John (who uses aa@aa.com though has no affiliation with American Airlines) wrote this interesting comment. Check it out.

http://www.decheung.com/archives/2004/11/hint_gate_4x_is.html

I remember when Apple’s Mail.app e-mail client first came out with it’s “Bounce” feature. It came out to rave reviews, with the Mac community all excited about what a powerful feature it was, and how great it was for Apple to think of this feature and enable its customers to fight spam.

See, the way the bounce feature works is this:
1. Select spam.
2. Choose “Bounce” from a menu
3. Mail.app would send a return mail to the sender of that message saying that you didn’t exist.

People love this feature - it gives them a sense that they’re doing something about their spam. That they’re fighting back.

And the obvious question was “Well, why doesn’t Microsoft Entourage have it?” (often with the insinuation that Microsoft is behind much of the spam, which is why there’s so much spam in Hotmail. Right. Microsoft is pushing penis pills and re-fi’s. Not likely.)

Well on Joi Ito’s blog is the reason why we don’t have a bounce feature.

Three reasons:
1. It doesn’t do anything. Most spammers don’t care if mail bounces back to them. Why would they? There’s virutally no cost to spamming, with lots of income potential.

2. It’s quite possible that spammers can detect the Mail.app bounce back and say “Oh ho! This is indeed a legit email address! Muhahahahah!”

3. And the worst reason: More often than not, spam messages use forged e-mail addresses. While it may say that it is being sent from “billg@microsoft.com”, it’s really sent by evil-penis-pill-pusher-3293@evil-domain-that-does-not-resolve.co.zi. So by having this feature, we’re enabling innocent people to hurt other innocent people by flooding their inboxes with bounce messages.

Best way to fight spam once it gets into your Inbox? Delete it. Forget it. They won this round. You’ll get ‘em back another time.

But do you want to do more to fight spam? Tell everyone you know about this site:

Huh? People buy from spam ads? YES THEY DO! About 1 in every 5 Americans do!

This is an older article, but it’s fascinating to read about the kinds of people who buy penis pills (it included the manager of a $6 billion dollar mutual fund - scary huh! Makes you wonder how your investments are doing…)

Well over there all All Things Alceste, Dan expects me to write something about travel. I guess I can considering I took this photo while I was at JFK:

These are the machines I referred to in my post from last week about the random collection of Ms Pac Man machines in JFK T9. Except that these thoughtfully placed machines are in JFK T8. Yes - I can’t think of a better way to put three machines except completely packed side-by-side, with the same game at both ends. Brilliant. (This is why you need Program Managers - to think through customer scenarios!)

I apologize for the blurriness of the photo - I still have not mastered the art of taking photos on my Audiovox SMT 5600 Smartphone. And I prefer not to take photos with my Canon S400 since I tend to get strange looks when I use it at the airport … what, me? A terrorist?

Anyway, going back to travelling day, my day had no such serenity like Dan’s. I woke up early, frantically showered and packed, and got a ride from a dad to JFK at 8:00am. And it was raining like crazy that Sunday.

As we drove into JFK, I suddenly realized that I didn’t know what gate I needed to go to. You see, half of the American Airline flights leave from Terminal 8, and the other half leave from Terminal 9. Sometimes, a flight arriving at Terminal 8 will depart from Terminal 9. It’s critical that you look at the departure gates and the arrival gates.

If you remember one thing from this post, remember this:
-Gates 1-23: Terminal 8
-Gates 30-49: Terminal 9
-It’s a 15-30+ minute walk from from the edge of T8 to the edge of T9 — and more in the opposite direction because it is uphill. You need to leave security and clear security again. So on a super unlucky and bad day, this can be a 1 hour trek.

I’ve seen a dozen+ people screw this up and barely catch their flights. I’ve also seen 2 people now miss their flights because of this.

So using my Smartphone, I check the aa.com website and find out that I’m at Gate 4X.

Now, I’m a Computer Science dork… I see 4X and think “Oh, where X is a value between 0-9 - it’s probably not defined yet!” and go to Terminal 9 where all the Gate 40’s live. Fortunately, I’m Platinum on AA so I can skip the line with the giant crowd, and can talk to someone directly… who tells me that Gate 4X means “Across from Gate 4… in Terminal 8″.

I’ll spare you the rest of the details, but suffice to say that I’m glad I spent the 30,000 miles to upgrade myself - I always do for the return flight from Thanksgiving. It’s fantastic to be able to board the plane early, not have to fight for overhead luggage space, and be able to sip champagne to relax. Unfortunately, this was a breakfast flight so I only had a warm biscuit, pancakes, grapefruit, kiwi, turkey sausage, scrambled eggs, with a dessert of cheeses, green and red grapes, and a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie. Frankly, I much prefer the lunch or dinner flights: I’ve had one of the best lobster tails for lunch and a shockingly tender filet mignon before. And the ice cream sundae is always a nice treat.

