SEPT 03
I.T. soup
I don’t make a habit of it, but there’s a restaurant round the corner that has a buffet-style take-away at lunchtimes. It’s not a big place, but it’s popular and gets really busy – there’s usually a queue to pay. They’re fairly teched-up, and when you arrive at the counter, you get a barcode fiche, which is scanned, and the staff punch-in the weight of your plate – so that when you get to the paydesk, the person on the till rescans the fiche, and his terminal shows how much to pay etc etc.
A couple of day back, the system was down, so . . . was the queue
A) longer or
B) shorter ?
I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said the ‘get-your-food-pay-and-getout-time’ was cut by two thirds. The queue had vanished.
We are all deluded. Hypnotised. Techno-tysm. Like ‘rabbits in the headlights’ when it comes to IT systems, individuals, corporations, governments - everyone. The whole point of the systems is that they should make things easier, save time, more efficient blah blah. I recall a conversation with the owner of a very up-market sound-studio in London where they had recently installed an automated ( i.e. computer controlled ) mixing-console system. “So I guess the mixes get done a lot quicker nowadays?” “Are you kidding? Takes ‘em twice as long ! We love it- they pay by the hour don’t they ! “
brown outs
Sooooo ... We have, US/Canada (50Million affected), Denmark/Sweden (4Million), London ( entire underground system ) and now Italy (50Million,) all in the last few weeks.
There were a similar spate of power cuts in Brazil a couple of years back. The supply companies blamed it on 'excessive demand' 'unforeseen circumstances' and 'ageing infrastructure' etc etc. Co-incidentally, the cuts happened at the very same time that the recently privatised supply companies were arguing with the government about their rights to increase charges to domestic customers, which was prohibited under Brazilian law. The cuts and blackouts went on for months. Funnily enough, when the government backed down and changed the law, the cuts stopped ! Duh! . . .
Well, it’s blindingly obvious that there’s a connecting factor here, and I’m just offering one possible answer - well two actually. The second is that the supply companies have all recently switched over to using Windows.
Comment: Yep, the inquiry into the massive US power cut finally attributed it to a software problem ! The O.S. was not, however Windows, so that bit we we got wrong - sorry about that.
tanked up
I was resisting to obvious urge to talk abut Mr. Blaine’s escapade. I was maintaining a ‘don’t look - it only encourages them’ strategy, but it’s got to the point where I think it’s time for a comment. Many people have criticised Mr. Blaine, saying that it’s grossly offensive to fast as a stunt while so many in the world are starving without a choice. Personally, I see it from another angle. Because he’s not eating, won’t there be a bit more food to go round? If he dies in the attempt, won’t the effect will be even bigger? I think we’ve got to hand it to him, he’s achieving exactly what he want’s viz. mega publicity. He doesn’t pretend to be anything other than an out-of-his-box TV ‘magician’.
Update : Mr B survived, and is now out of his box.
what use is that?
Time for a lighter note I fancy. In fact, I’m literally talking – notes. Because, after years of being completely unaware of it, I’ve recently discovered I’ve got ‘perfect pitch’. Well, not quite perfect actually – I couldn’t, for instance, hum you a B on cue. But what I can do, is hum or sing a tune at precisely the right pitch – sometimes with music I haven’t heard for years. I hum the tune, put on the CD, and it’s right! Bizarre.
Around 1% humans have perfect pitch, and I couldn’t help wondering, how it could possibly have evolved, and what use it could possibly be. It’s the aural equivalent of being able to look at the colour of a leaf and say, yep– that’s Red 233, Green 122, Blue 27. There are very, very few natural sounds that are always at the same musical pitch, so we can’t have been exposed much to specific musical frequencies over the time of our evolution. Even if we had been exposed, what would be the use of such a skill in the African plains where we are supposed to have evolved.
In other words, what possible evolutionary advantage do we gain by being able to recognise a air-vibration of 440 times per second and knowing it’s an ‘A’ ? As far as I know, it’s the only ‘calibrated’ sense we have. All the other senses work on a ‘relative’ scale, and usually with a very wide range of adjustment. ( we know if it’s getting warmer or colder, but not - it’s 23.4 degrees C ) If anyone has any ideas . . .
surprise !
A friend of mine once gave me some advice. He said “Find something that makes you angry, and then write about it.” I wouldn’t want to rely too often on this as a strategy for inspiration, but it certainly works.
A good few years back, I was talking to an elderly man, who told me that he
was a (reluctant) sailor in the British navy during WW2. I’ve no idea
why, but he ended up telling me that he had been on a ship somewhere in the
Pacific, when the astonished crew saw a huge detachment of the Japanese fleet
determinedly steaming by, in the general direction of Hawaii, ( still a few
days journey away ) The radio officer immediately contacted naval command,
and they also radioed the nearest American ships to alert them, who presumably
contacted their HQ, p.d.q.
