Patent Trolls or why software patents should be abolished!
The patent system was originally designed to provide exclusive rights for invented ideas to inventors. But, there used to be a catch, the idea must lead to a real world tangible device. The patent system was also conceived long before computers existed. So, at the time when the patent system was conceived, it was designed as a way for inventors to retain exclusive control over their ideas for tangible devices without other people stealing or profiting from those ideas.
The patent system is enforced by the legal system. It is sanctioned by governments (specifically in the US, by the US Patent Office – USPTO and the legislative system) to protect said individuals’ patents from use by others who serve to profit from those previously ‘patented’ ideas. So, enforcing a patent involves suing an alleged infringer and then having a court of law rule whether the alleged infringer has, in fact, infringed. It is, then, the burden of proof of the patent holder to prove infringement. And, of course, it ties up the legal system to resolve this dispute.
Tangible vs Intangible Devices
The patent system was conceived at a time when the ultimate outcome of a patent idea was to produce a tangible physical good. That is, something that ultimately exists in the real world like a pen, a toaster, a drill, a telephone or a light bulb. The patented idea itself is not tangible, but the idea described within the patent should ultimately produce a tangible real world item if actually built. This is why ideas that lead to intangible things were never allowed to be patented and are only allowed to be copyrighted or trademarked.
Fast forward to when the first computers came into existence (30s-60s). Then later, the 70s when the US Patent Office began granting software patents en masse (although, the first software patent was apparently granted in 1966). Software, unfortunately, is not a tangible thing and, for the most part, is simply a set of ideas expressed through a ‘programming language’ with finite constructs. Modern programming languages, specifically, are designed to have limited constructs to produce a structured code. That is, an application that follows a specific set of pre-built rules to basically take data in and present data out (in specific unique ways). Ultimately, that’s what a program does, take data in, process it and spit data out in a new way.
Software Design Limits
Because modern programming languages have limited constructs from which to build an application and which are further constrained by such limits as application programming interface (API) frameworks, operating system function calls, hardware limitations and other such constraints, writing an application becomes an exercise in compromise. That is, you must compromise programming flexibility for the ease and speed of using someone else’s API framework. Of course, you can write anything you want from scratch if you really want, but most people choose to use pre-existing frameworks to speed the development process. Using external frameworks also reduce time to completion of a project. At the same time, including third party API systems is not without its share of coding and legal issues. Programmatically speaking, using a third party API opens up your code to security problems and puts implicit trust into that API that it’s ‘doing the right thing’. Clearly, the functionality derived from the external framework may outweigh the security dangers present within the framework. From a legal perspective, you also don’t know what legal traps your application may fall into as a result of using someone else’s API framework. If they used code within the framework that is legally questionable, that will also bring your application into question because you used that framework inside your app (unless, of course, it’s using a SOAP/REST internet framework).
With all that said, embedding frameworks in your app severely constricts your ability to control what your program is doing. Worse, though, if you are using a high level programming language like C, C++, Objective C, C# or any other high level language, you are limited by that programming language’s built-in construct. So, even if you choose to code everything from scratch, it’s very likely you could write code substantially similar to something that someone else has already written. Because high level languages have limited constructs, there are only so many ways to build an application that, for example, extracts data from a database. So, you have to follow the same conventions as everyone else to accomplish this same task.
Software Patents are bad
Because of these limited high level language constructs, there is a high probability that someone writing an application will write code that has already been written hundreds of times before. And note, that’s not an accident. That happens because do()while, for() and while() loops as well as if conditionals area always used in the same way. Worse, you can’t deviate from these language constructs because they are always the same in pretty much any language. If these constructs didn’t exist, you couldn’t easily make decisions within your code (ie, if X is greater than 3, do this, else do that).
Why are software patents bad? Simply, because languages are written with such limited programming concepts, the probability to reinvent something that has already been invented is far too high. Unlike devising a real world idea where the probability someone could come up with that same exact idea is likely near zero, writing software using language constructs the probability is far higher than 70% that someone could design the same (or substantially similar) code, idea or construct. And. that high probability is strictly because of the limits and constructs imposed by the high level language.
Yet, the USPTO has decided to allow and grant software patents knowing the probabilities of creating substantially similar ideas within the software world is that high. Yes, probabilities should play a part in whether or not to grant patents.
Probabilities
Probability in idea creation is (and should always be considered) how likely someone is to create something substantially similar to someone else. Probability should always be relevant in granting patents. Patents need to be unique and individual. That is, a patent should be granted based on something that multiple people could not devise, guess, build or otherwise conceive accidentally. Because real world tangible items are constrained only by the elements here on Earth, this effectively makes inventions using Earth elements pretty much infinite (at least for all intents and purposes). Because software code uses a much smaller number of constructs that limit and constrain programming efforts, that smaller set increases the chances and the probabilities that someone can create something similar. In fact, it increases probabilities by orders of magnitudes. I’m sure an expert on statistics and probabilities could even come up with real world probability numbers between element based inventions and software code based inventions. Suffice it to say, even without this analysis, it’s quite clear that it’s far too easy for someone to devise something substantially similar in software without even really trying.
Software patents are bad, revisited
Basically, it’s far too easy for someone to devise something someone else has already conceived using software. On top of this, the USPTO has seen fit to grant software patents that are way too obvious anyway. That is, they’ve granted patents to software ideas that are similarly as common place as cotton, strawberries, a nail and yarn. Worse, because of these completely obvious patents, patent trolls (people who do nothing but patent without the intent of producing anything) game the system and produce completely obvious patents. This action has created a land mine situation for the software industry. This is especially bad because it’s virtually impossible to search for existing patents before writing software.
So, as a software developer, you never know when you might step on one of these land mines and get a ‘cease and desist’ notification from a patent troll. That is, someone who has patented some tiny little thing that’s completely obvious, yet your application takes advantage of that thing somewhere because you just happened upon one of the easy to build constructs in a language. Yet, patents should only be granted based on an idea that someone cannot easily create by sheer accident. Yet, here we are.
