REACTIVEradio

Late last week, Larry Page gave a talk at the American Association for the Advancement of Science symposium in which he spoke about what is currently possible with current technology, but isn’t available due to what he believes is a lack of human motivation. I think it’s a rather interesting dichotomy: on one hand we are developing these technologies so that at some point in our or our children’s lives, everything will be automated to the point where robots will do everything for us and we can be the truly lazy slobs we all want to be, but on the other hand, we need to continue working harder and harder towards this goal, in effect zeroing out the laziness in advance.

The law of energy conservation states that no energy can be created or destroyed; it can only change forms. Now, normally this law only applies to the transfer of actual energy between particles like atoms and quarks and all those other infinitesimally small bits of matter, but I whole-heartedly believe that it can apply to the equalization of larger systems as well, namely our lives.

Take, for example, two junior lawyers at a large firm. One of these newbies leaves at 5 o’clock every day, in a race home to meet his wife and kids for dinner. The other, a workaholic, sticks around until the wee hours of the morning nearly every day, trying to get his cases all in line. Now who do you think is going to be named partner sooner? Of course it’s going to be the workaholic, but I ask the question: is he really getting a break? Obviously, being partner, he’ll be afforded quite a few more luxuries, and have less (or no) work to do when he reaches those ranks, but it’s only because he did the same amount of work he would have done as a partner but as a junior. Think of it another way: if you think of the amount of work each of these lawyers will do in their life as “100%”, the first guy is going to spread his 100% out over the course of his 40 years as a lawyer, and the first guy is going to do the same 100% of work, but he’s going to do it in 20 years, and have another 20 years to sit behind a desk and look pretty.

In the end, you’re putting in the same amount of effort. Whether you do it all at once, or spread it out, nature has a way of evening things out.

Now, back to what Mr. Page was talking about. He essentially said that human laziness was the single biggest barrier to technological advancement, and I’d have to agree with him. While there are a number of people out there who go into work every day hoping to develop a faster way to deliver medicine into our bloodstreams or make stronger steel to build cars out of, I think it’s fair to say that a much larger percentage of us go to work, do the bare minimum, and all the while wish that the bare minimum was even less than it currently is.

We’re starting to expect technology to do too much for us and as a result, we are becoming increasingly lazy, which in return is impeding our progress in the various scientific disciplines. We want to be lazier, so we go to work at a technology company and pretend to be “part of the team” so that we can feel like we accomplished something. This company then puts out Product X™ which allows people to spend 9 more minutes a day doing absolutely nothing, and increases the global lazy coefficient by 2 and a half points.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

It’s a sad cycle, and I think Mr. Page is absolutely correct. I think that the laziness being exhibited on a daily basis in Corporate America/Canada/Bangladesh is astounding, and is increasing at an alarming rate. People seem to have this fantasy about sitting at home all day every day sipping margaritas by the pool instead of counting beans at a desk, but until we actually reach a point where robots are able to completely take over society, we all still need to push ahead to make those dreams a reality. It needs to be a global effort; not just an effort put forth by 1% of society.

Anyways, I’ve spent an hour of company time writing this so I should get back to work.

The Microsoft Zune. What an absolutely beautiful device. An MP3 player with a 3 inch screen which is perfect for watching your favorite movie on a bus or a plane or when you’re just waiting in the stupid doctor’s office for your stupid turn in line to get your stupid chest x-ray taken. You’ve got 30GB of hard drive space to store tons of media, which is more than enough room to store 20 movies plus thousands of MP3s.

Even before you open the box, the Zune screams uniqueness. Rather than following the typical glossy packaging trend, it arrives in a non-shiny container, with pictures of people sitting around, chilling out, and having a Zune party (yes, they exist). The caption reads “welcome to the social [sic]” and with the features it’s bringing, I can’t wait to join in.

Welcome to the social. For once, Microsoft finally got their branding right. What sets the Zune apart from those other digital audio players (DAPs) *cough*iPod*cough* is that the Zune comes with Wireless built-in. No, you can’t surf the internet on it (being that it only has 7 buttons on it, that could prove to be difficult), but you can sync up with other Zunes in the vicinity and trade songs. There are restrictions on the transferred songs, such as you have 3 days or 3 plays (whichever comes first) to listen to them before they are removed from the player, but I think that it’s a great chance for bands with less than stellar advertising budgets to get exposure to new fans.

