How To Tell If Gadgets Are Needlessly Complicated: The Mom Test

This is a rant, of the grumpy-old-man variety.

Two weeks ago I was staying at my parents’ apartment because my home in New Jersey was without power, thanks to Hurricane Sandy.

“Oh, Sonny, I’m glad you’re here,” my mother told me when I arrived. “I need you to help me set up the DVD player.”

I love my mom to bits and pieces, but sometimes it’s like a bad sitcom with her: The tech writer son tries to help his mother (who still refers to the refrigerator as the “icebox,” by the way) do something he thinks is the easiest thing in the world but to her is akin to landing the Mars Rover.

We went into her bedroom. She had a television that was connected to a cable box and a DVD player—simple. Even the universal remote that came with her cable box was already programmed to work with the TV and DVD player. Miracle of miracles.

“See, Mom, you’re going to want to change inputs when you switch from cable to DVD,” I said.

“Change inputs?” she replied. “Can’t I just have it set to channel 3?”

This is what I’m talking about: My mother has that Reagan-era notion that you can set a channel of the TV to be an auxiliary input, like I used to do when I wanted to fire up the VHS and watch The Last Starfighter. Again.

“No, Mom. It’s really simple. Let me show you.” This is where things fell apart. But not because of my mom. “OK,” I began, “you’re going to use the cable box remote. Remember to push ‘DVD’ at the top of the remote to send commands to the DVD. You’ll then have to push ‘STB’ when you want to go back to cable, but to change the TV’s input, push ‘TV.’”

The cable box remote did have a “video source” button on it. And pushing it did call up the TV’s video source menu. And pushing “video source” repeatedly did allow one to cycle through the available sources. I reached “DVD,” selected it, and then looked for the “exit” button to close out the source menu.

Except my remote didn’t have an “exit” button. Or, it did, but it wasn’t mapped to the TV’s exit function. So the TV’s source menu just sat there—on top of my mother’s DVD of The Thin Man playing underneath.

“OK, Mom, looks like this remote can’t access all the functions on your TV, so we’re going to get the TV’s original remote,” I said. Even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I knew this wasn’t going to work.

“Seriously?” my mother asked. “Lemme get this straight: If I want to watch the goddamn Thin Man on the DVD, I have to first get the TV remote, find the source menu, switch to ‘DVD,’ then go back to the cable remote, select ‘DVD,’ press ‘play,’ but don’t forget to switch the remote back to ‘STB’ when I want to control the cable box? Something like that?”

“Um. Yeah, Mom.”

“What the hell happened to channel 3?”

Here’s the thing about my technophobic mother: She’s absolutely right. The tiny hoops we are asked to jump through give lie to the idea that technology is going to make our lives easier. In some cases it does (I never get lost in my car anymore, thanks to GPS; I’m never bored anymore, thanks to my smartphone), but there are glaring omissions.

TV manufacturers, can you please get it together? Can there be some common standards so my TV knows when I’ve put a disc in the DVD player, and it can ask me if I’d like to watch it now? Can remotes and devices talk to each other automatically, with full functionality, without the need to program them? Can someone please let me access any and all on-demand, streaming, or downloaded video without having to switch from my set-top box to Netflix (NFLX) or iTunes? Can I have a TV setup that I don’t have to explain how to use to house guests and babysitters? (“… sometimes the sound bar will turn itself off because it gets confused by a signal from the remote to the TV. Just use this remote to …”)

Face it, TV people: Your products are commodities. No one cares about your hardware. One display is virtually indistinguishable from another. But if one of you actually made it easier to use your product? Let me tell you something—it wouldn’t just be 65-year-old Jewish women on the Upper West Side of Manhattan who would be interested. We’d all line up for that.

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Canada seen needing to spell out rules for natural gas projects

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – The fate of a handful of liquefied natural gas projects planned for Canada’s Pacific coast may depend on the Canadian government‘s willingness to spell out rules for foreign investment in the country’s energy sector, according to a study released on Thursday.

Apache Corp, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Petronas, BG Group Plc and others are in the planning stages for LNG projects that would take gas from the rich shale fields of northeastern British Columbia and ship it to Asian buyers.

But the federal government’s decision last month to stall the C$ 5.2 billion ($ 5.2 billion) bid by Malaysia’s state-owned Petronas C$ 5.2 billion for Canada‘s Progress Energy Resources Corp could lessen the appetite of Asian buyers for Canadian LNG, energy consultants Wood Mackenzie said.

