The Tin Lizard

Expanding Website Naming Suffixes

In business and in politics, it seems the obvious explanations are often overlooked by journalists, either from naivete or - more likely I think - from a deliberate effort to keep the story going.

Such is the case, I think, with the plans announced by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN - that's mumbo-jumbo for the outfit that controls the naming of internet domains, websites, and such) to greatly expand the number and type of available "top-level domains".  More explanation: TLDs are the three letters after the dot, as in ".com" or ".edu", sometimes also referred to as "suffixes" (but not simply as "domains" as the writer mistakenly claims). 

Our intrepid reporter here duly quotes ICANN to the effect that the expansion will "promote innovation," as well as critics of the move who claim that it will more likely promote confusion.   So, like big oil companies which publicly scoff at profit and promote themselves as creators of jobs and friends of the environment, ICANN is just looking to serve the public interest.   I think critics have the better argument.

It's true that ICANN is nominally a non-profit organization.  But its livelihood clearly depends upon the companies that sell and register website names, and increasingly offer hosting and site-creation services as well.   There used to be only a couple of such authorized registrars; now there are dozens.  And now that every company and entity in the world already has a website, demand for names is probably down. 

How could business be pumped up?   Well, it's been pointed out that many existing companies may very well want to buy up alternate versions of their name (for example, WidgetCo might have Widgetco.com, but might want to block others from creating similar-sounding websites like Widgetco.usa or Widgetco.edu).  That's particularly true for the planned ".xxx" suffix, which would denote pornography and the like.  There's already evidence that these .xxx suffixes are being preemptively snapped up.  That's lots of dollars headed into the coffers for website names that will forever remain blank.

Following the money gives a strong hint that the main effort is to create an artificial demand.   Why expand the available suffixes so dramatically when there is no visible surge of interest in them?  Apparently,"because ICANN."  It's business as usual.     

 

When Is A Phone Not A Phone?

Consumer Reports may seem a little old-fashioned in these days when you can go online and get many different sites offering "ratings" and "reviews" of consumer products.  Those online places are OK, and may alert you to a certain problem, or something that turns up in everyday use that you might not have realized otherwise.  On the other hand, I think there's still a place for the more systematic, rigorous comparison of products performance, and price for which CR is deservedly well known.  (I have banned the word "iconic" from my writing as overused and nonsensical, but others might use it to describe the magazine's position in this kind of endeavor.)

So: Consumer Reports?  Still useful.  Get yourself a subscription, the real magazine or the online access, at www.consumerreports.org.   It turns out, for example, that they just did a fairly comprehensive review/comparison of currently available smart phones.  And that's my subject today.

That report, which covers no fewer than 27 phones from four major carriers and six makers, has the usual rating chart, in which each smart phone is rated "excellent," "very good," "good," "fair," or "poor" in several different categories.  Often, there aren't huge differences between brands and types in high-tech products, and these phones are no different.  Nearly all garner "excellent" ratings in many categories, and "very good" in most of the others.

With one exception:  "voice quality."  In that one category, NOT A SINGLE PHONE has better than "good."  How odd.  The name of this product is "phone," no matter how smart it is, so shouldn't we expect that some of them could muster better performance than a middling "good?"  And personally, I think it's pretty clear that "good" isn't good at all, not if my experience with several different phones is any guide. 

My first cell phone was a Qualcomm.  I can't recall the model number (840 sticks in my mind for some reason, but that's irrelevant).  I recall doing a little research and this phone was singled out as among the first to operate on a 900-MHz band.  That's probably zero-G, in today's terms, or maybe 1G.  And indeed, the clarity of the sound was impressive -- no fuzziness, no garbles, every word understandable (though of course there were dropouts in those days when cell towers were still miles apart). 

Qualcomm quickly stopped producing actual phones.  I've owned several phones since then, and it seems to me sound quality has deteriorated with each successive generation.  My latest, which I acquired just last month, despite its braininess, often delivers fuzzy, broken-up voice quality.  

My guess is that neither manufacturers nor carriers are especially concerned about the quality of transmitted sound any longer.  People are using their telephones less and less as telephones.  Phones are just as obsolete as desktop computers, music CDs, and e-mail.  This occurred even as telephone conversation essentially became a free good, with the cost of calls dropping like a stone; and concurrently as the cell phone brought mobility and convenience to the market. 

But "phones" aren't really for calling anymore.  They're for a hundred other purposes, some really useful and some fanciful, but "calling" is way down on the list.  HIgher on the list is texting, which is a good deal more profitable for the phone companies.  Did poor sound accelerate the migration to texting, or did the social/technological advantages of texting result in the deemphasis on sound quality?  

We may never know the answer to this modern chicken-or-the-egg quandary, but no matter which came first, they are related.    

