OffLine

Ubiquity and privacy

2008-11-18T23:41:00.001Z

Here's an interesting piece on where we may be headed with ubiquitous RFID and WiFi - basically Big Bro territory: http://weblog.infoworld.com/…_wifi.html

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Armstrong looking ominous

2008-11-13T23:13:00.001Z

Like a dark cloud on the horizon, Lance Armstrong looks strong, and he has barely started: 'Fawley dropped back into third while Henry kept the gap to Armstrong under a minute, and Comardo dropped back almost six minutes, still solidly in fourth. Henry marveled at the Tour champion's performance. "It's hard to compete with such a big motor," he said.'

http://www.cyclingnews.com/mtb.php

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Lance and his gang vs everyone else

2008-11-13T02:29:00.003Z

Up to his old 'Patron of Le Tour' tricks already, I guess....

Armstrong, who will join former Team Manager Johan Bruyneel and Klöden at Team Astana, responded to Gerdemann's rumoured remarks. He threatened to chase Gerdemann if he tried to join an escape group. Klöden reminded Gerdemann that he would need "friends in the peloton," and that Armstrong would not be one of them; "Lance was angry." (SW)

He took a dislike to Simeoni and pulled the same sort of 'close down the break' stunt. He means it.

A treasury of nutcase ideas

2008-11-11T02:09:00.002Z

What a nutty idea: ALL babies should be DNA-tested at birth to ensure men are not wrongly named as a child's father, a men's rights group says.

Forget trust, cancer, inheritable disease, disabilities or the overall health of the child, it's paternity that matters. If that newspaper can be believed, that men's group is a sick and sorry lot, eh?

Another nutty idea: "You know, I have - faith is a very big part of my life. And putting my life in my creator's hands - this is what I always do," Ms Palin said.

Forget about self-will, choice, motivation, desire or even capability, just wait for a higher order being of some sort to open some doors. I like the idea of faith, sure, it's a beautiful thing - but sometimes we have to exercise our free will to think, and to act.

Another one: The Mars Phoenix Lander today announced the end of its five-month mission with a cryptic message on Twitter, sparking a wave of heartfelt replies written in computer language.

Sure, it was fun tweeting to a human on Earth about a robot on Mars, but folks, really - it's not reading your tweets, indeed it never was. And now it's shut down, frozen, out of juice! Let's not get too emotional about these mechanical contraptions of ours, eh?

Biotech nano-materials - the next big thing?

2008-11-05T22:04:00.003Z

It's not a new idea, but it's a fairly important one. Adapting pre-existing biological processes to make the things that we want, be they nano-scale batteries, solar cells or neural nets, may herald the next wave of miniaturization and open up new possibilities for large-scale manufacturing of the seemingly miraculous.

Belcher and two MIT colleagues, chemical engineering professor Paula Hammond and ceramics professor Yet-Ming Chiang, are coaxing viruses to assemble micro-batteries which are the size of a human cell. They could one day be used to power tiny devices like sensors or medical diagnostic tools.

Check this out...Garson Hampfield, Crossword Inker

2008-10-30T00:39:00.001Z

It's not just funny.. it's brilliantly done!

That Lorikeet stare

2008-10-29T22:41:00.001Z

Lorikeet stare_0478a
Originally uploaded by gtveloce

Up close and personal with a daily visitor. As long as there's food around, that is...

Lorikeet lout

2008-10-18T04:46:00.001Z

Lorikeet_0455
Originally uploaded by gtveloce

They are very bright, very colourful and full of personality. They are also bossy, noisy and, umm, feisty. The lorikeet. Product of Australia.

The new capitalism

2008-10-14T21:49:00.001Z

The new capitalism looks just like the old one, except it takes shares in Citigroup and Bank of America... and underwrites shoddy loans

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TV analog one RF connector_0219

2008-10-11T03:55:00.001Z

TV analog one RF connector_0219
Originally uploaded by gtveloce

This 1990 model TV set, pictured with 2 1978-vintage Canton speakers, is part of my growing - and working - collection of audio/visual relics. Yes, I collect old stuff. The old Sharp TV has just a single input - an antenna connector, not even a composite "yellow" input - so I have had to rig up an RF modulator. Now the kids can use a DVD and a set top box on that old set. The picture's not great - but it works.

