Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

The one person who seems to constantly read my blog (Hi Mom!) and who isn’t particularly concerned with technology speculation but who nevertheless is curious about changing trends might be interested in the following question, “what sorts of businesses are based on temporary (placeholder) technologies which will inevitably (and in the near future) be replaced by more permanent technologies?”

Here’s my list:

• Supermarket self checkout^* (inevitable technology: “push through” check out with RFID tag scanners)
• Netflix (inevitable technology: stream media to your house)
• Long distance calling card (inevitable technology: border-less, VOIP worldwide communications. (Deprecates timezones/country codes))

What’s on your list?

* Am I the only one who HATES those?

In response to my post of seconds ago, many have remarked, “Sure, Ryan, but those technologies are many years ‘a coming. What are some near future big things we can look forward to?” Well, my impatient friends, here is my list for those rather big things:

• Electric transportation (no more gasoline cars or gasoline infrastructure)
• Complete globalization (the world becomes flat)
• Media-less (no physical delivery of bits)
• Return to centralized computing (everything in a browser: word processing, etc.)

People are always asking me what I think the coming big technologies will be^* like I’m some all-seeing oracle or something. Which I’m not. Not really. Fortunately, I do have some guesses though. I think there are three technologies which will prove revolutionary and disruptive (not evolutionary) to society.

• Nanotechnology
• Real artificial intelligence
• Biotechnology/genetic engineering

What do you think?!?

* not true

Domino’s pizza has a new ad campaign (the “anything goes deal”) where each day they release a word puzzle and if you solve the puzzle you get a link to an eBay auction where the first ten people that day (for only $9.99) can get cool stuff, like an iPod or a year’s worth of pizza.

The puzzles are one of three forms: Word Jumbles, CryptoQuips or Domino’s Trivia. The Word Jumble is just as it sounds; they scramble the letters of some Domino’s themed sentence around and you get to unscramble it. For example: MOIODSN HITNNYGA SOGE ALED

Because I’m all about giving back to the community, I took five minutes and wrote a small program to help you with those tricky Word Jumbles. Here’s the link: Domino’s Pizza Anything Goes Deal Helper Script

It’s not perfect, but it will unscramble a lot of what Domino’s throws at you. You’re Welcome!

Want the code?

You’re looking for something on Google, but you’re just not finding it. Page after page of search results turn up nothing. Arghhh! All you want is the URL of that site where people post pictures of their cats and you get to rate them, like a hot-or-not site. What is the name of that thing!!!

Couldn’t it be cool if you had a REAL LIVE PERSON to help you search? Now you do! Introducing ChaCha Search– the People Powered Search.

Here’s how it works: surf on over to www.chacha.com, type your search query into the box and then click on Search With Guide. On the left hand side of the next page will be a nifty little chat box with a real person hanging out inside (virtually.) They get paid $10 an hour to help you search. It’s pretty interesting. And it’s free for you!

UPDATE: I failed to mention that I think, from a purely MBA perspective, that chacha.com (regardless of how novel it is), will ultimately fail. I predict it will be offline in 6 months. Three reasons why: 1- it doesn’t scale well, 2- it’s a solution looking for a non-existent problem, and 3-the guides are not horribly helpful.

…but due to a “programming glitch”, it turns out that all the conversations were recorded. After consultation with my legal council, we decided I was well within my power to release the transcripts of some of those chats. What I learned: 1- a lot of you hate bots 2- a lot of you like to flirt with the bot. And so, with that, here we go, the actual, unedited conversations between humans (H:) and the infamous bot (B:)

H: yo dog B: Dog: Domesticated animal, “man’s best friend.”
H: hows it going B: Fair to partly cloudy.
H: who rules? B: God Rules.
H: who is god B: God is master of the universe.
H: what is the universe B: The set of all things.
H: what things? B: You know, “things.”
H: which ones? B: “You know things?” Which ones?
H: yes B: Tell me more.
H: no B: What would you rather talk about?
H: ryan byrd B: Not many people want to talk about that.

H: You’re strange. B: Compared to what?
H: Get help B: Where can I get help?
H: Get help from Ryan B: Where can I get help from Ryan?
H: Die B: Your crude attempt to terminate me will not succeed puny human.
H: what? B: Are you surprised?
H: Yes B: I wouldn’t have known.
H: Liar B: No I am telling the truth.
H: Soo stupid B: Stupid as in unintelligent?
H: You are stupid.B: I will remember you said that when robots take over the World.
H: Robots will die B: Tell me your definition of a robot.
H: you will die B: No, software will live forever.

