Archive for 2008

I came across this post on Gizmodo today, with the following video:

Stripped by a Mechanical Shovel! - video powered by Metacafe

Years ago, when I still lived on an acreage, we had a delivery of bricks for the construction of our retaining wall. The delivery truck had a little crane on it, and the guy used the crane to drop the eight or nine pallets of bricks with elegant precision and near-total economy of motion. It was a small thing, but I doubt the worker realized just how impressive his skill was. Likewise, we had a fellow do some Bobcat work on the front half-acre of our yard, and there was nary a missed step as tons of dirt was shifted and ground levels adjusted to control the flow of water across our property. The merger between human and machine was nearly poetic.

I admire the skills of these ballet masters of the mechanical- a testimony to the ability of humans to turn the mundane into something of beauty.

Irene and I arrived home last night after our Las Vegas vacation. I have spent most of today perched here on a chair going through our photos and posting them to the gallery. Here is one of my favorite photos:

I took this picture Saturday evening: that is the Paris Hotel and Casino, with its half-scale version of the Eiffel tower.

During our three full days in Vegas, we did the following:

• Day 1:

• • to the strip during daylight hours, rode the monorail, saw the Eiffel tower and went to the top, visited the Star Trek Experience at the Hilton, watched part of the Bellagio fountain exhibit
  • returned at night, saw the Eiffel tower again, watched the Bellagio fountain show

• Day 2:
  • drove to Hoover Dam, took full tour
  • continued drive around Lake Mead to Valley of Fire

• Day 3:
  • back to the strip again, went to Siegfried and Roy’s Secret Garden at the Mirage
  • shopped at Caesar’s Palace mall
  • explored MGM Grande and Excalibur on our way to the Las Vegas Luxor, where we saw the Tutankhamun exhibit

By the end of Day 3, my feet were killing me- every hotel in Vegas is at least a mile long, or so it seems, and to get from one monorail entrance to a particular hotel/casino usually involves walking through two or three of these massive structures. The monorail was great, by the way: $9 a person for a 24 hour ticket- ride as much as you want. My favorite parts of the trip were the times when we were able to get away from the casinos themselves. Which leads to my opinions about Las Vegas.

What did I think about Vegas? Well, it is definitely worth seeing- Irene and I had a great time, getting a real mental break from the normal day to day. There is a tremendous amount of entertainment compressed in a small area, and there is always something going on. Would I go again? Probably, but I don’t think I’d make Vegas itself my primary “hub” for touring. It is too loud, too bright, and too tiring. I don’t drink or gamble to excess, so a big chunk of the appeal of Vegas is lost on me.

It is probably worth noting that the drinks may still be cheap in Vegas, but everything else is pretty expensive these days. Expect buffet prices to start at $15 per person for breakfast, and about $20 a person for supper. Don’t get me wrong, that isn’t a bad price at all: but if you expect to eat for $10 a day in Vegas in the 21st century, you are out of touch. If you want to attend a show, the prices start at about $45 per person and climb based on the fame of the show’s star and the seating location. Bette Midler or Cher command $150+ a person, with really good seats going for $900 a person: note that most of the tickets for the “name star” shows are sold out months in advance. Cirque de Soleil shows (of which there are several: Zumanity, Ka, O… ) are $75-$125 per seat. Some magician I’ve never heard of before costs about $45 a seat. Budget accordingly.

The casinos in Vegas are still all “smoking permitted”, and I found that to be a lot tougher for me to deal with than I expected. All of the public spaces *other than* casinos are non-smoking. However, all the buildings are structured to herd you right through the gaming floor, often several times as you make your way from one attraction to the next. I noticed that I was rushing, almost running through the casino floors in order to get to clear air again. And invariably some guy wearing far too much gold for someone with so much grey hair and belly flab would come around the corner with a $50 cigar blowing smoke in my face just when I thought the air was breathable again. It was worse for Irene, but she put up with it far more stoically than I expected.

When we go back to Vegas, and I’m sure we will one day, I think we’ll focus more on going to a few shows or exhibits over several days instead of trying to see several per day. Without long rests sitting in front of a slot machine or gaming table, the walking is just too much- like I said, my feet were literally killing me. I also think we’ll probably pick a more centrally located hotel like Caesar’s Palace or Bellagio.