Flying over San Francisco was amazing on Sunday though - it was so amazingly clear. And of course, the first thing a few Californians asked me was “Wasn’t it really cold there?”

New York City Metro, San Francisco Bay Area - I’m so glad I am able to live in these fantastic places. It’s truly a blessing. One that I was reminded of today when I saw that not everyone is as fortunate as I to be able to live in places like this. Were it not for my parents, my education, and the opportunities I’ve been given… well, I’m just lucky. But not everyone else is as lucky as noted in this picture linked from this blog I read:

So I was walking around midtown, and I stumbled across an orchard of big apples.

Yep. That’ll cause some major tooth decay. (Note to self: Flash isn’t always a good thing!)

Some far better photos available at this website of all the different apples.

I wonder if this came first, or if the Hearts in SF thing came first. (curse that damn Heart with the MOM tattoo that I couldn’t find on July 17th!)

One of the hottest issues that’s in all the headlines these days is our economy w.r.t. China.

I saw a very interesting Frontline interview, that I’ll post later this week once I further digest it. But for now, here’s a balanced article on the pros and cons of our entanglement with the Chinese economy.

Some key quotes:

Ohio State University business professor Oded Shenkar, author of the new book The Chinese Century, hears many war stories from local companies. He gives it to them straight: “If you still make anything labor intensive, get out now rather than bleed to death. Shaving 5% here and there won’t work.” Chinese producers can make the same adjustments. “You need an entirely new business model to compete.”

Well that seems rather obvious. Unfortunately the problem seems to be that China is succeeding at both the low and the high end. Past competitors hit us hard in the low end (e.g. labor intensive work), but we were able to pull out ahead with an high tech and information based economy. But not this time.

America has survived import waves before, from Japan, South Korea (news - web sites), and Mexico. And it has lived with China for two decades. But something very different is happening. The assumption has long been that the U.S. and other industrialized nations will keep leading in knowledge-intensive industries while developing nations focus on lower-skill sectors. That’s now open to debate. “What is stunning about China is that for the first time we have a huge, poor country that can compete both with very low wages and in high tech,” says Harvard University economist Richard B. Freeman. “Combine the two, and America has a problem.”

What will be the next wave of innovation that we will bring out to continue our advantage? I’m thinking bio-tech. And technology still - but more in the intellectual property space. And personalized services - especially personalized services (think 250 million markets of 1).

Nonetheless, I suspect that the old 1950’s style American Dream will be declared dead moving forwards. The idea of one parent working, 8 hour working days, weekends off, vacations, comfortable middle class, so on and so forth are already in trouble today. Let’s look at the competition:

China is also propelled by an enormous domestic market that brings economies of scale, feverish local rivalry that keeps prices low, an army of engineers that is growing by 350,000 annually, young workers and managers willing to put in 12-hour days and work weekends, an unparalleled component and material base in electronics and light industry, and an entrepreneurial zeal to do whatever it takes to please big retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE:WMT - News), Target (NYSE:TGT - News), Best Buy (NYSE:BBY - News), and J.C. Penney (NYSE:JCP - News). “The reason practically all home furnishings are now made in China factories is that they simply are better suppliers,” says Janet E. Fox, vice-president for international procurement at J.C. Penny Co. “American manufacturers aren’t even in the same game.”

I think we’ll be able to find some way to work smarter, but as a whole, most will have to work a lot harder to tread water. (Thought: How will Europe respond to this? In particular, how will they retain their existing lifestyles? Will they be able to?) And much of this points to the fact that a higher education will become increasingly essential. K-16?

Here’s a fascinating tidbit:

Also, unlike Japan 20 years ago, China is a much more open economy. It continues to lower tariffs and even runs a slight trade deficit with the whole world — which makes the U.S.’s deficit with China all the more glaring.

Wow. That I did not know. Did you?

It’s a great article that I encourage you to read, except for this closing sentence:

More innovation. Better goods. Lower prices. Newer plants. America will surely continue to benefit from China’s expansion. But unless it can deal with the industrial challenge, it will suffer a loss of economic power and influence. Can America afford the China price? It’s the question U.S. workers, execs, and policymakers urgently need to ask.

Instead of simply demonizing China for “stealing American jobs,” we need to realize the fact that we’re hooked on Chinese prices. (Hm. Sounds like our dependence on foreign oil.) But the reality of it is that we can’t just ignore them and hope it goes away. Rather, what we need is a strategy to continue to succeed.

I’m staying at my parents place in Long Island. Most of Long Island, and Queens, and Brooklyn are under some sort of flight path depending on the year, the weather, and whether they are playing tennis or not.

Well, as of a few hours ago, something must have changed, and now the flight path for some airport (probably JFK) is now over my parent’s house. A plane roars by about 90 seconds or so. They’re so close, that I can hear them power the engines back up just a bit so that they maintain above stall speed on the approach to the runway. And it’s 11:30pm.

