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Saturday, September 24, 2005

Bypassing Acrobat Bypassing Acrobat

Adobe has a pretty good scam going on. It gives away its Acrobat Reader, and sells, for a fair amount, its Acrobat, which is used to make .pdf files. Because of this, .pdf has become a well established file standard - including being heavily used by the USPTO.

It is possible to create .pdf files that have blanks that can be filled in with Acrobat Reader, but you can't save the input values. And you can't annotate non-fillable forms. What to do, without buying the entire Acrobat suite?

Well, I found one solution. I import the Acrobat file into Word as a picture. I position it in the background. I then use MSFT Draw to add text on top of it. It turns out that you have to make everything relative to the page boundries (and set margins to zero). Nevertheless, you can then print out the form with blanks filled out.

Unfortunately, Acrobat Reader exports its images at 75%. This means that you have to expand them by a factor of 1.333%, and that, unfortunately, means that the form itself is somewhat fuzzy.

The answer to that problem is to print the form first in Acrobat Reader. Then, you delete the form from Word and print on top of the form you just printed in Acrobat Reader. You can "undo" for saving everything. It worked so perfectly that small boxes I filled out hit exactly.

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Tipping Point: The Stickiness Factor Tipping Point: The Stickiness Factor

The chapter in the "Tipping Point" on the Stickiness Factor starts out by looking at the creation of Sesame Street. The show's creator, Joan Ganz Cooney, set out to start an epidemic. The target was three four and five year olds. The agent of infection was TV. And the infection she wanted to spread was literacy. And, as we all know, it worked.

A lot of what went into the show was experimentation. Every segment of every show is tested on kids. Through time, they have learned a lot of how to get the attention of kids this age, and how to get them to retain it. For example, initially, they tried separating people from the Muppets. It didn't work. The kids weren't that interested in the Muppets. And then, at almost the last minute, they tried them together. And, then had to rush around recreating those scenes, because that is what worked.

No matter how good Sesame Street was, there were some who thought that they could do better. And one show that succeeded was "Blue's Clues". They ended up breaking a lot of the rules that Sesame Street had set, and ended up with a more effective show. They cut it to half an hour. There is only one human ("Steve"). He has a blue dog ("Blue"). And each episode, they solve a problem. And, then they ran the show every day for a week, before going on to the next one.

They did a lot of interesting stuff. They typically had three or so clues, and each one was a mini-segment. They would shuffle them around before test audiences to get the order right. But part of the stickiness was that the kids would guess the right answer earlier and earlier each day - because they had seen it the day or days before. And the kids would do this out loud.

One big difference between the two shows was that Sesame Street was designed to include the parents on the theory that they would share this with the kids. The result is that there is a lot of stuff in the shows that goes right over the kids' heads. As adults, we think that is great. The kids find it confusing. I would be laughing at some thing in one of the shows, and my daughter would ask why? I usually had a hard time explaining.

Blue's Clues is just the opposite. I found it idiotic. But then, I am not a three year old. The repetition seems mindless. But it isn't for kids that age. They thrive on being able to predict earlier and earlier each day what is going to happen. It keeps them involved, and it works.

Interestingly, one of the biggest successes from Sesame Street was the alphabet, as recited by James Earl Jones. As is his wont, he left big pauses between all the letters. And because he did such a good job at it, it was a segment in a lot of Sesame Street shows. And as a result, after awhile, a lot of the kids were anticipating him in those pregnant pauses with the next letter. Needless to say, Steve does this a lot in Blue's Clues for exactly the same reason - to push those young kids to anticipate what he is going to say. And, as noted, it works.

The reason that the author talked about these two shows to such length was that both were trying to increase "stickiness", in this case, of things such as the alphabet, in the minds of young kids.

Stickiness is one of the big things that advertisers strive for, and usually fail at. The author gives an example of a mass mailer competing with a major advertising agency. He included gold prize boxes in magazines, and then in late night, low cost, advertising, explained them. The response was overwhelming. He beat the advertising agency hands down.

Last weekend, my daughter and I were talking about TiVo, etc., and I told her that it wouldn't be that hard to program them to skip commercials. How? Because the volume invariably jumps when they start to try to get your attention. Needless to say, it fails. We are much too sophisticated. Listening to radio, I invariably punch the button of another station when I get the volume jump indicating a commercial break.

