When hazard lights are a hazard

Car hazard lights are useful if you have to pull over and warn incoming vehicles that your car’s lying there.

But when hazard lights are used for other situations, they may actually cause more harm than good.

Case in point: It has become a common practice here for drivers to switch on their hazard lights when rains become really strong. It’s their way of warning cars behind them that road conditions are hazardous.

It’s considerate of them, but it’s a flawed move.

That’s because when your hazard lights are on, then there’s no way for the car behind you to know when you’re planning to edge towards the left or the right.

And that can be a really serious hazard right there. I mean, sure you’ve warned him that you’re a road hazard yourself, but you’ve still lost a vital bit of information just the same.

Imagine going through heavy rains and flood waters (not that you should, by the way). Your speed is low, and visibility is shot. Now imagine trying to overtake the car ahead of you in these conditions. If his hazard lights are on, then you have no way of knowing if suddenly, without warning, he will turn towards you and ram you down.

The solution? Separate hazard lights.

Instead of making your car’s signal lights do double-duty as both hazard and signal indicators, why not have dedicated hazard lights? That way, you don’t lose critical info. You can get to know when there’s a hazard ahead, AND if the car needs to move left or right, you still get a heads-up.

Note that all this is because our drivers have developed the bad habit of using their hazard lights while driving. But then, since it’s so prevalent a practice, why not institutionalize it and work with it?

Paging Volvo…

Where’s my Karo?

Boy have I got a problem.

I’ve been a Karo syrup junkie since I was a kid. I grew up with the stuff. A pancake or a waffle just isn’t the same if not properly doused in generous dollops of clear, thick Karo syrup.

Lately, however, the stuff has vanished completely from grocery shelves. What gives?!

Over the past several months, I’ve been hunting high and low for a bottle of Karo syrup. And it’s nowhere to be found. And now I’m getting withdrawal symptoms.

Because I have to say this. All other syrups out there just plain suck. I’ve tried everything else, from Pillsbury to Coltee’s to local brand Clara Olê… and they all fall short by a mile.

Sure they taste fine. But it’s not about the taste. It’s about the thickness. Pour Karo onto your waffle wedge and the syrup lingers on the surface, teasing you with its glistening presence as it takes its time to dribble down your meal.

By contrast, pour any of these other impostors onto your pancake pile and watch these syrups sink like really thin soup, instantly disappearing into a big brown birthmark that makes you feel sorry for what you’re eating.

I want my Karo syrup back. You hear that, Hi-Top? You hear that, SM? You hear that, Landmark? You hear that, whoever-it-is-who’s-distributing-Karo-here? I want my childhood memories back. I want my pancakes to be teased by dollops of clear, thick syrupy goodness.

And I want all these other syrup makers to take a page out of the Karo playbook and make syrups that don’t look like colored water.

Wer na U?

It’s a $181 million piece of equipment. And it’s missing.

I was surprised to realize that an airliner can actually vanish, as in the case of the currently missing Air France flight AF447.

I won’t go into the horrible thought that 228 lives on board may have been lost. I won’t even go into the issue of the (likely) crash itself. What I want to focus on is the fact that authorities couldn’t locate the plane. They couldn’t even pinpoint exactly where it may have ended up.

This is, after all, the age of GPS and 24/7 communications. We live in a time when, if you have a Mitsubishi Pajero and it’s stolen, it could easily be tracked down in real time (possibly leading to the discovery of the hub of an entire carjacking operation, as was what happened a couple of years ago).

So if you can track a Pajero, a fleet of trucks, and ships, why not track airlines in real time too?

At present, the way airlines keep track of their planes are via (1) flight plans, and (2) radar. There is no actual feedback system that let’s you note exactly where the plane might be right now.

The point is, with today’s array of technologies, it is near-outrageous that you could lose something as big as a jumbo.

Perhaps the most practical way to implement real-time tracking is for the aircraft manufacturers themselves to take care of handling tracking services for all the planes that they have mobilized and leased out. So in the case of AF447, for example, it is the Airbus consortium that should have a real-time tracking service, allowing them to pinpoint the location of each and every Airbus in service at all times.

And while they’re at it, why not let the planes transmit real-time diagnostics as well? Right now, we rely too heavily on the black box to tell us what happened to a plane. But heck, if you’re looking at a black box, then something pretty bad has already happened. A better way to fly would involve planes transmitting data back to home base in real time, so that it won’t just be the pilots reacting to problems, but also ground service proactively working on potential problems as well.

DUO ditty

I rarely wax euphoric about new tech or telecom services these days. But this one I give an A+ rating to.

Globe’s DUO service gives you a “wireless landline” (an oxymoron that Bayan Telecom has popularized) on top of your regular cellular line. This way, you need only carry one phone for both cellular and landline calls.

