NOV 03
small minded five
As we are told nearly every day, the Music Industry is in trouble. To give an example, the sales in Germany, where the giant BMG is ensconced, the sales recently fell from €2.8Billion to €2.1Billion in 2 years. At first glance the drop doesn’t look that dramatic. But, if the graph continues to fall in the same straight-line – then, in six years time, sales will be zero. All the behemoth corporations concerned are desperate to do something to change things – the current flavour-of-the-year fix is to merge with other companies. (see 11th Nov) Of course, it will make little difference whether they merge or not. If all the major coachmakers had merged at the beginning of the 20th century, it wouldn’t have made a beans-worth of difference in their battle against the new-fangled motor-car.
But it did occur to me recently that perhaps there is another reason why the sales are nose-diving. Pretty obvious really – but you don’t hear it mentioned in the mainstream media – a very common reason for falling sales – perhaps the product is no good.
There are various reasons why this could be. Firstly, all ( i.e. all five ) companies are so huge, and worth so much, that the chances of them being managed, at a high level, by twenty-year-olds is virtually zero. In other words, we can be reasonably sure that the top echelons of the management teams will have little, if any, clue about what the young music-buying public actually wants. Imagine if the CEO of Mercedes had no idea whatever what a ’SmartCar’ was, or why people wanted to buy it.
The second reason is the ‘Hollywood’ effect. The big studios make a film – it’s a hit. Let’s say ‘Batman’. When the accountants, who, in effect, run the company, see the sales figures, they naturally immediately commission ‘Batman II’ then ‘Batman III’ etc etc. This, ‘Let’s stick to what-we-know-works’ idea – doesn’t work. It stifles new talent. Some gifted-upstart director with a wicked script won’t get a look-in, because the corporation is busy making ‘Batman XII’
So, when the Big Five put all their serious effort – and mountains of cash - into promoting the Kylies and the Robbies – that means far less money available for the new talent. And, as the sales fall-off, the natural tendency for the owners of the companies is to pull in their horns, and plump for ever ‘safer’ options. In this context, the words ‘safe’ and ‘boring’ are often interchangeable .
If the big five could somehow re-invent themselves and start releasing and promoting thousands of super-interesting Micro-Artists, ( of which there is a permanent, endless, underground supply ) they’d have a good chance of surviving a few more years. The more artists there are, and the more add-on products such as books, clothing, gig-tickets, are available - the less important the piracy problem will become.
But a much more likely scenario is that we will end up with one conglomerate, which puts all its money into one, last, utterly-safe, artist. Wonder who it will be ? Sir Elton perhaps ? As soon as the first new CD hits the streets it will be copied and pirated . End of story.
No Moore’s law.
The central tenet of Moore’s law is that the speed of operation with regard to microprocessors doubles every eighteen months. Considering the prediction was made around 40 years ago , it’s held up extraordinarily well. Nowadays though, it needs to be taken with a large pinch of salt , because the chip manufacturers are always trying to win PR wars by claiming that their latest chip runs at lightning speed. And they know that although they can increase the raw ‘clock speed ‘ ( - the minimum time the chip takes to jump from one instruction to the next ) the chip as a whole won’t speed up by the same factor - because some parts work slower than others.
Bottlenecks and gridlocks happen on-chip just as they do in a large city’s traffic system. In other words, if you were to increase the top speed of individual cars which inhabited a city, it might not make that much difference to traffic flow as a whole. For this reason, and also because , smaller = faster = more unstable = more errors = need for more error checking = slow down again . . . it would seem that Moore’s law won’t hold out for all that much longer.
But, of course, the main hangup with Moore’s law is that, although the
hardware of the machines which we use speeds up rapidly as years go by – the
software which runs on it remains well and truly stuck in the mud.
I’ve been trying to work out exactly why there is such a gaping difference between the efficiency in the two fields. It’s true that modern software has become so complex that many large programmes and operating systems have long since passed the stage where no one individual understands everything about the whole system. But the astonishingly complex chips which run the average desktop computer aren’t exactly a piece of cake either ! The chip architecture couldn’t possibly be designed without the help of massive computing power, and the same rule applies – no one person understands everything about the whole device.
There is however, one glaring difference between the two fields.
Producing the first chip for a newly designed processor can cost hundreds of thousands , perhaps millions of dollars. So the first one *has* to be right. If there are any ‘bugs ‘ in it they will have to be sorted before the chip goes into production, otherwise it’s going to cost the manufacturer millions in recalls / PR damage / and court cases ! In short, one serious chip-design-error could bankrupt the maker. So, they are very, very, very careful. ( although mistakes do still occasionally occur ). The teams who design and build these chips have to be the best that money can buy.
Software on the other hand ? Well we don’t have to look that far to see what kind of quality control goes into the average ‘shirk-wrapped’ (sic.) box of software. At the moment, the product seems to be exempt from any kind of consumer protection whatsoever. In fact, many software houses have the audacity to ask customers to accept written agreements which say, in effect, ‘don’t blame us if it doesn’t work’. The makers know they don’t have to bother to properly debug the product – so - they don’t.
Mostly, it’s half-baked junk which just about manages to work on a good
day. You might think that this would make it easier for the software houses
to churn out new versions even quicker than Moore’s eighteen months.
It does – but the efficacy of the product is usually pitiful –
The current rule-of-thumb for software efficiency in general is that it
doubles every *twenty* years ! ( source: Prof. John Holland, Computing
Dept. Univ. Ann Arbor. MI. )
“Within Acceptable Limits”
Here’s a joke. I may be wrong, but I think it’s the work of that professional scallywag and establishment goader Mark Thomas. It goes something like this . . . “ It was dark, and I was ‘angin’ abaht on a Sarf London council estate when I saw this old dear walk by wiv ‘er ‘andbag – so I mugged ‘er. Well, if I ‘adn’t someone else would’ve - wouldn’t they ? “
It nicely deflates the usual playground-logic excuse given by arms manufactures when they are trying to justify sales to dodgy régimes. viz. “ Well, if we don’t sell them the equipment – someone else will -won’t they ?” Those cheeky chappies at BAE ( the UK’s biggest arms manufacturer: year 2000 sales clocked in at a bangin’ $15Billion ) are doing yet another ‘less than squeaky clean’ deal - this time with the ‘less than squeaky clean’ régime in Saudi Arabia.
The Export Credit Guarantee Dept, ( which has, more than once been on the receiving end of a Mark Thomas badgering session ) will pay BAE’s bill ( with the helpful assistance of UK taxpayers ) should the customers fail to cough up the (estimated ) $4.5Billion for their new toys. ( for some reason, Transparency-Tony’s UK government is refusing to say how much the deal is worth – can’t think why )
To make matters worse, the kind of sums involved with this sort of deal are so gargantuan that there are always going to be ‘ less than squeaky clean’ individuals ‘angin’ abaht - trying to get their hands on some of the dosh. So much so, that the attentions of the Serious Fraud Office have been awoken after previous Guardian allegations about ‘Slush’ and ‘Funds’.