There is one exception though - Frontier Airlines. They have painted the tails of their planes with animals. Very distinctive. But, then they gave a bunch of these animals quirky personalities. The verbal by-play of their main characters is always charming and quite funny. So, I hear those voices on the radio, and turn up the volume for their ads.

This is the stickiness that advertisers dream about, and almost invariably fail to achieve. It catches people's attention. It not only identifies the product, but in a very positive way. You can't help but think that a flight with that airline is going to be pleasant. This is especially interesting as they have one hub, Denver. And Denver is dominated by United, whose long time slogan has been to "Fly the Friendly Skies of United". Yet, most people who fly both would consider Frontier by far the friendlier. Why? Could be those ads. It also seems to rub off on the employees. Last time I flew with them, I was talking to the flight attendants, and both had come from different airlines, where they made more money. Why the switch? Because it was a much friendlier place to work. The power of sticky advertising.

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Tipping Points Tipping Points

I just finished "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference" by Malcolm Gladwell. It looks at a lot of phenomena from an epidemiological point of view, and draws a parallel between how trends take off and/or die and how epidemics do the same.

It seems fairly dry. It isn't. He starts by looking at an epidemic of syphilis that hit Baltimore in the 1990s. In one year, the number of children born with it increased 500%. A number of experts had their own theories. The CDC blamed it on crack cocaine. An expert on STDs at Johns Hopkins University suggested that it was due to a breakdown in medical services in the city's poorest neighborhoods, most notably a reduction in the budget and staffing of its STD clinics. John Potteral, a leading epidemiologist, points at physical changes in the area resulting from the dynamiting of old 1960s vintage public housing. What is interesting is that none of the explanations are all that dramatic - small changes over time, all of a sudden resulting in the epidemic. Secondly, all three explanations described very different ways of tipping the an epidemic.

His second example consisted of Hush Puppy shoes coming back from near death and turning into a fad from a handful of East Village kids who found them at thrift stores.

The book then introduces three rules of Tipping Points: the Law of the Few; the Stickiness Factor; and the Power of Context. In the Law of the Few, he identifies three critical groups of people. First, there are the Connectors who know everyone, or, at a minimum, a lot more relevant people than the rest of us do. The Mavens are the experts, invariably early adapters, who either like or dislike something new. They are not selling the good new things for money, but out of passion. They have a need to know this sort of thing, and do. And, thus, they are trusted. Finally, you have the Salesmen, those guys who can sell refrigerators to Eskimos. For trends to take off, it takes all three, doing their part. They take the ideas that the Mavens find, and push the rest of us into them too.

In particular, Mavens can be absolutely critical. Lexus, when just introduced, had a minor recall. Instead of the usual letter in the mail, they called everyone personally, and if the owner was out of town, would send a mechanic there to make the fix. Why? Because they knew that many of the Lexis owners at this time were Mavens, and if they could be convinced of the car's quality, word of mouth would do much of the rest. And, needless to say, it worked. I know a number of people who have moved to the car from their Mercedes and Cadillacs because of the perceived quality of the Lexus - and this perception was a direct result of the company coddling its Mavens during this recall.

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Wal-Mart and Hurricanes Wal-Mart and Hurricanes

Thomas Friedman in his book, "The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century" looks at how the world is changing as it "flattens". One of the companies that he talked about was Wal-Mart. The company has become the largest retailer in the world through, in particular, by far, the best inventory management system.

Well, as hurricane Katrina was moving towards the Gulf Coast, Wal-Mart had semitrucks rolling into the area with extra generators, water, canned goods, and the like. This was all happening while the governor of LA and the mayor of New Orleans were dawdling about what to do.

It may look like altruism, but it wasn't. It was just good business. It was maximizing sales through the best just-in-time inventory system on the planet. It turns out, according to Friedman, that they always do this in anticipation of hurricanes. They have meteorologists on staff who watch hurricanes very closely. And they know by now, from experience, just what is usually needed (and thus, bought) right before and right after hurricanes. And so, they pre-surge these items in preparation for hurricanes.

Obviously, they weren't able to pre-stock all the water that would be needed this time. But, it wasn't their responsibility, and they did far, far, better at it than did the governments of LA and NO whose responsibility it was.