Did we gamble at all while in Vegas? I put $1 into a slot machine at Ballys and came away with $2: I briefly had $5. We also plugged a twenty into one of our favorite machines (Hexbreaker), and came away with $35. That was pretty much it for our gambling. And despite the miles and miles of walking, and the fact that I missed quite a few meals, I actually somehow gained weight while on vacation.

Apropos of nothing, here is a video I shot of the dolphins while we were at Siegfried and Roy’s Secret Garden…

I will be away from home for the next week and a bit. I’m flying to Las Vegas in a few hours to attend a work-related technical conference. That ends next Friday, at which point Irene is flying down to join me and we’ll spend a long weekend seeing the sights in Vegas.

I will have Internet access, but I doubt I’ll be making any updates or blog postings while I’m away- I expect to be pretty busy. Rest easy, though: I’ll be back in ten days, refreshed and ready to post- hopefully you’ll all survive without your Uber Geek fix

Liars, damned liars, and statistics. Apparently, several of the most “reliable” temperature recording surveys in the world indicate that the Earth’s average temperatures are actually showing a downward trend during the last decade. But the single most quoted source, NASA, says exactly the opposite. From an article on The Register…

How can scientists who report measurements of the earth’s temperature within one one-hundredth of a degree be unable to concur if the temperature is going up or down over a ten year period? Something appears to be inconsistent with the NASA data - but what is it?

One clue we can see is that NASA has been reworking recent temperatures upwards and older temperatures downwards - which creates a greater slope and the appearance of warming.

[From Is the earth getting warmer, or cooler? | The Register]

The report suggests that NASA has been “correcting” historical temperature records using some method known only to them. These corrections don’t agree with anyone else’s historical records, and result in a more convincing upward slope in temperatures over the last century than anyone else’s data. Interestingly, the man in charge of the NASA data is Dr. James Hansen: science advisor to Al Gore, and a luminary in the global warming advocacy movement.

There are a ton of interesting links and data in the article. What is the truth? Well, as I’ve said before, I think humans have had a major negative impact on the world’s environment and climate, and it is critically important to start doing something about it. But I also think we barely understand how the climate actually works, and if we are being fed rejiggered data by various supposedly authoritative bodies then the job of trying to figure out the reality becomes increasingly impossible.

There is a lot of evidence of misdirection and outright lying on both sides of the global warming discussion: enough to make me doubt where the truth actually lies. There are obvious (to me, at least) political agendas here. Unfortunately, scientists are human just like the rest of us: subject to arrogance, hubris, political scheming, power hunger, greed, and all the rest. Usually, scientists are, as a whole, capable of self-regulating- the nature of their work demands that they question the common truth. But when funding, careers, and public opinion can be pulled, terminated, and manipulated, it makes it hard for scientists to remain honest and neutral.

According to Dr Hansen, the climate tipping point will arrive within my own lifetime. By 2016, we will be past the point of no return. Nothing we do after that will save us: if we haven’t already radically reduced our CO2 footprint, it will all be over. I hope Dr. Hansen is wrong, I fear he is right: regardless, we have to make major changes to the way we live, or pay the price. Just how radical do those changes have to be? Are we really the singular cause of the problem, or are there other factors at work? What worries me here is that the facts are being manipulated, possibly by both sides of the debate, and perhaps by people and organizations we should have absolute trust in.

The CBC reported today that an explosion leveled a home in Surrey worth “nearly $1 million.”

There is nothing wrong with the report itself. However, both the report and the RSS feed seem to emphasize the fact that the house is worth $1 million. In today’s housing market, at least in the lower mainland, a million dollar house is no big deal. Several of my co-workers own million dollar homes. My home is worth about three quarters of a million. A two bedroom twenty year old home in an established Vancouver neighborhood can easily be worth $1.4 million. And an obviously very ordinary home in Surrey can be worth $1 million. This is what that fabulous million dollar home looked like before it blew up:

Can’t you just see the limousines and fancy sports cars parking out front? And isn’t that a private helipad on the roof?

It seems to me that the reporter or editor of this story either live in one of the areas of the country not impacted by the housing price boom or they are people who haven’t actually looked at what homes are selling for in their own neighborhoods. The emphasis on the house price suggests they are a bit out of touch and are thinking a million dollar home must be a mansion or some such: hardly. To get what anyone would consider a “mansion” in the lower mainland means spending a minimum of three or four million- there have been houses in the Vancouver area that have sold for prices over ten million.

The other factor in play here is, of course, the fact that mention of a house being worth a million dollars immediately makes me think of… a very ordinary house. Obviously, my sense of reasonable prices is as skewed as that evidenced by the report in question: unfortunately, my skewed perception is based on reality.