Don’t worry though, if there were any payments - and there may, or may not have been - but if there were, the ECGD says they were ‘Within Acceptable Limits’ So that’s ok then.
and
Typical.
As from today, you can enter your family for the ‘The Epson Family’ competition. They’re looking for a ‘typical’ UK family ( whatever that means ) Starting in March next year, photographs of the family will be taken over a period of 100 days. The pics will then be used for publicity purposes, and also will be on show at a ‘Top London Gallery’. The winning family ( providing they have adhered to a mysteriously unspecified ‘written agreement’ ) will get just over eleven grand in cash - and some Epson bits and bobs.
I guess they’re looking for something along the lines of ‘The Osbournes’ ‘The Royles’ or perhaps ‘Wayne and Waynetta Slob’ It’s hard to tell from the somewhat sparse information on their website – but perhaps there’s a cryptic clue in the last sentence of blurb, which asks you to get your family to say ‘Cheese’ and then take a snap of them . . . If you fancy applying, you’ve got till the end of Jan 2004.
Here’s a tip. My guess is that, if you tell them you play golf, wear glasses and a watch, shave, play a musical instrument ( one which needs tuning ) , and your hobby is ‘robot ballet theatre’ - that might up your chances. (Applicable products are made by the huge and historic Seiko Corp, of which Epson is a part.)
Apply at http://www.the-epson-family.com
comment : The competition was won by the 'Want' family. There are a lot of possibilities for jokes here, which Really Magazine will refrain from making.
expensive at half the price
With gleeful smiles all round, Boy George signed-off yesterday on the single biggest military fund-fest in the history of the planet. The figure has been settled at $401.3Billion . ( Normally, I wouldn’t bother to include the ‘point 3’ , but in this case, just the ‘point 3 ‘ alone is 300 million dollars. ) If we add that to the special $87Billion that’s just been allocated for the ‘Fat ginst terrism’ the total is not far short of half-a-trillion dollars-worth of taxpayer’s cash . That’s the overt budget for just one years expenditure. ( History shows that there’s always other huge unseen sums which flow in the military netherworlds which congress doesn’t even know about.)
Hoooweeey boy ! Sure is gonna be a whole lot of flies ‘round that honeypot ! If you could get your hands on just 1000th of 1% you’d score five $million. So, yesterday was a very happy day for thousands of corporations and individuals who stand to gain – as well as dozens of universities.
Enthusiasts of military spending often quote ‘the trickle-down effect' – whereby cash spent on defence R&D eventually has a beneficial effect on society at large. For example, the computer which you are presumably using to read this, couldn’t have been built without the ‘integrated-circuit’ technology which was originally developed to make miniature robust circuitry for weaponry. Other examples would include lasers, liquid crystal displays, and the business-end of your microwave oven. The point which is often overlooked though - is that it’s a pathetically inefficient way of arriving at the result.
Imagine what could be done with a yearly, civil, tech-research budget of half a trillion dollars. Cure for cancer ? - couple of years max. Method for permanently eliminating malaria worldwide ? - perhaps six months. New, affordable technology for salt-water > freshwater conversion ? - a few weeks. Dirt cheap electric-solar-panels ? ( hang on - that’d mean oil + gas sales would nosedive – ok skip that one )
This cash colossus could build 260 state-of-the-art new hospitals in each and every one of the fifty states. Obviously, far more than could ever be needed. OK, let’s throw in free healthcare for all.
Imagine if even half this cash ( $250,000,000,000 ) were to be given away to deserving countries in the form of aid. The US would become the sugar-daddy hero of the entire developing-world overnight. - and still leave the nation with a defence budget roughly five times bigger than its nearest ‘rival’.
Unfortunately, none of the alternatives above is going to happen. But, I
guess if we wait long enough, something is going to trickle down on us. Let’s
hope it’s not red and sticky.
Red top – or Gold top ?
On Wednesday, the ‘Times’ will go on sale, for the first time in its 215yr. history I believe – in ‘tabloid’ form. Clearly following the lead of the ‘Independent’ which has been offering ‘compact’ versions for sale since last September.
What’s the big deal about small newspapers ? In the UK, there has long been a glass wall dividing the ‘Broadsheet’ newspapers from the ‘Tabloids’. The wall runs roughly up the middle of one of the major divisions between social classes. There is, of course, some leakage either side, but you would have to search long and hard to find an investment consultant walking from his flat in St.James’s to his Mayfair office with a copy of the Sun under his arm. Similarly, you don’t see all that many Guardian readers on building-site lunch-breaks.
Rupert (Fox) Murdoch, who conveniently owns both the ‘Sun’ and ‘the
Times’, has, it seems, decided it’s time to knock some
holes in the glass wall. Obviously, not in any altruistic ‘let’s
help break down the class barriers’ kind of way – but because
he’s witnessed the Independent’s sales rocket upward
by 30% ! A salesincrease of 30% in the newspaper-world is more or less
equivalent to a divine miracle.
So, why has it been such a ripping success? One possible pointer is the fact
that the new sales are mainly in the so-called commuter belt. In other words
- it’s considered too tricky reading a broadsheet on a train or a bus
. . .
Well honestly, what a shower of namby-pambies. It just goes to show
doesn’t it ? There they are again, alive and kicking – do you
see ? The class divisions dear boy ! Now look here – I’ll have
you know that it takes a fair degree of practice, and requires a good grip
on the physics of paper-folding in a gravitational field ( combined with
real-time adjustments for moving air currents ) – but it can be done,
mark my words, oh yes. Once mastered, it gives one the opportunity to conceal
oneself from the gaze of all those dreadful Red-Top-readers.
No such thing as ‘The Class Divide’ anymore ? try this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk
blown out of proportion
A few days back, BBC news ran an interview with an American finance guru who happened to be visiting London. The subject of the interview was the FED’s interventions with interest-rate tweaking. At one point, the interviewee said that ‘ there is, at present, an undesirable low-level of inflation’ The journalist made no response to this, not even a raised eyebrow, and went on to the next question. Call me a pedant, but I was kind of expecting him to say ‘ er . . . hang on a sec . . . what exactly do you mean, “an undesirable low-level of inflation” ?’
Why, specifically, is low inflation a *bad-thing* ? Macro-economics is way
too complicated for my non-math brain, but I can do a few basic, unscientific,
simplistic, thought-experiments . . .
Imagine a world with zero inflation. There would be no wage-strikes, no
gradual price rises in the supermarket or the car showroom, and savings would
be safe. Doesn’t sound all that undesirable to me.?