WiFi bridge - look Mum, no USB!

2008-10-11T03:52:00.001Z

WiFi bridge_0218
Originally uploaded by gtveloce

I couldn't get an old Windoze 95 box to connect to WiFi in the usual manner, mostly because 'version B' doesn't support either USB or WiFi, so I added a bridge instead.

It uses an existing Ethernet connection (which Win95 B does support) and bridges to our wireless LAN (which it doesn't, being so old). No USB needed!

Bridges are a good way to connect dumb boxes to TCP/IP. You do some simple configuring on the bridge itself, so it recognises your WiFi LAN, and then put your DNS and gateway info into Win95 (or whatever you connect). This one is connected to an old Acer P1. It's slow. Really slow. But it works.

Turnbull keeps the bull in interest rates

2008-10-07T05:22:00.001Z

Sadly, new Opposition leader Turnbull can't say the truth, just the politically "expected" instead: <a href="http://www.domain.com.au/…ticle.aspx%">Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull, however, says that the banks remain highly profitable in a market of shrinking competition and can afford to follow the RBA's rate cuts.</a>

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Speculation: Macbook 'carved' from aluminium block

2008-10-07T00:40:00.004Z

Is it April 1? Is this cool or crazy? Firstly, this is of course idle gossip. Secondly, numeric control machines have been around for 'yonks', so carving a block of aluminium is not news. Fluid-flowed aluminium is newer but again not news. Thirdly, it can only carve the case, anyway. So why would this be a game changer? It's not.

Seth Weintraub a blogger at 9to5Mac.com claims that Apple has invented a new manufacturing process for MacBooks that will result in the product being manufactured from a coplete block of aluminum. He writes "It is totally revolutionary, a game changer. One of the biggest Apple innovations in a decade. The MacBook manufacturing process up to this point has been outsourced to Chinese or Taiwanese manufacturers like Foxconn. Now Apple is in charge. The company has spent the last few years building an entirely new manufacturing process that uses lasers and jets of water to carve the MacBooks out of a brick of aluminum.

And best of all, why is it so grand to waste precious resources like this? An expensive aluminium block (what is often called 'congealed electricity' because it uses so much in its manufacture) is presumably cast, then 'carved', leaving a lot of wasted off-cuts. Sure, it can be re-melted and re-cast, but why increase waste, especially when electricity generation and aluminium production are so heavily linked with carbon emissions?

The only advantage here is that you end up with a nice one-piece (or maybe 2 piece?) aluminium case. Form Apple's point of view that may be cool, and it may even save some bucks if the carbon offsets aren't made. Otherwise it's not cool at all.

It's not simple, is it?

2008-09-23T22:56:00.002Z

Modelling the complexities of nature is not a simple task, nor a certain one. We keep finding new, surprising things to factor in to our calculations... The big blue ocean is getting noisier. Sound can now travel further than it did a century ago, thanks to carbon emissions that have made the oceans more acidic.

OTOH, this is not a reason to throw our hands in the air and say, "too hard". Rather it should egg us on to further discovery and understanding. And quickly, before our planet says "enough".

Catching up with ABC iView

2008-09-22T23:19:00.001Z

When your STB lets you down, at least there's ABC iView on the PC... but now I want it streamed live, not delayed ;-) Well actually I should just update my DVB-T STB with a harddrive and make a PVR out of it... but that's too many abbreviations for me today!