The display that Microsoft has decided to include in the device is 3 inches (diagonal) big, and has surprisingly crisp pictures. Before I purchased it, I was of the mindset that 3 inches was just too small to have any kind of real viewable picture; I’ve since changed my mind. I’ve encoded quite a few of my favorite movies into Microsoft’s Windows Media Video format, and the quality is definitely watchable. It won’t be winning any home theater awards for clearest picture, but it also won’t be getting any complaints.

Along with the hardware launch, Microsoft presented the Zune Marketplace which is essentially their answer to Apple’s iTunes service. While I can’t review the quality of the downloads personally as they don’t allow Bermudian credit cards to sign up, I can say that I was a tad annoyed when I was looking at the pricing of songs. You see, Microsoft elected to use their Microsoft Points (MSP) currency rather than hard dollars and cents. This makes sense because MSP are also the currency of their Xbox 360 platform; they’re interchangeable, so I can understand the reasoning behind wanting to unify the two systems. My problem is that they may be misleading the customer a bit when they’re purchasing their songs.

You see, Microsoft is charging 80 MSP per song, however to get 80 MSP, you will need 99 cents. I have little doubt that someone, somewhere out there will think that they’re getting a deal when they see that songs on the Zune Marketplace are 80 MSP, but on iTunes are 99 cents. In reality, the costs are obviously the same, but to someone who isn’t paying attention, it would sound like you’re getting a better deal on Microsoft’s site. I don’t know if I agree with that. Then again, what do I know about marketing? Absolutely zero. Food for thought.

Back on track, the Zune software is actually rather useful. When attempting to help friends out with their iPods and consequently iTunes, I always felt that the user interface was designed specifically for Macs with PCs being an afterthought. While this may be clever marketing (e.g. to get the user used to the OSX look so that when they finally switch *hint hint* it won’t be a shock), it always felt out of place when it was inevitably installed in Windows. Not so with the Zune software. On my Vista-equipped laptop, the software integrates beautifully with the look and feel of Windows.

On the functionality side, getting your media onto the Zune is honestly as easy as clicking and dragging it from Windows Explorer onto the software. You drag it, the software synchronizes it. It’s seriously that easy.

The battery lfie on the device is exceptional as well. Since I first got it, I’ve used it at least an hour a day (I listen to it on my scooter to and from work) and I only have to charge it about once a week or less. Obviously I have to charge it a little more often if I happen to have the opportunity to watch a movie or two on it, but even then, it’s still well deserving of a “good” rating.

All in all, I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending the Zune to anyone considering the purchase of a new MP3 player. It’s got all the functionality you could ever want (and more), it’s got high quality components, and most of all, it’s incredibly easy and intuitive to use.

Rating: 9/10

Foreward: The piece you are about to read is meant as a means of communicating a viewpoint that is normally ignored or dismissed. I, Justin Smith, do not necessarily hold these views, but rather I’m using this blog to attempt to argue a stance that is not my own. At times I may even write in first person, but I must stress that these “views” are entirely fictional. This is simply an exercise in debate; nothing more.

Today on a lark, I took a personality test based on the Keirsey/Myers-Briggs scale. It doesn’t tell you very much in the end, mainly things that you should already know. Tidbits like how you may work well in groups versus alone; how you prioritize family issues over (or under) work issues. That sort of thing.

It should come as no surprise that I was rated an “ISFJ“, or “introverted sensing feeling judging”. After doing a bit of research on this type, I found that us ISFJs will often argue a viewpoint that differs from their own. This is not because they feel the need to cause a confrontation, on the contrary, ISFJs are very anti-confrontation. It’s believed that this need to offer conflicting opinions comes from their near-obsession with learning. This makes a lot of sense – by being forced to argue a reasoning that they don’t necessarily have as much knowledge about, they are forced to learn as much about a topic as possible to defend such views.

Throughout the course of this blog’s life, I will periodically write pieces which will be about a societal-sensitive issue but from the opinion opposite the public. I will write about topics like: why we should go to war; why robbing a bank should be legal; etc. Not because I believe it to be the truth, but just to see how convincingly I can argue the point.

I will also have a separate RSS category for these posts called “Devil’s Advocate” which I hope, if nothing else, will stimulate comments on the topic. You can leave comments on a post by clicking the “Comment now” link next to the title of the article. No registration is required; just click the link, pick a pseudonym, and post your thoughts whether they be for or against the topic at hand. I will endeavour to respond to each and every remark in as timely a fashion as possible.

