Photo by acaben

Steve Jobs could be on the verge of a self-destructive move that would ruin Apple. Again.

The idolized CEO’s leadership led to his dismissal many years ago, from the company he founded. The buildup to this was aggravated by  his arrogant and unfriendly manner, and unwillingness to unclench his fist from the steering wheel. His triumphant return to Apple in 1996 marked the comeback of Apple, and for years it seemed that he could do no wrong. But lately, he’s started wars or distanced himself from former allies like Adobe and now Google.

The Wikipedia entry on Jobs and and his dismissal from Apple are very laudatory and barely mention anything about the topic, have you been editing them Steve? (Joking aside, I suspect a PR executive or an overzealous fanboy is the culprit of it).

A few months ago, HTC released the first Google-branded phone, the Nexus One. It uses a touchscreen, and but doesn’t look more like an iPhone than dozens of handsets by Nokia, LG and others. But HTC has been singled out by Apple for a lawsuit. Apple claims HTC has violated 20 of its patents. But it deems like an indirect attack at Google, and all handset manufacturers that use Google’s open-source Android operating system.

This can only be interpreted as the first move of a major legal battle with Apple suing all other handset makers for imitating the iPhone. This is a terribly misguided thing. I hope the lawsuit fails, because otherwise, Apple is shooting itself in the foot, by generating waves of anger, and a likely backlash.

Hubris is your Achilles’ heel Mr. Jobs.

Body, Soul and Spirit

A few days ago during a conversation, the topic of the difference between body-soul-spirit came up. On that occasion I replied that the body was the biological engine that keeps the soul and the spirit together. But what is a soul? I have heard the soul defined as mind, the seat of intellect, heart, the center of emotion, and will, the throne of decision. But then, what is the spirit? I spit out my learned-by-heart definition that the spirit was that which allowed us to communicate with God. Someone else who was there said the Spirit was God himself present in human beings.

Is the soul the same as consciousness?

This morning I was musing about the difficulty in enforcing mental hygiene, i.e. keeping my mind clear of destructive thoughts. It struck me that all I can truly control is my will. My mind seems to bring up destructive and counterproductive thoughts almost randomly. My emotions are almost completely impossible to control, except by patient mental discipline enforced by willpower.

All I can control is my will. I can’t stop the endless flood of sensory data entering my mind through my eyes, ears, smell, taste, and touch. But by my decisions I can move away from unpleasant or unwanted sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and sensations. I can’t stop my mind from bringing back memories, but I can choose whether to let them remain in my conscious thought. I can also choose which thought I can express as words or deeds.

Is the human essence a matter of will alone?

I was reading last night about the work of David Cope, an emeritus professor of music at the University of California. His lifelong goal, to produce a musical composition that would move a young person to the awe and love of music he himself experienced when he heard Tchaikovski’s Romeo and Juliet.

He had produced highly regarded music, and his works have been performed worldwide. But during a severe episode of creative block, he decided to examine the creative process itself. He dove into the study of Mozart, and Bach, and was surprised to discover that their music was very much based on rules.

So he taught himself how to program computers, so he could create a program to compose music using the rules he synthesized from Bach. He named his program EMI, and nicknamed it Emmy. But, the initial resulting music was uninspiring and mechanical. He then realized that Bach intuitively knew when to break his own rules. He modified Emmy to break the rules occasionally, in exactly the same ways that Bach did. The result was thousands of compositions that many musicologists were unable to distinguish from authentic Bach creations.

Many composers were aghast. Their opinion of the very same compositions were drastically changed once they realized that a computer algorithm had created them. They wanted music with soul. The professor decided to renounce his experiment, and even went as far as deleting his databases.

But the rejection of his colleagues challenged him, and a few years later he created a new computer program, that he named Emily Howell, an improvement of his earlier work. Emily uses the earlier algorithm to suggest musical themes, and responds to the criticism of a human, who decides whether a particular set of notes is accepted into the finished composition, or rejected.

The continual acceptance and rejection of musical themes trains the program and makes it better at creating music that is pleasing to its trainer. The result is brilliant; my experience of listening to some of Emily’s compositions is truly awe-inspiring. I wish I could compose music like that.

Is the mind a complex computer, and thus “only” a machine?

In my musings about the will and the mind, I found a parallel with professor Cope’s painstaking study and research of music, and the role of the will in shaping our minds. Professor Cope unraveled the rules that made Bach’s music so timeless and poignant, and taught a computer algorithm to follow them to a degree of perfection almost undistinguishable from Bach himself. Once this was done, Cope coached the algorithm, teaching it what was good and wasn’t.

This is very similar to the training we receive as children and continue in our own minds day by day. We receive a synthesized set of rules to establish what is good and what is isn’t. Then we train our minds to reward thoughts we consider pleasing, and punish or reject those that are unpleasant.

The soul could easily be seen as an interface between the hardware of the physical brain,  a vast storage and interconnected network of neurons with emotions as its language, the mind, which would be the algorithm or software running inside it, and finally, the will, the “trainer”, who through continual grooming of thought can control the entire system.

Practicing Hope

This would give hope of the mind being guided to challenge its most basic tenets, and after a great deal of dissonance, be transformed into a new creation. This is the process theologians call “conversion”.

