Paper/Plastic/Reusable

A lively discussion was sparked at EcoGeek over paper vs. plastic.  The recurring point is the best solution is reusable bags.  Paper vs. plastic is an unnecessary distraction.  Whole Foods offers a 5 cent or more rebate per reusable bag.  In Sweden, I've heard, they charge per bag.  While the Whole Foods rebate is more customer friendly, the per bag charge makes a bit more sense since you're less likely to have some crazy person come in with 100 bags asking the clerk to put one item in each bag.

Thinking just about bags maybe stopping short of the finish line.  What about fruits, vegetables, deli meats, and all other things packaged at the store?  Shouldn't we have a reusable system for those as well? 

There are only two obstacles to the in store packaging, motivation and convenience.  Motivation can be addressed by a rebate or per bag charge.  I'd like to see that expand to more stores.  If I were looking to pass some effective legislation I would much rather mandate that all stores offer a reusable bag incentive program than ban plastic bags.

The second issue of convenience.  I use Peapod, which unfortunately has no reusable bag program.  That's silly because in terms of convenience they have the ultimate ability to deliver it.  There's no reason to worry that you'll forget to take the bags into the store, or you won't bring enough.  Peapod can easily collect the last set of bags the next time they deliver.  In fact they do this already with the larger cardboard boxes they wheel on and off the trucks.  Come to think of it, why do they even need the plastic bags at all?

Also, Peapod could gain some customer satisfaction points easily by using higher quality, reusable containers for fruits, vegetables and such.  It's amazing they haven't thought to take advantage of that yet because in a sense, Peapod has an opportunity to really excel in the environmentally conscious market.  Their customer base is primarily city dwellers. 

They should be able to make the case for saving a great deal of gas by replacing individual trips back and forth to the store with delivery trucks running an optimized route.  When my groceries are delivered, there is often one or two other deliveries in the building, and I'm sure many of the drivers other deliveries are around the corner or down the street.

Last, they have the ability to offer a good selection of eco products in addition to the "mainstream" products.  About the only disadvantage they have over stores like Whole Foods is the preference of many consumers to personally pick their fruits and vegetables.

I think they are really missing out on an opportunity here to do something good for both their bottom line and green cred.  I'll have to send this post their way as a "concerned customer".

Secure Automatic Login for Vista

I, like quite a few computer owners, am almost the only person to use my machine.  It always has annoyed me that when I boot up my machine I can't just walk away and come back to a ready to use machine.  That's because it will load Windows fine, but when that's done I still won't be logged in.  So I enter my password and then wait while resources get sucked up by various applications that start loading.

One could argue with why these applications load at this time, or why they need to suck up so many resources that the it's hard to use the machine for a minute or two longer but that's another post.  The other way to avoid this problem is to have your user automatically logged in.  But I've never been comfortable with the idea of my computer not needing a password, despite it being locked inside my apartment, and the knowledge that a determined person who was inside my apartment already could surely defeat that protection given ample time.

I've finally found the solution to this problem.  First, start with the automatic login.  Tap Window-R and type netplwiz.  This loads the Advanced User Accounts Control Panel.

If you have more than one user configured make sure your user name is selected.  Next, uncheck the box "Users must enter a username and password to use this computer."

As I mentioned the problem is now your computer boots up and is wide open.  The fix is to take advantage of Vista's much enhanced task scheduler.  You can either run taskschd.msc /s or choose Task Scheduler from Administrative Tools.  Choose Action\Create Task.

 

On the General tab make sure "Run with highest privileges" and "Run only when user is logged on" are both checked. 

Go to the triggers tab and click New and select, Begin the task: "At log on".  Make sure "Enabled" is checked too before clicking OK.

Almost done now.  On the Actions tab, click New again.  Select Action: "Start a program".  In Program/script, type %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\rundll32.exe.  Last, in Add arguments, type user32.dll, LockWorkStation.  Click okay, click Run now to test, or reboot. 