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The dangers inherent in correlating data

2008-09-19T07:05:00.003Z

Now this could be a fascinating insight or simply way off beam. Without further research on the topic to persuade me otherwise, I'm going for the latter. It's nonsense: Although political views have been thought to arise largely from individuals' experiences, recent research suggests that they may have a biological basis. We present evidence that variations in political attitudes correlate with physiological traits. In a group of 46 adult participants with strong political beliefs, individuals with measurably lower physical sensitivities to sudden noises and threatening visual images were more likely to support foreign aid, liberal immigration policies, pacifism, and gun control, whereas individuals displaying measurably higher physiological reactions to those same stimuli were more likely to favor defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism, and the Iraq War. Thus, the degree to which individuals are physiologically responsive to threat appears to indicate the degree to which they advocate policies that protect the existing social structure from both external (outgroup) and internal (norm-violator) threats.

Correlations are tricky things. There's no causation here, just a coincidence of data. Yes, it seems convincing, but how deeply does it go? Tip it around - perhaps instead of your 'political leanings' being linked to your physical reactions and thus being biological in origin, perhaps instead what you learn as political animals over time shapes your reactions. We would need to delve very deeply here - and longitudinally, from birth - to find what actually comes first - be it the so-called 'hard-wired' response (suggested but unproven here) or the politico-social viewpoint. Ask yourself, does the correlation expressed here vary by language type and skill, by culture, and by experience? Have they checked? How could they check?

There's also a danger that someone will believe this to be "true"and use it to "prove" some case that socially-aware and caring people are "cowards" or "fearful" and thus not to be trusted with decisions or in situations where shock, awe or force may be involved. Or maybe it's all true, who knows.

unsupportable statements 101

2008-09-19T05:45:00.002Z

Forbes has weighed in with a biggie: All's not doom and gloom once you venture off Wall Street. In fact, there are some positive signs in the "rest of the economy." Dropping oil prices are good for the airlines; everyone still needs toothpaste and shaving cream.

What am I on about? The glib, throwaway statement that"everyone still needs toothpaste and shaving cream". Well no, they don't. We got away without both of those things for a very, very long time; and plenty of people have found good reasons to not need them today, either. Food and shelter, yes; toothpaste and shaving cream? I don't recall seeing those in any hierarchy of needs.

Puerile, gutter-level fun drops audience

2008-09-19T03:29:00.002Z

I have to laugh when the puerile, self-indulgent antics of the "Footy Show" is outrated by the public broadcaster's knee-jerk attempt to balance right and left-wing views, the surprisingly watchable "QandA": But at least someone was watching, as The Footy Show recorded one its worst ratings performances of the year in Sydney with less than 200,000 tuning in. It was again beaten by the ABC's interactive political debate show Q&A, which had 249,000 viewers to The Footy Show's 191,000, pushing The Footy Show into fourth behind Law and Order: SVU and Ghost Whisperer.

Maybe the TV audience is growing up. Shame Channel 9 can't get their collective heads around that idea!

Guitar gadgets: Line 6 'Backtrack'

2008-09-17T23:18:00.002Z

An inline memory device that records your guitar playing as you go, with the ability to mark the bits (and I do mean bits) you want to keep and dump to your PC. There's a microphone option, too. Always on, BackTrack begins recording as soon as it detects a signal. Just plug into the quiet 1/4-inch input and start playing. And use the 1/4-inch output for immediate playback. Just set it and forget it for total inspiration control. Pressing the “Mark” button designates what you just played as special and separates it for easy review. The Forward and Reverse buttons provide instant recall of marked and non-marked ideas. It has a Gig of on-board flash RAM.

Alternatively you could also just run your guitar through your PC (using iAxe or some other USB interface) and save as you go, but that's a heftier option, especially if you are playing away from home.

Words, words, words

2008-09-17T03:49:00.002Z

Today's misused word, or perhaps the word I choose to bolt down and tickle to death today is tactile. Tactile generally means 'perceptible to the sense of touch' or, perhaps, something close to 'tangible'. At a stretch you could make it more abstract, giving tactility to language for example, but I wouldn't recommend it myself

I mention it because a motor noter at Fairfax wrote: The dash is slightly soft to the touch, giving a more tactile feel than the harder plastics typical of competitors.