“Some potential off-takers of Canadian LNG like the idea … because it’s perceived as having low political risk, and another reason is because they see the potential for investment opportunities,” said Noel Tomnay, head of global gas at the consultancy.

“If there are going to be restrictions on how they access those opportunities, if acquisitions are closed to them, then clearly that would restrict the attractiveness of those opportunities. If would-be Asian investors thought that corporate acquisitions were an avenue that was not open to them then Canadian LNG would become less attractive.”

The Canadian government is looking to come up with rules governing corporate acquisitions by state-owned companies and has pushed off a decision on the Petronas bid as it considers whether to approve the $ 15.1 billion offer for Nexen Inc from China’s CNOOC Ltd.

Exporting LNG to Asia is seen as a way to boost returns for natural-gas producers tapping the Montney, Horn River and Liard Basin shale regions of northeastern British Columbia.

Though Wood Mackenzie estimates the fields contain as much as 280 trillion cubic feet of gas, they are far from Canada’s traditional U.S. export market, while growing supplies from American shale regions have cut into Canadian shipments.

Because the region lacks infrastructure, developing the resource will be expensive, requiring new pipelines and multibillion-dollar liquefaction.

Still Wood Mackenzie estimates that the cost of delivery into Asian markets for Canadian LNG would be in the range of $ 10 million to $ 12 per million British thermal units, similar to competing projects in the United States and East Africa.

($ 1 = $ 1.00 Canadian)

(Reporting by Scott Haggett; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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Engineers of the Future Design Star Trek-Inspired Tricorder Device

A group of college and high school students has designed a Star Trek-inspired sensing device that can beam environmental data to a smart phone. The team developed their project during a summer internship program run by the Wright Brothers Institute and the Air Force Research Laboratory. and shared their results at this fall’s World Maker Faire in New York City–a showcase of DIY ingenuity. The Summer at the Edge program gives student teams ten weeks to work on science and engineering projects. The tricorder device is the team’s response to a challenge from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: “Is there an effective way to integrate external sensors with smart phones and can we globalize this information?” Applications could range from data collection for research to educational hands-on activities to disaster-zone assessment. The description reminded the students of a Star Trek gadget. In the sci-fi television series, the tricorder is a hand-held device used to diagnose illness, scout alien planets and more. Several real-life tricorders have been developed or proposed and the 15-member student team decided to take a crack at designing their own. The device itself looks like a clear brick filled with computer parts and batteries. It is built around an open-source computing platform called an Arduino microcontroller and transmits data via Bluetooth. An environmental sensing pod connects to the controller and collects measurements on variables like temperature, wind speed and radiation levels. Users can view data collection in real time via Google maps or an interactive graph and monitor changes and search for patterns. The tricorder’s modular design lets the team swap functionalities while still using the same Arduino controller and software. To demonstrate, the team built an additional pod equipped with an infrared beam and motion detector–a security sensor. Along the way, the team faced some challenges. Getting the sensors and the tablet to talk to each other involved a lot of troubleshooting. “We were having a lot of trouble with the Bluetooth communications,” says Lujack Prater, a junior studying electrical engineering at Ohio State University, who worked on the software design. “It was a few days that we didn’t get it. We were working on it and working on it.” Then a breakthrough: “It was really exciting–I remember the first time we started getting data streaming to the tablet,” says Grace Crumrine, part of the hardware sub-team and a sophomore in electrical engineering at Ohio State University. “But it was completely corrupt and didn’t mean anything.” The team needed to iron out software glitches and calibrate their sensors. Crumrine explains that the wind sensor was just “spitting out analogue values and we didn’t know what they meant.” So they took the sensor for a ride. While her teammate drove, Crumrine stuck the sensor out the car window. They were able to determine which values corresponded to specific speeds by rolling down the road at five, then 10 miles per hour and so on. The EPA was impressed, says Rob Williams, head of the internship program and research director of the Air Force Research Laboratory‘s Discovery Lab. “The tricorder was one of the more ambitious research projects,” he adds. “I think it validated the model that we’ve been an advocate of–bringing together motivated students and giving them the opportunity to have fun learning while doing projects that have potential.” Other notable projects include a tablet-based virtual walkthrough of medical techniques to train physicians and a device that can detect the brain’s electrical signals to give quadriplegics control over robots. What’s the next step for Project Tricorder? Williams would like to find teachers and students around the country who want to use the team’s design. He says middle school students could use the device to see how technology can help protect the environment. The military could use it to download information to virtual command centers and guide decision-making during a search and rescue based on current conditions. The device’s multi-functionality and connection to a smart phone would be key advantage. Sensor pods could even be installed in remote or dangerous locations and still report via Bluetooth.