I came across this report on Gizmodo today. The story is about one of those new robotic lawnmowers being recalled, detailed in the following excerpt:

Apparently, one of the owners lifted the mower from the ground while it was still on and “suffered minor lacerations from the moving blade.” Yet another case of stupid humans trying to win the Darwin Award. Fortunately for him, nothing serious happened, but the US CPSC and the company have decided to recall models LB2000, LB2100, LB3000, and LB3200 because “the cutting blades continue to rotate when the mower is lifted from the ground and the spacing on the side of the lawn mower could allow room for a consumer’s foot to go beyond the shield and be struck by the blade” which “pose a serious laceration hazard to stupid lawn bozos consumers.”

Now…I’m all for product safety, but this is just plain stupid. Anyone who is moronic enough to grab and lift a running lawnmower, robotic or otherwise, and not expect to get hurt, deserves exactly what they get. I’ve been equally stupid at times: burning myself by grabbing the metal of a hot pan fresh from the stove while intent on removing its handle springs to mind. But I don’t expect the manufacturer of said pot to recall it because I am a fricking idiot.

But apparently, in our modern moron-coddling idiocracy, protecting us from our own increasing stupidity is an absolute necessity. I really feel sorry for the manufacturer of the lawn mowing robot. They shouldn’t feel compelled to recall something for behaving reasonably. Now, if the robot spun its blade up to 5,000 RPM and spat it out at the person picking it up… that might warrant a recall.

Our washer died about a week ago. It was a Maytag Neptune frontload purchased in late 2000, so its failure was more or less inevitable. The point of failure was in the control panel: the washer locking mechanism blew out, which caused a cascade failure in the control board. Repair would have been $600-$800.

I shouldn’t really complain- we got over 7 and a half years of service out of a washer renowned for its high failure rate and defects (the problems in the product family showed up after we bought it). But to me seven years isn’t exactly a stellar record for a “top of the line” washer. Live and learn: great/well respected brands can die ignoble deaths at times.

In any case, we only pondered the repair versus replace question for about 5 seconds. Irene and I were in almost immediate agreement- we wanted to replace the washer and, since we weren’t terribly fond of the Maytag dryer, we wanted to get the pair. I did a little research, and then we went to Trail Appliances to make our final decision. We settled on the LG SteamWasher and its dryer companion. Irene convinced me to get a colour- the pair are navy blue.

I was a bit torn between the LG and the Miele washer/dryer. The Miele are probably better quality, but they looked… clunky. Not exactly high-tech, and I hate to admit it, but the tech sells me more often than it should. LG has a good reliability and service reputation, and was about $800 cheaper for the pair (Miele is about $3500). For that price, the Miele lacked steam cleaning and was a slightly smaller capacity. Mind you, Miele is pretty much the only washer/dryer manufacturer that builds and tests their gear with an expectation of 25 years of use- most of the other manufacturers target 10 years. We looked at the Bosch as well: we have been really happy with our Bosch dishwasher, but the clothes washer control panels take up some of the “folding space” we like to use on the top of the machine.

They were just delivered an hour ago or so, and I’ve already almost finished running through the first load of laundry in the washer. It is quieter than the Neptune (except for the 1300 RPM spin cycle, which is rather noisy- this would probably not be apparent if the washer were situated on a concrete floor in the basement), and I like the little drawer that slides out for loading detergent and bleach. The “I’m done” alert is a nice little tone instead of the horrendous buzzing sound that most older washers seem to favour. The controls are completely electronic- no manual “clockwork” knobs which, in my experience, are the first part of a washer to die. And the LCD display tells me handy things like how long it estimates it will take until completion… based on load size/weight and cycle choices.

So far, though, the biggest “feature” is the glass door- watching the clothing spin around is fascinating. I remember this from laundromats when I was a kid, and forgot how mesmerizing it can be.

Tania Derveaux supports net neutrality. That’s great, but the way she has chosen to demonstrate her support is a bit unique.

The basic idea: if you are a geek who supports net neutrality and are a virgin, Tania will have sex with you for free. I guess that solves one of your problems… There are some conditions for the offer: surprise buttsex is out (but apparently it’s okay if it isn’t a surprise), and she reserves the right to hurt your manhood badly if you were lying about a virgin or otherwise attempt to violate the terms of … service.