In my testing you won't even see the desktop.  All your user login work will be taken care of and you'll see just the login screen.  For a small bit of added security, go back to netplwiz, and on the Advanced tab choose "Require users to press Ctrl-Alt-Delete".

Geography of Nowhere and Video

Last month I read The Geography of Nowhere, which I thought was great.  James Kunstler is funny at times by going a bit over the top, but the book had a great deal of good information, and not a few good ideas, such as the fixes necessary to many of the zoning policies and other outdated regulations.

If you wanted to get the overall point of the book (though you'll miss out on the important detail), I thought this short New York Times video was pretty close in theme.

Wind/Solar faster to build

A common concern with renewable energy, is how quickly can we build out capacity.  It's not uncommon to hear advocates of coal say it's the only option in the short term, for example.

But is this concern even valid?  Sure, there is only so much equipment and trained workers to build wind and solar capacity, but if it's obvious the number of opportunities that will exist, workers will respond pretty quick.

And those issues are heavily outweighed by wind and solar's advantage in raw construction time.  The average coal plant takes 3 to 4 years to build.  A whole wind farm go up in under 3 months.  Solar panels can be installed on roofs or in massive arrays as or more quickly.

It's rather telling to examine the EIA's report on planned capacity additions from 2007 to 2011.  Post 2008, and even in 2007, renewable plans are nearly non-existent, while coal plans skyrocket.  At first you may wonder what those planners are thinking, but the reason isn't hard to find.  The lack is because the short duration of wind/solar build times means the motivation to plan 5 years out doesn't exist.  For coal plants it's a necessity.

Another telling detail in this data comes from the breakdown of energy capacity by source and producer types.  As you can see, IPP, or Independent Power Producers own and have built the majority of renewable power.  Utilities are tiny, trailing behind even dedicated industrial generators.  As of 2006, of the 24gw of renewable capacity, 16gw is owned by IPP's, and 5gw by industrial compared to the utilities paltry 2gw.

Why aren't the big utilities participating?  They're bureaucracies and much prefer managing big massive projects that take years to plan and complete then to manage hundreds of small, quick and agile projects.

All this means that wind and solar are not just the smart long term solutions, their smarter short term solutions as well.  They are more reactive, they encourage more efficient competition, and because they aren't in development and planning for 4 years, they don't have 4 years worth of accumulated interest to payoff before they ever go online.

SIT - Transitions (Part 8)

A key idea of SIT is the reuse of existing infrastructure; road, rail, even the automobile manufacturing infrastructure.  That has the strength of lower investment cost, but it has the difficulty of requiring a transition plan.  My experience in software architecture has taught me that transition plans are as difficult as they are powerful and important.

What would the transition from the present day transportation architecture to SIT be like? Many possibilities exist.  What is more clear is some of the components of the transition.

Manufacturing - Platforms

Manufacturing is a key transition point.  The separation of platform (drivetrain, engine, suspension and transmission), from passenger compartment could happen prior to widespread adoption for other reasons.  Already today, automobile manufacturers design and build many models upon a common platform.  The primary obstacles to the design and manufacture of a modular architecture like SIT, are the engine and transmission.

The size, shape and placement needs of the internal combustion engine put the engine above the "floor" level which makes integration and modularity possibilities more limited.  Electric and fuel cell vehicles don't have the same limitations. 

The linkage of steering wheel, brakes and gas pedal to mechanical components presents another hard link between the upper vehicle and lower vehicle, this time extending into the passenger compartment.  Drive-by-wire in addition to many other benefits solves this limitation.

The GM Hywire concept shows an example of not only how these two components would enable the separation, but also demonstrates the early motivations that would precede any SIT style system.

Manufacturing - Automation

Three significant components are necessary for automation, software, control and sensors.  Of these three components, control is the most difficult to retrofit.  But, drive-by-wire also requires the same control components, and manufacturers are already using and trending toward drive-by-wire for other good reasons.