Lujack Prater and Grace Crumrine with their team's device at the World Maker Faire. Credit: Grace Crumrine

Both Prater and Crumrine say the program is hard work. Prater spent the first two weeks learning how to code and program Android devices. “You get so involved in the project that you forget what you are doing,” says Crumrine. “Then when you present it to people you see their face with all the excitement and astonishment. It is worth it.”

Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
© 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.

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U2′s Bono to urge U.S. politicians not to cut aid programs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Irish rocker and anti-poverty campaigner Bono will appeal to Democrats and Republicans during a visit to Washington this week to spare U.S. development assistance programs from cuts as Congress tries to avert the looming “fiscal cliff” of tax hikes and spending reductions early next year.

The U2 lead singer’s visit comes as the Obama administration and congressional leaders try to forge a deal in coming weeks to avoid the economy hitting the “fiscal cliff” – tax increases and spending cuts worth $ 600 billion starting in January if Congress does not act.

Analysts say the absence of a deal could shock the United States, the world’s biggest economy, back into recession.

Kathy McKiernan, spokeswoman for the ONE Campaign, said Bono will hold talks with congressional lawmakers and senior Obama administration officials during the November 12-14 visit.

During meetings he will stress the effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance programs and the need to preserve them to avoid putting at risk progress made in fighting HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, she said.

Bono, a long-time advocate for the poor, will argue that U.S. government-funded schemes that support life-saving treatments for HIV/AIDS sufferers, nutrition programs for malnourished children, and emergency food aid make up just 1 percent of the U.S. government budget but are helping to save tens of millions of lives in impoverished nations.

The One Campaign would not elaborate which lawmakers and senior Obama administration officials Bono will meet.

On Monday, Bono will discuss the power of social movements with students at Georgetown University. He will also meet new World Bank President Jim Yong Kim for a web cast discussion on Wednesday on the challenges of eradicating poverty.

(Editing by W Simon)

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Next-day discharge after C-section may be okay: study

(Reuters) – Some women who deliver their babies by cesarean section may be able to check out of the hospital the next day without raising their risk of problems, according to a Malaysian study.

The study, which appeared in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, looked at 360 women in Malaysia, who were randomly assigned to go home either one or two days after having a C-section.

Both groups were equally satisfied with their care, and the women who were discharged sooner seemed to have no more problems with breastfeeding or mental well-being.

“Day 1 discharge compared with day 2 discharge after a planned cesarean delivery resulted in equivalent outcomes,” wrote lead author Peng Chiong Tan, at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur.

Those results don’t mean that hospitals should start discharging women the day after a C-section, but they do suggest that a next-day discharge is something women can talk about with their doctors, researchers said.

In the United States, where C-sections are done in about one-third of births, women typically stay in the hospital for three to four days after the procedure. That compares with about two days for women who deliver vaginally.

In the past, there were concerns about insurers pushing mothers to leave the hospital before they’re ready. That led to a 1996 law requiring insurers to pay for a 48-hour hospital stay after a vaginal delivery and a 96-hour stay after a C-section.

Still, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) says a shorter stay after a C-section is an option if the baby is ready to go home, though the mother should meet certain requirements first such as normal blood pressure, no signs of infection and adequate pain control.

At Tan’s hospital in Malaysia, women who have a C-section are routinely told to expect just a two-day stay, and some providers there have discharged new mothers the day after.

Tan’s team randomly assigned the 360 women having a planned C-section to go home either one or two days after delivering. In the end, 16 percent of the women in the day-after group were not discharged that early, because either they or their babies were having problems.

But when they did go home the day after, there didn’t seem to be a greater risk of difficulties. When the women were interviewed two weeks later, 87 percent were happy with their discharge timing.

The same was true for almost 86 percent of women who went home two days after their C-section.

While the findings would likely extend to women in other countries too, these Malaysian women typically went home to a lot of support – often, an extended family network, Tan said.

“Where this support is not available, next-day hospital discharge may not be associated with the same degree of satisfaction, acceptability and good outcome as we have found,” she added.