So, using the John Lennon ‘who stands to benefit’ rule,
let’s see who would gain if high inflation takes hold. . .
One of the nastiest effects of the rampant inflation of the 1960’s and 70’s in the UK , was that millions of people saw their life-savings more or less evaporate. Although the banks put up their interest rates substantially, and paid more interest on Mr. Smith’s nest-egg, there was an enormous gap between what they actually paid and the losses through inflation. So, in real terms, Mr. Smith’s savings were worth less every month. In other words, the banks were making money on the difference between the interest they were paying, and the actual amount that the cash devalued. Neat eh?
Now to business. For many large corporations, their highest expense is their
wage bill. If inflation is high, that means that, every month, the cash which
they pay out in wages is worth less in real terms. They know that, sooner
or later, they are going to have to put up wages to compensate, but they
will more than likely wait for a strike, or credible threat of a strike,
before they do so. Just like the previous example, this gives them the opportunity
to make money, real money, in the ‘gap’ before the wage rises
come into effect. This gap can be months, or even years.
The same company can also use the ‘excuse’ of inflation to put
up its prices to consumers. In this case, we can be sure that there will be
little, if any gap, and sometimes the prices will be rising ahead of inflation,
in fact, they will be driving inflation.
There’s another hidden business-benefit too. The larger the inflation
index, the more difficult it will be for Mr. Smith to gauge the ‘real
value’ of a particular product, and so there is a bigger chance that
a supplier can overcharge without the rise being noticed. In an inflation-free
scenario, this can’t happen.
In short, ‘big-money’ likes inflation. It needs inflation. It makes
it much easier to squeeze a little more from the usual source - the punters
who haven’t got much.
Inflation and unemployment, the salt and pepper of capitalism.
end of Phase 1
Apparently ‘Phase 1’ of the Seti@Home programme is nearing to a close.
The Seti ( Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence ) website doesn’t give much away as far as information on progress is concerned. I can only assume that they haven’t found anything at all interesting yet – or they might have told everyone about it by now. There will, apparently, be a new ‘distributed computing’ network up-and-running soon, which may well be used in the continuing search for extraterrestrial communications. ( see http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ )
( In case anyone is unfamiliar with the concept – these systems use
downtime on individual PCs and Macs etc spread across the internet,
then collect and collate all the data that’s been run on them – thus
forming, in effect, an enormous and ultra-economical supercomputer. )
I wish the Seti project luck – but I reckon there’s a
fundamental tech- problem with their search . . .
It took humans around 50 years to go from the discovery of radio to the discovery of frequency-hopping ( see 19th Nov ) . When millions upon millions of transmissions are superimposed, all hopping frequencies, and over a huge variation of wavebands, - the resulting electromagnetic soup will look - and sound – like noise. Just like all the other naturally-ccurring noise in the universe as a whole.
In other words, if you were looking for telltale transmission signals from other worlds, you’d only have a window of perhaps a couple of hundred years or so ( assuming they’re as bright, or dull, as we are ) during which the easily identifiable fixed-frequency stuff will be transmitted. That cuts down our chances of spotting anything by a huge factor. If we happened to point our radio telescopes at a highly advanced planet – we’d only pick up a burst of what looks like random noise.
Of course, the idea of listening-in to alien transmissions can work in both directions. So, we can now be sure that, if there are any ‘advanced civilisations’ within fifty or so light-years from Earth, they will shortly start to receive the easily-decoded BBC black and white 405-line TV signals ! What a blast ! Can you imagine how unbelievably weird it will seem to them, getting TV from another planet ! It will doubtless become a cult hit – watching ‘Bill and Ben The Flowerpot Men’ after they get back from the SpaceBar on a Saturday night . . . .
‘Nuffink to do with me mate’
one of the many catch-phrases of Matt Lucas a.k.a. George
Dawes of ‘Shooting Stars’ fame.
Imagine the following scenario. You own a large quantity of lard. The lard
is in Rotherhithe, and you want it transported to Glasgow, where you can sell
it for a fat profit. From your offices in London’s splendid Cavendish
Square you engage the services of a lard-transporting company. The company
have a fleet of trucks. You hire one and it sets off up the M1, but unfortunately
it gets into to difficulties and overturns, spilling 37 tons of premium lard
onto the motorway. The emergency services turn up and try to cope, as best
they can, with the spillage. But it’s a fine mess. Worse than that, they
soon find that the truck had a string of serious defects, and was an accident
waiting to happen. The owner will be in big trouble. Only one problem – the
truck was ‘registered in the Bahamas’ . . . there’s nothing
can be done. Sorry. End of story.
So, who’s to blame? The owners of the lard? Well, if they knew the transport company was dodgy then yes, they should share the blame – but if they didn’t know, then it’s hardly their fault.
Howabout the transport company ? Well, they knew alright – but their head office is in Liberia, and the government there won’t hand over details or get involved in the case ( although rumour has it that the actual owner of the truck is, in fact, Greek and therefore accessible to EU law ). Maybe the Government of the Bahamas might help with the lard tragedy ? Yeah right ! Fat chance.
The foregoing badinage is a more or less accurate metaphor for what happened to the ‘Prestige’ oil tanker – whose sinking anniversary has just passed. The oil which came ashore has caused damage running into billions of Euros, killed countless numbers of birds, fish and crustacea – and most of it’s still down there – leaking out slowly.
So, a year later, have the owners/shippers/governments concerned been held to account ? Fat chance.
See the tangled, sticky, black, sickening web at :
http://observer.guardian.co.uk
Oil sure is dirty stuff dude !
none too excellent
Well , it’s eleven P.M. London time (20th Nov) and I’ve just checked the BBC website. Their lead story is the AntiBush march. The headline reads ‘Tens of thousands of people have protested in London . . . ‘ and then goes on to say that the organisers are claiming 150,000, while the police say it was more like 100,000 . . . As readers of this journal may be aware, mathematics is not a strong point of the author; so, could someone please explain how 100,000 can be classed as ‘tens of thousands’
If you were to buy a flat which cost between £100K and £150K, would you describe it to your friends as costing tens of thousands ? If you were a fishmonger and had a hundred or so crabs in a tank, would you tell your customers you had ‘tens’ of them ?
Deutsch-Welle, ( the German equivalent of BBC World ) however, had a rather different view on the demo. They called it ‘ the largest weekday demo in the history of the UK ‘ Ouch ! there seems to be a bit of a numeric discrepancy ? I wonder how that could have happened ?
Update: 12Hrs later . . . The BBC now have increased the estimate to 200,000, and included the factoid about the biggest weekday demo. They’re still calling it ‘tens of thousands though’. Why not call it ‘thousands’, or maybe ‘hundreds’ or perhaps ‘several’ ?
The story has now been dropped from the front page – and is now filed under the ‘Americas’ section of their news pages !