I should also note that we saw evidence of this system at work throughout the recovery from the hurricane too, as they were one of the private agencies able to bring the right stuff there fastest.

So, I have no doubt that as the people in Texas are evacuating from the imminent arrival of hurricane Rita today, that the Wal-Marts in that area have also had their hurricane necessities massively augmented, with more trucks on the way.

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Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Ayatullah Sistani on Alcohol and Medicine Ayatullah Sistani on Alcohol and Medicine

As noted in a previous post, the Grand Ayatullah Sistani has a web page (unfortunately not currently accessible) that includes a Q&A section.

As we all know, Islam forbids imbibing alcoholic beverages. But the Ayatullah clarifies how this relates to the modern world.
a) Alcohol itself is pure. Thus, using it medically, for example, as a disinfectant, is perfectly acceptable.
b) It only gets a little harder for medicines suspended in alcohol - as long as you can't get tipsy from them, they are fine. See (#a) above.
c) Pretty much ditto for mouth wash.
d) Non-alcoholic beer is acceptable to drink - if you can't get the least bit tipsy from it.

Lest you think though that he is easing up here, he makes clear that not only cannot Muslims drink, but they can't even sit at the same table as someone drinking alcohol. However, they can eat in the same resteraunt.

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Ayatullah Sistani on Black Magic Ayatullah Sistani on Black Magic

As noted in a previous post, the Grand Ayatullah Sistani has a web page (unfortunately not currently accessible) that includes a Q&A section. I think the questions on Black Magic do a very good job at illustrating the tension between the new and old that he seems to be trying to bridge.

The questions seem to be of the form of "if someone is using black magic against me, can I use white magic in response". And the Ayatullah's response is invariably to trust in Islam and see a (presumably medical) specialist if necessary.

Indeed, the answer is not all that different than we would expect from a Catholic priest asked what to do when you have been hexed (in, for example, NOLA).

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Monday, September 12, 2005

Grand Ayatullah Sistani Grand Ayatullah Sistani

Grand Ayatullah al-Sayyid Ali al-Hussani al-Sistani is the leading Shiite cleric today in Iraq, and one of the preeminent clerics in all of Shiite Islam. Of all those involved in the democratization of Iraq, he is probably the most important Iraqi. Without his support, we would have no chance there.

On his website, he has a Q&A section that includes his views on a number of subjects. I found the questions and his answers quite interesting, esp. as to answering questions of how Shiites should live in, and adapt to, the modern world.

Of particular note to me as an intllectual property attorney were his answers on Copyright questions. He states, for example, "Copying or duplicating a book or software without their owner's permission is not permissible" in response to a question about copying Islamic books subject to copyright. Quite the modern answer.

As a note, he requires on his web site (persuant to his copyrights) that the information there can be used, if properly attributed. In deference in particular to his modern answer on copyright, I shall do that now - the information I am discussing here and in subsequent posts is derived from his web site, www.sistani.org.

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Microsoft - the Evil Empire? Not! Microsoft - the Evil Empire? Not!

The accepted wisdom of much of the software world is that Microsoft is the evil empire incarnate, throught its preditory practices. I agree to a very great extent, and some day, would love to have the autobiography of the late Gary Kildall, founder of Digital Research, and developer of CP/M, published. It details how Microsoft really got going by selling a clone of CP/M to IBM and the world as DOS. The people at Apple, Netscape, et al. have somewhat similar stories to tell.

That said, what is forgotten is that this has provided enormous wealth to a number of people, many of whom have tried to do something important with their money. But of those, the two of note are those who made, by far, the most money, its founders: Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

The two have gone in different directions. Mr. Allen has spent his retirement from Microsoft helping seed emerging technologies. Of recent note, he was the major funder of Space Ship One, the winner of the X Prize for reaching space twice in ten days or less. Through this, he (among others) helped show us that we can reach space economically, without NASA, and all that that agency entails. I think that within my lifetime, we can expect to see space craft reaching earth orbit at a fraction of the NASA cost (of some half a billion dollars a flight). This will invariably result in the growth of space based industries building products that cannot be built here, and, ultimately, potentially, moving a lot of our polluting industry into space.

Bill Gates on the other hand is slated to be the Andrew Carnegie of our era. Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie almost a hundred years ago set up the foundation bearing his name, and as a result, thousands of libraries were built across this country. His foundation is still at work today, 94 years after its founding.

