Poojan (Wagh) Blog

Update 2010-1-3

I’m back to using Barnes & Noble. Every now and then, they have an ebook or MP3 audibook that’s way less than either eMusic or Audible. Also, I do know to look out for the WebLoyalty (etc) pitch, so it doesn’t bother me as much now.

Original Post

I’ve been pretty happy with Barnes & Noble as an alternative to Amazon. I just bought What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful and unfortunately found the following link to Webloyalty

Sigh. I have a hard time leaving Barnes & Noble; their discounts are good, but I’m afraid I might have to because of their affiliation with Webloyalty

It’s clear that ClearWire’s software gives the user a better 4G experience than Sprint.

I’ve been using Sprint’s 4G for almost a week. As I posted before, I didn’t particularly like their connection software popping up their start page every time I connected to their 4G network–especially since I had to connect several times on my train ride into the city. Don’t get me wrong, the Sprint SmartView software will auto-reconnect (although I’m still not sure how I got it to do so) in the background if your 4G signal gets dropped–except every time it does so, there’s the sprint start page again, completely interrupting your work.

I coworker had issues installing SmartView on his Windows 7 64-bit machine. (I’m running 64-bit Vista right now.) He read somewhere that ClearWire’s software will install on Windows 7. Since Sprint and ClearWire are the same 4G network (Sprint divested/invested in ClearWire), the software should work. So, I happily installed ClearWire’s software trying to “upgrade” from SmartView.

It didn’t work. What’s worse is that SmartView refuses to function. Even after a complete de-install/re-install. Even after deleting sections of the windows registry, and the Sprint sub-folder in my %APPDATA% folder. (For those of you who don’t know what registry and %APPDATA% are, be thankful, and just realize I was taking desperate measures to cope with broken software.)

As it turns out, one of our IT guys told us that the 32-bit version of Clear’s software seems to work with Sprint’s 4G network (meaning, it authenticates under a Sprint 4G account–Clear and Sprint have the same network). However, the 64-bit version doesn’t. That didn’t help my Win7-64 friend and I.

What did help immensely was this post at the sprint forums. This guy “manned up” and modified the Clear software so it’ll connect to the 4G network using a Sprint account:

And it worked for me! So, no more trying to get SmartView running again. This software is way better. It’s much smaller and less intrusive. Its default install automatically reconnects when the signal is dropped. It has more updated drivers, and it supports 64-bit Win7. It’ll connect using either the 4G or the 3G modems built into the U300 (which Clear also sells).

The lesson learned here is that Sprint is distracted by 4G. It’s not their main thing. They’re supporting a bunch of other devices, and they don’t invest as much in their SmartView software. However, 4G is all ClearWire does. It shows in their software’s usability.

Just an FYI: there are no guarantees to any of this working for you. Also, the buttons on the clear software “my account”, “my usage”, “my local” won’t work for me because I don’t have a clear account… but that might change.

ClearWire also supports the built-in Intel WiMax radio inside my Lenovo T400. So, I’m going to try out their service as an official subscriber. That means I give up connecting using 3G, but that’s not so bad. It’s almost worse to have the 3G backup, because your 4G connection will imminently drop, the software will connect you on 3G, and you’ll be stuck on 3G unless you manually reconnect to 4G. Also, the U300 works better with a proprietary Y cable (supplied by Sprint/Clear) that allows for more power; it’ll be nice to not have to worry about that cable.

Incidently: if you connect to Clear’s network (using Intel’s proset WiMax utility), you’ll get an offer for a 30-day free trial (until the end of the year)—which you won’t see on their home page or anywhere else. So, it pays to just try to connect and get the offer. You do have to agree that they get to send you emails during the 30-day trial period. I’ll post a follow-up with how ClearWire’s service looks (as an official subscriber), but for right now, I’m much more impressed with ClearWire than with Sprint.

I’m taking the train along Metra’s Milwauke District West. Here’s a test close to the Elgin Station:

That’s right: 5 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. Except that by the time I reached the next station, the 4G was disconnected. I can’t say that this is due to Sprint’s 4G network, due to their software, or if it’s due to my laptop. Regardless, it’s annoying. I do have a couple firmware updates to install, though. I tried doing it last night, but I’m not exactly sure how to (the button to update didn’t seem to do the job.)