Now I'm all for the evolution of language and the constant mutation of meaning, but what's going on here? The writer is saying that a soft dash is somehow by degree more tactile, ie 'more' perceptible to the touch, than a harder one? If this is possible, which I doubt, wouldn't a softer plastic actually be ever so slightly less tactile? In fact this is all codswallop, either you can feel it or you can't, surely? Either it's tactile or it's not.

I gather the author of this nonsense, Toby Hagon, just wanted to say the softer plastic was, indeed, softer than a harder one, and nicer to boot. Groan. Just keep him away from the thesaurus, pleeeease!

Should we laugh or cry?

2008-09-09T00:10:00.004Z

Interesting take today on fairness and equity in society by a community group spokesperson in Camden, NSW:The president of the Camden/Macarthur Residents Group, Emil Sremchevich, told Fairfax the Catholic plan "ticks all the right boxes", even though he was yet to see its development application. "Catholics are part of our community so we should be supporting it on this basis alone," Mr Sremchevich told Fairfax. "To become part of the community, you need to live in the community. You can't just turn up."

Apparently this Mr Sremchevich believes people of a Catholic disposition definitely reside in Camden, whereas Muslim folk come from "elsewhere". Not sure how he "knows" this, perhaps he did a door-by-door survey of everyone in the district. And the local Muslim believers of course owned up to the inquisitors immediately and honestly; or perhaps simply lied, as one suspects non-Catholics may do. (Oh dear, and me not at all a Catholic, either.) In any event we are assured there are no people of the Muslim faith anywhere near Camden, so why they wanted a school there in the first place is just plain weird.

Mr Sremchevich is surprisingly not at all discriminating with regard to what is being built. If it's proposed by a Catholic group it gets immediate approval without further consideration, according to his quoted words. That certainly speeds up the development process, doesn't it? (Who needs the previous planning minister Frank Sartor when you have this bloke in charge.)

I certainly agree with Mr Sremchevich that his is not a racist stance. Mr Sremchevich said he was not being racist. He is not discriminating by race, rather by religion. Hey, isn't there a law against that, too?

If quoted correctly, Mr Sremchevich surprisingly admits to being "a beast": "Why is it xenophobic just because I want to make a choice. If I want to like some people and not like other people, that's the nature of the beast," he said. Being "a beast" may be a good thing, but I'm not sure of the context. Mr Sremchevich should however seek assistance in defining "xenophobia" as he may be a tad unclear on what 'a fear of foreigners' may actually mean. It may not mean that he's afraid of them, per se, because he's obviously a brave man to say these things, but perhaps any dislike of people from outside one's own area or district of locale, zone of comfort or belief could fit the bill. I'm just trying to help.

Even more surprisingly he is advocating dividing suburbs up along car ownership lines, proposing gated communities for particular brands: "It's very simple: people like some things but don't like other things ... some of us like Fords, some of us like Holdens." I'm not sure if the Holdens (a GM brand, btw) can traverse Ford suburbs (or Territories, a local Ford joke ha-ha) and vice versa. (Shame I didn't fit a Chevy Suburban gag in there too but Aussies don't actually buy cars that big, I hope). It's unclear if Camden will be deemed a Ford or Holden suburb by Mr Sremchevich, or which brand will subsequently be forced to leave the suburb.

Camden was a nice township when I last visited. They have a splendid little semi-rural environment with an interesting history. It's also close to transport and forever threatened by over-development. Whilst I favour preserving the theme and flavour of such quaint townships on the outskirts of Sydney, it would be a shame to see it isolated from the rest of Sydney, walled up and gated from intrusion. If everyone did that we'd have a lot of unnecessary fear and loathing of the people "outside", which of course would be everyone else.

Hyundai derivative, Ford and VW original... yeah, riiight

2008-09-07T23:31:00.004Z

From the increasingly annoying drive.com.au... And as compression ignition sales grow, it's no surprise that aggressive Korean manufacturer Hyundai is leading the assault. The evidence is the i30 CRDi, a stylish (albeit derivative) small car that is well equipped, space-efficient and part of a model line-up selling well in Australia's most popular segment.