Hello ! BBC ! Anyone there ? I think you’ll find London is in the UK not the US . . .
Secure communications.
As time goes by, it’s getting less and less difficult to communicate with others, no matter where they are. At the same time though, it’s getting easier and easier for anyone with the right tech-know-how to eavesdrop.
There’s a whole crypto-industry which specialises in coding communications so that they can’t ( in theory ) be read by a third party. But history shows that technology behind codes is astonishingly flaky. All it takes is one person ( probably a mathematician ) to come up with a new trick for breaking the coding routines - and decades of work can be destroyed overnight. On top of that, there’s always the possibility that the body which approved the coding as secure in the first place had their own less than scrupulous reasons for seeing it become well established.
The media is always full of stories about techniques ‘ which would take the world’s meatiest supercomputers hundreds of years to break ’ An honest version of the same sentence would require the caveat - ‘er . . . unless someone does it tomorrow of course . . . ‘ In the end, if you really want to communicate securely, it’s definitely not a good idea to use a method which is mainstream.
To sidestep the problem, you could, for instance, enroll in an evening class on the Spanish island of ‘La Gomera’ and learn ‘Silbo’. It’s been a compulsory language in the island’s schools for four years now, but still only a few thousand people on the entire planet can understand it. So you can rest assured that the chances that any of the practitioners is a credit card hacker, or a Government eavesdropper in a Gloucestershire bunker, is very slim.
To hear a sample of the language goto:
http://www.agulo.net/silbo/silbo.mp3
Electronics going soft?
A few companies have demo-ed ‘smart houses’ whereby just about everything in the home is under electronic control, and can be accessed remotely. The idea, apart from the obvious ‘because it’s possible’ motive, is that you will be able to monitor your quarters from afar – and switch-on the microwave 1.5 minutes before you arrive, so that you’re greeted with a nice cup of warmed-up coffee. The current flavour-of-the-year method of interlinking the electronics is via Bluetooth™.
The Bluetooth™ chip itself is a very small, very sophisticated radio controller developed by Ericsson, which uses frequency-hopping to avoid interference with other devices. ( The hopping idea was first invented by Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, a.k.a. filmstar Hedy Lamarr, during WW2 ) The frequency bands which it uses are free-access without a special licence, and, in theory, it can provide secure, interference-free communication over short distances.
In theory . . . But the practice is a little more complicated. The protocol, i.e. the agreed programming routines for the chip can fill a manual several hundred pages long. Not surprising then, that some of the first public demos of the system by manufactures using the chip were often embarrassing affairs, with pesky journos sometimes discovering that there were actually interconnecting wires concealed behind the scenes. At one press launch, a manufacturer’s rep proudly proved that there was definitely no wire connecting his laptop to a printer. ( but unfortunately, if another Bluetooth™ device was switched on in the same room, it crashed the system.)
Things have improved a lot since then though, and now millions of devices, from mobile phones to central heating systems, have been utilising the chip.
My point? In a word , *reliability*. The idea behind the technology is vulnerable. Firstly to oversaturation. Because the waveband it uses is free, there are other competing systems which also use it. All utterly incompatible, and all interfering with each other. ( One of Bluetooth’s competitor chips doesn’t even freq-hop, and so hog’s the entire waveband.) As such devices become more and more ubiquitous, so they will become more and more gummed-up in the tsunami of competing digital commands all operating at the same time – whether freq-hopping or not. As well as that, it’s recently become mainstream enough to attract the attentions of hackers and spammers - who have been sending dross messages to Tooth-enabled mobile phone users – and, in the last few days, there have been reports of the usual ‘steal the address-book’ hacks.
Doubtless the chip itself is flawless, but the idea of wireless digital control for everything – all the time - isn’t.
To sum up: fine for applications which aren’t that crucial – but very probably not the first choice for critical applications. So, if you were thinking of rigging up your gas cooker so that it can be remotely controlled . . . for the time being, it may be best to stick to some very long wires and a switch.
(see predictions page )
Some more thoughts on ‘Drive-By-Wire’ .
Although several major car manufactures have built prototype ‘drive by wire’ vehicles, none is in production yet. The cars can be made to work well in the lab – but on the road is a very different matter. There is one area however, where tentative steps have been taken to add DBW in a small way. Cruise Control.
The original systems were purely mechanical linkages, and of course suffered occasional failures. Always a problematic area, there have been dozens of court cases across the globe, usually involving claims of sudden uncontrolled acceleration. Many of the accidents have been fatal. But recently, car-makers have been implementing electronically controlled versions – and the failures haven’t gone away. The court cases continue to be filed. The in-house legal teams for the manufactures must be keeping a very close eye on this area, which is, in effect, a toe-in-the-water as far as DBW goes.
A glitch in your office PC may trash a database and give you a headache for a few days – a glitch in the firmware of your car’s speed control may give you more serious health problems.
Aircraft makers have ( for the most part ) got round the problems by using the same techniques that Victorian engineers used when they built bridges. They figure-out how robust a system has to be, and then make it ten times stronger. Many aircraft with ‘fly-by-wire’ systems now have four computers, all made by different companies, all programmed by different teams, using different programming languages. Only when all four machines agree on a command is any action taken. In a sense, the computers ‘vote’ on whether things are ok or not. But this way of clobbering the glitches is very expensive. And ‘expensive’ is a very dirty word in the car-making industry.
The aircraft builders also go to extreme lengths to screen the electronics from electromagnetic interference. But, as we know, even this sophisticated level of protection can’t necessarily keep out even the meagre transmissions from a mobile phone or computer game on board the aircraft.
So, ten years from now, don’t even think about using your mobile while driving . . .
little bro'
Well, it looks like the UK Government’s ‘Snoopers Charter’ is going to go ahead. The bill passed through the House of Lords a couple of days back. The legislation insists that ‘Communication Service Providers’ ( CSP’s) keep exhaustive records of all their customers’ activities. That means, electronic logs must be kept of every phone call ( numbers & locations ), every e-mail, every website visited - for everybody in the UK. All this data will then be freely available to most ‘government agencies’ e.g. your local council, on demand, without a warrant of any kind.
Personally, I’ve no doubt whatever that all this info is currently available to Big Bro’ already. After all, we now know, thanks to various persistent investigative journalists in the 1990’s, that all international phone calls in and out of the UK have been recorded for decades. Nowadays, they can be analysed by supercomputer for ‘Key-Words’. And lately, it’s been alleged that all UK mobile calls are recorded too. Hacking into web and e-mail traffic would be a simple matter in comparison.
The irony of the situation is that, according to rumour, the powers-that-be are drowning under an ocean of data already. Key-Words popping up by the tens of thousands every day. ( including spoofs of course . . . ) The computers can cope alright – but what do you actually *do* with all the results ? In the end, all it’s good-for is as a double-checking mechanism – something you can look into - if your interest is aroused for some other reason.