Software is a relatively minor retrofit, the primary difficulty being the possible need to upgrade the "computing" hardware at the same time.  Considering the constantly shrinking size and cost of computing hardware it shouldn't be difficult or expensive to install that either.

Sensors are likely to be the main cost of retrofits when undertaken.  There are many types of sensors that are being built into cars today (wheel slip, accelerometers, etc.), but there are other sensors which are still expensive and don't have the same general purpose utility.  This may shift as "back-up" cameras and radar sensors are used for adaptive cruise control and automated parking features.

Road Automation

Reusing the asphalt and pavement already constructed is important for two reasons.  One reason is it costs a lot of money and time to create all that physical infrastructure.  Even more important than the actual asphalt and pavement is the physical space that lies underneath it, and it's pervasive locality to where people live, work, play and shop.  Even if you didn't need the roads, you'd need space near the front doors of homes and businesses.

Three styles of road transition are zoned, side-by-side and interoperability. 

Zoning

Zoning is switching specific areas to fully automated.  Likely first zoning candidates are parking and highly congested urban streets.  Zoning has the advantage of being easy to administer internally once established.  But, zoning is difficult to establish due to poor interoperability.

Zoning might be successful in urban areas that are already using vehicle bans or restrictions.  For example, London restricts vehicle traffic in certain areas, either charging a fee, disallowing certain classes of vehicles, or other measures to discourage unnecessary vehicle usage.  In areas like this, which may already be mostly public transit and taxis, a switch to SIT could occur.  Taxis and public transit vehicles could be replaced in short order and still be usable in non-automated zones, and only personal with the necessary equipment would be allowed to enter.  Other visitors would need to take public transit, or park outside the zone, which already occurs today.

Zoning might also be successful for parking.  Certain garages or lots might require SIT equipment to use.  Fees for these garages would be lower because they could obtain the compactness and efficiency of a valet parked garage, but without the costs of the valet employees.  Convenience would be higher than valet or self park garages.  Similar to valet garages, you could enter and exit your car at street level, not search for a space and not have to remember which row/section you parked in.  But also, you would never find the attendants unavailable, you could "call-ahead" by messaging your vehicle to be ready, and you wouldn't need to worry about your car being taken for a joy ride.

Side-by-side

Side-by-side is division of lanes, or construction of extra lanes in and existing right of way, with some lanes automated, and some not.  First side-by-side candidates are congested urban and suburban highways, and long haul highways.

Suburban and urban highways have large numbers of lanes and large amounts of traffic.  Trips are somewhat short, but long enough that an automated system can be used for part of the travel in special lanes.  Automated lanes should be faster, more convenient, safer and able to sustain higher densities per lane than non-automated lanes.

Long haul highways are often only two lanes, but entrances and exits are minimal, and truck traffic is high.  It's likely that trucking companies would be eager adopters once technical and legal requirements are met.  Employing drivers is a significant costs, and trucking companies would be sensitive to any opportunity to reduce those costs.  Trucks could be automated, and transported without a driver (except for hazardous materials or other loads that would still require supervision.) from one trucking "switchpoint" to another.  At switchpoints drivers would take over incoming trucks and drop off outgoing trucks.  Truck drivers could work 9-5, and be home to their families every night, yet still handle ten times as many loads per month.

One advantage of side-by-side is that lanes can be transitioned in stages.  For example, a transition might start with one of six lanes.  As availability of SIT equipped vehicles expands, two lanes might be used, and so forth tile the final lane is switched when all or nearly all vehicles are SIT equipped.  They only work well when entrances and exits are at a reasonable level though, so streets with intersections, and even some highways may not be compatible.

Interoperability

Interoperability requires automated vehicles to operate simultaneously in the same lanes and/or intersections as non-automated vehicles.  Interoperability is more difficult in technical terms, but if successful is applicable to any area, including rural and suburban streets.