The Miami Serpentarium

Years ago - probably about 1976 - my wife and I took our first trip to Florida, spending about two weeks driving around the state.  We saw a lot of the usual "attractions," including Disney World (brand new at the time!), Sea World, Cypress Gardens, old town Tampa, the Everglades ... and one that was somewhat less well known:  The Miami Serpentarium.  We can't even recall how we happened to hear about it, or why we thought it was worth driving into the suburbs of Miami to find it, yet we did.   

The serpentarium kept hundreds of poisonous snakes of dozens of species, that were milked for their venom (for the production of antivenin).  Its head and founder had been accidentally bitten or purposely injected himself with venom so many times that his blood was a registered serum and, we were told, health authorities would occasionally call him from faraway places asking him to save someone by providing a bit of that blood.  All in all, a unique and memorable experience.

So it was with regret that we heard of the death of that gent the other day.  Bill Haast was something of a legend, something of a pioneer.  His obit is worth a read.  We hadn't realized, either, that he had closed the Miami Serpentarium long ago, in 1984, so we were fortunate to have visited when we did.   One trip to Florida was enough; our first trip proved to be our last and we haven't ever wanted to go back; but it would have been a big disappointment if we had, and had found the Serpentarium missing.

Beavers And The Folly Of Men

This item about the problems of an expanding beaver population in Argentina and Chile caught my eye.  Beavers in Argentina?  It seemed out of place somehow.  I always thought the beaver was a native North American animal.

And so it is.  But these beavers were imported to Tierra del Fuego (the southern tip of the continent) in the 1940s in hopes of starting a fur industry.  Now, they've become some of a plague on the land that has authorities in both countries worried about their forests.  

Man toys around with nature, moving an animal here, a plant there, usually in an effort to solve some specific problem or fulfill some specific purpose:   Yet in the long run, the transplant more often than not proves to be a costly, sometimes even disastrous, mistake.   Beavers in Argentina, raccoons imported into Germany for hunting, rabbits in Australia, Japanese knotweed in the U.S.  -- the list goes on and on, without even including the accidental imports, ranging from the seemingly harmless red finch to the voracious, ecology-altering Asian snakefish.

When will we learn?  

 

The Fascinating Cicadas

The strange buzzing of the cicadas, their numbers in some years so large that you can hardly hear yourself speak over the deafening roar, is as much a part of summer in North America as ice cream, baseball, and wieners.  

Note the spelling of that last word, as something we throw on a grill, and note how it's different from the name of that Congressman Weiner who's now in something of a hot spot too.  He mispronounces his name, it really should be "Wy-ner."  So he's not really a wiener, though he's certainly a hot dog.  But I digress (again)...

Yes, cicadas and summer, a match made in heaven.  Except in the years they don't appear, or appear only in small numbers and can barely be heard in the summer air.  In the Washington DC area this, apparently, is one of those years when we won't see too much of them.  In the U.S., people in the south central parts of the country will have all the fun (cicada races, cicada roasts, and such) this year.

But we can still think about them, wonder about their odd life cycle, philosophize on whether they have a real function in the ecosystem.  Could they in turn be the philosophers of the insect world?  Do they wonder if humans have a function in the ecosystem?  They certainly have time to ponder such questions as they sequester themselves for 13 or 17 years underground, in preparation for a short life above the surface. 

 

A Plague of Pigs

What's numerous, wily, elusive, scruffy, and a big nuisance in Texas?  

Politicians, you say?  Well yes, but it seems that feral pigs go them one better.  The Smithsonian Magazine always has a lot of interesting material, and I found this article fascinating: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/A-Plague-of-Pigs-in-Texas.html.

In some cultures, pigs are a symbol of good luck for the new year. 

She Sells Cell Phones, Down By the Cell Tower

Making hay while the sun shines, and finding the profits they get from exorbitant rates on text messages, internet access, and other services insufficient, cell phone companies are preparing new technology that will enable your phone to suck your entire paycheck directly from your bank to them.  It's called charging tiered rates for different levels of service. 

Of course, complaints are being heard from those who have been getting increasing levels and speeds of increasingly complex services basically at one low price.  Overall, this isn't necessarily a bad thing.  For those of us who don't want or need to see the latest episode of "Mad Men" (this is one example cited in the above-linked article) while we're supposed to be working, or even when we're not, it might make sense if our rates were lower than for those who can't live a second without it.  Further, a different price structure might reduce demand for the services that require the most bandwidth or speed, helping to alleviate the problems of overloaded infrastructure that are beginning to be felt.

Still, the most noticeable characteristic of the new tiered system is that it will continue, or even expand, the old shell game of "confuse the customer."  Cell phone contracts and bills are already far too complicated, with a profusion of companies, phones, services, and plans that make direct comparison far too time-consuming, if not impossible.  That, of course, is the idea.  An industry spokesman laments that "What we're trying to do is offer choice, and there will always be those that then say choices are too many. So you're darned if you do and darned if you don't."  Not exactly.  Why not offer real choices, rather than an infinite array of minor choices; why not quote one price for each choice, rather than a whole list of services separately, each with its own cost (often hidden)?