Ideas now patented
Worse, software is not and has never been tangible. That is, software doesn’t and cannot exist in the real world. Yes, software exists on real world devices, but that software itself is just a series of bits in a storage device. It is not real and will never be real or ever see the light of day. That is, software is just an idea. An idea with a structured format. It is not real and will never have a real tangible physical shape, like a toaster. We will never be able to have tactile interaction with software. Hardware, yes, is tactile. Software, no. The software’s running code itself cannot stimulate any of our five senses: not sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste.. Someone might argue, well software does produce visual and audible interaction. Yes, the output of the software produces these interactions. That is, the software processes the input data and produces output data. The input and output data has sight and sound interaction. You still aren’t seeing or hearing the software code doing the processing. That’s under the hood and cannot be experienced by our five senses. For this reason, software is strictly an idea, a construct. It is not a tangible good.
Patents are a form of personal law
That is, the owner of the patent now has a legal ‘law’ that they need to personally enforce. That is, that patent number gives them the right to take anyone to court to enforce their ‘law’ err.. patent. No entity in government should be allowed to grant personal law. Especially not for intangible things. I can understand granting patents on tangible items (a specialty hair clip, a curling iron, a new type of pen, etc). That makes sense and it’s easy to see infringement as you can see and touch the fake. It takes effort, time and money to produce such a tangible item. Software patents require nothing. Just an application to the USPTO, a payment and then wait for it to be granted. After the patent has been granted, take people to court, win and wait for royalties. This is wrong.
All software patents should be immediately abolished and invalidated
Why?
- Software patents only serve corporations in money making ventures. Yet, software patents really serve to bog down the legal system with unnecessary actions.
- Software patents stifle innovation due to ‘land mines’. Many would-be developers steer clear of writing any code for fear of the legal traps.
- Software patents are granted based on probabilities far too high that someone will produce something similar based on limited high level language constructs
- Because software language constructs are, by comparison, much smaller in number when compared to Earth elements (when inventing real world ideas), probabilities say it’s too easy to recreate something substantially similar to someone else in software.
- Software is intangible and cannot expose itself as anything tangible (which goes against the original idea of patents in the first place)
- Software patents will reach critical mass. Eventually, the only people left writing code will be large corporations who can afford to defend against legal traps.
- Software patents are now being granted without regards to obviousness.
As a result, all software patents, past and present, should be immediately invalidated. If we continue this path of software patents, a critical mass will eventually exist such that writing software will become such a legal landmine that developers will simply stop developing. I believe we’ve already seen the beginnings of this. Eventually, the only people left who can afford to develop software will be large corporations with deep pockets. Effectively, software patents will stifle innovation to the point that small developers will no longer be able to legally defend against the Patent Trolls and large corporations seeking to make money off ‘licensing’. The patent system needs to go back to a time when the only patents granted were patents describing tangible physical goods. Patents that do not describe tangible physical goods should be considered ideas and dumped under copyright law only.
iPad: One year later…
The iPad was introduced very close to this time last year. Now the iPad 2 is out, let’s see how it’s well it’s going for Apple and for this platform as a whole.
Tablet Format
The tablet format seems like it should be a well-adopted platform. But, does the iPad (or any tablet) really have many use cases? Yes, but not where you think. I’m not sure Apple even knew the potential use cases for a tablet format before releasing it. Apple just saw that they needed a netbook competitor, so they decided to go with the iPad. I am speculating that Apple released it with as wide an array of software and development tools to see exactly where it could go. After all, they likely had no idea if it would even take off.
Yes, the iPad has had a widely and wildly accepted adoption rate. Although, market saturation is probably close at hand with the numbers of iPads sold combined with the Android tablet entries (Samsung’s Galaxy S, Toshiba’s tablet and other tablets out or about to be released). That is, those people who want a tablet now can have one. But, the main question is, what are most people using a tablet for?
My Usage
I received an iPad as a gift (the original iPad, not the iPad 2). I find myself using it at work to take notes first and foremost. I can also use it as a systems admin tool in a pinch. However, instead of carrying paper and pencil into a meeting, I take notes in the notepad app. This is actually a very good app for taking quick notes. Tap typing is nearly silent, so no clicky key noises or distracting pencils. The good thing, though, is that these notes will sync with Gmail and you can read all your notes in Gmail. You can’t modify the notes on Gmail, but at least you have them there. You can modify them on the iPad, though. You can also sync your notes to other places as well.
My second use case is watching movies. So, I have put nearly my entire collection of movies on the iPad. Of course, they don’t all fit in 32GB, so I have to pick and choose which ones get loaded. The one thing the iPad needs, for this purpose, is more local storage. I’d like to have a 128GB or 256GB storage system for the iPad. With that amount of space, I could probably carry around my entire movie collection. In fact, I’d forgo the thinness of the iPad 2 by adding thickness to support a solid state 256GB drive.
The rest of my use cases involve reading email and searching and, sometimes, listening to music… although, I have an iPod touch for that. I might listen to music more if it had a 256GB solid state drive.
Cloud Computing and Google
This article would be remiss by not discussing competition to the iPad. There is one thing about Google’s Android platform that should be said. Android is completely integrated with Google’s platform. Apple’s iPad isn’t. Google has a huge array of already functional and soon-to-be-released cloud apps that Android can take advantage of. Apple, on the other hand, is extremely weak on cloud apps. The only cloud app they have is the iTunes store. That, in fact, is really a store and not a cloud app. So, excluding iTunes, there really isn’t any cloud platforms for Apple’s devices. That’s not to say that the iPad is excluded from Google, it’s just not nearly as integrated as an Android tablet.
Eventually, Android may exceed the capabilities of Apple’s IOS platform. In some ways, it already has (at least in cloud computing offerings). However, Android is still quite a bit more buggy when compared to IOS. IOS’s interface is much more streamlined, slick and consistent. The touch typing system is far easier to use on an iPad than on Android. Finally, the graphics performance on Android is incredibly bad. With Android, the scrolling and movement is choppy using an extremely slow frame rate. Apple’s interface is much more fluid and smooth and uses a high framerate. The transitions between various apps is clean and smooth in IOS, but not in Android. This graphics performance issue Google must address in Android. A choppy slow interface is not pretty and makes the platform seem cheap and underpowered. Worse, the platform is inconsistent from manufacturer to manufacturer (icons are different between manufacturers). Google has to addresses these performance and consistency issues to bring Android to the level where it must be.
Apple’s Blinders
That said, the iPad (or more specifically Apple) needs to strengthen its cloud offerings. If that means partnering with Google, then so be it. Apple needs something like Google Docs and Google Voice. It also needs cloud storage. It needs to create these offerings that are Apple branded that integrate with the iPad natively, not as third party add-ons through the app store. This is what Apple needs to work on. Apple is so focused on its hardware and making the next device that it’s forgetting that it needs to support its current devices with more and better cloud offerings. This is what may lead Apple out of the tablet race. This may also be what makes Google the leader in this space.