Interoperability is the "holy grail" so to speak of transition.  It's great in concept, but difficult or at least expensive to achieve.  The DARPA urban challenge shows promise for the possibilities, but even after interoperability is achieved, the other transition styles deserve consideration and use as they will continue to have edges in safety and efficiency when used appropriately.

Interoperability technology is important to go the final mile.  Rural roads are single lane, and will have things like cows, tractors and such on them for a long time.  Rural roads could potentially be left non-automated without harming the viability of widespread adoption, as long as manual control remains available in all vehicles.  But not presenting an automation solution for suburban roads would likely undermine the universal adoption desired.

Resistance

Every transition effort will encounter resistance.  Sometimes the reasons are valid, though unbalanced against the positive benefits, sometimes they are founded only on fear, sometimes they are just misunderstandings.

One misunderstanding I've seen frequently is the idea that an automated system would prevent individuals from choosing a navigation path.  An automated system would be able to accommodate requests like, "drive by the lake", "don't take the expressway", "turn right at the next corner".

Another misunderstanding, mixed with fear, is safety.  Computers do crash, and I doubt an automated transportation system would be entirely flawless, but it would greatly exceed the safety of human drivers.  Over 42,000 people in the U.S. die each year from an auto-accident.  That's a big number, but given the number of miles driven is perhaps not so large.  But what saves occupants lives is not the astounding driving skills of drivers, but the massive amount of safety features in every car.  Each year, there are over 6.4 million highway accidents, which result in more than 2.5 million non-fatal injuries.  Those are huge numbers.  Nearly 1% of the U.S. will be injured each year, and more than 2% involved in an accident.  The technology to develop zoned or side-by-side systems with vastly lower accident rates exists today, and if the DARPA urban challenge is any indication, interoperable technology is not far away.

Part 1 - Personal Transit

Part 2 - Storage

Part 3 - Flexibility

Part 4 - Efficiency

Part 5 - Morning Options

Part 6 - Service

Part 7 - Theater

 

Transportation Taxes, Expenditures and Fairness

Today, EcoGeek made a mistake by supporting a per-mile driving tax.  I've previously pointed out how bad this idea is.

I thought I'd add an additional comment in response to the thought that a per-mile tax would be more fair.  For those driving guzzlers (who would benefit), why not consider the destructive cost of your guzzler and how fair it is to pay absolutely nothing for that privilege.

If that's not convincing, consider the billions of dollars that go into road construction above and beyond gasoline taxes.  In 2004, according to the Federal Highway Administration

"taken together, all levels of government spent $147.5 billion for highways"

yet,

"the total amount generated from motor-fuel taxes, motor-vehicle fees, and tolls imposed by Federal, State, and local governments—were $105.8"

Note, the emphasis that the expenditures do not even include local roads.  Where does the rest of that money come from?  Well for highways alone,

"bond proceeds of $15.8 billion (10.9 percent) and general fund appropriations of $23.6 billion (16.2 percent). Other sources such as property taxes, other taxes and fees, lottery proceeds, and interest income totaled $23.0 billion (15.8 percent)."

Give me back my $50+ billion dollars, please, and fund some public transit.

For more information:

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/2006cpr/index.htm

When (not) to document?

Documentation, it's a boring job, but someone has to do it, right?  That's what process advocates say, but maybe that view is overstated.  To think about that question, consider the reasons and flaws of documentation.  On the plus side, it's hard to argue documentation is bad; it's additional data.  In theory, documentation helps others understand something non-intuitive.  Managers hope documentation will allow replacement of one employee with another.  They say in case of accident ("hit by a bus"), but we know the reason is in case one employee quits or demands more money.  In another case, it educates users, and reduces the need for hands on training.