But this Bill really does change things. It takes the info from the desks of the elite , and passes it downwards. A long, long, way downwards. It will make it possible for any tech-savvy dork from your local council to check out virtually every detail of your life which involves a phone or a computer – without permission from anybody. Quite a few local council’s in the UK don’t exactly have a squeaky-clean record when it comes to nefarious activities. Bribes, persecution, vote-rigging – the works. To any who are really intent on monkey-business, this new data will be a gift-from-the-God’s.
Big Bro’ is drowning, but soon there’ll be thousands of ‘Little Bro’s’.
p.s. Bizarrely, your friendly local Post Office doesn’t appear to be considered as a CSP, so posting a letter might soon be the most secure way of communicating. For the time being – but legislation is already gearing up in the US, for example, which will make the tracking of all mail compulsory . . . Next it’ll be carrier pigeons.
for sale :
Hmmm. Not q u i t e sure if this a spoof or not. http://www.spadedev.com is auctioning a satellite on E-bay™. Bidding ends on 20th Nov - and the reserve is a hefty $9.5M ( including insurance ) . They’ve had one bid already, but unfortunately only a rather derisory quarter of a million. If anyone wins the bid, they’ll be able to supply their own payload, and attend the launch ! K3wl !
The company’s website says that it provides ‘ affordable and innovative space products ‘ Rrrrrright.
I’ll be keeping an eye open to see if anyone wins though, because I might approach them with my art-in-space idea, ( unfortunately no longer original ) which is to launch into orbit a very lightweight miniature sculpture. I had the idea twenty years or so back, but held off till now because . . .
1) couldn’t afford it, and
2) I was concerned about adding to the ‘space-junk’ problem.
I now have a fix for this aspect. The sculpture would be carved from a small block of solid camphor – which would evaporate in the space vacuum after a few hours.
I can picture the analysis in Art Review now . . . ‘ - A poignant
symbol of the brevity, and levity, of the human condition - ’. Love
it.
updated note : it failed to reach its reserve price.
Doh !
I'm in a lay-by
If you live in the UK, you only have two weeks left to make dangerous calls from your mobile while driving.
There’s a fair bit of confusion as to what’s lawful and what’s not, and naturally the mobile phone stores are busily selling all kinds of hands-free gizmos and attachments which they claim will be legal to use ( don’t bet on it ). The new law, which is detailed on the Government’s website ( cut’n’paste link below ) is kind of, maybe, not too confused, possibly.
What it seems to boil down to, are two basic points. One is that you can’t ‘hold’ the phone while you make a call. They define ‘to hold’ rather vaguely, and it includes ‘holding’ between ear and shoulder. I can think of some other ways to ‘hold’ a phone, but they aren’t mentioned . . .
But the main point is that you can’t use the phone if it will distract you from driving. And, surprise surprise, this is covered under a 1986 law which insists that you must have ‘proper control of the vehicle’ at all times. In other words, the Police have had the power to wield against in-car-mobile-phone-users for at least fifteen years or so. ( I suspect before that too. ) ( Oddly, the new law doesn’t apply to bicycles – I would have thought that it may be slightly distracting to make a call from one, but there you go.)
Personally, I’ve no doubt whatever that many people really do have trouble concentrating on their call and driving. In fact, many have trouble concentrating on a call and walking. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen call-distracted pedestrians step straight off the curb in London’s mega-busy Oxford St. and walk blithely across in front of oncoming traffic without so much as a sideways glance - utterly unaware that they just came within inches of becoming an organ-donor. The unlucky ones may step out in front of a bus driver who’s making a call – that’s a fairly common sight as well.
If we’re having this much trouble with mobiles, imagine what’s going to happen when ‘head-up’ displays start becoming common in vehicles . . . but perhaps, by then, the computer will be doing the driving anyway.
Here’s the government’s easy-to-remember link:
http://www.dft.gov.uk
hellish
In the news this week, the strangest of all metals. Exotic, to say the least, as it doesn’t naturally exist. Not on Planet-Earth anyway - only the man-made variety does. In the 1940’s it was so incredibly difficult to produce that it had to be made microgram by microgram, and the cost of producing a few Kilograms was astronomical. For it’s time, the process was unbelievably exotic, and, of course, utterly secret. Needless to say though, after a very public demonstration of its uses overhead Nagasaki in Aug 1945, every nation with enough tech-resources and raw cash was desperate to start making it. Hence the rush to build nuclear ‘power stations’ - which also had the useful by-product of electricity generation.
Over the years 50 years or so, so much of the material has been manufactured
and stockpiled, that nowadays, there’s not really any need for the ‘developed’ world
to make any more. In fact, there’s a glut. It has become the first
metal in the history of humanity to become worthless ( in financial terms
). Due to difficulties in storage and security, its price, on the ‘white’ market
anyway, has now dropped below zero.
But for countries outside the ‘nuclear club’ things are very different.
They will try, by any means necessary, to get their hands on the stuff – just
as the club members themselves did in previous years. So we now have a situation
where some countries have a glut of worthless material – and other countries
which will happily cripple their economy and commit international crimes to
get their hands on some. . . . Strange stuff indeed.
A critically unstable out-of–this-world metal which specialises in causing global instability. Whoever it was who picked the name for the newly discovered metal in 1940 did a magnificent job - Pluto was, and presumably still is, the Roman God of Hell.
A couple of daft-tech updates.
One is daft because it won’t work, the other because – it won’t work either.
Sony Music is launching an updated version of its music CD copy
protection on Monday. ( For some reason, only in Germany ? ) The new system,
called ‘connecteD’ (sic.) , will attempt to thwart
users from uploading tracks to Kazaa-style websites. A previous
version of copy –protection was soon sidestepped by a sophisticated
hack – involving sticking a small piece of Post-It Note™ to
the CD. Doh! Anyone want to place bets on how long this one will last?
The second one. The South Korean government has just issued a legal directive to all mobile phone manufacturers in the country. From now on, they must ensure that all new phones which are equipped with a camera must ‘beep’ when a photo is taken. The beep must be at least 65dB loud, which, according to the politicians, will be enough to alert anyone nearby that their picture is being taken. The legislation follows court cases involving complaints from persons who were snapped without permission in less than helpful circumstances.
Maybe I haven’t understood the sophistication of the directive, but I would have thought that anyone who was intent on taking dodgy photos without asking may well place their thumb over the bleeper outlet. Or perhaps a glob of chewing-gum would do it? No, hang on, it’s illegal in Korea . . . er . . . no , sorry, that’s Singapore . . . oh whatever.
pontifications
The Vatican has been holding a two day conference on GMO’s
this week. The Church hopes to "gather the greatest number of informative
facts on GMOs, which will later serve as the basis for ethical and pastoral
discernment," Which seems like a reasonable idea. Although they
do have a track record of getting hold of the wrong end of the stick on a
biblical scale. ( like trying to persuade people in AIDS-ravaged countries
not to use condoms, for instance . . . see entry 10th Oct)
Anyway, here’s some hopefully informative factoids which they might like
to add to their list . . .
