well as cash -- particularly designed for the unique needs of Long-Term Care.

Imagine that within such an associationn, members could volunteer to provide services that are needed by other members, and get credit for their good works, that could be cashed in for services when they need them at some later date.

With the right computer-based, Internet-based accounting system, it should be possible to evaluate and keep track of such service credits. So, you as a member, at any given time have a balance of X dollars and Y service credits.

Then a core family (or a "virtual family") could declare itself as a unit, and pool its credits, and make those credits available to a family member, when that person needs these kinds of services, for instance for assisted living.

So you end up institutionalizing people helping people, and thereby keep down the cost of care for all.

Group LTC plans/associations with a service credit option could be tied to government service programs. In other words, if someone were to volunteer under a Peace Corps or other government-backed volunteer program, the government could pay cash the association for that work in cash and/or service credits (rate?) with it being credited to the account of that individual and/or core group.

Perhaps even service in the military could earn cash and/or service credits for the individual and/or core group.

Perhaps the system could be extended so non-profits could make such awards for work done on their behalf.

Take it a step further, and manage a national or even international service pool. Non-profits needing volunteer work sign up, (including, first and of course,)  non-profits involved in delivering services to  the elderly. And the individuals performing that work receive cash/service credits deposited to their LTC plan.

Individuals could thus save their through lifetime, at little or no financial cost, and thereby pay for much if not all of the LTC they will need, if they live long lives. And members of a core or even an extended family could make sure that their loved ones will be well taken care of.

And should an individual die with a balance remaining in his/her account, that balance remains available for the benefit of that person's core designated group.

Perhaps even make it possible for someone to designate such an account as a beneficiary for life insurance and in a will.

Of course, this is pie-in-the-sky. And of course I don't know what I'm talking about.

But if it were possible, it would create a fabric of motivation leading to 1) affordable LTC, 2) stronger family ties, 3) far more volunteer efforts, people helping people.

Selling groceries by weight

When doing the weekly food shopping I find that I can estimate the cost of the groceries within about 15% simply by how full the cart is. And I remembered in England 40 years ago, back in the days of pence and shillings, banks counted coins quickly and easily by weighing them.

So it occurred to me that it might be possible to charge for groceries by the weight, rather than by scanning the bar codes of each individual item. That would greatly reduce the time and cost of check out (all the computerized cash registers and all the check-out personnel).

To make that work, you couldn't offer for sale particularly expensive varieties of merchandise. Perhaps whole classes of food might not work well this way (such as meats). But I suspect that you could set up so that for sales of $100 or more, you just rolled your shopping cart onto a scale and paid by weight.

Likely scenario for the development of outspace -- private companies run space stations and cities on the moon

Consider Las Vegas. Translate that to outer space, with even less legal restraint on entertainment-related activities. Then there would be enormous financial incentive for the development of space stations and of cities on the moon.

Such out-space settlements could specialize in particular types of entertainment -- sex, gambling, drugs. Some might even be euthanasia-oriented. People with limited time left to live due to an incurable illness, could go there for a final bash, and pay for their experience with their life insurance. Those with lingering painful and debilitating illnesses could go there to end their lives in style.

Outsourcing government

Consider the natural direction of outsourcing when applied to the federal government. First specialized functions are outsourced, like payroll and security and monitoring of environmental factors. Then entire departments, like Housing (HUD) and the National Institutes of Health and NASA and Social Security.

A single multi-natioinal company might run the health research or social security systems of numerous countries.

In some cases, governments would pay the contractors to do the work for them, at less cost to the public. In other cases, companies would pay (based on bidding) for the contracts -- they'd make their money by charging for services provided to the public, and government would receive revenue.

Over time, the functions of government shrink.

Eventually, there might be no governments at all.

Bush may be far more intelligent than you ever imagined

During the presidential campaign, Democrats had fun mocking Bush's speech mannerisms. Yogi-Berra-like mind twisters, like “I don't want to run the risk of ruining what is a lovely recession” and grammatical marvels like "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" were forwarded again and again over the Internet. Many Democrats probably grew complacent, finding it unimaginable that someone who seemed such a fool could stand a chance of winning the election.

Then on election day, one state after another was colored red, and Kerry was left with the liberal enclaves of New York/New England, Illinois, and the Pacific coast. The south and the entire heart of the continental US all went to Bush. How could that happen?

Did you ever consider that Bush's hick-like accent and strange spoken mistakes could be deliberate? His way of talking makes him sound like a "man of the people". He's very well educated. He went to Yale, just like Kerry did, and around the same time. His father speaks like an ordinary American business man. His brother Jeb doesn't seem to have these speech "deficiencies" either.

We knew Reagan was an actor. Perhaps Bush is one as well.

It could be that he deliberately adopted this style of speech at a young age, because of the benefits it brought him -- the friendly, neighborly manner, rather than seeming to speak down to the public, builds trust in subordinates, and could disarm business associates and competitors. And over time, this manner may have become second-nature for him, so it would now be hard for him to do anything else.

Web Notes by Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com

The joy of changing Web hosts

All Web hosts are not equal, but until you make a change you may have no idea how much of a difference there can be.

I signed up with Hispeed about five or six years ago, was surprised when they were bought by Usanethosting, and then was continually frustrated when they never got their stats program to run correctly, when they had frequent downtime, and when their support people weren't particularly helpful. Eventually, I was annoyed enough to switch hosts.