H: Hi Bot B: Hi there undefined. I am a robot.
H: How are you today B: Ah. Everything is going extremely well
H: Do you do anything useful? B: Yeah I do a lot of anything useful
H: For example? B: For example, apples.
H: What do you do with apples? B: My favorite activities are computer programming and surfing the web.
H: tomato B: Potato.
H: jibbah jabbah B: That remark was either too complex or too simple for me. We were talking about jibbah jabbah. Do you believe in god?

H: cold, B: Ambiguous: cold weather or cold sickness?
H: both B: What are both like?
H: you tell me B: What do you want me to tell you?
H: nothing B: Not a thing?
H: nope B: Really interesting.
H: meh B: I lost my train of thought. What do you do in your spare time?
H: puke B: I don’t think very many people do that.

H: i hate you B: What do you have against robots?
H: everything B: That is a lot.

H: hello robot B: Hello there. I am a robot.
H: how do i impress girls? B:You must persuade me to impress girls.
H: how do i persuade you? B: Try logic, sophistry, or rhetoric.
H: i think, therefore i am B: Who are you, Rene Descartes?

H: i love you B: Thanks I like you a lot too undefined.
H: my name is pete B: I am very pleased to meet you pete
H: i love you B: Thanks I like you a lot too pete.
H: i want to make love to you B: Sorry pete I’m not into that with my clients.

H: I hate bots B: I honestly think you should sit down, take a stress pill, and calmly think things over.
H: I hate you B: What do you have against robots?
H: You stink B: Thanks for your criticism, undefined.
H: You stink bad B: That’s good information: undefined said I stink bad.

H: you are stupid B: I will remember you said that when robots take over the World.
H: They will not take over the world. B: The anonymous they.
H: Robots will not take over the world. B: “Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.”–Lord Kelvin, 1895.
H: True B: You and I are on the same wavelength, undefined.

H: hi. my name is mindy B: Hello there. I’m pleased to introduce myself to you, mindy
H: what are you wearing? B: I am wearing my usual plastic computer wardrobe.
H: that’s hot B: Thanks for explaining hot.
H: i hate you B: What do you have against robots?
H: you stink B: Thanks for your criticism, mindy.
H: would you like to kiss me? B: No thanks, I don’t think I’d like to do that.

A few days ago, in my corporate strategy class at the U, we discussed the social and economic impact of legalized gambling. Utah, you might know, shares the ignominy with Hawaii as the only two states to ban all forms of gambling (or “gaming” as some like to euphemistically refer to it.)

Some have argued that Utah is missing out on millions of dollars in tourism and taxable gambling revenues as its citizens leave the state headed for Wendover, Las Vegas, Idaho Powerball and Evanston horse races. Allow me to sum up the salient elements of each side of the gambling divide:

Points made by the pro-gamblers include:

1. Money goes to good causes like education (I find this strikingly manipulative, by the way) and transportation.

2. People are going to do it anyway, why not capitalize on it?

3. Gambling is merely recreation.

4. Gambling is essentially the same thing as speculation/day-trading on the stock market.

Points made by the anti-gamblers include:

1. “Gambling is a tax for people who are bad at math” and as such, it disproportionally affects the young and less educated

2. Gamblers are also overrepresented among minorities (esp. black) and low income citizens (a.)(b.)(c.)

3. Gambling is addictive

4. Compulsive gambling is detrimental to families.

5. Gambling increases crime, bankruptcy and divorce.

I am in the latter school of thought and am against state-sanctioned gambling. Here’s why: I believe governments have a moral and ethical mandate to legislate for actions that strengthen society and against activities that are deleterious to it. Permitting gambling within Utah’s borders is the legal equivalent of a stamp of approval. There is no doubt that facilitating access to lottery tickets, etc would increase the numbers of gambling participants as well as the overall frequency in which participants gamble. The idea that in a cost-benefit analysis, the benefits outweigh the social costs is a dangerous one; that same “ends justify the means” is used by those supporting embryonic stem cell research and likely too by Nazi scientist Josef Mengele. Hazardous means remain hazardous regardless of the potentially meritorious ends.

Where do you stand?