So, what things do you use your iPad for?
Let’s Find Out
| Poll 1 | Poll 2 |
Apple’s bleeding edge
Apple loves to adopt brand new bleeding edge technologies and shun existing functional and supported technologies. Case in point, Apple’s new MacBook Pro line sports a new Thunderbolt (Lightpeak) port. So, yeah, while this port is capable of 10Gb per second, there are no peripherals yet available for this technology. But, instead of placing USB 3 ports (capable of 5Gb per second) onto the MacBook Pro, they instead decided to skip this recent technology. So, the MacBook Pro comes shipped with dog slow USB 2.0 ports running at a whopping 480Mb per second. That’s ok if the only thing you want to transfer is sync data to your iPhone or iPad. For hard drives, this speed is unbearably slow.
Apple’s own stupidity
We don’t want ports with no peripheral support. We want ports that are actually supported. Simply because Apple has adopted the Thunderbolt technology doesn’t mean that it will in any way become a standard. In fact, Apple’s bleeding edge adoption of the Thunderbolt port is about as risky as the Firewire (1394) port was way back when. And, where is Firewire now? Dead.
I just don’t get why you would stick old technology on a brand new notebook when new technology already exists? There are many USB 3 adapters and peripherals that could easily get users faster speeds until (or if) Thunderbolt actually takes off.
Apple needs to wake up and realize we want to connect fast drives to external ports. So, at least give us ports where we can do this. Sure, LaCie and other manufacturers will likely start making Thunderbolt compatible drive enclosures, but they probably won’t hit stores for months or possibly even as late as 2012. Until then, we have to live with USB 2.0 ports that suck rocks for speed.
Thanks Apple.
Parental Guidance Definitely Required
While this article’s header may sound related to movie ratings, it isn’t. On the other hand, in a way, it kind of is. No, what this article is about is parents not properly guiding their children’s behaviors in public places. Let’s explore.
Lack of Guidance
In recent years, more and more children seem to misbehave in public places. Parents seem to lack the parental skills to manage their children properly (probably at home also). Although, managing your child properly in public is more important. With that said, there are many behaviors from children that are just not appropriate in public, yet parents simply seem to ignore these disrupting behaviors. In addition to bad behaviors from children, included are some equally bad behaviors from the parents.
Top 12 list of bad public parenting
12. Strollers in crowded areas — When bringing children to very crowded venues, think twice about using anything more than an umbrella stroller. When pushing strollers along in crowded areas, you are likely to run the wheels over someone’s foot. It’s never pleasant to have a baby stroller scrape up your heel or run over your toes. If at all possible, leave the strollers at home and let the children walk. If the children are unable to walk and you can’t carry them, then perhaps that event is not the place for you and your family.
11. Newborns in public — While I know that mothers of newborns can get cabin fever, that’s the price you pay to take care of an infant. However, I regularly see mothers taking 1, 2 and 3 week old babies into malls, theme parks and various other venues. This is completely selfish behavior. The baby is far too small (and unprotected) to know where it is. Heading out to these places is solely for the mom and dad. For the baby, it’s not healthy. First, babies this small cannot regulate their body temperatures yet. Heading to an overly cold air-conditioned mall or to a theme park in sweltering heat is not what your baby needs. As the mother, you can’t (and shouldn’t) be riding anything (especially if you delivered by c-section). You’ve wasted your money by going to a place that requires an entry fee. The baby won’t even know it was ever there. Second, the baby basically has no immune system. Exposing this small of an infant to crowds of people is likely to get it sick. Coupling the germs with the unregulated temperatures, and you’re just asking for your baby to get sick. Stay home until the baby is older.
10. Feeding your children from unpaid groceries — While shopping, do not grab a pack of Twinkies, loose grapes, a pack of chips, cookies or any other food item, open and hand it to your child. I’ve seen many parents do this to keep their children occupied. Not only does this teach your children the wrong food habits, it’s stealing when you don’t pay for the food. Not only is the parent contributing to the child’s unhealthy eating habits, this behavior is also teaching the child that it’s ok to grab food from a store and eat it unpaid. Only open and consume foods outside of the store and only after you’ve paid for it. This teaches your child the correct shopping behavior.
9. Screaming and yelling — When your children are in public, it is on you as a parent to keep them under control. This also means keeping them from screaming and yelling. While you may be used to this behavior from your child, the rest of the public doesn’t want to hear it. If your child begins to act up by screaming and yelling, stop and take them outside of wherever you are. This is especially true when in a movie theater or a restaurant. In a movie, silence is the key and if your child cannot sit for longer than a few minutes before acting up, then do not bring them to a movie. Instead, wait and rent the movie to watch at home. Still, it’s probably more important to figure out how to control this behavior from your child. In a restaurant, people go for a relaxing dinner, not to hear your child scream at the top of their lungs.
8. Salad and hot food bars are not for children — Children under adult height should never be allowed anywhere near salad bars or buffet tables.
First, buffet tables can be dangerously hot. Unless you enjoy taking your child to the emergency room scalded or electrocuted, children should remain safely away from hot food bars. Second, children generally have little self control over their hands and fingers. Not only are children notoriously bad for not washing their hands, they will easily stick their fingers into and play with food on food bars easily leading to a burn or contaminating food. Yuck! Combine this problem with their lack of height and their faces being just below the sneeze guard, you end up with a very unsanitary situation. Again, too many children will place their hands into the food to play and possibly sneeze and generally breathe all over the food with nothing to block this. Again, very unsanitary. Third, by letting children serve themselves, you are not controlling what food or the amount of food they eat. It is important to control your child’s nutrition. Instead, you should choose their foods from the bars and bring their food to them plated. For all of these reasons, keep your children away from food bars. Although, if you really want to keep your child healthy, don’t eat off food bars and, instead, order directly from the menu. Salad bars and buffets are generally unsanitary and the foods are excessively high in calories, anyway.
7. Grocery carts are not toys or rides — Grocery carts are intended to be used for shopping. If you want to place your child in a grocery cart, then place them into it as intended (in the front with their legs hanging out of the holes sitting down and strapped in). Do not let them play under or in the basket itself. Children should never stand up in the basket part of the cart.