It’s available only for postpaid subscribers thus far, but Globe plans to eventually roll it out to its prepaid customers too as well. Metro Manila and Cebu only for now.

Signing up is brilliantly simple. Just text “DUO INFO” to 8888… and that’s it. Globe sends a confirmation text, you reply and, instantly, you get your wireless landline phone number. And you’re good to go. Now you can treat your mobile like a cordless phone that you can take anywhere. Make unlimited voice calls to landlines and other DUO users. Use it as a personal walkie-talkie. Cut down on your text rampages.

And it has one advantage over Bayan Wireless: it uses Globe’s already-mature cellular network, so calls come in clear enough. Unlike Bayan which, I must admit, still struggles with a crackly, spotty call quality and coverage.

Some implications:

First, Bayan Telecom is probably gripping the edge of their seat right now because of this new service. Note that their Bayan Wireless service, still smelling like fresh paint, has depended on the Blue Ocean assumption that the large carriers, Globe and SMART, won’t touch the “wireless landline” segment because it would threaten their cellular cash cows. Well, SMART eventually did by way of PLDT, although it’s more like PLDT by way of SMART (i.e. parent company PLDT borrowing SMART’s cellular network to offer its own wireless landline service). But then the PLDT Landline Plus service is a crippled version of Bayan Wireless… crippled in order to protect SMART’s interests.

Globe, however, has shown remarkable bravery in rolling out their DUO service. As a “wireless landline”, I suspect that revenues from the additional P399 would go to Globe’s landline division, under a profit-sharing arrangement with the Handyphone cellular division. But just the same, the new service opens up a whole lot of cannibalization… from both divisions.

Second, once prepaid subscribers are allowed to get their hands on the DUO service, this will lead to IT pundit Jerry Liao’s worry that if you lose your phone, you lose not just one number, but two (then again, if you lose a MySim phone with two SIMs, it really isn’t anything new).

And third, here, have another flower for the eventual grave of the landline phone. Since landline subscriptions have plummeted at alarming rates, landline providers have migrated towards a DSL model, selling DSL lines rather than plain-vanilla phones. Add to that the trend towards lean businesses, with people carrying their phones with them rather than being tied up at an office desk waiting for calls, and you’ll see why “wireless landlines” make more sense. Say goodbye to the business phone line, which is the last stand of the traditional landline telephone.

Which brings me back to the Globe DUO. The service is still too pricey for the student market, so don’t expect this to explode like gangbusters the way text messaging did a decade ago. But it’s going to explode nonetheless. Especially with professionals and families. And with wives who can now call up their hubbies every five minutes or so to demand to know where they are. And clients who can now hound you and demand to know what’s taking you so long. And telemarketers who can now reach you even while you’re on the road. And…

Hmmm. On second thought…

Profound observation of the day

Twitting is hazardous to blogging.

Up in Smoke

I took a brief vacation to Vigan and, as usual, I left my computer running back home, quietly munching away at the net and grabbing stuff from the ether for me.

But then, I got back home a few days ago… to find that my Western Digital MyBook storage device was not functioning. It was just blinking cryptically, even as my PC kept begging it for a response.

Inside the MyBook: lots of TV shows (replaceable), and lots of photos, videos and scanned documents (many irreplaceable).

The MyBook drive, before going up in smoke

I tried to take it in stride as best I could. I pulled out the unit and fired up my backup storage device to serve as its PC stand-in for the meantime. I was almost sure that it was just the proprietary enclosure that conked out, and that the hard drive and its data was safe and sound.

There was no point shipping the MyBook in for warranty service because the most likely scenario was that they would fix the unit but destroy all the data. So I was better off destroying the unit and salvaging the data myself.

After checking a few blog entries by people who have tried extracting the drives themselves, I set about prying open the MyBook’s shell and extracting the hard drive. Nothing to it. Next stop, getting a new enclosure for the drive.

I bought an el cheapo 3.5″ SATA enclosure from CD-R King. And then I set to work getting my hard drive back in business. I flipped on the power switch…

…and the hard drive began to smoke.

Uh oh.

The last time I did a backup of my files was at the end of last January. So I still had a couple of months of unprocessed data, many of which were important business stuff. Which could literally be going up in smoke. Dang.

At any rate, the only thing left for me to do was to preserve the drive in whatever state it was in right now. I unplugged it, packed it in an antistatic bag along with a bag of desiccant or two, and treated it as if it were in a state of suspended animation.

I’ll have a data recovery service eventually take a look at it (hi Adel). And I will just have to assume that all the data is still in there somewhere, so I need not worry about it at all.

In the meantime, I got a 320GB Seagate FreeAgent as a replacement unit. And I have reprimanded myself enough for becoming lax and not doing a weekly backup as was supposed to be my standard procedure.