Today’s Devil’s Advocate post will be about suicide, and how it should be accepted as a practice to end one’s suffering.

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Suicide. It is generally regarded as the most indecent way of dying. In fact, according to the Bible, suicide is the only cause of death that will absolutely, positively prevent you from ever reaching heaven. Suicidal tendencies imply extreme mental stress on the part of the individual, and if kept unchecked, could lead to the individual taking his or her own life. My question is why does suicide have such a negative connotation?

As an ex-troubled young boy, I spent many of my waking hours pondering my own mortality. Not so much about the afterlife sense (being of the deterministic “faith”, such things don’t exist) but rather in the more dreary should-I-kill-myself sense. I will spare you all the trouble of an incredibly depressing story of an even more depressing (or rather depressed) youngster, but suffice it to say, I spent a considerable part of my childhood just wanting that pain to go away.

I didn’t (nor don’t) believe in Heaven, so I had no qualms about killing myself. Should my heart cease beating, I wouldn’t traverse an infinite plane to meet a wooly man dressed all in white, I would just cease to exist. I wouldn’t have any knowledge that I had perished, I was just dead. I never understood (or rather, don’t understand) why we as a society hold the dead to some higher standard that require praising on certain anniversaries or need to be treated with some extra respect; they just happen to be people who, if engaged in an arguement, would lose by default, because they couldn’t fight back.

Using this as a basis, ending one’s own life to cure depression should be just as accepted as seeing a psychologist, or taking a daily regiment of SSRIs. Life isn’t something to be celebrated at all. Who of us had a choice when our parents decided to bring us into the world? We were brought into this life like slaves; why shouldn’t we ultimately have the choice to break those chains if (or perhaps, when) we finally realize what a terrible existence it is?

We are born and for the first 3 years of our lives, we struggle with the most basic of basic functions: speech/communication. Something we all take for granted is something these little dudes and dudettes are having one hell of a time mastering. Instead of “Mom, I would like pickle,” you hear a combination of mumbling, gurgling, and crying, sometimes all at once. They’re unhappy and frustrated, but flailing their arms and legs back and forth is the pinnacle of their motor control at this point.

So then these little people grow into children, who are best known not for creating the most realistic nativity plays, but rather destroying even the most miniscule chance you might have once had when you brought your date out to dinner. Once again, the little terrors realize how miserable they really are, but now they have enough sense to disseminate the hate amongst anyone with a pulse, as a more or less cathartic release since mommy didn’t let them eat a sponge earlier in the day.

The children grow into young adults, and if they haven’t actually contemplated suicide by now, have probably only not done so out of ignorance that such a wonderful fate could await them. They are getting smart enough to see the world for what it really is: a disgusting place of pain and suffering, being perpetrated by the same people they had looked up to for the last 15 or so years. Their educators teach them about the wars and atrocities that have been commited since the beginning of recorded history and for at least some of the kids, they start to realize that the world isn’t that utopian place they were brought up believing it was.

It’s at this point that the realization that these feelings won’t disappear all on their own sets in. The person sinks into a depression which has a number of “outs”. They can go speak to a therapist/psychologist/psychiatrist. They can have their doctor prescribe any of a hundred anti-depressants, such as Paxil, Celexa, Zoloft, Ritalin, lithium, and the list goes on. They can also choose death.

While I completely understand that a family who has to deal with the loss of a family member can be at the very least devastating, these feelings have to do with your view of death, and to what regard you hold it. Obviously the person who has committed the act has (or had, rather) a different view of it, and when it comes down to it, why should the person be obligated to follow your views on anything. I’d go so far as to say that demanding that they follow what you believe to be the “true way” is incredibly selfish.

Yes, there are alternative methods to “curing” their depression as we discussed above, but why are any of those any more valid than suicide? They all have the same outcome: the depressed are no longer depressed.

In conclusion, whether or not suicide is accepted by the general population, it is indeed the cause of quite a number of deaths each year which means that at least a certain number of people believe it just as useful as talking about their problems. You can look down on those who have thought about committing (or committed) suicide with disdain and tell them that they have other choices before they end it all, but who are you to choose for them? We choose not to go parading around, telling those patients on pills that there are alternatives to having to take their meds every day. We let them make their choice; let us make ours.