6. Children under foot — Keep your children with you at all times. Do not let them run around crowded events unattended. Not only is this a potential kidnapping situation, it’s simply dangerous as small children can be easily overlooked and tripped over or trampled. Children are not good at watching where they are going or what they are doing, so keeping hold of your child in crowded situations is very important. Remember, only you are watching out for your child. Other people aren’t watching your child. Although, other people may be judging you on your lack of parenting skills.
5. Restaurant booths, movie theater seats and airplane seats — Children should always be firmly seated. Do not let your child stand up in their seat. Your children also need to be occupied with something (coloring, reading, talking to them, etc). Otherwise, children will stand up, fidget and become a nuisance to the people sitting around them. For example, a child standing up in a restaurant booth can easily turn around and stare or otherwise disturb another table. When seated at the theater or on a plane, children can easily kick the back of the seat in front of them. Control your child. Keep them occupied so they don’t do this. If they stand up, sit them back down. If you can’t control them, leave. If you’re on a plane, find something for them to do. Also when traveling, plan ahead by packing enough activities, games, crayons, etc to occupy your child throughout the entire plane trip.
4. Sit with your children — If you are a family of four, each parent should sit next to one of their children when possible. Don’t let young children sit together alone so the parents can sit together across the isle. If one of the children has an issue, you can’t easily manage it. Sitting next to the child, you can probably thwart the issue by catching it early. Of course, if you’re the Brady Bunch, that could make it harder. However, if you do have that many children, you’re probably in need of lots of help on long plane trips.. in which case, it might be better to take the train where you can have your own room.
3. Toy Stores — While the trip to the toy store may seem like a great idea, it really isn’t. To a child, a toy store is their dream-come-true. At the same time, it’s a parent’s worst nightmare come true. Don’t take your child to the toy store! Let me say that again. Do NOT take your child to a toy store. Instead, know what your child wants and go pick it up and bring it home or order it from Amazon. This way, there are no screaming fits, no “buy me this” chants and no unnecessary tantrums. The toy store should be used as only a good behavior treat. A once-in-a-blue-moon event. Some place you go only if your child has met some extremely high criteria and is extremely well behaved… and only when you’re intent on rewarding them with a toy.
2. Keeping your children out late — Children need stable and consistent sleep patterns. Therefore, as much as child may want to see a movie, don’t take them to see a movie in the theater after their normal bedtime hours. I have seen so many children out shopping, at the movies and running around after 11PM on weekends. This is wrong and bad parenting. Without consistent sleep patterns for your child, your child will want to get up late and be sleepy all day. Don’t do this. Children, especially babies, need to have a regular sleep pattern. If it’s late and your child is fussy, then you need to leave and take the child home to bed.
1. Running around stores (literally) — Stores are not playgrounds for your children. Stores are not babysitters. Stores are not day care facilities. Do not bring your children to stores and let them run around in public without any control. Stores are dangerous places for children to ‘play’. Simply because they sell bikes and skateboards doesn’t mean that’s where they are intended to be used. Remove your children from the bikes. Get them off of skateboards. Stop them from strapping on skates in stores. Don’t grab toys off of shelves to occupy them. Like foods mentioned above, giving your child a toy that you have no intention of buying teaches your child the wrong thing. If your child isn’t well behaved enough to visit a department store with you, then you probably don’t need to bring your child with you.
As a parent, it is up to you to teach your child correct behaviors in the early years. It is also up to you to make sure your child behaves correctly in public. If you are unable to control your children, then you probably haven’t enacted correct discipline in your home. If you are unable to implement proper discipline, you probably need the help of a nanny or someone who can help you improve your parenting skills. Simply because you have chosen to have children doesn’t mean that other people want to hear your child scream or run into them simply because they want to run around. As a parent, it is your sole responsibility and duty to keep control of your children. Discipline is important for a child. Yet, discipline does not mean using a belt or a paddle. Using other means, such as timeouts, can affect the same level of control without the need for physical interaction. Whatever you use to control your child, just remember… in public, we can all hear your child scream.
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Contacting Amazon.com support — where is that number?
Phone numbers have been updated for easy dialing. Click or tap to dial.
More and more, companies are hiding their support phone numbers behind layers and layers of web pages. They simply don’t want you to call in. They seem to think that their automated systems are so bulletproof that there is no need ever to talk to a human being. Well, Amazon has taken this to the extreme. Amazon is now so hands off, even their Amazon Web Services site has no sales phone number. As if the automated signup and sales process is so fool-proof that you won’t fall into any kind of trap… what a joke!
So, the question begs, how the heck are you supposed to ask questions about their services or about charges on your cards? Clearly, a company can’t do business like this long term. Customer Service is everything and hiding your support people behind layers of web pages is so completely counter to sales and support, I don’t understand how these companies even stay in business.
What are consumers to do except get more and more frustrated? Instead of getting frustrated, this article is here to expose these hard-to-find phone numbers for all to see and use.
Amazon’s Customer Service line:
- 1-866-216-1072 (they can transfer you to other departments, just ask)
- or 1-888-280-4331
- or 1-888-280-3321 (3321 may be discontinued in 2018)
- International customers: 1-206-266-2992. Charges may apply.
- For AWS subscribers, call the above number(s) and politely ask to be transferred to the AWS support team since there is no direct number for AWS.
- Keep in mind that you will need a paid phone support contract with AWS to talk to a representative. Without a contract, they may not talk to you.
- 1-866-540-3229 — Note, they require one-time use pin codes or press # if you don’t have it. It will likely expedite your call to set pincode up from the link. You’ll need to login to do this.
- 1-888-221-1161 — Note, need to login and set up one time-use pin code, but you may be able to skip this step when calling without one. It will probably expedite your call if you set one up.