Another thing that’s annoying? After I reconnect, the Sprint Smartview software opens Sprint’s web site in my browser. This is mildly annoying when I have firefox up (it just adds another tab). However, it’s absolutely intolerable when I don’t, because I just want to get back to work, but instead, all of a sudden, firefox pops up with:

I’ve been looking for a way to stop SmarView from doing this, but I haven’t found it yet. Incidently, I had to reconnect twice while writing this post.

OK: make that 4 times. If anyone is wondering, I’m using the U300 (can’t tell if it’s Sierra Wireless or Franklin) modem. It supports both EV-DO and WiMax. It does not automatically hand over. I’ve also tried getting SmartView to auto-reconnect to WiMax, but that doesn’t work either. You have to manually reconnect when disconnected.

I’ve been upgraded to Sprint’s 4G WiMax. I’ve tried it for all of 10 minutes. The connection (coming out of downtown on the Metra) was a little spotty. I keep getting disconnected. It’s unlikely but possibly the fault of my laptop (the Lenovo T400 seem to have trouble holding a WiFi connection, but AT&T and Sprint 3G mobile broadband seem fine). Anyway, here’s the speed test results:

1.047 Mbps download isn’t bad. However, I’m extremely happy about the 657 kbps upload. That’s going to be some good VNC.

A little further out (near the Grand/Chicago stop on the Metra Milwaukee District West line), I got the following:

2.3 Mbps down and 731 kbps up. Nice! Hopefully, the connection holds stable.

I got mad after just completing a purchase with Barnes & Noble. Seriously? They expect to compete with Amazon in the online game? Amazon at least takes security seriously. That’s the very basics of competing online: customers must trust you with their credit cards. Anyway, here’s the rant I sent them:

I’d like to express my gross dissatisfaction with your association with WebLoyalty, Inc.

I noticed it recently when completing a purchase. You certainly know that most of your customers don’t gain any value in the services offered by WebLoyalty. In effect, it’s a scam that they will try to get out of in the near future. Most of your customers will be surprised that they unwittingly gave their credit card information to WebLoyalty through your web site.

If you want to beat Amazon and your other online competitors, customers need to trust your web site. They cannot do so when you present links to sites such as WebLoyalty that are notoriously nefarious [1][2].

[1] http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-207.htm
[2] http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/dynamic/ecommerce-investigation-webloyalty.cfm

I’m partway through the book The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton. I’m amazed by a couple of teachings of Epicurus:

• Wealth does not necessarily mean happiness. (In fact, relishing simple indulgences tends to make one happier than acquiring a sophisticated taste.)
• In order to be happy, you should surround yourself with friends.

This reads straight out of Seligman’s Authentic Happiness (among other places). So, basically, it took thousands of years for psychology/philosophy to re-deliver an ancient truth.

Enjoyed the McKinsley Quarterly podcast A conversation with Lowell Bryan and Richard Rumelt – McKinsey Quarterly – Strategy – Strategic Thinking (link is to transcript of the interview).

They make the point that we were all looking at the wrong metrics before the mortgage/credit crisis occurred. Things such as GDP, etc. have no correlation with people making much larger mistakes (packaging high-risk loans as low-risk).

Here’s a really good analogy:

At the heart of this failure is what I call the “smooth sailing” fallacy. Back in the 1930s, the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg were the largest aircraft that had ever flown. The Hindenburg was as big as the Titanic. Together these vehicles had made 620-odd successful flights when one evening the Hindenburg suddenly burst into flames and fell to the ground in New Jersey. That was May 1937.

Years ago, I had the chance to chat with a guy who had actually flown over Europe in the Hindenburg. And he had this wistful memory that it was a wonderful ride. He said, “It seemed so safe. It was smooth, not like the bumpy rides you get in airplanes today.” Well, the ride in the Hindenburg was smooth, until it exploded. And the risk the passengers took wasn’t related to the bumps in the ride or to its smoothness. If you had a modern econometrician on board, no matter how hard he studied those bumps and wiggles in the ride, he wouldn’t have been able to predict the disaster. The fallacy is the idea that you can predict disaster risk by looking at the bumps and wiggles in current results.