Documentation doesn't always live up to those goals, but it at least partially accomplishes them.  But I see two primary problems with over-documentation.  The first, it is better not to need documentation, then to have it.  A goal of 100% documentation not only distracts from the quest to reduce it's need, but as I'll explain, it's often an obstruction as well.  The second problem, is time.  Creating, maintaining, organizing and disseminating documentation is time consuming.

The second problem is obvious, and there is little to be said.  Each project must make it's own decisions on when and how much documentation is appropriate.  Whatever that decision is, insure the entire lifecycle of documentation cost is considered.

The idea of fulfilling the goals of documentation through intuitive design is much more interesting.  It's a commonly accepted practice in the development world that the design of classes, method names and other elements of code should strive to not need documentation. 

If you have the choices of creating a method void Execute(byte[] array, string input), and then providing documentation stating, "The Execute(ref byte[] array, string input) method reads the contents of a file with the input path input into a byte array, array.", or simply creating a method byte[] ReadFromFile(string filePath) with no documentation, any rational developer would choose the second.

It's not impossible to do both, especially in the case above, but it can be difficult.  I already pointed out it's time consuming, but documenting what doesn't require documenting is most tedious.  Repetition is the fuel of tedium, so don't repeat yourself.

It's not just code that benefits from the rule of eliminating the need for documentation.  The highest goal of any user interface designer should be an application that is intuitive, an application that trains the user through use.  RTFM is a nice phrase, but it's been repeated so many times we should question it's wisdom.

SIT - Theater (Part 7)

A recent trend with SUV, Minivans and other large vehicles has been the addition of television displays, usually for the purpose of watching movies.  Today's cars have several limitations that make that experience limited.

Number one, the driver.  Cars, even those cars, only have one occupant much of the time, and watching a movie while you drive is.. not a good idea.  An unfortunate side effect of needing a driver is needing a clear glass windshield.  Theater's are usually configured with one large screen in front of the audience, but the prime real estate for a screen is needed for the much more important task of observing the road. Ah, the tragedy.

Spaces configured for watching a movie, the morning news, or other programming would be a popular a part of a SIT model line.  That means eyeballs, and while I'm not a big fan of the pervasiveness of advertising, or it's purpose of promoting extreme consumerism, theater spaces entertainment is likely to be partly subsidized by advertising just like conventional entertainment.  Also, some interesting opportunities exist unique to a moving vehicle.

Location based advertising could highlight stores, restaurants that are either nearby, or on the way.  I suspect that would be a big hit with advertisers, and it may reduce vehicle miles driven too.

More interesting is a new type of entertainment that utilizes the surrounding through which you are traveling.  The windshield could be translucent LCD used to overlay a tour display.  It might highlight landmarks and history, though that would be fairly boring for a daily commute.  Highlighting recent events could fix that.

It could be part of an interactive game, which is somewhat scary because it might get used even when you didn't need to travel.  Hopefully that phase will be a short lived fad, similar to geocaching.

Not every possibility will take off.  One of the more unrealistic of which I've heard, is the cars based "social network", which lets you chat with people in nearby cars.  I can't personally see any use for knowing who's in a nearby car unless by chance they are a friend I'd like to catch up with, akin to bumping into them on foot.  If I saw a friend nearby while heading to a store or some other non-time sensitive travel, I might suggest a quick stop for a face to face hello.  But meeting new people just because they are temporarily nearby?  Seems unlikely to catch on, and more likely that people will continue to rely more on where a person lives, works or hangs out as the location component of selecting new people to meet.

Part 1 - Personal Transit

Part 2 - Storage

Part 3 - Flexibility

Part 4 - Efficiency

Part 5 - Morning Options

Part 6 - Service

X-Prize Mania

A good leader can tell you that encouragement is a subtle process.  One size does not fit all.  Not only do different people need different incentives, and different outcomes need different incentives, but different combinations of people and outcomes need different incentives.

Knowing this, it's interesting to watch attempts to reapply the latest hot incentive system to every problem.  The X-Prize incentive system is the latest hot item.  While it makes sense in some cases, it doesn't in others.

