Comments on the Consumer Electronics Show

140,000 people jammed this year's CES in Las Vegas. I'd never been before, so the scope was breathtaking. There had to be fifty football fields of exhibition space. It was easy to get lost. I'm told that some of the individual corporate exhibits cost $3-4 million to construct.

Overall, I will say that this was an incremental show. Everything was a little faster, a little bigger (or smaller), a little cheaper. There wasn't much I would describe as revolutionary, other than Looxcie, which I wrote about here.

General impressions:

• Lots and lots of tablets - everyone wants a piece of the iPad market (50 million tabs will have been sold by the end of '11)
• Cars, particularly Fords, are getting wired with all sorts of goodies
• 3D TV is being pushed heavily, but consumer acceptance is questionable
• Internet-enabled TV will be the standard within a couple of years, whether people want it or not
• I heard dozens of languages, but the Asian presence was particularly strong

Some specifically cool things:

• A company is making a single, secured credit card with embedded electronics that can be used with any of your accounts, so you won't have to carry around six cards in the future. It's also rendered unusable if stolen.
• There's now 3D television that doesn't require glasses. It was pretty cool, but the problem is it only works if you stand in certain places. A techie guy next to me said that this was a non-fixable issue.
• Intel is now fitting a billion transistors on a chip the size of your thumb. The first transistor-based computers had 500 transistors and definitely not the size of your thumb.
• Acer won the "Last Gadget Standing" with a laptop that had two touchscreens. The second one is where the keyboard is normally found. It was pretty bulky, but this problem will solve itself. The techies loved it.

There was so much going on at this show that I think they ought to split it into five or six separate shows. Like running a marathon, though, I recommend doing it once.

Is Paris Hilton Inciting Violence?

Hmm. Has anyone told her she needs to dial back the rhetoric?

The Game Changer I Saw At the Consumer Electronics Show

 
Just saw the first thing here at the CES that I think is a game changer with some profound implications. Not even sure the manufacturer has thought through all the societal implications.

A company called Looxcie is coming out with a bluetooth enabled camera that fits right on your earpiece. It films everything you see and can, with the push of a button, upload what you just filmed to YouTube, Facebook, or twitter. It can even do live streaming.

Here's the cool part. As these devices spread, you will be able to tune into just about anything, anywhere in the world. Riots in Jakarta? Watch it live. Springsteen at the Meadowlands? Watch it live.

Here's another development we can expect: celebrities or other self absorbed types will stream their lives to the world 24/7. Why should Ashton Kutcher simply tweet he is getting coffee when he could broadcast the experience? If your life is boring, you will tune into the lives of others. Reality TV to the tenth power.

People - and not just celebrities - will use streaming video to build out their personal brands. Product placements will become big business - the next advertising frontier of the digital age.


I also predict that in the not-too-distant future people will use these cameras to document their entire lives so that at any point they can retrieve archived footage of any moment of their existence.

Which gets me to the creepy part. As it is, these devices are small, but in a couple of years you won't be able to tell someone's wearing one. In other words, you could be getting filmed at any time and not know it. Lots of people will get filmed saying and doing things that won't play well on the internet. Social interaction will become guarded.

I predict this device will be ground zero for the privacy wars. Congress will get in the act (particularly since they're the ones always getting caught doing embarrassing things). Stay tuned.

America the Porky

So I was at a theme park recently...the theme was, "Get in line, fatty."

                                                                     -Zach Galafianikus

GDP Since Jesus

Thought this was great, courtesy of the Economist. Here comes China:

The Malthusians Never Win

Thomas Malthus, Doofus

One wonders how many bets they have to lose before they get it:

Economic Optimism? I'll Take that Bet!

What Will Happen Soon Enough All Over the Country...

...if we don't look public sector unions (teachers union most of all) squarely in the eye and say:

You can not be paid the benefits that irresponsible politicians gave you in exchange for votes.