Guess what happened next ?
Absolutely nothing. Not for three or four days that is, when there was a ‘surprise’ attack on the US fleet in Pearl Harbour. The truth about the attack is still under wraps, but enough details are in the public domain for a common-sense overview to be surmised. It appears that the US government knew very well what was about to happen and yet took no action. They soon had a pretty good reason to convince their previously sceptical electorate that they should get involved in WW2, bigtime. Ring any bells? Take a look at what Gore Vidal thinks about it . . .
http://observer.guardian.co.uk
Still not angry yet? Try this one . . .
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/33/features-cooper.php
not so hot tips
The media over the last couple of days has been full of stories about European finance ministers who are furious that ‘the dollar is being kept low’. Their clamour implies that they believe the dollar is actually worth more than its current listed value. And they are furious because that means that they’ll get less when they export their goods to the States. So far I can understand. But doesn’t that also mean that when they want to import goods from the US, they’ll be cheaper? So Intel chips, Ford cars, Californian OJ futures – all cheaper.
It’s pretty obvious that when currencies change, one group of people become despondent, the others are delighted. But that doesn’t make a good headline. The ‘value’ of a currency can be manipulated pretty severely by governments, speculators, even individuals with enough cash and credibility. Fortunes can be made and lost just by a 0.1% fluctuation in exchange rates. Hence the media is awash with biased stories press-released by one vested interest or another.
To get a grip on reality, it seems to me we need to find a globally available product which always has a more or less sensible price, set by the people - not politicians, speculators, or cartels. I’ve tried long and hard to come up with one. I’ve gone through an extensive list - and dismissed almost every one I’ve thought of. Coca Cola ( price controlled by head office ) Pizzas ( too urban ) Wheat ( tariff set by cartels ). The best I can come up with so far is builder’s sand. It’s available just about anywhere, and no-one cares much about it, so the price is honest. A quick Google-assisted trawl revealed the following interesting results. Here’s the price of bulk sand, converted to dollars . . .
U.K. $15.4 per ton
U.S.A $11.4 per ton
China $14.4 per ton (very good export quality, clean as laundry)
Brazil $2.5 per ton
I’m no financial whizz-kid, but it’s pretty obvious what’s going on here? I’m calling my broker – now - to buy as much Brazilian sand as he can get his hands on.
latest Golf news
Volkswagen are just about to launch their new ‘Golf’ model onto the highstreets of the world. The new car may be squeaky clean, but the giant’s industrial relations certainly aren’t. They have a huge production facility in Brazil - where things are not running smoothly. The plants have been under threat from job cuts since 2001, and last November, 16,000 workers there agreed to a 15% wage cut to avoid redundancies. Now, despite the cut, the management have decided that they’re going to sack 4000 workers after all. Not surprisingly, the workers have again threatened strike action.
But here’s the twist. The VW management have publicly stated that anyone who goes on strike to protest against job-cuts – will be sacked. The workers at the plants have apparently been made to sign no-strike agreements in order to get a job . . .
Funnily enough, the directors of VW haven’t tried the same thing in Germany.
Here’s a couple of quotes from its US website employment pages . . . “ We love our cars, but people are our most valued asset. “ and “ Volkswagen has a corporate culture all its own. We're sort of like one big, happy family around the holidays.“ Ahh . . . sweet !
Comment: July 2004. Sales of the new Golf are not going as well as was hoped. As a sweetner, you can now get one with aircon at no extra cost.
pain in the lip
This is a news story from earlier this year, but I’ve only just stumbled across it, better late than never.
The Roslin institute, famous as the location for the creation of Dolly the Sheep, has chalked up another first. They have performed an extensive study which shows that ‘fish feel pain’. Presumably, the motivation behind the research was to dispel the myth that fish feel no pain when hooked by anglers. ( fans of nominative determinism will be pleased to hear that the research was headed by a Professor Sharp ).
The scientists found that, when they injected the lips of live unanaesthetised trout with bee venom and vinegar, the trout behaved - in a manner which suggested they were in pain - rocked from side to side, and wouldn’t eat for prolonged periods.
Oh r e a l l y ? Well well, who’d have thought it ? The experiment is perhaps just one notch short of consideration by the Ignobel prize team ( see links ), but should obviously have stayed in the realm which Einstein used to call ‘thought experiments’.