If we believe in the training the Spirit of God gives us, we can change our minds to a degree where they will be “prepared for every good work” , but not so completely that they would be free of what the apostle Paul called “the sin in me”. To me there are many unanswered questions in this, and great hope.

I read the tech news yesterday, surprised at Google Buzz, the newest attempt by Google to catch the social networking wave. It wasn’t until today that I was able to login to Buzz.

Google Buzz seems to be facebook without the apps. Or perhaps an augmented Twitter. My equation for it: facebook + twitter + simplicity + centralization. Google created a video to introduce Buzz.

Google hasn’t seen runaway success in social networking yet, it’s Orkut service has only become popular in few countries. Buzz is not a groundbreaking product, but because it sits so comfortably inside gmail, it is very easy to adopt. I predict over half of gmail users will at least try it out.

However there is absolutely no integration between Google Buzz and facebook. This omission, which is probably not an accident, could cost Buzz many users. Facebook has more than 400 million users, while gmail only counts 36 million.

As a developer, I can’t help but be excited whenever Apple comes up with a new product. I have never been as satisfied with a computer as I am with my MacBook. But where will Apple’s new iPad shine? Two things: games and web apps

The app store has seen a flood of games, countless versions of Sudoku, Chess, Solitaire, and others have created so much competition that for a lone programmer, any time spent developing a new game is almost completely wasted. Only large game companies like EA can afford to release games for the Apple App Store, and successfully charge for them. The iPad, with its 1024×768 screen, will give them the capability to make much more satisfying games than with the iPod/iPhone. The multi-touch interface and accelerometers make for extremely fun and novel ways of interacting with software as well.

But in my opinion, it is the web which holds the greatest potential for iPad development. For decades, ever since the web boomed, visionaries have dreamed of using the web as an application platform and operating system. Only last year Google announced that they would be creating a netbook which would store all it’s programs and data on the web.

But web apps aren’t as beautiful as native apps. No wonder Apple is blocking Adobe’s flash and Microsoft’s Silverlight from its iPods, iPhones and now the iPad. These technologies could allow for more aesthetically pleasing and powerful web applications. Nevertheless, the onset of new standards, like HTML5, will soon break Apple’s blockade. Here is where I would invest my time as a developer.

I resent Apple’s benevolent dictator attitude. There is very little customization in their operating systems. Although this allows for more beauty and better performance, I resent having to force my device to do my bidding.

I use the OS X terminal window and resort to Unix commands when I need to do something my MacBook doesn’t want me to. There is no legal option in iPhones or iPods to do something similar, because all content is locked down through a media store, and an app store. The process of getting an app approved is notoriously byzantine in difficulty. But the web is free, and any attempt by Apple to force me to use their services is defeated by the web’s openness.

I predict I will eventually get an iPad, in a few years, when version 2 or three comes out, cheaper and with less restrictions. I don’t expect to get on the App Store gold rush mentality either. As a freelance developer I can’t afford to expend my effort on a program with a limited audience. The web is the future, the web is free, the web is device-independent. Viva la Web!

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OMG, I have a tin foil hat on and a paper bag over my head now because Google Street View has my house on their database. Members of the resistencia will now know where to send their thank you notes.

I live in an apartment behind the Ficus trees.

As the trend for smaller, cheaper, more portable computers drives on, Google is preparing to replace Microsoft as the software company for the world. The concept of the browser as an operating system has been a dream since the early nineties.

I remember a conversation with a Costa Rican friend, Juan Manuel Brenes, where he made the prediction, 15 years ago, that someday, the operating system would disappear, to be replaced by the browser. Since then, many in the computer industry have dreamed of a “cloud computer”.

Google is very near achieving that goal. Most surprising of all is the news that they are borrowing the Apple business model of selling the computer hardware with the software pre-installed. Microsoft does largely the same thing but still provides copies of Windows to install on old machines.

But, users would not be able to download Google’s operating system, called Chrome OS, and install it on their computers. The reasoning behind it? The operating system would not be stored in each computer, but in the internet itself. Any upgrades will happen in a server farm somewhere in the arctic tundra. Applications would be hosted on the internet and accessed as services. All data would be stored in servers, not your own computer.

This has several implications for privacy, and also for graphics performance. Most graphically intense applications have long since moved to game consoles, or the Mac OS. Apple would not lose much of it’s market share; the big loser in this would be Microsoft, because Windows is what powers cheap netbooks and most business machines, which only need scheduling and office software.

With Chrome OS, Google could easily become a larger giant by far than Microsoft ever dreamed of being.

The Truth about 2012 from NASA Lunar Science Institute on Vimeo.

2012 is a highly enjoyable disaster movie in theaters today. But the 2012 hoax is enjoying a popularity that has some people so afraid, that they are considering suicide. This video was put out by a NASA scientist to counter the ignorance.

I never bought the iPhone, even after years of drooling over it. I am almost perfectly satisfied with an iPod Touch, because I am no fan of TelMex’s high prices for their 3G network.

These costumes are a step above the average iPhone/iPod costume, because they actually show images of what’s going on in their screens. I can’t imagine how heavy or expensive they must be, carrying a huge flat-screen monitor inside.

Ummm, somebody please give Microsoft a beginner’s course in marketing! In order to promote the launch of Windows 7, in Japan, Burger King is offering a 7-patty version of its venerable Whopper. At a whopping 2120 calories, this is all the nourishment a person would need for an entire day. The price, 777 yen.