Musings: CO2 emissions confidentiality warnings email spam
by Ben
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Remove your email confidentiality notice, save the planet
Occasionally I come across interesting tidbits of news. Then I usually turn to Twitter and share them. Today, I re-considered a piece that I had read a while back: email confidentiality notices are about as useful as letting your Hummer H1 idle all day. Basically, you can’t force someone into a contract after already providing the good or service. You could, possibly, send one email saying the contents in the next email are confidential, wait for a reply confirming that the other party agrees, then send the confidential stuff, but email isn’t confidential anyway.
According to a paper on energy usage when sending data published by IEEE (the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the people who set the standards for all networking equipment), 4kb of data requires about 3 joules of energy to send. As it so happens, the average of the last three confidentiality notes I’ve seen was 4kb. Sure, 3 joules is a drop in the bucket, but we sent 294 Billion emails every day in 2010. A mere 10% were real emails, the rest were spam, but if we assume 1/3 come with confidentiality notes, that’s 9.8 billion emails sent and received, or 8J per. Assuming it takes 1s combined to send and receive any email, and converted to kWh, we use 3.3 million kWh of electricity every single day to send this useless crap. It takes a one megawatt plant with no transmission loss (for you Nova Scotians, that’s one and a half Lingan coal plants) running 24/7 to move spam around, or 5.55 million kilograms of CO2 per year, if you’re as dirty as Lingan. If we nixed those stupid notices, it’d be like taking 1000 cars off the road. Sure, it’s not much on a global basis, but it all adds up.
If you really want to cut down on CO2 emissions though, stop subscribing to email lists that you don’t read, and find a way to stop spam emails in their tracks, since spam accounts for 90% of total email volume.
Gotta love Engineering
Some people say that some weeks are crazier than others. When you’re in Engineering, every week is crazy. An example of this is this week: I have over 25 hours of class, 10 hours of work, an exam, and four assignments. Not to mention a monthly beer tasting that I volunteered to host before I really looked at my schedule. Added on to that is a student union meeting that I’ll probably end up missing, a CBC website usability study that I strangely agreed to, three job interviews, and another meeting that I may skip. I haven’t been to the monthly meeting for the Web Committee for Dal Libraries since November. To be fair, I told them I probably wasn’t the best student for the job due to the fact that the meeting is during the day and I have class.
On top of all of those things that have a fixed schedule, I have flexible things. Four assignments that take an average of 7 or 8 hours each need to be considered. I’m writing this post rather than working on one that needs to be handed in tomorrow. We’ve estimated 12-15 hours to complete this beast, and I used the nicest weekend of the semester to do it. Basically, my fixed time (class + work) is 35 hours, plus 32 hours for assignments. If it takes 9 hours to get ready for bed, sleep, and wake up/shower each day, I’m down to 45 hours to eat, work out, relax, exercise, buy groceries, and do things like job interviews and beer tastings.
The lesson that I *should* be learning from this is time management. Instead, it’s cram-cram-cram, rush-rush-rush, then go out and drink hard/play trivia on Fridays. Perhaps someday I will learn the lesson. I’ve heard an entrepreneur should plan to spend 50-60 hours per week working on a new venture. That’d be a nice break from my current schedule!
Slowly, my planning is getting better. I’m getting more of my assignments done in advance, but there’s still too much cramming going on. When I get back on my work term this fall, I will be relieved. Maybe I’ll plan wisely and come out of the term refreshed and ready to survive my winter semester. I doubt it. Time management is a skill, sadly, it’s a skill I clearly have yet to master.
Musings Tech: android apple dodgeball foursquare Google iPhone nexus s phone twitter
by Ben
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The first week with my Nexus S
I’ve been hemming and hawing about replacing my aging iPhone 3G, bought in mid-July of 2008. The phone was taking forever to complete everyday tasks such as opening apps to a usable state, loading web pages, and performing general functions. The battery was worn too, struggling to last the day. Furthermore, a lot has changed since I bought it. The world has leapt ahead, especially with Web 2.0. When I bought my iPhone, I didn’t have twitter. Few did. Foursquare wasn’t on anyone’s radar, at least, until Google killed Dodgeball. The way we interacted with our phones was fundamentally different.
