Software for Small Business

It's conceivable to build an IT infrastructure entirely of freeware. I have been thinking about the ramifications of FOSS for mom-and-pop stores in developed nations (where piracy is taken seriously). What's the typical scenario for a small business, say, some catering service? I speculate that its IT needs are simple.

Getting hardware is never an issue these days. One can either buy an off-the-shelf PC preloaded with some popular OS (for example, OS X or Windows) or build a PC and install Linux. I guess that most small business owners will go for a PC with Windows (almost universally bundled) because it's inexpensive (made in China after all) and usually comes with reasonable technical support (outsourced to India) for hardware.

However, getting the right software is tricky. Instead of doling out more money (in fact, a lot more because software purchases dwarf hardware costs nowadays) for business applications (immediately obsolete upon purchase), why not adopt freeware (in the strict sense of being costless)? For example, the OpenCD project aims to introduce Windows users to the benefits of free software. The only missing piece from the catalog is accounting/payroll software. But a mom-and-pop shop can probably survive on spreadsheets for that.

So why most small business continue to use Microsoft Office instead of OpenOffice? The problem lies in not technology but psychology. To overcome the adoption inertia, the FOSS approach needs a large army of mobile consultants/volunteers who can forge a personal relationship vis-à-vis with technophobic clients. The geeks can learn some lessons from Microsoft and Oracle if money is an object. Of course, their overall service charges must be lower than the cost of commerical software; otherwise, it's difficult to stay as a viable business. It should be a win-win situation for the hungry geeks (a new market for their talent) and the small business (huge savings on IT).

Saturday Potpourri

Alas, there's no free lunch in the perfectly imperfect world. The free Tag Board service force-feeds silly popup ads to my blog. Fortunately, both Firefox and IE can silently block them. I wonder who is still paying for popup ads—so obsolete…

Is this (prank?) a bug or feature of Gmail? Still, I am very impressed that some people can exhaust 1G on emails alone (lots of attachments?) within a year. I estimate that all my emails accumulated over the last 12+ years (from all accounts with attachments intact) can comfortably fit on a CD. Until 1996, my annual email archive used to be backed up on a single floppy.

Here's my clever idea for sociologists: why not use the email storage as a sensible metric of one's sociability in the digital age? Develop some logarithmic scale (to give a scientific flavor) which takes into account various social factors (multipliers like the number of recipients to fine-tune a theoretical model). It'll be indisputably quantitative: the more email storage one consumes (excluding spams of course), the more networked s/he is—probably smarter, richer, and happier too. A plausible theory, isn't it?

A Deep Breath

Peter Whybrow, Director of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, was a guest on the Charlie Rose show last night. His new book American Mania: When More Is Not Enough examines the addictive mania of consumerism so prevalent in the US, allegedly responsible for the dot-com frenzy and epidemic depression. A blend of biology and sociology with a psychological twist, his Darwinistic theme is original:

…our ability to cope in the world … is shaped by our genetic inheritance … and by the shifting social and cultural environments that we have invented for ourselves.

It sounds like a good read, although (amazingly!) I am not afflicted according to the interactive quiz. I posit that the spreading American mania (presently exalted by the nouveaux riches in China) is rooted in the fabled American dream itself, which always appears to me as too vaguely specific. What's a big house? A nice car? Adjectives are driving me insane.

Bells & Whistles

TGIF—time for some blog enhancements. Firstly, I am so content with the web traffic since my inaugural blog one week ago that I am proudly displaying a counter.

Secondly, I want to try out the site-flavored Google search tailored to my interests (the freebie Blog Navbar currently cannot sitesearch because my blog hasn't been indexed by Google yet). Unfortunately, the oversized logo (it's not a transparent GIF!) is less than tasteful. Impatient to wait for Google to find my blog (hopefully soon?), I decide to temporarily implement a minimal site search feature in the sidebar. I tinkered with the website search technology powered by FreeFind—voilà!—my very own blog search, though at present it works for English only.