Business, Pragmatism, and Corruption

In many discussion lists that I am part of, talk occasionally ventures into the issue of corruption. Of how frustrating it is to be living in a corrupt system and a corrupt government and of how we cannot just apathetically let things go on as they do.

Here’s the odd thing: Most calls for change come from idealistic individuals… but you will rarely hear it coming from individual business people.

If business people do call for such changes, they would do so as part of a concerned group. Such as the Makati Business Club, making generic calls to stop corruption. But that’s that.

Here’s why: Businesses tend to view corruption as a fact of life. And since they would rather be minding their own businesses, they just factor in corruption as a cost of doing business.

Here’s a sobering example.

Once your business goes beyond the million peso revenue mark, you become a candidate for an audit by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR). And once you become an audit target, prepare to make the BIR a part of your life.

BIR folks will typically threaten your business with a particularly harsh audit. And believe you me, no matter how clean your books are, they will find something to toss against you, thanks to our very convoluted tax laws.

To escape this bother, they will ask you to pay up. Typically to the tune of one percent of your annual revenues. This won’t go to the government, mind you. This would go to the collector.

Nobody is immune. Even companies as large as the telecom firms — even SGV! — pay up regularly. And nobody can do anything about it.

That’s because this practice is so ingrained in the system that regardless of all the calls for change, there’s just no way to get rid of it.

There’s a theory in sociology that accounts for this. It’s called structuration theory. And it says that practices live on because they become part of the org structure.

Imagine that you’re a young, idealistic newbie at the BIR. And you dreamed of changing things and making it a clean place. Sooner or later, you will become more and more frustrated as you discover that everybody does the corruption thing. Worse, they scoff at you and treat you as a pariah for trying to change things.

You end up an outcast, with no friends at work, and increasingly disillusioned because you are not going anywhere while everyone else is profiting from the system.

So you end up being pragmatic. You decide what the hell, join the crew, and soon you yourself are attempting to get your one percent from businesses.

You grow old and fat and rich. One day, another young idealist comes into the bureau, hoping to shake things up. And then you look at him straight to his face and mock him for his naivete.

And that’s what’s happening. Corruption is just so ingrained that the only way to destroy it is by literally destroying the BIR itself and building it up from scratch.

And business people, being pragmatic, know that. That’s why they never take calls for reform seriously. Instead, they just allot a budget for corruption, setting aside one percent (negotiable) of their revenues for the inevitable tax audit dance.

At least it’s predictable, which is what business people want.

By an astonishing coincidence…

I can be a horrible driver. And I’ve had my share of scrapes – whizzing by red lights, speeding, swerving (several tickets here), idiotically entering one-way roads, and having a couple of bang-ups under my belt.

Don’t follow my lead. No, seriously.

Anyway, several years ago, I was whizzing around the Quezon Memorial Circle, rushing to get home. I was following this speeding jeepney, practically nose to rump, when…

…suddenly, the jeepney swerves to the left. Revealing…

…a stalled car in the middle of the road.

I hit the brakes. But by then it was too late.

WHAP!

The sickening sound of plastic and metal parts crunching together and giving way. After a momentary daze, I stepped out of the car fearing the worst. Fortunately, there wasn’t that much damage to my bumper.

But the car I bumped into, an aqua Mazda 323, had its rear bumper caved in.

Out from the car alights a couple of burly men. They meant business. They probably took one look at me and decided that they could make quick work intimidating me into paying to the hilt. After all, I looked like a scrawny geek.

Uh oh.

The driver in particular was a tough looking dude, wearing aviator glasses and an office shirt that tried hard to conceal some pretty solid biceps. He told me that he was with the Land Transportation Office. He could have been bluffing, but it did not matter. I had no excuse. I just had to bite the bullet and assume the position.

Still wearing his tough hide, he barked to see my driver’s license. I gave it to him.

And here’s where it got strange.

He takes my license from me. He takes one look at it…

…and then he freezes for a second, his expression drastically changing, as if unsure about what to do next. He lets out a mild cuss word, in a “well I’ll be darned” sort of way. He was in a place that was halfway between disappointment and awe.

I was puzzled. I just stood there like a moron.

He then hands my license over to his partner. Who then bursts into laughter.

I was really confused at this point.

The driver then takes out his license and shows it to me. I take a look at it. Yes, he was indeed with the Land Transportation Office…

…and then I saw his last name. It was the same as mine. Ilano. Hardly a common surname.

What were the odds.

So here we were, in the middle of a busy roundabout, with cars flying by left and right, and we began enjoying the routine of trying to piece together whether we were related or not. He was from Cavite, which was where my grandparents were from, so the likelihood was pretty high.