1) there are now 40Million hectares of farmland permanently growing GM crops in the US. ( that’s an area 20 times the size of Wales )
2) 60% of food in US supermarkets is now GM based – there are no labeling requirements, so consumers can’t tell which is which. ( even if they cared, which, according to surveys, most don’t. )
3) In the ten years since commercial GM crops have been grown in the US, there has been substantial ‘leakage’ of GM genes, to such an extent that some crops, e.g. Oilseed Rape ( Canola) , can no longer be grown ‘organically’ in many areas. The same will soon apply to maize, soya, and rice.
4) Farmers who opt for the GM route have to sign ‘technology agreements’ in which, unusually for farmers, they agree *not* to save seeds for replanting next year. The GM industry sues seven to ten farms a year who are caught ‘cheating’. They win the cases, because their products are patented, and using them without permission is patent infringement.
5) Many GM products have specially designed ‘terminator genes’ which prevent seed germination, the idea being to stop mischievous farmers cheating and re-planting seed without paying. In theory, these genes can’t ‘leak’ into other plants – because, by definition, affected plants can’t breed. However, if a ‘crippled’ or mutated version were to leak out, so-called ‘gene-hopping’, it has the potential to permanently damage plant reproduction on a global basis. Trees, flowers, vegetables - the works.
6) Along with the intended GM genes, virtually every modified organism also contains remnant genes from bacteria which have been specially bred to be immune to antibiotics. ( they are used in the engineering process ) If ( i.e. when ) these genes ‘leak’ back into ‘wild’ bacteria, the pontif’s flock might want to start looking for another planet.
7) No health risks have ever been consistently demonstrated regarding diets which are based on ‘blue-tomatoes’ ‘glow-in-the-dark-fish’ or ‘cabbages-with-added-scorpion-venom’. ( all commercial products ). Let’s give it another 20 years shall we?
Here ends the sermon.
More info on gene-leakage see meme_07.htm
And then there were four - then three.
Well, ok, it hasn’t happened yet , but it looks like it will. Record company ‘mergers’ are on the horizon again.
On Friday it was announced that Sony and BMG intend to ‘merge’. Now they have to wait for the all-important permissions from the relevant governments. But EMI and TimeWarner are also trying to get hitched, so the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the Monopolies Commission or whatever they are called nowadays, are going to have some tricky equations to evaluate. Because if permissions are granted, there will then only be three companies who effectively control the global $31 Billion music industry.
If the ‘big five’ morph into the ‘big three’ then why not the ‘big two’ ? and of course, eventually, the ‘Big One’ ?
Presumably when these types of mega-merger take place, the companies pool their assets, but also their debts, which can be huge. BMG’s website lists their 2002 ‘Net Financial Debt’ ( whatever that means ) at €2.7 Billion. It really does look like a real-life gargantuan Monopoly™ game being played out for our amusement.
I can’t help imagining a ‘Blofeld’ type character in his trillion-dollar control room in ten years or so, listening to a Dolly Parton recording on the world’s most expensive Hi-fi – humming along to her latest ( as yet unwritten ) cheese-infused track entitled ‘ You’re mine – all mine ’.
A lighter note again.
Freakin’ white webpages that’s what!
OK, it’s not easy designing a website, and getting everything right first time is virtually impossible. But, over the years during which the www has been evolving, several features have emerged, which can be filed in the category ‘universally detested by everyone’. Here’s ( just ) the top part of the list.
1) Everyone hates banner ads, Especially ones that flash. They suck
2) Everyone hates popup windows, and auto-maximise windows.
3) Everyone hates freakin’ white backgrounds !
If, by any chance, you work at a computer screen all day, like only God and Bill Gates knows how many people do nowadays, You will suffer from eyestrain. Everyone does. You can help to minimise the strain by taking frequent breaks, and by looking at a far-off object now and again to re-focus. Secondly, set up your screen with some subdued colours. Not freakin’ white ! Unfortunately, if you do this, then, when you innocently call up a website which has vast expanses of white background, IT WILL BE LIKE SOMEONE SHOUTING AT YOU.
The usual response from the voluntary snow-blindness camp is - ‘ yes but paper’s usually white isn’t it? you know, papers, magazines, books, all white aren’t they? hmmm? ' - Yes they are. BUT THEY’RE NOT FREAKIN’ ILLUMINATED ARE THEY ? When’s the last time you saw a freakin’ TV channel that always has a white background?
Pass the aspirin someone . .
amphibionauts
The German-based surveillance-satellite building company OHB has an interesting sideline. The make special tanks for aquatic plants, amphibians and fish, which can be taken into orbit. Quite why scientists would want to take zebra-fish and frogs into orbit I’ve never figured out – other than for the obvious twisted pleasure the astronauts can get watching zebra-fish swimming round and round inside large, gravity-free globs of water.
The company clearly has a sense of humour, because the product they manufacture is called ‘Closed Equilibrated Biological Aquatic System’ ( pron. Seabass’ ) . They also breed suitable specimens to take along, and one of their frogs ( sorry, name not supplied ) has been to Earth-orbit and back three times ! I’m not sure if they are aware of it, but I think that must be a record-breaking achievement . . . Have any other (non-human) animals been to space and back so often ?
' Frogs in Space eh? What are the chances of that ‘appnin ? mmm? mmm?' . Seriously though, somewhere up there in orbit, a frog is watching every move you make.
Can a virus make you fat ?
It’s odd how stories circulate and recirculate, this one has just appeared in the New York Daily News – In fact , the story is at least three years old now, but I guess the NYDN didn’t catch it the first time. Personally though, I think that a news item is best served hot.
The story originates from a study in India which used ‘ commercially available ’ ( don’t ask ) viruses to infect chicken to see if it made them fat. Wouldn’t you know it, but the second one they picked, AD-36, showed that it did ! What luck they had ! They then claimed that the virus, which is in the same group which causes common colds and can infect humans, might be causing an epidemic !
Headlines immediately appeared suggesting that the ‘ outbreak’ of obesity in the ‘developed world’ could be caused by a virus. An interesting theory. As yet, however, proof of the idea is in short supply. It shouldn’t be too difficult to test though, just screen the obesity sufferers and see if more of them have antibodies to the virus than do the ‘normal’ population. ( This had better be done soon, because in the States 50% of the population are now classed as obese, so that makes the definition of ‘normal’ a bit tricky. Let’s look on the bright side though – it means Boeing will be making aircraft seats bigger . . . )
Secondly, if it is caused by an infectious virus we would be able to spot the tell-tale signs of a spreading infection, as it’s symptoms move though populations in the form of a wave.