Rakuten.com:
- 1-888-BEST-BUY (1-888-237-8289)
Frys.com:
- 1-800-856-9800
- International: 1-408-350-1484
- Sales/Customer Service Fax: 1-408-487-4700
- Email: service@cs.frys.com
Netflix.com:
- 1-866-716-0414 — Note, faster if you use the express code from your account
Redbox.com:
- 1-866-REDBOX3 (1-866-733-2693)
Hulu.com:
- 1-877-485-8411 (For Hulu Plus Subscribers)
Virgin Mobile:
- No Contract Plans / General: 1-888-322-1122
- Broadband2Go: 1-877-877-8443
- Assurance Wireless: 1-888-321-5880
Wells Fargo:
- Online Banking: 1-800-956-4442
Airlines:
- Delta
- Reservations: 1-800-221-1212
- App Support: 1-888-750-3284
- International Reservations: 1-800-241-4141
- Skymiles: 1-800-323-2323
- Disability Assistance: 1-404-209-3434
- 711 for hearing or speech assistance
- Frontier
- Reservations and Support: 1-801-401-9000
I’ll add more as I find them. Of course, if you find any new numbers that need to be here, feel free to comment. If any of these stop working, please comment as well.
Enjoy!
Voice ads during your cell phone calls?
Just when you thought that advertisers couldn’t get any more annoying, along comes yet another technology that, on the surface, seems quite intrusive and may even become a privacy issue. This time, it’s on your cell phone.
Paying to hear ads?
It’s not as if cell phone plans and cell plan minutes are cheap. The average cost per minute is around 10 cents. Some postpaid plans may be able to get the cost down to around 7-8 cents per minute, but that’s only for high dollar high volume plans. The average small to mid-sized plan is usually around 10 cents per minute after taxes, fees and other charges have been tallied. With prepaid, the cost is 10 cents per minute. I’ve yet to find one carrier that has less than 10 cents per minute prepaid plans.
That said, because you’re paying for your service, you are also implicitly paying to not have advertising on your phone during your conversations with other people. Advertisers need to learn that when consumers are paying for something, advertising on that space is off-limits. If the advertisers want to help subsidize our costs for something, then we will be willing to tolerate external advertising. It’s a give and take process here. So, advertisers (and those enabling this new technology) need to understand this part of the equation.
What exactly is this technology?
Good question. It doesn’t have a cleverly coined name yet, so let’s call it ‘jam’ (as in they’re jamming up the airwaves with advertising in your cell phone call.. and it also rhymes with spam :). This new technology plans to use the carriers to interject audio advertising into the cell phone’s audio stream during a call. Specifically, during hold music and other ‘dead air’ times.
There’s really only one place in the call flow where such advertising can be injected with new audio and that’s on the carrier’s equipment. It’s also possible that it could happen right on the handset through an actively running app. Either way, ‘jam’ isn’t what people want.
Advertising during dead air? Why would we want that?
Well, the answer is as consumers, we don’t. So, why enable this technology? Because someone can. That and that someone thinks they can make money from this service as well. Good luck with that business model. Anyway, the idea is relatively simple, but definitely not pleasant. Worse, though, is that the advertiser may even have your personal buying habits and interject ‘relevant’ advertising into your call. Not that relevant advertising is bad, but it’s rather creepy when it’s injected into audio conversations of a cell phone. So, you’re on hold waiting for someone to fix your computer and then injected audio steps in and advertises for that vacation to Hawaii you searched on the web just an hour before you called. Ugh, creepy.
Worse, though, is what happens if their dead air recognizing routine fails and it begins injecting advertising in the middle of your conversation? Ewww… now not only will you hear the ad, but likely so will your caller. If you happen to be on a business call… well, all I can say is ewww.. messy and embarrassing.
Opt-out
For such a technology to have any hope of working to even any degree, there must be an opt-out mechanism. If there isn’t such an opt-out system, users will be calling their carriers to complain, that’s a guarantee… especially if such an advertisement interrupts a business call.
Jam on businesses
The primary target for this advertising system is during hold time. I admit that hold music is often boring and repetitive. But, does that give the right to an unrelated third party to inject jam into your phone for their benefit? And, what of the business on the other end providing hold music? They may have advertising that they are counting on to up-sell their newest products. Yet, if jam interrupts and begins selling ‘relevant’ advertising in the form of a competitor, how is fair to the company you’re calling? This system has now injected competitive advertisements without that company’s consent. I see this as a lawsuit just waiting to happen.
Carrier and phone level access
Frankly, I’m surprised that the wireless carriers would even allow this level of access into their network. Unless, of course, these companies can figure out a way of doing it directly into the handset. Either way, it will require very low level access to either the handset or the carrier network to inject this level of audio into a conversation. The trouble, of course, is what happens when their system goes haywire and injects audio at inappropriate times? And, you know this will happen. This isn’t going to make either caller very happy, especially if this happens during a business call or a conference call. I just see failure written all over this.
2010 in review
Year 2010 Randosity at a Glance. Thanks everyone for making 2010 a great year. Let’s make 2011 even better!
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
Crunchy numbers
A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.
The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 21,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 5 fully loaded ships.
In 2010, there were 34 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 82 posts. There were 4 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 317kb.
The busiest day of the year was November 25th with 201 views. The most popular post that day was Cell Phone: Prepaid vs Postpaid.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were google.com, ifreestores.com, twitter.com, google.it, and search.conduit.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for battlestar galactica religious undertones, itunes vista problems, empire efi virtualbox, dave levey leaves araxi, and install mac leopard 10.6.2 in virtualbox.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
Cell Phone: Prepaid vs Postpaid June 2010
5 comments
Running / Installing Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) on VirtualBox June 2010
36 comments
iTunes can corrupt your iPod’s iTunes library January 2009
26 comments
The reality behind Reality TV: Hell’s Kitchen Edition October 2009
Is Battlestar Galactica Christian allegory? Certainly appears so. January 2009
14 comments
A call to boycott ABC’s V series
[Update: V has been cancelled as of May 13th. Bye ‘V’.].
I have personally decided to boycott watching the new V series. No, not because the series isn’t good. It’s a reasonably good series, so far. No, it’s also not for any creative or story reasons you might think. The reason I have decided to boycott the V series is that whomever owns the rights or produces this series has decided to no longer allow streaming of new episodes in any form or on any Internet site, like Hulu or iTunes.
No more V on Hulu?
It’s not just Hulu that’s cut out of streaming for this show. It’s all streaming sites including ABC’s very own ABC.com site. You would think that since ABC owns the broadcast rights to the series and, in fact, are the ones who make the very decision whether V lives or dies as a series, that ABC would have the rights to stream this program online. No, apparently they do not. Very odd. It’s also not available on iTunes or Amazon either.
It almost seems like the producers are biting the hand that feeds them (in more ways than just one). Seriously, not even allowing ABC.com to stream episodes of V on their own site? This seems like the kiss of death for this series.
