Confusability

Vannevar Bush and the backup plan for the Manhattan Project

It was a crazy way to win World War II in the Pacific-- All the United States had to do was to attach small incendiary bombs to millions of bats and release them over Japan's major cities. As the bats went to roost, a million fires would flare up in remote crannies of the wood and paper buildings common throughout Japan. When their cities were reduced to ashes, the Japanese would surely capitulate... The plan made sense to a handful of eccentric promoters and researchers, who convinced top military brass and even President Roosevelt to back the scheme. It might have worked, except that another secret weapon--something to do with atoms--was chosen to end the war. Told here by the youngest member of the team, this is the story of the bat bomb project, or Project X-Ray, as it was officially known. In scenes worthy of a Capra or Hawks comedy, Jack Couffer recounts the unorthodox experiments carried out in the secrecy of Bandera, Texas, Carlsbad, New Mexico, and El Centro, California, in 1942-1943 by "Doc" Adams' private army. This oddball cast of characters included an eccentric inventor, a distinguished Harvard scientist, a biologist with a chip on his shoulder, a movie star, a Texas guano collector, a crusty Marine Corps colonel, a Maine lobster fisherman, an ex-mobster, and a tiger. Not to be defeated by minor logistical hurdles, the bat bomb researchers risked life and limb to explore uncharted bat caves and "recruit" thousands of bats to serve their country. Through months of personality conflicts, military snafus, and technical failures the team pressed on, certain that bats could end the war with Japan. And they might have--in their first airborne test, the bat bombers burned an entire brand-new military airfield to the ground.

Bat Bomb: World War II's Other Secret Weapon

You can listen to the story on BBC Radio 4 if you missed it earlier today.

Findability Precedes Usability

Buy me now.

It was 40 years ago today

I was born on the 22nd November in 1965.

That makes me 40 today.

On November 22nd :

1922 - Howard Carter opens the tomb of Tutankhamun.
1963 - JFK was assasinated in Dallas.
1977 - British Airways inaugurates a regular London to New York City supersonic Concorde service.
1990 - Margaret Thatcher resigns as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
2005 - The XBox 360 releases in North America. First of the next-gen consoles.

In 1965 :

24 Jan - Winston Churchill dies
9 Feb - Vietnam War: The first United States combat troops are sent to South Vietnam
21 Feb - Malcolm X is assassinated
08 Jul - Ronald Biggs escapes from jail
14 Jul - US spacecraft Mariner 4 flies by Mars, becoming the first spacecraft to return images from the red planet
11 Aug - Watts Riots begin in Los Angeles, California
8 Oct - The Post Office Tower opens in London
16 Nov - Disney launches Epcot Center
22 Dec - 70 mph speed limit imposed on British roads

The White Man's Technical Burden

MIT suffers hubris over $100 PC idea

No hard drive, however. Power is going to be provided through a wind-up crank and other sources. The actual display technology is up in the air depending on the day of the week, ranging from "electronic ink" to a rear-projecting image device.

There's been a lot of media fawning over the idea, but nobody's really asked how a non-profit organisation is going to go from mockups to hardware in about two years, especially when you're talking about minimum quantities of five to 10 million machines "paid for and ordered in advance."

No amount of hype makes MIT $100 PC a reality

Even before the hardware has moved out of mockup design phase and into reality, Negroponte says that the price per laptop won't be $100, but has drifted upward to around $115. And this is before the never-before-mass-produced dual-mode LCD display has been finalised, much less cranked up to any quantities in prototype form. Don't be surprised if first run units end up arriving not in late 2006, but sometime in 2007 and costing closer to $135 to $150 once the smoke clears.

Problems with the $100 laptop

By marketing the idea to governments and large corporations, the OLPC project adopts a top-down structure. So far as can be seen, no studies are being done among the target user populations to verify the concepts of the hardware, software and cultural constructs.  Despite the fact that neither the children, their schools nor their parents will have anything to say in the creation of the design, large orders of multi-million units are planned.

Alan Kay comes through

He said, "There's a hierarchy of elements, each of which is harder than the other. There's the hardware and that's easy - that's just engineering (I don't take that wrong - LF). Then there's software, and that's harder. Then user interface, and that's even harder. Then there's courseware, which is harder still. And finally there's mentoring, which is really, really hard."

That got me thinking about how the digital divide was in fact a design failure. We should have been able to design computers and their software so that everyone could use them. Then Alan set out his hierarchy, and I was thrilled. "He's made my case," I whispered to Bab Marsh, sitting next to me.

Clockwork radio inventor rubbishes MIT $100 PC

Baylis, who invented the clockwork wireless radio, was recently invited to MIT Media Lab to meet Negroponte and see the prototype, but said that it "could have put together with a Lego kit".

"Nothing worked. I was expecting him to show me the screen in action or the wind-up feature, but I saw nothing but a basic prototype," he said.

"If Negroponte has done it, full marks to the guy, but I am not 100 per cent convinced. It was all something of a PR stunt."

But Baylis said he came away from Boston feeling non-plussed. "Negroponte did not ask me to provide the technology," he complained. "He was more interested in looking at my wind-up torch, which I didn't develop anyway. I bought it in China for £3."

Peter Drucker 19 Nov 1909 to 11 Nov 2005

Peter Drucker - 19 Nov 1909 to 11 Nov 2005

His most controversial work is on compensation schemes, in which he said that senior management should not be compensated more than twenty times the lowest paid employees. This made him an enemy of some of the same people who had previously praised him.

Information Technology: We have spent the last 50 years thinking about the Technology. We will spend the next 50 years focusing on the I in IT.

The Next Information Revolution

Kate Bush sings Pi (incorrectly)

I have been listening to Aerial, the new album from Kate Bush, and it just gets better with every hearing.

One of my favourite tracks is "Pi":

"a sentimental ode to a mathematician, audacious in both subject matter and treatment. The chorus is the number sung to many, many decimal places." - Observer Review

But something kept nagging me about the song. Was Kate really singing Pi to 150 decimal places?

I got hold of the lyrics and checked them against an online version of Pi. All was well for the first 53 decimal places but then Kate sang "threeeeee oneeeee" when she should have sang "zeeeeeeerooo" instead. She recovered for the next 24 digits but then it went to hell in a handbasket when she missed out the next 22 digits completely before finishing with a precise rendition of her final 37 digits.

It may seem a bit pedantic to make a fuss but if you are going to sing Pi then you should make an effort to get it right.

"Sweet and gentle and sensitive man
With an obsessive nature and deep fascination for numbers
And a complete infatuation with the calculation of PI

Oh he love, he love, he love
He does love his numbers
And they run, they run, they run him
In a great big circle
In a circle of infinity"

If Simon Singh can get Katie Melua to re-record her song because of a error about the age of the universe then maybe I can get Kate to re-record Pi.

Real Pi: 3.
1415926535    8979323846    2643383279    5028841971   6939937510
5820974944    5923078164    0628620899    8628034825   3421170679
8214808651    3282306647    0938446095    5058223172   5359408128

Kate Bush Pi: 3.
1415926535    8979323846    2643383279    5028841971   6939937510
58231974944  5923078164    06286208
8214808651    3282306647    0938446095    5058223

In case anyone is worried about the accuracy of the published lyrics I did check the audio against the published lyrics and can confirm that they are the same.

And yes I know that I am a bit sad.

[Update 14th March 2006 - Just added another pi related rant.]

World Usability Day - Not Quite So Easy

Why worldusabilityday.net AND worldusabilityday.org?

Why are there 36 hours in World Usability Day?

Have a good one. (I hope the servers hold out!)

And is anyone else getting errors (access denied) on some homepage elements?