So, how’s the evidence stacking up ? W e l l , it’s not really . . .
Time for another experiment then. Here’s one ; admittedly it will take ten or twenty years to run . . . how about raising an entire population on a diet of meat from cattle which have spent their whole lives being given daily ultra-high doses of growth-promoting hormones and antibiotics ? As an added fillip we could mix the meat with lots of fat-soaked carbohydrates for extra effect , I suggest chips ( fries ) might be a good candidate.
Anyways, what’s wrong with fat chickens ? Cuts down on th’ cookin’ oil and, just makes ‘em fry better boy! Where can we git some o that ol’ AD36 ?
drive by wire
Bertone, the famous Italian design group, have been proudly driving around their new ‘Novanta’ vehicle. ( ok, it’s not that new, but they’re still tweaking it ) Bertone love to innovate, and one of their latest innovations is in regard to the Novanta’s steering wheel – it hasn’t got one. It’s got a kind of aircraft-style / video-game controller. The main difference between the controller and a normal steering wheel though, is that the controller isn’t connected to the front wheels. At least, not connected in a basic mechanical sense. The Novanta is a ‘drive-by-wire’ vehicle.
The aircraft industry has been using similar techniques for decades, mainly because the physical distance between the pilot and the control-surfaces makes mechanical linkages very cumbersome and heavy. The Novanta’s steering controller is, in fact, a sensor, which generates electronic signals about it’s current position and sends the data to a computer. The computer then analyses the data, and sends relevant commands to hydraulic or electrical actuators nearby the front wheels.
So far so good – kind of . . . The problem with digital systems is that they are either working or not-working, alive or dead, black or white. There is no in-between state for zeros and ones. Analogue systems ( like a 3cm diameter steel rod connected from the steering wheel to the steering-box ) can very easily half-function. They go wobbly, get sticky, grate and grind. If they are substantially well built though, it’s very rare for them to fail without warning. You generally get signs ( the symptoms mentioned above ) if things are going wrong. Sometimes these warning signs can last for months. With a digital system, you get a warning which lasts a few milliseconds at best.
The Novanta is not a production car, although it can and does work, ( videos of it in action do tend to imply it’s not going very fast though – well, it’s got drive-by-wire brakes as well . . . ) but there is likely to be a long wait before any manufacturer is brave enough to launch a drive-by-wire production model.
Their engineers, but, more importantly, their lawyers, will have to have absolute
confidence in it first.
( see www.Really Magazine/cartoons)
running dry
The giant Russian oil firm Yukos has been in the news the last few days after its chief was thrown in jail on corruption charges. Some analysts have said that the arrest was politically motivated. It could well be. On the other hand, a corrupt businessman in charge of a huge corporation ? No? Surely not? As a comment on Pravda’s website put it . . . ‘ (I) Have an equation for everyone. Politician = special interests = corruption = communist or capitalist. ‘ . .
As they say, a dog-bites-man story really. The point that I do find interesting
though, is the government’s appointment of the new chief , Simon
Kukes . . . He’s an oil-man , and . . . he’s an American
citizen !
There are also two other US citizens on the board which now runs Yukos.
Well, things certainly are a-changin’ in Russia ! Can you imagine the
US government appointing three Muscovites to head Texaco ?
I feel a prediction coming on . . . There will be a major oil deal between Russia and the US any day now.
comment: July 2004. There was no giant oil deal, so the prediction was wrong. But the Yukos affair is still rolling on. It seems as though the Russian government is determined to bankrupt the company, who, they claim, owes billions in back-taxes.
news flash ( heh! ).
Checkout the sunspots via the links page. The gas cloud from the largest solar flare ever recorded will be reaching Earth today or tomorrow, so we can expect some fireworks ( purleese . . . ) It was so large the sensors on-board the sun observation satellite went off-scale . . . ( p.s., I wouldn’t rely too much on your g.p.s. system for a couple of days !)
Curioser and curioser . . .
I’ve always thought there are some very odd things about Google. The first odd thing is its speed. They allegedly get around 150 Million searches a day - that’s roughly two every thousandth of a second. The response-time for every single one of those searches is only a couple of seconds. For a search through 3Billion web pages, each of which may contain kilobytes of data. Whatever is at the Google end doing the searching must be the mother of all computers.
Rumour has it that they use a thousand or so networked pc’s running Linux, and some sophisticated search algorithms. Er . . . . nah , sorry, doesn’t parse. There’s only one way it could be done at the rate it works, and that’s with the m.o.a.c. mentioned above.
The second thing is the secrecy surrounding the company. They very often don’t respond at all to press questions and comments, and don’t publish details of their ‘special algorithms’. Very much a closed community – with mountains of arcane data, on everything . . .
They are in the news at the moment regarding their possible stock floatation next year. I’ve just checked the UK Guardian’s story, which says that ‘ it’s probably worth around $15B to $25B - generating revenue from advertising which appears alongside search results’
W e l l , I’ve just checked Google in the first obvious place to find ads - the front page. There are none.
O.K., let’s do a search. Search returned. Any ads there ? No.
Let’s check their news pages. Any ads? No.
You can always tell when a magazine is about to go under ; when there aren’t
enough ads. But Google goes from strength to strength. - Errr, sorry
guys, but exactly where’s all the cash coming from ?
I’ve noticed a lot of websites recently which have started publishing pages under the title ‘caution regarding forward looking statements’ In other words, texts which spell out, in very clear terms, that no-one should rely on predictions made elsewhere on the site, and that everyone should be very cautious, especially when investing money.
So here’s my own ‘forward looking statement’ regarding my personal take on Google, which, needless to say, should be treated with much caution. I predict that the float will be a very problematic affair. They might raise money selling shares to thousands of very small punters who have no way of checking or understanding what’s really going on. But the BigBoys will want to know every last detail of how the system works. Details, which, up until now, are not at all forthcoming. A takeover? Yes, very likely, from some other megalith that wants to get its hands on what-Google’s-got.
What has it got ? Search me.
Update ; The float was far from problem free - but not for the reasons we gave . . .
uhuh ?
Most people don’t like seeing creatures suffer, and I’m beginning to get a bit squeamish about watching the throes of the ‘big-five’ record companies as they try ever more terminally hopeless methods to protect themselves against piracy. Just a couple of months back, BMG made a big PR splash, announcing to the world that their future releases would be using a new copy-protection software called MediaMax to protect the CD’s.
The company which developed the system, SunnComm, ( whose website’s hook-line is ‘lightyears beyond encryption ‘ . . . classic! ) say, in their press release, that the system has ‘an incredible level of security.’
I think I’m right in saying that the root of the word ‘incredible’ comes from the same source as the word ‘credulity’ , viz. something that can be believed in. So, something that’s ‘incredible’ – can’t.