SOURCE:http://bit.ly/TzbGoz

(Reporting from New York by Amy Norton at Reuters Health; editing by Elaine Lies)

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Greek lawmakers back fresh cuts

11 November 2012 Last updated at 18:06 ET

Greek lawmakers have approved a 2013 budget involving fresh spending cuts, despite mass public street protests.

The budget was backed in by 167 votes to 128. The bill was a pre-condition for Athens to be granted a 31.5bn euro (£25bn; $ 40bn) EU/IMF loan necessary to stave off bankruptcy.

Another austerity package of tax rises and pension cuts was passed last week.

Ahead of the vote, more than 10,000 protesters rallied outside the parliament in the capital, Athens.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras earlier warned that without the new loan, Greece would start running out of money on Friday.

Eurozone finance ministers are due to meet just hours after the vote in Athens, and Mr Samaras is now expected to travel to Brussels for a series of meetings.

The problem that he faces is that it could take some weeks before the EU backs the new instalment, BBC Athens correspondent Mark Lowen reports. The measure will have to be approved first by some parliaments, including Germany’s.

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BBC must reform or die, says Trust chairman

LONDON (Reuters) – The BBC could be doomed unless it makes radical changes, the head of its governing trust said on Sunday, after its director general quit to take the blame for the airing of false child sex abuse allegations against a former politician.

Chris Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, said confidence had to be restored if the publicly funded corporation was to withstand pressure from rivals, especially Rupert Murdoch‘s media empire, which would try to take advantage of the turmoil.

“If you’re saying, ‘Does the BBC need a thorough structural radical overhaul?’, then absolutely it does, and that is what we will have to do,” Patten, a one-time senior figure in Prime Minister David Cameron‘s Conservative Party and the last British governor of Hong Kong, told BBC television.

“The basis for the BBC’s position in this country is the trust that people have in it,” Patten said. “If the BBC loses that, it’s over.”

George Entwistle resigned as director general on Saturday, just two months into the job, to take responsibility for the child sex allegation on the flagship news programme Newsnight.

The witness in the report, who says he suffered sexual abuse at a care home in the late 1970s, said on Friday he had misidentified the politician, Alistair McAlpine. Newsnight admitted it had not shown the witness a picture of McAlpine, or approached McAlpine for comment before going to air.

Already under pressure after revelations that a long-time star presenter, the late Jimmy Savile, was a paedophile, Entwistle conceded on the BBC morning news that he had not known – or asked – who the alleged abuser was until the name appeared in social media.

The BBC, celebrating its 90th anniversary, is affectionately known in Britain as “Auntie”, and respected around much of the world.

But with 22,000 staff working at eight national TV channels, 50 radio stations and an extensive Internet operation, critics say it is hampered by a complex and overly bureaucratic and hierarchical management structure.

THOMPSON’S LEGACY

Journalists said this had become worse under Entwistle’s predecessor Mark Thompson, who took over in the wake of the last major crisis to hit the corporation and is set to become chief executive of the New York Times Co on Monday.

In that instance, both director general and chairman were forced out after the BBC was castigated by a public inquiry over a report alleging government impropriety in the fevered build up to war in Iraq, leading to major organisational changes.

One of the BBC’s most prominent figures, Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman, said since the Iraq report furore, management had become bloated while cash had been cut from programme budgets.

“He (Entwistle) has been brought low by cowards and incompetents,” Paxman said in a statement, echoing a widely-held view that Entwistle was a good man who had been let down by his senior staff.

Prime Minister Cameron appeared ready to give the BBC the benefit of the doubt, believing that “one of the great institutions of this country” could reform and deal with its failings, according to sources in his office.

Patten, who must find a new director general to sort out the mess, agreed that management structures had proved inadequate.

“Apparently decisions about the programme went up through every damned layer of BBC management, bureaucracy, legal checks – and still emerged,” he said.

“One of the jokes I made, and actually it wasn’t all that funny, when I came to the BBC … was that there were more senior leaders in the BBC then there were in the Chinese Communist Party.”

Patten ruled out resigning himself but other senior jobs are expected to be on the line, while BBC supporters fear investigative journalism will be scaled back. He said he expected to name Entwistle’s successor in weeks, not months.

Among the immediate challenges are threats of litigation.

McAlpine, a close ally of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, has indicated he will sue for damages.

Claims for compensation are also likely from victims who say Savile, one of the most recognisable personalities on British television in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, sexually abused them as children, sometimes on BBC premises.

INQUIRIES

Two inquiries are already under way, looking at failures at Newsnight and allegations relating to Savile, both of which could make uncomfortable reading for senior figures.