Now I understand why the citizens of San Jose mandate that SJC not allow planes of a certain noise threshold to land after 11pm (though I continue to disagree with it as a frequent flier on the frequently late Alaska Airlines.)

As a sidebar, I guess the policies around SJC are still fantastic compared to the policies around SNA (John Wayne) which have created this interesting takeoff situation for pilots:

it is not the start of the takeoff that we don’t like. Holding the brakes and spooling up is no big. It is the deep cutback at a few hundred feet in the air to a power setting that gives us only about 50 feet per minute rate of climb that is not right. It is wallowing out across the coastline through all the Wichita flak in a nose-high attitude with no maneuvering speed and neither pilot giving full attention to traffic spotting that is unsafe.

If there is, no, make that when there is a midair, the pilots will be blamed for “failure to see and avoid” the traffic. Make no mistake though, the real cause will be the spoiled thousandaires (real millionaires don’t live there) who can’t decided which they hate more - jet noise or driving to LAX, and it will be the politically motivated airport manager and it will be the greed of the airline management whose chief pilot’s rubber-stamp approval of a stupid procedure that will be to blame. And it is coming.

As I said in my first post, I believe that it has gotten better. If I’m not mistaken we no longer cut back below climb power. It has always been hard to believe that a jet at any power setting only two thousand feet above your house could be quieter than one at seven or eight thousand feet and climb power on a normal profile.

Yipes.

So tonight (Monday) I attend the 7pm taping of the Late Show with David Letterman. I’ve done this twice already, and my image has never made it to broadcast.

Attending a taping, and this is obvious I suppose, really brings home the fact that the show is a production, and now just some chatty chat chat chat with some ha ha ha’s sprinkled about.

At the risk of being banned from ever getting tickets again, here are my positive and negative thoughts the experience (which will be aired this Friday):

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Positives (in no particular order):
1. While you’re there, you’ll notice that the ground rumbles every so often - this is because the subway is passing by. It’s actually some what audible. The fact that this isn’t picked up in the audio feed must be some amazing engineering achievement.

2. Jessica Biel was the second guest. Not bad. Unfortunately for her, Dave was in a “I’m not going to be a vessel for you to simply shill Blade 3” mood, which is why she was obviously there, and end up giving her very little time - most of it was him making stupid shit up about a dog named “Bob”.

3. Paul Schaffer and the CBS Orchestra really do put in a lot of energy. I’m quite surprised. Will Lee, their bass player, also puts in an insane amount of non-dairy creamer into a tiny cup of coffee. He basically turned the container upside down and let a huge amount pour all over the cup and the speakers.

4. Barak Obama makes a fine fine guest. I was pretty surprised that Dave asked him if Colin Powell was forced out… And the answer Barak gave was a bit more “yes he was!” than I would’ve expected from a politician. Barak is quite the politician - as he walked off stage, he gave the audience a set of hand gestures and looks that really made you feel like he was waving to YOU specifically.

5. In the 120 seconds before the show aired, Dave noticed to women wearing brand new Late Show sweaters. They tell him that they cost $50 each - and instantly he has the stand up comic assistant give them each $50 in cash back from the assistant’s wallet. Nice!

Negatives:
1. When you go get your tickets, the interns do some sort of screening process to ensure that the center front almost always consists of people like Dave - older, white, couples, from the Midwest or the South. They get shunted off to a separate line where one person noted “Hey we’ve all got Southern accents!” Watch Late Show versus the Tonight Show and compare the demographics of the first few center rows - the Tonight Show is usually obscenely multi-ethnic and young.

2. Dave made a lot of jokes about the Pacers/Pistons/Artest incident. Uh, Dave - this is the Friday episode - by Friday this will be very old. And why did he waste precious Barak time on this??

3. “Does it float segment” perpetually sucks. Why they continue with it is beyond me.

4. The studio is damn cold (not news), and has this mild “old NYC building” funk smell to it.

5. The prepping by the staff: LAUGH AT EVERYTHING. LAUGH A LOT. LAUGH LOUD. LAUGH LAUGH LAUGH.

The taping experience could be so much better if they were more transparent about the process. For example, give a brief talk about what goes on (and believe me, plenty goes on - there’s an incredible amount of running around on stage during the taping), what each stuff is - heck even offer a paid tour!!

Instead, it’s in-and-out. One can definitely leave feeling that the audience is there only so that they don’t have to use a laugh track.
Oh… And when will this be in HD!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6522314/site/newsweek/

The Tech-Support Generation

Millions of young Americans will head home next week to give thanks, eat turkey ? and fix their parents? computers

Oh wow… I was going to write a piece on this, but it seems that Brad Stone beat me to the punch.

It’s so true - I spent most of yesterday installing patches to Windows XP, Office XP, running AdAware, checking msconfig, and redoing the network at my parents place. And this happens every single time! Now I have to figure out what cost effective antivirus strategy to pursue…

Here’s the related SlashDot thread.

Thanks to BoingBoing.