Thirdly, I am also putting up a nifty tag board to test whether instant messaging will increase site traffic. However, I couldn't fix the layout so that it looks equally good in both IE and Firefox. Well, the Firefox view is at least not ugly.

Furthermore, to support free content, I link in the sidebar a few of my favorite references: the Open Directory Project, (English) Wikipedia, and WWW Virtual Library.

Lastly, how about the latest Top 10 News Stories for the tech-savvy? I wish that I knew enough CSS to design a better layout. So far, my crude hacks predominantly favor a Firefox experience. Yes, I can appreciate the pains of a UI designer now.

随笔

I first read the mystically numbered list (right, just a mere coincidence…) a couple of days ago. Today I happened upon it again. Yes, the placebo effect definitely deserves the top spot. I remember that I was so fascinated by the concept of placebo that I elected to take an introductory psychology class in my junior year (at the regrettable expense of hanging out in Sociology 111, an occasion for sociable girls). Of course, I've become an avatar of cognitive dissonance ever since. But is this scientific anomaly really a human condition in disguise?

Money cannot placate el Comandante, as any bona fide Marxist would surely be indignant.

A sequel to Johnson's prophetic essay headlines the Post today: U.S. to back Japan Security Council Bid. Even Tom Friedman couldn't resisit the cliché in yesterday's Times. No wonder that Wolfie can preside the World Bank.

A Neat Trick

Here's an embedded snippet of my shameless self-promotion:

<a href = 
"
 javascript: -1 != navigator.appName.indexOf('Microsoft')
  ? window.external.AddFavorite('<$BlogURL$>', '<$BlogTitle$>')
  : void window.open('Enable Live Bookmarks')
" 
title = "Bookmark">书签</a>

This elegant (pourquoi pas?) JavaScript one-liner first identifies a browser. For the Microsoft crowd, a mouse click will painlessly add my blog to Favorites; for others, Firefox is recommended because of its wonderful "Live Bookmarks" feature (if a user hasn't noticed that my blog is conspicuously RSS-friendly). Well-done, if I may say so myself. An apparent bug is that a Firefox surfer can open the intended Mozilla URL only in a new window. Much more to learn about tabbed browsing…

Gems of Wisdom

Chalmers Johnson recently expounded in an eloquent essay the labyrinthine relationship among America, Japan, and China. Backed by impressive statistics, his incisive perspectives are particularly refreshing among the increasingly vociferous sinophobes around the world. Incidentally, a germane trilateral relationship (among China, EU, and US) is currently under close scrutiny in several capitals.

Peter Jennings on ABC reported tonight a new program to help giant pandas mate. As I understand, the idea is to find compatible deoxyribonucleic acids (i.e., good chemistry in plain English) between prospective couples based on reproductive science. Isn't that plain hi-tech eugenics for Ailuropoda melanoleuca? I relish the intriguing thought that true love is lurking somewhere in the DNA.

Gmail

Gmail is open to everyone now! I had to beg for an account last summer. I speculate that some large investment finally came through and made it possible, since the maintenance and storage costs for 100M accounts alone would have easily overwhelmed the annual budget of most financial institutions on earth. On the software side, I haven't yet gotten a clue how to thread emails into conversations (the sender and subject of an email, not its message, seems to play a dominant role), though the current Google algorithm only does a passable job (but still better than Thunderbird which apparently groups by subject headings only). The more I ponder, the more I think that a relational mini-database of graphs (whose nodes are keywords parsed from a message) should work. What about the computational complexity? There must be some brilliant graph theorists inside the Googleplex.

It seems that the cool Google X is short-lived (alive for its début only). I will be taken aback if Apple is shutting it down (to me, it's a free ad for the imitable OS X). Perhaps security problems or operational issues?

Un billet doux

梦好恰如真，事往翻如梦。 (彭孙遹 • 生查子)

I write and erase.

Pearls of Wit

In the same issue of TIME, Ian McEwan is quoted:

Most of humanity gets by without reading novels or poetry. And no one would deny the richness of their thoughts.