It's great that smaller, less thirsty cars are in the spotlight, but why slap Hyundai around just because? Somehow the almost-identically styled and packaged Focus and Golf are not instantly labelled "derivative", even though they are clearly derived both from previous models in their own stables, and also generally in the marketplace. They all have hatches, drive the front wheels, are similar boxes with subtle curves. None of them actually add anything new that we haven't seen before. So exactly what is drive.com.au getting at? That Hyundai's somehow not "worthy" enough is how I read it.

This is typical motor-noter weariness and laziness but please, please get over it.

Neither spelling nor logic a forte

2008-09-01T00:31:00.004Z

What can we learn from nineMSM today? Apart from the ubiquitousness of gossipy trash, we now know that good spelling is no longer guaranteed. I usually don't care, but it's just so bleedin' obvious!!

The other obvious thought is that it's a non-story. Of course banks won't guarantee a rate cut just because - and even if - the Reserve Bank adjusts its cash rate target. It's a target, a hint, and little more. It certainly makes it more likely that rates will come down but it's not a given. Why beat these stories up? Why does the old media try to make the banks look like the bad guys, especially when lots of us home owners own shares in these banks and don't want them to make bad commercial decisions?

Oh yeah, these old fairy stories still resonate with lots of people, that's right. And the old media no longer care about reporting the truth, they just want to feather their own nests. Got it.

More 'Millennial' madness

2008-08-28T05:47:00.004Z

Had enough of mindless Millennial drivel? Too late, I've got more... and the bottom line is that "we", the non-Millennials, "should" know and identify these Millennials, and somehow expect them to be different from other humans. And of course they somehow deserve 'different' treatment because of that. Heck, they may not even be human!

So take a read of this, from BNET: "The teens entering college over the next few weeks were probably born around 1990. Here are five observations that jumped out at me from the “mindset list”:

GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available
They may have been given a Nintendo Game Boy to play with in the crib
Caller ID has always been available on phones
Windows 3.0 operating system made IBM PCs user-friendly the year they were born
Radio stations have never been required to present both sides of public issues.

According to Benoit, 'The class of 2012 has grown up in an era where computers and rapid communication are the norm, and colleges no longer trumpet the fact that residence halls are ‘wired’ and equipped with the latest hardware. These students will hardly recognize the availability of telephones in their rooms since they have seldom utilized landlines during their adolescence. They will continue to live on their cell phones and communicate via texting. Roommates, few of whom have ever shared a bedroom, have already checked out each other on Facebook where they have shared their most personal thoughts with the whole world.'"

OK there's good stuff here. The ever-decreasing size of Western 'family units' will show up in a larger proportion of kids who have never shared a room with a sibling. It may shape some attitudes about sharing, although I have seen no research on that. And there are also more blended families, so what does that mean with regard to attitudes? And although they may be living somewhat different lives from people born 10, 20 or 50 years ago, what evidence is there that it actually makes a difference?

As for the rest of it, whether you are familiar with computers, cell phones and whatnot all of your life or whether you have adapted to it as it has evolved is of little concern, surely? We all live in the same world and have embraced gizmos to greater or lesser extents, irrespective of age. Yes, to be older (on average) affects our uptake of new stuff. So does relative wealth, culture and religion, amongst many other things. It's a continuum, a sliding scale of influence and uptake - not the black and white of the dime-store demographers. Plenty of Millennials actually don't care for the latest and greatest stuff, and plenty of so-called Boomers do.

Now we can try to analyse it to death, but people are people, and should not be labelled just for the heck of it. But humans love to label, and having labelled them we should not try to second-guess how we should treat them, or ascribe values based on untested theory. It's so easy to say that young people 'these days' prefer part time work, shifting careers and lower levels of loyalty when we have brought them into a world that has created exactly that environment. There are fewer full-time jobs, more service-oriented jobs and entirely new careers that didn't exist even 5 years ago.

On the one hand we say 'they want this stuff' but on the other we didn't give them a choice - it's how it is!

What about faster trains on shorter routes?