The history of bumps and wiggles—and of GDP and prices—didn’t predict economic disaster. When people talk about Six Sigma events or tail risk or Black Swan, they’re showing that they don’t really get it. What happened to the Hindenburg that night was not a surprisingly large bump. It was a design flaw.

This theory of large disasters makes a lot of sense to me: it almost seems like a necessary condition for a large disaster that the conventional metrics wouldn’t predict it. We’re not all stupid; if some metric predicted disaster, someone would take advantage of it–and in free markets, each opportunistic person forms a feedback loop that corrects the original market inefficiency (in this case, averts disaster by gradually devaluing mortgage-backed securities).

The interviewees go on to say that the systematic design flaw was treating correlated securities as having independent risk. That seems like a contradiction to me: aren’t things such as correlations and risk well-established metrics? So, weren’t the metrics available at the time able to predict this disaster?

According to the interviewees, these metrics weren’t being analyzed within the scope of economic stability. Instead, GDP (and GDP volatility) was being tracked. I don’t know enough to know whether they are right or wrong. But, it makes for thought-provoking reading.

I finished the book Outliers by Malcom Gladwell . (I listened to the audio version available at my library.) I enjoyed it tremendously.

The premise of the book is that we tend to credit outstanding performers (“outliers”) with outstanding skill. While Gladwell does acknowledge that all outliers do have top-notch ability, he makes the case that ability is not enough: there also needs to be some external situation that enable this ability to jettison a person to the upper rungs of performance. Since many people have ability, but few people have favorable circumstance, we should really credit the circumstance with the generation of peak performance.

The book is not science in the true sense of the term: There are no controlled experiments to show that ability is a weaker predictor of success than is circumstance. However, one could argue that such a controlled experiment is impossible: you can’t hold all other things equal—and Gladwell has come pretty close to performing the experiment (retrospectively) by considering both people with great talent and great circumstance that accelerate to the pinnacle of their field, and people that have great talent but not circumstance. The best we can say is that Gladwell is a journalist and he has gone beyond the 3-example rule to give evidence of his hypothesis. However, he has not scientifically proven it. A larger (statistically valid) study could prove it.

That said, his description of how things happen rings true with me. I can’t say that I’m at the pinnacle of my field. (Lately, I can’t even define the field.) However, I did benefit from some good circumstances in my life:

• When I was in the 5th (?) grade, my dad brought home an HP computer from work. I quickly began programming in BASIC and plotting sinusoids. I learned a lot about both math and programming from the experience. My parents continued to buy computers: I started programming on Windows 3.1 when I was in 7th/8th grade.
• After I finished the 6th grade, my parents moved us to the US. This was a designed shift in circumstance. My parents wanted my sister and I go to high school and college in America. They worked very hard to get us here.
• Going to University of Illinois, I met someone who would later be a partner at Infinium. That certainly helped get me in the door at Infinium.

In addition, it’s clear to me that Infinium itself illustrates the sort of paradigm shift that Gladwell talks about in the book: the founders of Infinium predicted that things would go digital and be software-driven—and that one could then do automated trading.

The chapter on the Canadian hockey teams also reinforces a principal I’ve learned over the years: coaching is for everyone, not just for your good players. I think in corporate environments, there’s an over-emphasis on differentiating talent. That differentiation is good. However, it tends to get confused with where managers spend their time. That’s a shame; as the book shows, structures that seem to be meritocracies can be fatally flawed. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this book . I especially recommend it for teachers, managers, and parents. (Yes, I know that covers a lot of ground.)

[mp3 keywords=”Let Down OK Computer Radiohead” title=”Radiohead: Let Down”]

This has remained in my top-ten favorite songs for almost a decade.

I really like David Allen’s Getting Things Done. While he discusses long-term (50,000-foot) goals, he focuses on the near-term panic-causing stressors of an over-demanding life first. Someone who is just plain stressed out isn’t going to start thinking about their life vision. He clearly understands the needs of and stresses on the human brain. This (at least in my lay opinion) is the power of cognitive behavioral therapy as opposed to psychoanalysis: who cares about what happened years ago if you’re just nervous/sad/pissed about what is happening now.

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