I was planning to wait until WWDC to see if they’d drop a really nice iPhone, but then I took a hard look at the Nexus S. I was impressed with what I saw. The drawbacks were few, the opportunities were greater. It looked like a smooth, fast phone, and I felt it would drop seamlessly into my lifestyle, not to mention cushioning me from constant accusations of hipsterism. So I called Rogers and asked if they had a deal. We agreed on a free phone, 300 weekday minutes, 6PM evenings and weekends, unlimited messaging, unlimited nationwide calling to 10 numbers, and 1GB of data, all for $55/month plus tax. I practically skipped to the store yesterday: the old guy could retire.
While the clerk did some paperwork, I installed and configured my key apps. He looked over and said “I guess you don’t need a tutorial?” It turns out I did. He casually mentioned I could access voicemail just as before, forgetting visual voicemail. I’m going to miss that. Hopefully Android will get it before long.
With the knowledge to be able to check my messages, I departed. Right away I noticed that issues relating to my sloppy typing were exacerbated on this phone. But the speed with which it functioned was amazing!
I certainly have a few reservations about the phone, however, they are largely insignificant. The phone lacks a certain polish, which is probably due to it coming with a pure build of android. There is nothing built-in to notify of new messages if the speaker is off, no email counter exists (à la iOS email icon), the calendar icon doesn’t show the date, the weather app icon doesn’t show the icon, and there is no percentage on the battery meter. These are the few that I notice regularly, and can mostly be fixed with apps. If you purchase other Android phones, the manufacturer has patched many of the perceived defects to suit their hardware.
The battery life had initially left something to be desired, though I feel that that was largely due to being in a rural area the first few days, and treating my phone like a kid in a candy shop. Battery life has stabilized and I can now make it through the day without fear of my phone dying.
My key beef is the keyboard. I was a sloppy typist on my iPhone, and I find it worse on the Nexus S. I’m sure if I slow down and train my fingers my accuracy will improve, but the keyboard may be slightly at fault too. Even after a week, I feel my acuity isn’t improving. I’ll really have to sit down and practice typing accurately.
Other deficiencies with the phone lie with the developers. Twitter hasn’t enabled push notifications, which is a total PITA for an addict such as me. The Foursquare app lacks polish too, with the nearby venues list populating much more slowly than I’d expect, and no ability to peer into a friend’s checkin history, save the most recent one. Sure, that may sound somewhat stalker-esque, but there are times when it’s handy, particularly when engulfed in a points or mayor race.
App selection has been satisfactory at worst, wonderful at best. I wish kijiji had an app, to improve my pending selling spree, but I’ll make do. There’s no official CBC livestream app, which I hope changes before long. I’ve enjoyed QR Droid, a powerful QR reader, Angry Birds (which I’d sworn off on my iPhone), and Tweetdeck. There are a few apps I use infrequently, such as Google talk, which is good but not great. The key miss there is the lack of ability to flip from front to rear camera in a voice call.
None of these grievances is enough to coax me into returning the phone, but I do hope developers get together and bring this functionality to us end users.
Other nitpicky complaints include the camera’s shutter noise (unnecessary. Rules requiring it were designed to stop a few people from doing upskirts, which is problematic, but shouldn’t prevent me from having a silent camera. I tried to take a picture of a robin this weekend, and it heard the noise and flew away. I’ve since learned to turn the ringer off first.) There’s no ability to take a screenshot, which is handy when reporting problems or saving records of events.
Overall I’m very pleased with the phone. If I think of any more problems or delights, I’ll post them here. If you’re considering an iPhone 4, and don’t mind the lack of polish and inability to play your DRM iTunes music, the Nexus S is definitely worth a second look, if only for the speed, wide availability of free high quality apps, and a rapidly improving OS and user community.