2008-08-25T04:35:00.003Z

Given that I think I convincingly debunked the economic and environmental wisdom of a fast train between Sydney and Melbourne (even if I do say so myself), what about the proposals for fast trains from Penrith and Gosford to Sydney?

Well these proposals are not necessarily for fast trains, but certainly faster. A fast train is one that travels above 200kmh, at least in my book. To reach that speed requires enormous torque to get it rolling, low drag, high-end power and good, strong brakes to bring it back to a stop. You also need few if any curves, easy grades, strong and smoothly jointed track and big enough centres of population to justify the investment. In Japan in the 1960s and 70s, for several reasons, no problem. However in the cases of Penrith and (especially) Gosford, big problems. Penrith to Sydney CBD may generate enough passengers if the train stops at Parramatta, and especially Strathfield, but each stop kills the average speed. With Gosford the problem of attracting passengers at premium rates is compounded by the need for truly massive tunneling. On the plus side you could stop at Hornsby or perhaps Chatswood, but again the average speed falls dramatically.

If we want a fast train to go anywhere it must have its own track. It can't share, because sharing will slow it down, even if it gets priority. It also increases complexity and imposes risks. Existing train services will be slowed, and the track will of necessity be improved to cope with the fast train's needs. In any event the grades and curves will need to meet fast train specifications, which existing rail cannot do. So it's tunnel, tunnel, tunnel, new stations, new track and new trains, along with the anciliaries like maintenance areas.

You could perhaps design a big arc from Gosford to Penrith that takes in Chatswood, the CBD, Hurstville, Liverpool and Parramatta, which may offer some benefit - but the cost would be extortionate. With a finger in the air you'd say that's 200km of track. At least half of that would cost $2billion per 10km, say $20 billion and half that price for the "easy" bits. So $30 billion. If you add Newcastle as well you could pay around $40billion for the track but at least please some more commuters. Wyong would want in and you'd have an argument about time lost in stopping but you'd flip a coin and see what happens. And remember, for that bargain price you still don't have any trains, just the bare infrastructure.

You would have trains accelerating and then decelerating quite quickly, but the savings in time would still be substantial, even if your maintenance costs will be high. And on some sections you may have a ready market, but how ready will they be to pay premium fares? With a $40billion price tag you'd hope to get most of the existing commuter market, but even so you aren't going to approach Japanese levels of passenger volume, especially if you price to recover cost.

And many commuters change trains (and buses), so you need convenient interconnects. Get that and the pricing wrong and commuters may as well keep driving rather than drive to the fast train station. Or just stay on the now-slightly-less-full existing 80-100kmh trains and save some money.

So why even contemplate fast trains? Because there's a theory - and a pretty good one too - that if we can move around faster we can (a) do more work of economic value in any given time period and (b) increase our range of economic choice in terms of location, so we can work and purchase goods and services further outside of our regular "economic zone". In simple terms we increase our range and thus increase the overall level of competition. In that way companies can source good workers from further afield, potentially lowering costs of production; and purchasers can consider a wider range of sources for many commodities and services, driving down prices. Easily said - now go and measure it.

You could also say that commuting time saved can be "spent" elsewhere, perhaps in relaxation, and that too will be an economic (and social) benefit. However we choose to look at it, we still have to determine a value for the economic and social value generated and compare it with the total economic, environmental and social cost. And then consider the opportunity cost - what could we have done with that money had we spent it elsewhere?

In terms of carbon emissions, a fast train of any sort will release carbon in the construction phase - dramatically so - and will in day-to-day operation fair badly in comparison with slower, conventional trains. You can't accelerate a train to speed without consuming energy - and it's going to be coming from coal-fired power-stations for the immediate future. However these faster trains will still be more efficient than thousands of individuals in their wretchedly grid-locked cars - and it would be hoped that some such cars would be taken off the roads as a consequence, or the growth in car use avoided. If that's not achieved then we've done nothing for global warming, except taken a step back.

In this way the $40billion spent is just one part of the equation. In the end we may buy a less-fast train that stops at more stations but still needs its own reserved track. But let's not imagine that the sums are small or the calculations easy.