Rationale behind this decision
I have no inside scoop here, so I really have no idea what the producers were thinking. But, I can only guess that the reasoning is to force viewers to watch the show live on ABC (the TV channel) and only on the TV channel for its first run. So, on the one hand, this seems like a ratings bonanza. On the other hand, let’s explore the downside of this decision.
Viewer Demographics
Because V is very much a long continuous story arc format, if you miss even two episodes, you’re hopelessly lost. V isn’t a one-off monster-of-the-week series where you can watch an episode now and then. No, it is a long deep story arc that needs to be watched one episode at a time in order.
On top of the long story arc format, it is a science fiction program involving heavy uses of technology and intrigue. This genre choice automatically limits the types of viewers. So, the types of viewers that V tends to draw in are those who tend to be younger, tech savvy, internet knowledgeable types. Basically, the kind of viewers who tend to watch things on Hulu and download content from iTunes.
Producer miscalculation
So, on the one hand, the appearance is that this decision should allow the program to get higher ratings by forcing people to watch it live. On the other hand, Hulu and iTunes (and others) no longer have the rights to carry the back catalog of episodes to allow people to catch up. If viewers can’t catch up, they’ll not watch it live either. If you get lost, there is no reason to watch as you can’t understand what’s going on anyway. So, turn the channel and watch something else.
By alienating the exact demographic who tends to watch programs on Hulu combined with the lack of back catalog of episodes on Hulu for people to catch up with missed episodes, my guess is that this decision will seriously backfire on the producers. The ratings will, instead, drop and drop precipitously as the season progresses. In fact, I’d venture to guess that this decision may, in fact, be the sole reason for the death of this series. It’s clear that ABC won’t keep V on the air without viewers. We know that. But, you can’t keep viewers watching V by trying to appeal to the wrong demographic or by pissing on the fan base.
The streaming and Internet genie is out of the bottle. You can’t go back to a time before the Internet and Hulu existed. The producers seriously need to understand this. It’s unfortunate that the producers chose V for this experiment. So far, V appears to be a good series and is probably worth watching. But, the producers also need to realize that removing choices of where and how this program can be viewed is not the answer. You need more viewers, not less.
Underground distribution
Of course, that just means that people will create xvids or mp4s of the show and distribute them via torrents. Instead of seeing legitimate views on legitimate sites with legitimate ad revenue, the whole thing now gets pushed underground where there is no ad revenue and views don’t help the show or the producers at all. Not smart. Not smart at all.
What is the answer?
The answer lies with Neilsen Ratings. In a time where streaming and instant (day after) releases are nearly common place, Neilsen still has no strategy to cover this media with ratings. TV ratings are still and only counted by live views. This company is seriously antiquated. It still solely relies on active Neilsen households watching programs live. Hulu views, DVR views and iTunes downloads do not count towards viewership or ratings. Yet, these ‘day after’ views can be just as relevant (or even more) today than live views. Today, counting only live views is fundamentally wrong.
Change needs to come with the ratings companies, not by producers trying to force the 70s viewing style in 2011. Neilsen needs to count all views of a program no matter where they are or when they are. The ratings game needs to change and must change to accommodate the future of TV. As TVs become Internet connected, this change will become even more important. Eventually, TV programming will be seamlessly delivered over the Internet. In fact, there will come a time when you ‘tune in’ and you won’t even know if it’s streamed or over the air. In fact, why should you care? A view is a view whether live or a month later.
Understanding Neilsen’s antiquated system
Of course, once you understand Neilsen’s outdated model, you can also understand why Neilsen is not counting any ratings other than live TV. Why is that? Because counting any other medium than live TV threatens the very existence of Neilsen’s service. Once broadcasters realize they can gather these numbers through Hulu, Roku, Slingbox, Netflix and other DVR and on-demand technologies directly, there is no need for Neilsen. That is, once we’ve moved to streaming TV 100% it’s easy to get accurate counts. Neilsen’s service was born out of the need to track viewers in a time when the Internet did not exist. With the Internet, it’s much easier to track viewer activity and data in real time. It’s also easy to get this information right from the places that have rights to stream. So, with these real-time reporting methodologies, Neilsen really is no longer necessary.
Neilsen has always used an extrapolation methodology for its ratings statistics, anyway. That is, only a tiny subset of homes throughout the country are Neilsen households. So, when these Neilsen households watch, these small numbers are extrapolated to the larger population, even though there is really no way to know what non-Neilsen households are watching. So, Neilsen’s ratings systems are actually very inaccurate. Counting the numbers of views from Hulu, iTunes, Amazon, Roku, Slingbox, Netflix and other streaming sites and technologies are exact and spot-on accurate. In fact, these numbers are so exact, they can even be traced back to specific hardware devices and specific households, something Neilsen’s rating systems have never been capable of doing. This is why Neilsen is scared to count online views. This is why Neilsen is no longer needed.
Goodbye V
It was nice knowing ya. My instincts all say that the fan backlash from this decision will be swift and final. If this series manages to make it to the end of the 2011 spring season without cancellation, I’ll be amazed. However, if ABC cancels this show before June, that won’t surprise me. So, unless the producers make an about-face really fast with regards to this no-streaming experiment, this series is likely already cancelled… it just doesn’t yet know it. I’d also urge anyone reading (and especially Neilsen households) to boycott the new V series and send a message to the producers that not offering streaming options is not acceptable and that your program is dead without them. I can tell you that I won’t watch this series again until streaming options become available. This is not really a problem for me as there are plenty of other TV shows available. The problem here is for the cast and crew. These people are dedicating their time, effort and livelihoods to putting this series together only to be screwed over by the producers. Such is life in Hollywood, I guess.
Installing Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) in VMWare Player 3
With this article, I’ll start by saying.. please purchase your copy of Mac OS X desktop software from Apple. It’s $29 and you get the original media (which is always good to have on hand).
To start, here are the softwares you will need:
- VMWare Player 3 (need to create login to download)
- Empire EFI 1.3.2 for VMWare
- Snow Leopard Install Media (Disk or ISO)
- 7zip (for opening Empire EFI archive)
- ImageBurn (for making ISO images from CD Media)
Installing Mac OS X on VMWare Player is a pretty simple install, but note that there are some important issues that aren’t yet resolved. I’ll explain the issues, however, after the install steps.