Prize incentives work for one-off creations, not mass production.  Only one (or very few) lunar landers are necessary.  The software for a robotic car needs only be written once (and tuned/enhanced thereafter).  But to save gasoline and lower emissions, you need hundreds of millions, or even billions of high mpg cars, not one 100 mpg car.

An X-Prize for a 100mpg car would generate some ideas.  The already existing automotive X-Prize already is.  But I don't expect this type of incentive to result in a production ready, marketable car, much less actually get millions of them on the road.  Reading the contest rules for the existing rules (PDF) show many of the difficulties.  In order to make the incentive at all valuable, a number of bars have been raised very high.  100mpg is no easy.  The real difficulty is:

"Vehicle cost at a production rate of 10,000 units per year must be within levels that the market is likely to bear."

Honestly, depending on the judge, that's an immensely difficult standard to meet without any other requirements.  A winner must have a car that they can prove will sell at least 10,000 units per year, and do so at a profit.  Assuming the car would sell somewhere between $25,000 and $75,000, that is a market between 250 and 750 million dollars per year.  A $25 million dollar prize seems paltry in comparison.

So would raising the prize to a billion dollars help?  Oh maybe, but what if we do?  We need millions of cars, not 10,000 per year.  And even if a judge decides 10,000 people would line up to buy the winner's car, doesn't mean they actually will.  And what if someone other than one of the established automobile manufacturers win? It's likely even with a billion dollars in pocket that they would have significant difficulty in avoiding the anti-competitive behavior of their the established manufacturers and their lobbies and actually getting to market.

Short version, if you want to get millions of more efficient cars on the road, incentive that goal directly through taxes and/or tax breaks on the individual vehicles.  Raise the CAFE numbers.  Or reform CAFE's flaws.  Or best yet, use a gas tax instead.  All of these would produce results much sooner and much more broadly.

Home efficiency ratings: LEED and HERS

For years, several good programs have rated the efficiency of homes and buildings.  The LEED rating system, and the HERS Index are two examples.  Both are good, but serve different purposes.  LEED is the program that has drawn more recent attention. 

LEED is excellent at highlighting good construction and remodeling practices, but it's not much use in persuading consumers from a practical standpoint.  It might feel morally right to own a platinum of gold home, but if it's difficult to balance that in the checkbook, and many consumers will be not be persuaded by those arguments. 

However, a HERS rating includes average annual estimates for "space heating, space cooling, domestic hot water, and all other energy use".  Those estimates are a more powerful persuasion tool, more meaningful to the consumer, and ultimately, more likely to add to the long term value of a property.  But HERS hasn't caught on in quite the same fashion as LEED.

The explanation is not difficult.  LEED is an award, but HERS is a comparative index.  That means that in a voluntary system, a LEED rating is a gold star, usable as an advertising tool, where HERS is a disclosure of estimated costs.  It may seem illogical, but when making comparisons consumers regularly judge a disclosed cost more negatively than an undisclosed cost.

LEED works as a voluntary program, but a comparative program like HERS works best when comparisons are possible between each and every home.  In other words, HERS would work best if mandated.

Every rental agreement, property contract, or mortgage agreement should disclose the HERS annual energy cost estimate, much like they include elements like property taxes, association fees.  This would ensure consumers consider those costs in their purchasing decisions, and enable them to make better choices that match their needs and means.

I suggest we initially ask our legislators to require developers to conduct a HERS evaluation and to include the energy cost portion on paperwork.  Later on, I'd suggest rental properties be required to conduct an evaluation and include the estimates of any non-covered costs on rental agreements.  Mortgages agreements should also include this information.  Lastly, private property sales would require this information.

For each stage of transition, there would be a window where those properties who have not had an evaluation would have a "out".  They'd be required to list an estimate, but this estimate would be based the estimate from a "very poor" home with comparable square foot.