To further the research, I have recently conducted a ‘thought experiment’ of my own, which this time focuses on psychology rather than biology. In my experiment, everything proceeded exactly as before, but this time, the scientists themselves were monitored to see what they were feeling whilst injecting bee venom into the trout’s lips.
Result? Absolutely nothing.
oh great, more ads.
The website of my favourite newspaper is in trouble. They’re short of cash - but they’re doing something about it. They describe their new scheme as ‘ an exciting development ’. Over the past few weeks they have been gradually introducing ads to most of their pages. Once the ads are ensconced, they’re upgraded to enhanced flashing ones. ( Unfortunately the ad spaces aren’t exactly selling like hot cakes, it’s pretty noticeable that most of them are just pointers to other pages on their own site …)
By now most pages are awash with jittery dross that makes the site look a bit like a FoxNews bumper. It’s annoying. In fact, the paper has had ‘ - a number of complaints’ about the ads, and they’re doing something about that as well … If you subscribe to a ‘special edition’ of the website , ( for £20 a year ) then you get an ad-free version!
So, let’s distill this down a bit …. They plaster the site with ugly blather which they know annoys the readers – then they ask for cash to remove it.
Now what does that remind me of … oh yes … those guys that used to hang around parking spaces in central Glasgow. ‘ Dy’e wannus te luke afta ye motor mister?’ You paid them - and they went away - if you didn’t pay, they ‘keyed’ the paintwork for you. Funnily enough, those guys weren’t universally liked.
Let’s imagine that the paper gets, at an outrageously optimistic estimate, ten thousand loyal, but miffed, readers to subscribe. The paper will raise £200K in a year. There will be a bit on top of this if they manage to get any outside firms to buy ad space, but the rates for web-based ads has dropped though the floor. ( that’s because they don’t work very well ). Perhaps they’ll make £300K in a year, quite a bit for an individual, but for a national newspaper it’s chicken feed. Looking at the problem from the other side, how much would a newspaper be willing to pay a PR firm who could give an absolute guarantee that it would substantially raise reader loyalty for, say, ten thousand readers …. Priceless.
bang per buck
The UK government funds a company called Qinetic. ( No I haven’t missed the ‘u’, there isn’t one. For some reason , the consultants who dreamed up this cheesy name evidently thought it was more, how shall we say, more potent without it. ) The ‘company’ is actually the tech research arm of the UK Ministry of Defence, but, since Margaret Thatcher cut their budget, they’ve had to struggle to top-up their cash-flow by developing and licensing ultra-high-tech goodies for industry.
The list of their achievements is amazingly impressive. They claim, though I suspect others would dispute this, to have invented,
1) microchips,
2) lasers
3) liquid crystal displays,
4) radar,
5) infra-red imaging
… the list goes on. Like it or not, it’s an indisputable fact that most of the ‘tech-stuff’ we take for granted nowadays can trace a direct genealogical-line back to the military. It’s true that many of these inventions have saved thousands of lives – but they’ve also terminated thousands. Microchips were initially developed as ultra-compact, ultra-tough circuit components for missiles. The humble ‘PIR’ intruder detector you might have outside your garage was originally a personnel-mine trigger. In fact, every single one of the boffin’s inventions was, initially, designed with a combat system of some kind in mind.
It would be a very enlightening exercise to evaluate whether all the mountains of cash spent on military R&D actually ends up making a ‘profit’ for the country which develops the stuff. Personally, I doubt it. Probably, we’ll never know. But this week I did find the likely answer to a question that’s been niggling me for months. I’ve been wondering why the Icelanders, of all people, have one of the highest ‘income per capita’ in the world ( they are ranked by the WorldBank at number 9 - that’s fully 14 places higher than the UK ) Incredible isn’t it? I just found out that they have no armed forces.
handy skill
A year or so ago I was standing on a corner in London’s manic Oxford St. waiting to cross the road. I soon realised the person next to me was behaving far from ‘normally’. She was gesticulating wildly, throwing her head around and kind of, well, grunting. I freely admit that I entertained very un-pc thoughts along the lines of ‘why is it me that always ends up standing next to the fruitcake already.’ Then I realised she was actually having a vicious argument, not with Mephistopheles, or ‘invader from planet Tharg’ – but with her friend – who was inside a car about thirty metres away – she was arguing in sign language.
It immediately occurred to me how incredibly useful a skill like this must be. All you need is line-of sight contact with another person , and you can have a conversation !
Why aren’t children in school routinely given the option of learning it, just like say French or Japanese ? Incredibly handy (sorry) on occasions when the normal short-range audio stuff can’t be used. If Amslang is too much of a slog, how about just learning to lip-read? Even I want to learn. I always wonder what those presenters say to each other after they fade the mike at the end of the TV news.
Size matters.