Installation
Inside the Empire EFI 1.3.2 archive, you will see the following files:
You will see that the extracted ‘Snowy_VM’ folder contains several files besides just the EFI media. Inside the Mac OS X Server*.vmwarevm directory, you’ll see it contains two .vmx templates for VMWare. Use the .vmx file without the underscore at the beginning. Note, you’ll need to use this template to get the install going. It’s far simpler to use their existing template than trying to figure out all the proper VMWare Player settings. So, use what’s given rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. If you absolutely feel you want to reinvent, then I’ll leave that for you to determine what’s necessary.
To begin, inside VMWare Player, select File->Open a Virtual Machine. Find the .vmx file mentioned just above and open it. Once opened, it will appear as ‘Mac OS X Server 10.6 (experimental)’ in the VMWare Player selection panel. From here, you will need to modify the settings for the CDROM device under this machine. Choose the ‘Mac OS X Server 10.6 (experimental)’ imported machine and choose ‘Edit virtual machine settings’ on the bottom right of the window. Now click the on the CDROM device and under ‘Connection’ change it to ‘Use ISO image’ and browse to and select the darwin_snow.iso image inside the Snowy_VM directory’. Click ‘OK’.
You’re now ready to boot. So, click ‘Play Virtual Machine’. Once the machine has started and the system begins searching for a CDROM (read the text on the screen), you will need to change the CDROM to the Mac OS X Snow Leopard media. I recommend using an ISO media to install. So, I will assume you are using an ISO image here. At the bottom of the active VM Window, right click the CDROM icon which may now be greyed out (disconnected) and choose ‘Settings’. Locate the Snow Leopard media on your hard drive and click ‘OK’ to accept it. Check the box next to ‘Connected’ at the top of the window and click ‘OK’ at the bottom.
The system should recognize the disk change and begin to boot the media in about 10 seconds. Once the install begins, you are now installing Mac OS X. Follow the steps to install Mac OS X. Once Mac OS X is installed, reboot. Note the hard drive given in this Snowy_VM archive is ‘ready to go’. So you don’t need to format it.
Booting issues with VMWare Player and Mac OS X
Let’s pause and explain this. When you reboot the first time, the system may or may not boot up. There are two behaviors you should watch for. The first behavior is that you get to the Apple Logo screen with the spinning lines. If it never progresses beyond this grey screen, then you will need to reboot and try again.
The second behavior is that it may get past the grey screen, but then Finder never appears and you see a forever spinning cursor. If you see this, you will need to reboot and try again.
These issues are annoying, but that’s why this is ‘experimental’. So, we live with these issues.
The third issue is that you will need to continually leave the darwin_snow.iso image in the drive all of the time to boot up Mac OS X. Hey, at least it works. Leaving it in the drive is really not a problem as it boots up so quickly. Perhaps they can create a standalone booter later, but for now this works.
Note, I recommend setting up a second CDROM drive inside your Mac OS X virtual machine’s settings. This way, you leave one CDROM always set up with darwin_snow.iso and you use the second one to load/unload other ISO images. If you like, you can set the second one up to your physical drive also so you can pop real CDs in the drives as you need. Note that if you change the darwin_snow.iso image to something else, you have to remember to set it back when you’re done. If you don’t do this, Mac OS X won’t boot. So, this is why I recommend setting up a second drive for loading ISO images.
Booting up successfully
After getting through any unsuccessful boot attempts (or not), you should get to the registration screen. After going through all of the registration screens you will be at the standard Finder desktop. At this point, you might want to change things like Sound and Display. Note that the sound and display drivers are just about as good as what’s in Virtual Box. In fact, Virtual Box’s resolution setup is a bit more complete than this. So, don’t expect a whole lot here.
Suffice it to say that you will need to follow editing of the apple.com.Boot.plist file as in the ‘Installing Mac OS X on VirtualBox‘ article on Randosity. Add in the lines related to the graphics. Once you have done this, edit the virtual machine in VMWare player and choose the Display setup. Under ‘Monitors’ change it to ‘Specify Monitor Settings’ and manually change the maximum resolution to ‘1366×768’. When you reboot, Mac OS X should go into this mode. If it doesn’t work, then you may have to fiddle with the apple.com.Boot.plist file until it works. Note that the resolutions here are limited, so don’t try to set up some odd resolution as it won’t work.
Note, this is the best resolution I could find. Note that in the above directory, you’ll see the file ‘EnsoniqAudioPCI.mpkg.tar’. This is a Mac OS X driver for audio. I have tried installing this without success. But, your mileage may go farther. The trick is in getting this into the Mac. So, you’ll need to start a browser and download the EFI file again on the Mac. Then extract it, find this file and install it.
At this point, you should be all set. You may run into the booting issues from time to time, just reboot until it boots up. Hopefully this booting issue will be fixed at some point. Good luck and happy installing.
If you’re looking for something that boots consistently for Mac OS X, has better video mode support and working sound, then I would suggest setting up Mac OS X on VirtualBox. The setup for VirtualBox is a little more complex, but it boots consistently every time, has its own standalone boot loader and offers a few more features.
If you have questions, please leave a comment below.
Are electric cars really good for our environment?
On the surface, this question seems like it has a simple answer. And that simple answer is ‘Yes’… or is it? Let’s explore.
Green or Brown?
Electric cars seem like such a great idea until you realize that you have to plug it into the power grid to recharge the thing. So, how is this car greener than, say, its gasoline counterparts? On the one hand, the car itself runs clean. No fossil fuels to burn so no emissions to speak of. This is a good thing. The bad thing is that it has to pull from fossil fuel derived electrical energy to recharge. This ultimately means that while the electric car itself is no longer the gross polluter, that pollution has been pushed off onto the electrical suppliers. So they, in turn, have to ramp up more fossil fuel production to handle the added load to charge these 240v batteries in electric cars.
So, how did that exactly save us anything? Maybe it makes the buyer of the electric vehicle feel more environmentally conscious until we consider where and how the power was generated to recharge that electric vehicle.
I should point out here, though, that the tires, the plastic parts and the moving parts are all derived from or utilize fossil fuels. For example, nearly all lubrication is almost always fossil fuel derived.
Alternative energy sources
As more and more electric vehicles are deployed onto the nation’s roads, the power grids will have to be enhanced to support the power generation needed to recharge these cars. That means, ultimately, more fossil fuels being burned to create that energy to send it down the line to recharge your car to let you go to work.