The New York Times, of all places, writes about a town where they just stopped the checks:

The Town That Stopped Its Pension Checks

The New Electoral Math

The results are in, and there is new electoral math to consider. Gaining congressional seats are:

Texas                 +4
Florida               +2
Georgia              +1
Arizona              +1
Nevada              +1
South Carolina    +1
Utah                  +1
Washington        +1

Losing seats are:

New York           -2
Ohio                  -2
Illinois                -1
Iowa                  -1
Pennsylvania      -1
Massachusetts    -1
Michigan            -1
Missouri             -1
Mississippi          -1
New Jersey         -1

The media today is focused on how many extra house seats this translates into for the Republicans. The answer is not insubstantial, maybe around 10 to 12 seats. But lost in the wash here is that this also changes the number of electoral votes from each state, and this will have a considerable impact on the 2012 presidential election.

The math is much more straightforward than trying to guess congressional outcomes because we don't have to see how redistricting plays out. Texas, for instance, is s slam dunk to produce an additional 4 electoral votes for any Republican.

The way I see it, Texas, Georgia, Arizona, South Carolina, and Utah are a lock for Republicans. That's a pickup of 8 votes.

Republicans also pick up seats - relatively - by losing less badly in New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, and New Jersey. That's another 6 seats.

Democrats likely pick up single votes in Washington and Mississippi. Our total is now +12 for the Republicans.

That leaves Nevada, Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Missouri. I figure out of that the GOP nets one more seat, so that makes the tally +13. That is no small deal, especially in our era of close elections.

I can't let one other thing pass without comment. Notice any patterns here? Perhaps that almost all the losers are Blue states and all the winners Red? This is clearly due to the rampant mismanagement of states like New York, New Jersey, and Illinois. Spending and taxation have driven citizens to more economically friendly environs. Can't we learn a lesson here?

P.S. Note Sarah Palin lookalike at the chalkboard!

The Coming State Apocolypse

This 60 Minutes piece by Steve Kroft on the catastrophic position of state finances is well worth watching:

60 Minutes

I have been convinced for some time now that the single biggest problem our country faces is public sector unions. More on this soon.

Congressional Democrats and a Hong Kong Newsstand

When we lived in Hong Kong in the 90s, each day my wife visited the same newsstand in the Citibank Building and bought the same exact thing: a Wall Street Journal and a cup of coffee. Each day, the proprietor would short change her. My wife would vigorously complain, and he would give her the rest of her change. It was a daily ritual.

What was striking, though, was the lack of embarrassment or shame. This guy didn't even pretend that it was an innocent mistake. He quite rationally calculated that the worst that could happen was that he'd have to give back the rest of the change. He also calculated that once in a while my wife would either not notice or be in too much of a hurry to care.

His plan was completely logical, but it only worked assuming he didn't mind being known as a thief.

As so you have today's Congressional Democrat. The pretense is gone - no more pretending that they are anything better than the thieving Chinese news vendor.

I speak, of course, about the new omnibus spending bill. It is the Mount Everest of pork. The kind of stuff voters quite specifically - loudly - rejected a month ago. It's like Democrats have been told to go on a diet but the diet doesn't start for a few days, so their faces are in the trough today.

Here are some of the highlights:

• $277,000 for potato pest management in Wisconsin
• $246,000 for bovine tuberculosis in Michigan and Minnesota
• $522,000 for cranberry and blueberry disease and breeding in New Jersey
• $500,000 for oyster safety in Florida
• $349,000 for swine waste management in North Carolina
• $413,000 for peanut research in Alabama
• $247,000 for virus free wine grapes in Washington
• $208,000 for beaver management in North Carolina
• $94,000 for blackbird management in Louisiana
• $165,00 for maple syrup research in Vermont
• $235,000 for noxious weed management in Nevada
• $100,000 for Edgar Allen Poe cottage visitor’s center in New York
• $300,000 for the Polynesian voyaging society in Hawaii
• $400,000 for solar parking canopies and plug-in electric stations in Kansas
• $720,000 to compensate ranchers in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan whenever endangered wolves eat their cattle

They have no shame, and they reason, just like the news vendor, that they can wear down Republican law makers and the general public. After all, it's worked pretty consistently in the past. And it's the holiday season. Perhaps the tea partiers are busy with other things, or worn out from fighting a new front almost every week.

It's a good strategy, as long as you don't mind people knowing you're a thief.