He started out by putting up a menacing front to intimidate me. But by the end of it, we were laughing and discussing the repair bill in an amicable way. My total outlay was just two thousand pesos.

It could have been far worse. I could have been asked to cough up four times that amount, and who knows what kind of intimidation I may have had to endure. Were it not for that astonishing coincidence.

Gspam fun

If you’re a regular Gmail user, then you probably know that every now and then, you have to roll up your sleeves, dive into the Gmail site, and check on your account’s Spam folder. That’s because every now and then, legitimate emails get tossed into this mix. And sometimes they turn out to be pretty important emails at that.

So once a week, I scan through about 200 spam messages to spot anything that looks like real mail. And the rest gets trashed.

Sometimes, however, you get to see some pretty funny stuff in the Spam mail, hidden within the reams of annoying “Get cheap pills online” and “Rep1ica watches” and “Discount CialisViagra”. They’re typically  R-rated headers, but they can be quite hilarious:

So huge my buddies were scared (And why exactly are your “buddies” around for it?)

You’ll surprise her with your Hulk (I wonder if  it’s green too?)

Women go crazy over huge mansticks (Are these located somewhere near the large testicks? sorry, that was awful… couldn’t resist)

Punish her with your monster (Probably what Dr. Frankenstein had in mind)

She loves suckin my monster weapon now (I wonder if it comes with quick release action…)

Turn a small knob into a huge wand! (Harry Potter, here we go!)

And perhaps in the too much information department…

She dripped all over the bed (Uh… maybe… she’s a messy eater?)

How to Solve the Microsoft Antitrust Dilemma

Problem: Your operating system needs to have a browser from the get-go. But you can’t bundle Internet Explorer because (1) you’re Microsoft, and (2) the European Union is trouncing you with an antitrust suit.

For the quick and dirty solution, read on.

A Brief History

Once upon a time, a tiny company called Netscape built the first commercial-ready web browser. And there was much rejoicing.

But when Bill Gates saw the potential threat in how web browsers can take over the desktop and eventually become an operating system on their own (yes, he thinks that far ahead), he realized that the only way to stop this threat was for Microsoft to enter the foray itself.

Thus emerged Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s answer to the fast-rising Netscape browser tide of the mid-1990s. And the strategy was to bundle Internet Explorer with every copy of Windows. That way, consumers need no longer download Netscape’s browser and Microsoft can be at peace.

It was a deadly move. Before long, the highly touted Netscape (one of the first high market-cap web success stories) shriveled into a ghost of its former self. And Internet Explorer became the dominant browser.

The Antitrust Movement

Netscape, and a host of other alternative browsers, cried foul. After all, how can they compete with something that ships along with the operating system itself?

The US Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, declaring that the company was guilty of anti-competitive practices. By 2002, a settlement was reached. It was just a slap on Microsoft’s wrist though, and the biggest benefit to emerge from this was that Microsoft’s iron-fisted lock on OEMs was loosened, allowing computer dealers to bundle other third party products with their PCs.

But Internet Explorer still remained a part of Windows. And Microsoft’s defense is that it is impossible to remove one from the other because the browser is now an integral part of the operating system.

Yeah. Right.

Cut to… Today

In Microsoft’s defense, the browser is now indeed an indispensable part of an operating system. A modern OS should allow the user to go online upon startup in order to do any number of things, including gather updates, register online, and get new software.

The European Union, however,  insists that the only way to play fair is for Microsoft to remove IE completely from Windows. Which is why it is actively pursuing its own antitrust investigations against the software giant.

So how do you reconcile this with Microsoft’s stand that any OS worth its salt needs a browser?

Solution: Bundle a VERY basic browser.

This should have been Microsoft’s offering from day one. While Microsoft has a point that web browsing should be an integral part of the OS, it has no business including value-added features to it since this puts it in competition with developers.

This very basic, no-frills browser can auto-launch upon Windows setup. It can then point by default to a “shopping list” page where you then get to choose which browser you would like to install–whether Firefox, Opera, Safari… even Internet Explorer.

And then the rest is a piece of cake.

To justify the browser truly being part of the OS, Microsoft should allow developers to build on top of it, making it an open highway that others can develop over if they choose to do so.

Result: Considering that times have changed and the browser is no longer deemed as a direct threat to operating systems, Microsoft will win from having less antitrust issues to deal with. Developers will win from the leveled playing field. And consumers will win from realizing that there are more browsers out there than they may have known.

Incidentally, this should also have been the same principle behind the Windows Media Player. Microsoft should have stuck with simply offering their basic no-frills Media Player Classic, and then let the consumers decide on which value-added media player they would eventually want to download and install.

This principle of doing away with all value-added software that an operating system comes with will solve the antitrust dilemma. Plus, it will encourage developers to build competitive products without fear of being pummeled by the very operating system that they are developing for.