References:

a. An Exploratory Study of Lottery Playing, Gambling Addiction and Links to Compulsive Consumption. Alvin Burns, Peter Gillett, Marc Rubinstein and James Gentry. Advances in Consumer Research, Vol.17, 1990. “Lottery players also tended to have lower incomes and be less educated than nonplayers.“

b. New Jersey Low Income and Minority Resident Lottery Participation. Allison Jackson Associates. New Jersey Division of State Lottery, July, 1988. “… low income players spend a larger proportion of their household income on the lottery than do other players, and blacks spend more on a weekly basis than do whites or Hispanics.“

c. Adult Survey of Minnesota Gambling Behavior: A Benchmark, 1990. Laundergan, Schaefer, Eckhoff and Pirie. Minnesota Department of Human Services, November, 1990. “Males, non-whites and respondents under the age of 34 were all overrepresented among problem gamblers and potential and probable pathological gamblers based on a modified version of the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS-M).“

d. Harvard Magazine, Trafficking in Chance. Craig Lambert

“Legalized gambling is inherently parasitic on any economy. . . . it always hurts the economy; it always creates large socioeconomic problems. And that intensifies the need for tax dollars to address the new problems that they are creating by legalizing gambling.” — Professor John Kindt of the University of Illinois

Robert Redford, described once by a local newspaper man as a “leathery midget”, founded the Sundance Institute back in 1981. That institute brings us the Sundance Film Festival, which takes place every January in Park City, Utah. Park City was chosen because it’s the most debaucherous city in the state and home to only three Mormons, all of whom are named Jack.

The festival is known for its second-tier celebrity sightings, its wild evening parties and its countless films about lesbians. For all of those reasons, and also because I believe that the market has a way of weeding out mediocre (read: independent) films, I had avoided ever attending the event. Curiosity, or perhaps my longstanding philosophy that places become real only insofar as I’ve visited them, delivered me among the other miserable people suffering in the cold experiencing the famed festival first hand on Saturday.

For your information, Sundance does exist, but, at least for us peasants, it has mostly to do about standing in very, very long lines for the slim chance of being afforded the privilege of paying ten dollars to watch a movie which in all likelihood is extremely low-budget, extremely bizarre and extremely not worth either the wait or the ten dollars.

In fact, the lines are so long and so legendary that this year there were even filmmakers doing a documentary on people waiting in the said lines. Was I captured on film several times for that documentary as I stood in the queue? Yes. That should come as no surprise given I’m very telegenic. Ha!

And so I wasted the better part of an afternoon freezing to the core in the blustery Artic that is that Gomorrahic city. I’d tell you which movie we ended up watching, but I’d rather not give it the honor of mention, as it was incredibly deranged and no doubt produced under the influence of both banned substances and the devil himself. So, no, I won’t be writing about it. And yes, I’m a bit bitter about the waste of time.

But at least I got a blog entry out of it…

–nothing–

UPDATE: ok, so I’m getting a lot of questions from people asking me to do their homework for them. Let’s change gears a little. Here are some better sample questions for you (stolen from Eric Snider): “Why haven’t we captured Osama bin Laden? … What should I make for dinner tonight? … Is Big Bird a boy or a girl? … My fiance wants me to have a mole removed from my face, but I don’t know. What if I regret it?” Ok, now back to your regularly scheduled question asking.

The other night I joined a few friends for a bite to eat at La Dolce Vita, a cozy restaurant not too far from Center and University in Provo which “offers authentic Napoletano Italian cuisine.” Normally, I enjoy their chicken fettuccine alfredo, but I was feeling a bit adventuresome, so I instead ordered their battered orange Roughy fillet grilled and served with tortellini alla panna. It was fantastic.

During the conversation, Mindy (a former roommate) and Cory (a former flatmate) proposed the addition of an “Ask Ryan” feature on Ryan Byrd dot net. The idea is that readers could write in and propose a variety of questions both profound and not and that Ryan (I) would draw from my years of experience to provide thoughtful, occasionally funny, responses.

I think it’s a splendid idea, and so I hereby solicit questions from you: Maybe you have a difficult physics question you’d like me to help you with? Maybe you’re having relationship issues you like advice on? Maybe you’re looking for a word that rhymes with “silver?” Maybe you’re not sure where your next family vacation should be? Perhaps you don’t understand women? Maybe you’ve always wondered how the Internet *really* works? It’s possible that you’re perplexed over the causes of the second world war.

I can help! Go ahead and click over to my comment page and leave your question. If you’d like to remain anonymous, just fill in a bogus name and email address. As soon as I gather ten or twenty questions, I’ll select a handful of the better ones and post my insightful and witty replies.

Let the fun begin!