Choice by all means, but as the above-referenced article points out, if you think your cell phone bill is complicated now, wait until you see the new ones that are coming your way.  Consumer groups are right to point out the potential problems of this approach.

Will Chestnuts Make It Where Elms Could Not?

It's an old chestnut to say that there's a silver lining in every cloud.  But true, nonetheless.  Now and then, amid all the gloom and doom of economic forecasts, the rancor of political partisanship, and the ennui of the daily grind, some good news turns up unexpectedly.

A case in point is the word that the American chestnut tree, which effectively went extinct in the first half of the 20th century, might be able to make a comeback, with the help of some cross-breeding with an Asian variety.

This report seems much rosier than those that came out of a similar project to restore the American elm; crossbreeding there failed to produce an elm that had the characteristics (overall size and leaf size) of the original; nor was the result really immune, or even highly resistant, to the beetle that destroyed it in the first place.  As a result, if you want an elm these days, you'll probably still end up with the Chinese one (also known as "lacebark" or by its Latin moniker, "parvifolia).  A warning against these elms; they are hardy and fairly fast-growing, but they have tiny, tiny leaves that lack the majesty of the American variety and are hard to rake; and they produce prodigious quantities of tiny seeds that attract squirrels in the fall, so that by this time of year they are almost totally denuded.

Let's hope the results with the chestnut will be better.  The chestnut is a prettier and more useful tree anyhow.  And if the tree is successful, maybe we'll also see a revival of village smithies.

Microsoft Battles Disorientation

I suspect there comes a time in everyone's life when it seems that everything is changing, and the things we remember from the "good old days" seem to start disappearing more and more quickly.  As oldsters drift into the various stages of CRS ("Can't Remember Shit") and beyond, the loss of the familiar old ways of doing things can be disorienting or upsetting. 

The dial telephone, the typewriter, paper checks, postage stamps, road maps...all these things familiar to today's 50 and 60-year-olds are going the way of mastodons. 

And while some things are transformed by technological progress, others change just for the sake of change.  For example, the recipe on cereal boxes these days for "traditional" Chex Mix -- traditional, it's not -- it bears no resemblance to the original Chex Mix.   Is ketchup headed in this direction?  The Heinz company says no, but let's wait and see.  

So it's always heartening when occasionally one of those altered products admits a mistake and goes back to its original form.  The poster-child case, of course, is "Classic Coke," introduced with much fanfare but it never caught on. 

The latest example is Microsoft's operating systems.  For years, the company's consumer OSs were notorious for shutdown problems.  I remember myself how Windows 98 never would turn off correctly, even after numerous patches.  And of course, we users cherished this quirk, but Microsoft felt they had to change just for change's sake.  So they invented Windows XP, which would shut down like a charm.  Most users, evidently, found XP's behavior too predictable, too consistent (although I kind of liked it myself, and even stuck with it through the Vista years).

But responding to popular demand, Microsoft's engineers went back to the drawing board and in the latest iteration, Windows 7 (which I bought into about 3 months ago), they gave users back what they had missed:  shutdown problems.  To avoid having to confess a mistake, though, they made up a sort of "classic Chex Mix" version - the same, but not the same. 

Now, rather than NOT shutting down when it should, this latest operating system shuts itself down at the drop of a hat.  Leave your computer screen for 30 minutes and you may come back to find it turned itself off.  (Not just the monitor, or the sleep mode, but a nice complete shutdown that requires you to reboot and reopen all your closed programs and windows.)

Like the unclassic Chex Mix, the re-originated Windows OS, for me anyway, just doesn't have the same comfort level that Win 98 had.  But thanks for trying, Microsoft. Your heart was in the right place (wasn't it?).

   

Losing Lizards

The Tin Lizard, for obvious reasons, is especially concerned about recent reports that lizards are now disappearing at a rapid rate, with clear evidence that global warming is a cause.

It seems counterintuitive, really.  Lizards are cold-blooded and depend on the sun and/or ambient air temperatures to warm them enough to go about their activities.  So shouldn't they thrive if desert temperatures go up a degree or two?  Well, yes and no.  It turns out it's not the heat that gets them.  Not directly.

 

Lizards can get fatally overheated by strong sun so they do have enough instinct to seek shade as temperatures rise above what's tolerable.  But according to studies done in Mexico (link above), it appears that higher daytime temperatures now prevail for longer periods during the day.  The result is that the reptiles remain in their burrows and crevices longer, leaving them insufficient time to forage for food and build strength.  For females especially, the ability to reproduce is then negatively affected.

Just another example of how small changes can trigger unforeseen consequences that may not become known until they've progressed too far to be altered.

(Photo: At left, curly-tailed lizards in the Bahamas)