Bill Gates and his wife Melinda have given (or are giving) the vast bulk of their immense fortune to charity, most notably, to The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. They are apparently only giving $10 million or so to each of their daughters, which, while seemingly a lot to most of us, works out to approximately 0.05% (or 5%%) of their entire wealth.

So where is all this money going? To save the world? Well, probably as close as they could get. They are on track for potentially saving hundreds of millions, if not billions, of human lives throughout the third world. In 2003, the Gates Foundation launched a project called Grand Challenges in Global Health. Instead of telling everyone how to solve the problems of 3rd world health, they asked the scientific community to collaborate. They asked the question of what are the biggest problems that, if science attended to them and solved them, could most dramatically change the fate of the several billion people in this world trapped in the vicious cycle of infant mortality, low life expectancy, and disease.

They received some eight thousand pages of response from scientists and then distilled them down into a list of fourteen Grand Challenges that include: Improving childhood vaccines, Creating new vaccines, Controling insects that transmit agents of disease, Improving nutrition to promote health, Improving drug treatment of infectious diseases, Curing latent and chronic infections, and Measuring disease and health status accurately and economically in developing countries. In June of this year, they announced $436 million in funding for 43 projects.

We here in the U.S. are not likely so see the major effects of this initiative. But that is by design. I have no doubt that the world will greatly note and long remember Bill and Melinda Gates.

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Sunday, September 11, 2005

Revenge Killings Fuel Fear of Escalation in Iraq Revenge Killings Fuel Fear of Escalation in Iraq

Interesting LA Times article today that talks about a wave of Sunni and Shiite assassinations. These sectarian assassinations are a big worry. But if you read between the lines in the article, it appears that you have two different players here. On the one hand, you have Sunnis who are trying to ignite a sectarian war. By all indications, these are the former Baathists who are starting to really get hammered for participating in the indiscriminate bombings that have killed so many Iraqis.

In short, their one chance of salvaging anything in the new Iraq is to ignite a sectarian civil war, and then pull a coup to regain power.

But the reason that this has escalated recently is that time is running out for them. First, the joint Iraqi and U.S. operations on the west, esp. along the Syrian border, are having an effect of significantly reducing the infiltration of foreign terrorists, plus their bomb making, and, thus, the number of bombings in, for example, Baghdad has dropped noticeably in the last week or so. And secondly, the constitution and a new Iraqi govt. is pretty much on track, one in which the Sunnis are, for the first time in 100 years, not going to be in control (unless they can pull off a coup).

But they aren't the only ones who know this - which is why the major Shiite leaders work so hard to prevent this. Starting at the (clerical) top, they have made it clear that they believe that their best opportunity is with the new constitution, etc.

The article also mentions that the Badr Brigade is apparently involved in assassinating Sunni former Iraqi military who fought against the Iranians. I see the Badr brigade as interesting. It is mentioned as being allied with a leading Shiite party. But it apparently got a lot of training by the Iranians, and seems to be carrying out what appear to be Iranian directed hits. In other words, it is an Iranian proxy.

What complicates this even more is that the Badr Brigade is also clashing with the Jaysh al-Mahdi, a bunch of young firebrand Shiites who view the Badr Brigade as being pro-U.S. They are the personal militia of Muqtada as-Sadr. We last saw them fighting us and Iraqi security forces in Ramadi, Fallujah, Najaf, etc. last spring. They killed some of our soldiers, and we killed a lot of them. And then Grand Ayatollah Sistani brokered a peace where they would participate democratically. But there is some indications that they are working now with Sunnis in order to destabilize the democratization process. Last week, they claim to have burned down 48 Badr Brigade offices, killing some Badr militia.

So, what this is looking like is a three way battle, between Sunni Baathists, the Badr Brigade, and Jaysh al-Mahdi, with most Iraqis, at least now, sitting on the sidelines. Both the Sunni Baathists and the Jaysh al-Mahdi seem to want the democratization to fail, but for different reasons.

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Saturday, September 10, 2005

Day by Day - NOLA Day by Day - NOLA

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New Orleans School Buses New Orleans School Buses

This is one reason that Democrats, esp. in NOLA, shouldn't be trusted to run the government.

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