I recently moved to OChosting, http://www.ochosting.com, and have been repeatedly delighted.

Sure, they charge less per month for more disk storage and more traffic. But more important than that, their stats showed me that many people were getting error messages, and they had a simple set up so that people who click on or typed in my domain name with a non-existent page would go to a page created by me to point them in the right direction, rather than getting a standard error message, such as 400 bad request, 401 authorization required, 403 forbidden, 404 wrong page, 500 internal server error. Their error log helped me identify and fix typos in links at my site. Soon, my traffic shot upward.

Instead of having one very bad traffic stats program, I had a choice of two good ones. And a Web-based email system let me set up an excellent spam filter at the server, which cut down on the glut of useless and annoying messages that my Outlook Express program brought over to my PC.

They makes it easy to set up redirects, from obsolete pages to new ones. And they have an efficient Web-based help desk, and they answer phone calls to support very quickly (usually within a minute or two, without holding).

Some of these capabilities, a technically savvy person could take care of on any UNIX system; but here you don't need to be technically savvy -- it's all made easy, with choices clearly spelled out. And when you do need help, the support people not only answer your question, they also let you know about alternatives and new applications. For instance, they told me about Spyware Blaster. While AdAware detects and zaps spyware on your computer; Spyware Blaster helps stop the spyware from ever infecting your system. They also let me know about SmartFTP, as an alternative to WS_FTP, which I had been using for many years.

Thanks to all these capabilities and great support, in less than two months, my traffic has increased by nearly 50%, and I'm spending far less time coping with problems related to Web hosting.

PayPal's free shopping cart

When I began selling products (books on CD) on the Web, I couldn't do so from my simple Web site. It would have been far too expensive to hire programmers to give me the ability to securely conduct electronic commerce, and to do so with all the convenience and ease-of-use features of an online shopping cart. So I set up a store at Yahoo, http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat, and also sold at eBay, which first had a business relationship with PayPal and then bought and integrated PayPal into its operation.

Now I have a choice of quickly and easily adding an Agora shopping cart to the Web pages at my regular Web site, thanks to OChosting (see above). And I also can, at no cost, insert a little code on my Web pages or in my email messages that connects directly to a PayPal shopping cart, with the name and price of the item I am selling preset, and also with me preset as the recipient of the payment. Here's an example. You might want to give it a try, then simply negate the sale:
Buy the Non-Fiction 2-CD set here using PayPal --

Once you get the code, which includes you as the payee, you can, without going back to the PayPal site, edit the item names and prices to make new shopping cart buttons.  I've experimented, making just about everything I have to sell available in that form from a single page at my main Web site http://www.samizdat.com/readme.html  Yes, this a poor man's version of electronic commerce. But it works well, and securely; with little fuss and bother. And, purportedly, more than 50 million people already have PayPal accounts. And it is very easy for newcomers to open accounts. PayPal members typically use a credit card or a direct bank account link to fund their purchases. You as a vendor pay a transaction fee to PayPal, but you don't have to pay separately for currency conversion or for a merchant credit card account. And, unlike with an electronic store, like mine at Yahoo, you can put shopping cart links right in your email.

So far, far fewer people have used my PayPal buttons than I had hoped. But this approach seems to have great potential. It just may take a while for people to get used to them and to trust that they are in fact secture.

Tsunami -- an Alternative to Babelfish for free, fast, online translation

Babelfish was the translation service created by AltaVista, back around 1996, when AltaVista, then owned by Digital Equipment, was the leading search engine. I wrote extensively about how to get the most out of it for the benefit of your Web site. See Making your site global -- taking advantage of free translation at AltaVista at http://www.samizdat.com/soc7.html and also Expanded translation capabilities at AltaVista's Babelfish site, an update from Jan. 2001, at http://www.samizdat.com/transnew.html, plus How to translate into French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, or Korean from English and from those languages (and Russian) into English at http://www.samizdat.com/trans.html and version of that same text in half a dozen different languages. Digital was bought by Compaq, and Compaq spun off AltaVista as a separate company; then Overture bought AltaVista; then Yahoo bought Overture. Babelfish still exists at the same old URL http://babelfish.altavista.com but there's no telling how long it will continue.

Recently, the folks at Tsunami Text Translation recently sent me email to let me know about their new service, which is also free, and very fast, and seems to cover far more languages. To try test the quality and range of their translations go to their homepage http://www.translationbooth.com or to http://www.countrycheck.com

Go to http://www.translationbooth.com/products/tsunami/ to fetch code for free that you can put on your own Web pages to let visitors translate whatever they like for free. In fact I might as well do that right here. Try out the translation box below, and please email me your feedback. If you find this convenient, I'll add such translation forms to many of my pages.
Add Free Translation to your site!

On the plus side, in addition to English and European languages, Tsunami handles languages with non-English alphabets. Enter words, phrases, sentences in English and get the translation in Arabic or Russian characters. On the negative side, you cannot request the translated text transliterated to English characters (for pronunciation). And you cannot enter transliterated Arabic or Russian text, and get an English translation. And when trying to translate from English to Japanese, I can't get it to display Japanese characters on my PC. (Okay, Babelfish can't do that either, and I'm asking a lot; but those would be on my wishlist). And to enter text in a language that uses a non-English character set, you would need change the settings on your computer to allow you to type in that character set. But what it does, it does very, very well.


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