We need to rethink this entire process. We need to find a way to get clean power generation from nature. Unfortunately, energies derived from solar, wind or water are temperamental and, at times, impractical. That is, we can’t rely on solar, wind and water derived energy to support the numbers of people who want to buy into electric vehicles let alone power the entirety of people living in the US. So, the grid suppliers have to dip into fossil fuel derived energy generation to provide electricity across the board. As more and more of these vehicles hit the road, the grid may eventually become overtaxed by the cars and we may, once again, end up in rolling blackouts.
So, we need more stable forms of energy that are renewable for a lot longer than fossil fuels.
Running out
It has already been predicted that we are on the downward slope of fossil fuel supplies on earth (i.e., peak fossil fuel supplies). Those rich abundant supplies that were once everywhere are slowly drying up. If we, as a society, don’t find more clean renewable power generation, our information age may come to a halt leaving us squarely back at a time without electric power or natural gas. A time when there were no cell phones, no cars and no grocery stores.
If you think about the things that are all around you every day that derive their existence from fossil fuels, you begin to understand the scope of a society where fossil fuels have run out. That means, no new plastic, no gasoline, no fossil fuel generated power, no oil for motors, no computers, no iPods and no cell phones. In fact, there won’t be much of our present society left if the earth runs out of fossil fuels. This also includes lack of medicine and all that that implies, but let’s stay focused on energy sources.
Clean burning, natural, renewable energy sources
Are there any? Sure, if you count water, wind and solar. But, as I said, these are temperamental. What other power generation tools do we have? Well, there’s also atomic energy that heats water to steam and turns turbines. Unfortunately, the safeguards necessary to prevent another Chernobyl are too prone to human error. Atomic energy generation is just too risky. So, are there any others? Yes.
Thermal energy
Not just any thermal energy, the earth is home to lots of geothermal energy. The difficulty with geothermal energy is getting to it and, secondarily, preventing the creation of accidental volcanoes and eruptions. So, where could we utilize geothermal energy and maximize the energy generation? In the ocean, of course. There’s plenty of water to steam and turn turbines. There are plenty of open geothermal pockets under the ocean that lead into the water. So, we should be able to figure out a way to take advantage of these open pockets to turn ocean water to steam and generate electric power. The trouble, of course, is getting the power from the ocean floor back to a distribution grid to send the power out.
Geothermal energy is about the only energy on the planet that can be easily harnessed, that exists on its own and that is completely renewable. Unless the Earth dies, geothermal energy is about the only source that we can rely on as constant. Just look at Old Faithful to see just how stable geothermal energy can be. The only difficulty is in trying to find a reasonably consistent geothermal vent that can be reliably used to generate energy using steam turbines. However, once enough of these are found, these can be used to eventually replace burning of fossil fuels to generate heat to generate steam to to turn turbines to create energy.
Energy deficit
Fossil fuel sources should be considered as previously stored energy pockets. Energy that was created by the sun. The sun first fostered the growth of plants and animals here and then these plants and animals died, decayed and converted into fossil fuels. These fuels from many many years ago are now being used today to operate our economy. The trouble is, these fossil fuels are finite and we are using them very rapidly. In fact, we may have used more than half of all of what’s on Earth to operate our economy from day to day. Consider when we drilled our first oil well vs how much fossil fuel we use today. As a result and because these resources are finite, we will eventually run out of it. Since we really have no idea how much more we have until it all ends, we should now consider that we are living in an energy deficit, and on borrowed time. That is, we are using more energy now than we should in order to allow for support of future generations.
So, while people continue to have babies, they aren’t asking when these babies become adults will they have a future? And, what of these kid’s babies? Where will they be? This is why we are now living on borrowed time at the expense of our future generations who may find themselves looking back at us thinking how selfish we were. And they will be living at a time when they may be burning candles, eating locally grown foods and doing subsistence farming just to keep food on the table. They may have our technology, but no energy to run it. What will become the currency of that day? Perhaps seed. Once the world ends up as local economies without contact to other remote economies, the government won’t be able to keep order. So, the government as we know it will cease to exist. Without cars, then there’s no need for driver’s licenses or car license tags or any other governmental taxes or fees as they won’t make sense in a local economy.
Without thinking ahead for renewable energy sources, our future generations may have no future. At least, not the future we see today. In fact, their future may not resemble anything of our information society. This is very likely where we will end up without finding a new fuel source for power generation. This is the importance of finding clean renewable energy that is synergistic with the Earth.
Electricity is not a power source
Electricity generation is the end result of the work from some other device (i.e., burning fossil fuel turns turbines that generate power). Electricity is not a power source itself, however. But, electricity is what drives every part of our economy today. Just think what the world would be without electric power. Without locating and instituting a replacement for fossil fuel electric power generation, the world’s economy will likely end as we know it when our fossil fuel supplies dry up. Our dependence on fossil fuel power generation is nearly 70% of all power generation in the US as of 2009 (and it is likely similar if you look at the world overall).
Full circle
So, that electric car you buy today borrows against fossil fuel power generation (coal, natural gas & petroleum) to recharge your brand new electric car. Obtaining power from the local power grid ensures that at least 70% of the energy placed into your electric vehicle was generated by coal or natural gas, both of these resources are finite and coal does not burn clean. So, a renewable synergistic power generation source is a must for the Earth and the future of humanity, let alone the electric vehicle which is only truly green once we have this renewable power source.
In addition to regenerative braking, we also need to consider more car regenerative power sources to keep the car from requiring recharging nearly as often and to allow for farther traveling distances. For example, someone could invent a paint that acts as a huge solar panel. So, every inch of the external painted surface could double as a huge solar power generation panel while driving in the sun. Additionally, alternating polarity magnets could be placed below highways to generate current as you drive over them which continually recharges your car’s batteries as you drive. Thus, drastically increasing the mileage of an electric vehicle with far less need to recharge as often. Also, fans could be placed behind the grill of the vehicle to capture wind energy as you drive. Again, all of these techniques add even more power generation to the vehicle that increases mileage while also keeping that car aesthetically pleasing.
Looking at today’s electric vehicles, these designs seem so infantile compared to what could be achieved with proper governmental infrastructure support of electric vehicles. Right now, electric vehicles look green, but really aren’t. Once we harness truly clean renewable energy sources (like geothermal energy) combined with more extensive regenerative power sources, we might finally be able to call the electric vehicle green.
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