Just drove mom to Newark Airport. Two things were learnt.

The first: computer systems are bloody stupid. It seems that some time between last summer and the winter past, United Airlines, among others, in an effort of cut costs, decided to go 'all digital' with only electronic check-in kiosks (they have a few people on standby behind the counters, but they mostly just take care of weighing the luggage and such stuff, so they can cut staffing by about 50%). We found this out when dad left after coming to visit for Thanksgiving. Dad is rather familiar around computers and such, and so he had no problems with it. Then P made to trip to Taiwan during winter break: she had reservations about her proficiency with the entire check-in process, since it was her first time traveling alone, so I went with her to the counter and showed her the ropes so to speak. She had no problems at the check-in either.

Mom, on the other hand, was never terribly comfortable around machines. So today I drove her to the airport, parked, and went in with her. It all began fine: you slide in a MileagePlus Card or Credit Card and it reads the name and finds an associated ticket. Then it ask you to type in information about yourself as it appears on the passport. Now that's where I found the first design error on the computers: it uses a touch screen keyboard. Touch screen keyboards are okay for menu navigation, but awfully lousy for data entry. Why? The touch screen is a binary operation: touch or no touch. Which means that you almost certainly have to lift the finger off the screen between entries of repeated letters or digits. So while mom was slowly and steadily entering in her information, she inadvertently keyed one digit short on her passport number.

And that's where the second interface design error came in: there's no "Back to the Previous Screen" option. There's only a "Enter and continue to the next screen" button (which works), and an "Exit" button on the top right of the screen (which, incidentally, doesn't work at all). So while I caught that mistake mom made, she had already pressed the button for the next page, and I couldn't see an obvious way of going back to the previous page. I tried the exit button, and met with zero response from the kiosk. So I raised my voice and asked for help. And waited. And waited. And eventually the kiosk timed out (it asks: DO you need more time? With only one button labeled "Yes"... what's the point of asking a yes/no question when there's only one possible response? It should say "Hit the button if you need more time" with a single button labeled "button" or something). And the staff manages to just walk around the corner right after the bloody thing timed out. Talk about timing.

It turns out, as we are informed by the attendant, that at the very bloody end of data entry, the user would be presented with a summary and queried whether the data is correct. If not, the user can go back and go through the entire process again to correct any errors. No, it is not possible to just correct the error on one single data field, but one needs to go through the whole 5 or 6 screens to add a single digit to one field. Design error number 2.5.

And then, after we correctly entered the information the second time around, it tells mom, who is traveling to Taiwan on her US passport, that "Length of stay not permitted" and quits. Bloody hell! It turns out that the computer checks the visa restrictions of the destination country against the passport that the traveler holds and, whenever the length of stay exceeds the amount permitted by visa-free entry, would quit the check-in process with that error. Oh great! Who would bloody think that travelers who are going aboard, after buying plane tickets, would neglect to acquire the visa?! And if the kiosks are so retarded, they should've put up a bloody sign that said as such, so that we could've saved all that trouble by going straight to an agent! The machine should have at least the courtesy of asking, for example: "The length of stay indicated on the ticket is longer than permitted for visa-free entry. Do you have a visa?" and let the traveler decide whether to continue with the check-in process or go and find immigration authorities. And better yet, how are they to know how long the traveler would stay? For example, I could've bought tickets for a trip to Taiwan that left today and returned on April 15 through United Airlines, and bought another ticket to Japan from Taipei through JAL that gives me a 3-day stay in Tokyo from March 18th through the 20th. I don't need a single visa: the US passport allows me visa-free stays of 30-days in Taiwan, and 3-day stays in Japan. Each stay I make in Taiwan is fewer than 30-days according to my plan, and the kiosk would still log me out.

See, this is an inherent problem in the American society. Instead of "customers are always right", the attitude has become "plebes are always stupid". The product of a sue-happy American culture has the end product that warnings are placed everywhere for the most trivial of things [this reminds me: at the airport, there's a crosswalk between the terminal and the short-term parking area. The pedestrian traffic light had instructions what each of the symbols mean. And here I thought that the reason traffic lights use colors and symbols instead of words is so that they can be used universally without assumption the knowledge of the English language. Go figure]. And what really is a company to do? If there's a single possibly that the product can be used in a stupid fashion, someone would invariably use it that way, and then sue when he or she was inconvenienced by his or her ineptitude. Yet we, the consumer-base with higher than 70 IQ points would ridicule them at every chance if they put up such warnings.

This attitude, I think, is also what culminated in the "No Child Left Behind" program. America is now officially catering to the lowest common denominator.

The idea, ironically, is a good one. To give every child the education the child deserves is a noble goal that I strongly agree with. But the feasibility of implementing such a program in the United States is one that I laugh at. Confucius had a famous saying that amounts to "teaching according to the student's ability", which means that teachers should develop their curriculum based on the individual talent for progress in the students, and thus make the most of their times. It is, basically, the earliest proclamation of "no child left behind". If each child is taught according to his or her abilities, then "something" would be learnt, which, I think, could be better than the current system in which the lowest decile often learns nothing at all. But, of course, such a program cannot possibly be in the US. Why? There would be outcries from the parents of "discrimination" and ambitious parents would push their children to be placed in classes beyond the children's actual level of achievements. The problem is, no parent would be willing to admit that his or her child is plain stupid. It is always the teacher's fault for not making an engaging classroom experience, or the child being lazy and not doing the work. The possibility that is always overlooked is the one that says: "there are innate differences in ability between people. Different children have different rates of brain development and peak at different times in different areas." The problem is, such a statement is politically incorrect. Look at where it got Lawrence Summers. (The problem with Lawrence Summers is, frankly, he was being frank. There have been no conclusive studies that compare the abilities of men vs. women. And no sociologists or anthropologists or developmental psychologists would dare suggest a study to do this comparison either. The same for the question asked with regards to race etc. It is possible [i.e., not ruled out] that there is a innate difference in ability between the typical male and the typical female, between the typical black person and the typical white person, between the typical Hispanic and the typical Asian. But all in the name of political correctness, such an inquiry was never brought up to a large scale and never will be, and a scientific possibility is just conveniently forgotten in all forms of debate because it may offend.)

Hum, I got on a rather large tangent there, didn't I. Anyway, the second thing I learned today: airport parking can be paid via EZ-pass. That would be convenient for the future.