Anyway, it can’t according to Princeton University’s computer department, who’s tech gurus tested BMG’s first copy-protected release and rapidly ascertained that anyone who simply held down the **** key while the CD loaded could bypass the entire system. Doh !
BMG aren’t saying how much it cost to implement the system, buy I think we can safely assume that their investment in licensing and setting up the technology would make Britney Spears’ annual clothes budget look like loose-change.
Look away, it’ll be over soon.
lovely grain though . . .
If you happen to be in London and you need some quality furniture, check out the shops in Tottenham Court Rd. W.1. You’ll find plenty of extremely substantial pieces, tables, beds, wardrobes, garden furniture etc - all made of delectable solid oak. The prices are really low too, so low in fact, that you’ll find you can buy a solid oak table for less than a similar model made out of cheesy-veneered chipboard . . . And oak is a fabulous wood. Indoors it will last for centuries, outdoors for decades. It’s incredibly strong, looks fantastic, it even smells lovely. That’s why there’s none left in the UK.
At one time, England was more or less covered in mature oak forest. Gone. All gone. ( well most of it, there are still bits and pieces left, all protected by law. ) So I asked one of the shop-staffers where the wood came from . . ‘Oh, it’s Lithuanian’ he replied. ‘Really? Are they just flattening the place?’ ‘Oh no, we have a certificate, it’s all from managed forest’.
Rrrrrrrrrrright. So the shop has a Lithuanian certificate which says ‘Yeverything is fine, don uuworry’
In fact, the Lithuanian company guarantees that they are replacing each tree they cut down with two new ones. Or, put another way, for every majestic mighty oak they fell - they plant a couple of acorns.
I happened to catch a TV interview a few days back with a forester from nearby Romania, where much the same thing is going on.
‘So’ asks the interviewer ‘Are there forestry inspectors to keep an eye on things ?’
‘Oh yes, indeed ! ’
‘Has your company been inspected’
‘Nah, we haven’t seen one in twenty years . . .’
Yes, of course, they are flattening the place.
An oak tree takes around 200 years to grow to a point where the wood is useful. Then there is another 200 years where it improves and solidifies. The last 200 years it dies back. So, if you were to ‘farm’ an oak plantation, as a rough guide, you couldn’t cut down more that one tree in 300 every year. In other words, the main body of forest would always have to be 300 times bigger than the bit you would like to chop down. I feel a Harry Hill moment approaching … ’ What are the chances of that appening eh? eh? eh? . . . ‘
The timber industry in Lithuania is huge, 30% of the country is (still) covered in forest, and 60,000 people work in the industry. A local saying has it that ‘everyone has a relative who works in the sawmills’. They desperately need the cash, and they’ve found that countries in the EU will happily buy as much as they can chop down ( providing of course they get sight of an acorn-planting statement )
Lithuania and Romania will be part of the EU in 2004, so presumably then they will be subject to strict(er) logging control. Possibly maybe. In the meantime, rush head over heels to Tottenham Court Rd.
The Shape of Things to Come. (you read it here first)
Oh dear. I was just gearing myself up to possibly think about maybe perhaps tentatively investigating Linux when this happens. One of the Linux vendors, Mandrake, which is reckoned to be one of the best value-for-money packagers, has recently released a version of its software (9.2) with a bug. We’ve all got used to endemic operating-system bugs which crash systems, lose data, cause delays, and generally raise blood pressure worldwide on a second by second basis. But this one is substantially different. It eats CD drives. Believe it or don’t, the software fault can overwrite the ‘firmware’ of the drive - turning it into a useful doorstop - permanently.
Firmware is, of course, just another piece of software, but it’s built into many computer components as a very low-level operating-system for the device itself. It’s stored in a so-called Flash-Eprom chip, in other words, a memory chip which holds its data even when the power is off. If it gets overwritten though, the whole device is dead meat. Normally, these firmware chips are very well protected, and in fact , the main operating system never touches them ( thank goodness ). But in theory it can, and Mandrake 9.2 does.
They’ve issued a hasty patch, and I’m sure the system is fine now – but the implications ? - Strewth ! . . . The last thing I’d want to do is encourage hackers, but this event makes very obvious the possibilities of new kinds of computer viruses, which, as far as I know don’t exist yet – but they will . . .
I’m talking terminal. Ones which disable a system’s harware permanently by ‘flushing’ the firmware of the basic devices from which the machine is built. That includes, of course, the machine’s motherboard as well as any of the peripherals.
As someone who has accidentally overwritten the firmware on a new motherboard, (don’t ask ) I can assure readers that it turns a very expensive ultra-high-tech piece of equipment into a lump of junk in a second or so. There’s no fix. You throw it away, or send it back to the manufacturer to get it reprogrammed ( but that costs more than buying a new one. )
Oh dear, time for a rename I think – how about ‘jellyware’ or ‘floppyware’ or ‘house-of-cards-ware’ ?
‘Glad to see the back of it’
. . . was the enigmatic comment from one New Yorker as Concorde left for the last time. From my point of view, I don’t think the back of Concorde looked too bad, in fact I think it was pretty stylish in a 1970’s way - but it certainly sounded bad and smelled bad. It was just about the noisiest, pollutioniest and annoyingest passenger aircraft ever to fly, and it was, of course, doomed to failure even before it got to the drawing board.
The sonic booms it created were so outrageously loud that, soon after its first flights, it was banned from travelling over any country at more than the speed of sound. That’s a slight drawback for a supersonic airliner. Like the Nasa moon-landings, the UK / French project had more to do with prestige than practicality. It was going to ahead no matter what.
Needless to say, the designers knew perfectly well about the impracticalities, because hundreds of military jets had already demonstrated what sonic booms were like. Easily loud enough to shatter glass windows 35.000 feet below.
There are now some aeronautic designers who claim that it’s possible to build faster-than-sound planes which have a greatly reduced boom, but this involves making the plane substantially bulgier and rounder - hardly Concorde supersonic design elegance. The bulbous shape also means that it’s going to be just a little bit difficult to push through the air at Mach 2. ( although if you bolt on big enough jet-engines, just about anything can be made to ‘fly’ )
The only practical solution to extremely fast intercontinental travel will be vehicles which venture outside the atmosphere before they get a speed up. And that’s going to cost. Big time. For the foreseeable future, there would only ever be handfuls of mega-rich passengers, not enough to pay back the development costs, let alone make a profit for the airline.
Personally, I’d rather the airlines ploughed all that R&D cash into that incredibly tricky, and technologically challenging problem which has been plaguing air travel for the past few decades. How can you feel comfortable in a seat that’s deliberately been built too small for you? If they can crack that one, then a seven hour flight won’t feel like the fourteen it does at the moment.
Case solved. Huge seats, acres of legroom – perceived airspeed doubled.
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