Fresh out of jail, Martha Steward allegedly proclaims, "Pride in homekeeping creates serenity and pleasure." I wonder whether homekeeping differs from housekeeping.

A profile of John Bolton reports that, when asked if the UN Secretariat Building in NYC lost 10 stories, he replied, "it wouldn't make a bit of difference." That's Realpolitik!

Today Google Labs announced Google X. I wonder whether the cool facelift (JavaScript and DHTML hacks?) will replace the current minimalist interface, iconic of a practical and understated Google.

If this survey is credible, I can see why there are so many single IT professionals … Sigh, so needlessly sensational …

Tonight Sliding Doors (1998) is on TBS. I watched it years ago and plan to watch it again later. A related movie is The Family Man (2000). Both ask an unanswerable, "What if?" Is there really a parallel universe?

Magnetic Psychiatry

I am skimming this week's TIME magazine, which notes an innovative treatment for depression called repetitive transcranial magnetic simulation (rTMS). As a complete illiterate of neuroscience, I chuckle that nobody is able to explain why it works (how it works seems to be just an elementary application of Faraday's Law: a changing magnetic field outside one's cranium induces an electrical current inside and some mysterious electrochemistry ensues). Since antiquity, magnets have always occupied a magic place in quackery. However, to harness the electromagnetic force to restore the delicate neurochemical balance of a human brain in a controllable manner is nothing but ingenious. I'm sure that quite a few NIH grants based on this method are ongoing to (literally) probe all the stuff inside a cranium (likely of a cute lab mouse somewhere).

As an aspiring (amateur) lexicographer, I am coining a flaky word electro-magneto-neuro-physio-chemistry for the brainiac shrinks.

Raw Intelligence

I read an insightful commentary by William Pesek Jr.: Redrawing the billionaire map. It's a fascinating analysis of an amazing list of 691. The author attempts to rationalize in terms of geoeconomics several interesting facts about the uneven distribution of billionaires around the world, among which is that there are more Indian tycoons than Chinese ones today. I find his arguments cogent. Incidentally, there's a profile of Lakshmi Mittal, the richest Indian whose wealth is intimately related to the rise (more accurately, reemergence) of China. It's clear that the rivalry between China and India (the two countries have so many parallels) will dominate the global economic scene in the days ahead.

Tonight's BL

Another episode of Boston Legal just ended. Two cases on the docket: one deals with free speech (a school principal blocked the TV broadcast of one news network) and the other, cryonics.

Acting as a beneficent dictator, the principal banned views of intolerance. I opine that his illegal censorship (which violated free speech) is necessary because of the formative audience (high school students). Will the court allow the censorship of Nazism on campus?

A dying man wished to be cryopreserved. He wanted today's right to execution in order to exercise tomorrow's right to life. I believe that death is a human condition. So just go quietly with dignity when the time's up.

Out of Gas

I really miss my previous car Flivver (a 1992 Geo Storm because a Lotus Elan would be too extravagant) which used to give me 30+ MPG. Though I enjoy its powerful 2.4L engine, my current car peaks about 25 MPG on the road. As I cringe at the soaring gas price, I'm dreading an upcoming visit to the local gas station. I even long for those days when I didn't own a car. Since 2003, my discretionary spending has been heavily curtailed by the gas price. The shrinks ought to define a new form of depression: anxiety attacks induced by high gas price.

It's widely reported that the rise of China is partly to blame for the recent surge in oil price. With both China and India growing increasingly wealthy, the US consumers have to get used to expensive gas one way or the other. An optimist may believe that new technology will afford us a viable energy alternative (solar-powered cars?) while a pessimist contemplates doomsday scenarios (geopolitical wars!) down the road. However, I am naively hopeful that the invisible hand will come to the rescue. As there'll be more cars on the roads in Asia, there'll be much more gas consumption (2 billion drivers there v. 200 million in America), pushing the gas price to go way up. Soon, most people cannot afford to drive, which will therefore decrease the demand (the supply might be incidentally dried up then), which will also reduce air pollution and traffic congestion (fringe benefits?). Isn't that a horrible prospect?!