Police have also launched a major inquiry into Savile’s crimes and victims’ allegations of a high-profile paedophile ring. Detectives said they had arrested their third suspect on Sunday, a man in his 70s from Cambridgeshire in central England.

Funded by an annual licence fee levied on all TV viewers, the BBC has long been resented by its commercial rivals, who argue it has an unfair advantage and distorts the market.

Murdoch’s Sun tabloid gleefully reported Entwistle’s departure with the headline “Bye Bye Chump” and Patten said News Corp and others would put the boot in, happy to deflect attention after a phone-hacking scandal put the newspaper industry under intense and painful scrutiny.

He said that “one or two newspapers, Mr. Murdoch’s papers” would love to see the BBC lose its national status, “but I think the great British public doesn’t want to see that happen”.

Murdoch himself was watching from afar.

“BBC getting into deeper mess. After Savile scandal, now prominent news program falsely names senior pol as paedophile,” he wrote on his Twitter website on Saturday.

It is not just the BBC and the likes of Entwistle and Patten who are in the spotlight.

Thompson, whom Entwistle succeeded in mid-September, has also faced questions from staff at the New York Times over whether he is still the right person to take one of the biggest jobs in American newspaper publishing.

Britain’s Murdoch-owned Sunday Times queried how Thompson could have been unaware of claims about Savile during his tenure at the BBC as he had told British lawmakers, saying his lawyers had written to the paper addressing the allegations in early September, while he was still director general.

(Editing by Kevin Liffey and Sophie Hares)

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Malaysian charged with Facebook insult of sultan; sister says he’ll file police complaint

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – The sister of a Malaysian man who has been charged with insulting a state sultan on Facebook says he is innocent and plans to lodge a complaint over his detention.

Anisa Abdul Jalil, sister of Ahmad Abdul Jalil, says her brother was charged Thursday with making offensive postings on Facebook last month.

She says the charges are ridiculous because there is no evidence linking Ahmad to the posts in question, which were made by someone using the name “Zul Yahaya.”

Ahmad was freed on bail Thursday after six days of detention. Anisa says he will file a complaint with police for unlawful detention and intimidation.

Nine Malaysian states have sultans and other royal figures. Though their roles are largely ceremonial, acts provoking hatred against them are considered seditious.

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Judy’s Garland’s Oz dress fetches $480K in auction

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — The now-faded blue gingham dress Judy Garland wore in “The Wizard of Oz” has sold for $ 480,000.

Auction house Julien’s Auctions says the pinafore fetched the highest price of any item during a two-day auction of Hollywood memorabilia that attracted bids from around the world. The auction ended Saturday in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Steve McQueen‘s racing jacket sold for $ 50,000, as did a purple skirt worn by Marilyn Monroe while filming “River of No Return” in Canada. Julie Andrews‘ “Sound of Music dress” brought $ 38,400.

Sunglasses worn by Jean Reno in “Leon” went for $ 8,320, while Johnny Depp‘s shades fetched $ 3,250.

Bidders also snapped up pieces of royal wedding cakes. Prince William and Kate Middleton’s cake sold for $ 7,500 while Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s cake sold for $ 1,375.

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Boehringer Ingelheim to start late-stage hepatitis C drug trial

BOSTON (Reuters) – Boehringer Ingelheim said on Saturday it plans to initiate a late-stage clinical trial of its experimental hepatitis C treatment following promising results from earlier studies.

The company announced final data from a mid-stage trial of its treatment regimen which showed that 69 percent of patients in the study were free of the virus 12 and 24 weeks following the end of treatment.

Hepatitis C is a blood-borne infectious disease of the liver that can lead to liver failure and transplant.

Historically, hepatitis C has been treated with pegylated interferon and ribavirin, but treatment lasts as long as 48 weeks and interferon is associated with flu-like side effects.

The goal of drugmakers now, including Boehringer, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc, Gilead Sciences Inc and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co is to develop products that do not need to be combined with interferon. Most analysts consider Gilead to currently be at the forefront of the race.

Full results from Boehringer’s trial, known as SOUND-C2, were presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases in Boston. Preliminary data were presented earlier this year.

Boehringer’s trial tested a combination of BI-201335, a protease inhibitor, BI-207127, a polymerase inhibitor, and ribivirin.

Boehringer is a privately held company headquartered in Ingelheim, Germany.

(Reporting By Toni Clarke; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

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