Copyright issues are very much in the news at the moment, especially music copyright. The RIAA is famously indulging in what some commentators have called a ‘suing orgy’. They’re hoping to get the public on their side - by suing 12 year olds ??. ( The child’s mother has just paid them $2000 to get them off her back )
Here’s where size comes in. If I cut’n’paste a section of a Harry Potter novel and upload it to my website, I’ve breached copyright law, and the rightful owners can sue me, for ‘punitive’ damages if they wish to. Even one paragraph is enough. But how about one sentence ; one word perhaps? So if I use the word ‘wizard’, which appears who knows how many times in the HP book , have I breached copyright? How about one letter?
The point I’m making is that since music ‘sampling’ became practicable in the 1980’s, record companies began suing producers who were using very short sections of copyright material,( eg James Brown's famous yelp ) It’s very easy to prove that a section of just a few milliseconds has been sampled. But, as the sampled sections get shorter, it gets harder and harder to prove they are unique. Taken to the obvious extreme, the shortest possible ‘sample’ i.e. one digital ‘byte’ , just like a letter of the alphabet, can’t possibly be copyright protected.
So, if a three minute piece of CD quality stereo music, is broken down into individual bytes, ( there’ll be about 32 million of them ) and each of these bytes is stored on someone’s computer somewhere … This is perfectly feasible peer-based network storage taken to its limit. What are the RIAA going to do, sue 16 million people, over one song? Or maybe lie in wait to catch a user Hoovering up the bytes from the www network?
Psst … wanna see a byte from Madonna’s new single ? 10100100
justice luck
There have been many books written on the subject of ‘courtroom dramas’. And just as many on ‘courtroom farces’. One of the most popular, which ended up as a tv series with a fifteen year run on the UK’s ITV, was ‘Rumpole of the Bailey’. The author, John Mortimer, was a real-life QC, and his book was full of hilarious insider-details which made the reader want to laugh-out-loud and wince at the same time.
Mr. Mortimer himself always came across as having an air of permanent amusement at the buffoonery of his profession. He was right to find it amusing, and he could afford to laugh - because he wasn’t on the end that gets stung. A good QC can earn in a day what a secretary in his office earns in three or four months. But if you happen to be on the sticky end, the end which pays out, – not so funny. Still, those who can look-in from afar and don’t have careers / life savings / reputations to lose – can laugh too.
There’s an on-going ‘court’ farce currently unraveling in the UK, involving the BBC versus Her Majesty’s Government. Here’s an extract from a couple of days back …
Mr. Gilligan ( hounded journalist / scapegoat - in answer to a probing ‘prosecution’ question ) “Absolutely, Yes” .
Lord Hutton ( big cheese in charge - pointedly intervening ) – “what do the words ‘Absolutely, Yes’ mean ?”
update: Mr. Gilligan was later sacked, Greg Dyke - the BBC chief - was persuaded to resign, Lord H ? Still going strong.
Not a good start to the day.
Covered in soya milk.
Well, not covered, but substantially doused. Trying to open a milk carton, a carton designed by, and made under licence to, a company going by the name of TetraPak. Every time I try to open one, or pour from one, or sometimes just look at one, the same thing happens. Countless clones of these very same cartons are in daily use throughout the entire world – thousands upon thousands of different products. So we can be sure that right - now – as you were reading that word, someone , somewhere was getting a dousing.
I couldn’t help remembering that the founder of the company, Mr. Rausing, was listed a while back as Britain’s Richest Man. In fact, he was only recently toppled from his position as the World’s Richest Man by a Mr. B. Gates. So here we have two of the richest characters on the entire planet ; one has made his fortune producing mega-successful cartons that spray, spill and dribble at any given opportunity; the other – well, you can see where I’m going.
Is it a coincidence? There’s a hidden connection here, but I can’t quite get a grip on it ( hands covered in soya milk )
Austrian president ?
So, Aaaahneld is going to have to wait a little longer for his chance to become Gubernator. Even Aaaahneld, it seems, can’t stand up against those dang chads. To save the long wait, and the expensive legal fees, why not just give the gubernatorship to Aaaahneld now ? – he’s obviously going to win anyway. It’s a great shame that he was born overseas, because, as I understand it, that prevents him from running for president.
If he could run, naturally he would win, which would enable the rest of the world to bathe in 100%-pure tsunami-like waves of irony. Of course, the fact that he can’t run for president is also deeply ironic. In a country built by Irish, Africans, Italians, Spanish, Indians, Dutch, English, Chinese and just about everybody else, they wouldn’t want a foreigner running the place would they?
Comment: He won, obviously.
END OF THE ARCHIVES !
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