As I understand it, Tania’s “don’t stay virgin” campaign is a bit of a double-entendre response to Virgin Media’s “net neutrality is bollocks” comments a couple of weeks or so ago. Apparently Tania is a member of the NEE party in Belgium, which I guess is more of a political protest group than a political party. She previously made an equally unusual offer as part of her political campaign:

As I understand it, this advertisement campaign was in response to another political party’s apparently bogus claim to offer 400,000 new jobs as part of their strategy.

I must say that, as political promises go, Tania’s offerings certainly do get some attention. Well, at least from half the population…

According to Jim Cicconi, “Vice president of legislative affairs” at AT&T, the whole Internet will be completely full by 2010. If you believe Jim, 20 typical households in 2010 will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today.

Sorry to have to break this to you, Jim, but you are either a complete ignoramus or you assume everyone you are talking to is. There is no credible evidence that anything this VP is saying has any truth to it whatsoever. Doing some simple math should make this incredibly clear: the aggregate bandwidth of the main U.S internet backbone is measured in terabits per second. There is no conceivable way that 20 U.S. households could consume even a noticeable fraction of that bandwidth. Even countries like Japan where “low bitrate” home connectivity means 20 Mbps have no problems managing the capacity of their Internet backbone. And there is absolutely no likelihood that anything approaching 20 Mbps to the home will become “standard” in the U.S. within the next decade, let alone the next three years.

So, why would this supposed senior executive, whose title implies to me that his primary skill is lobbying government officials to do AT&T’s bidding, say such incredibly inaccurate things? Simple- money.

AT&T and the other major communications network providers have built backbone networks that are pretty robust: home users aren’t going to impact that. No, the real problem is at the edge of the network. The mythical “last mile”, from the service provider’s backbone to the local concentrator and finally to your home. For the past two decades, network service providers have been massively over-committing the bandwidth at the edge of their network to home users: that is, they are selling the same bandwidth promise over and over and over again. The 4 Mbps you pay for, as an example, might share a common 10 Mbps link with 100 other people in your neighborhood who are also paying for 4 Mbps. This works out okay when no one is actually using what they paid for. But if more than two or three of those 100 people start using the network bandwidth they think they deserve, then the service providers have a problem.

Let me repeat my example for clarity: 100 people are paying for 4 Mbps of bandwidth. To increase profits, the service providers are pushing all 100 of those people through a single 10 Mbps link. That 10 Mbps link is overcommitted by approximately 40 times: if it were properly sized, it would be 400 Mbps to accommodate all of the capacity that the service provider had actually sold. Note that the websites and other Internet services home users connect to are *also* paying for connectivity to the Internet. Google, Apple, and Youtube spend millions of dollars a month of bandwidth each- but they get the bandwidth that they pay for, and that is written into their contracts. Not so for the home users.

To correct the massive overcommitment problem at the “last mile” to home users would cost tens of billions of dollars. The Telcos could afford the necessary upgrades, but that would cut into their profit margins for many quarters. For years they have been selling a pig in a poke: raking in profits based on the fact that they are selling something they can not conceivably deliver on the infrastructure they have deployed. Now more and more people are actually starting to use some significant portion (I.E.: more than 10%) of the bandwidth they have already paid for. And this causes a problem for the service provider’s business model.

Naturally, the service providers would like to make more profit, not less. So what they want to do is “shape” or throttle traffic, and charge both end users (I.E.: you) and service providers (I.E.: Google, Microsoft, Apple) extra to make sure you actually get the bandwidth you are already paying for. It is much, much cheaper to lobby the government to make sure they have the ability to get paid at least three times for every bit that gets pushed through their networks than it would be to actually upgrade the network appropriately.

What is at risk here isn’t the Internet. What is really at risk is the defective business model deployed by the major service providers themselves. They can’t see a way to keep on selling bandwidth the way they have (I.E.: massively overcommitting bandwidth to the home) without reducing their profits, so they are looking for legislative support to grant them a new way to charge extra for what people have already paid for.

When you hear about Network Neutrality, and you read about the big service providers like AT&T being against the concept… this is what it is all about. AT&T and their friends want the ability to charge you again for the bandwidth you have already paid for, all because they sold you a lie to begin with and can’t figure out now how to deliver what they promised without cutting into their profit margin. And since their initial lobbying efforts against Network Neutrality weren’t very well received, they are now starting to preach that the Internet is facing imminent collapse unless they are granted what they want.

Whenever I read about these tactics on the part of the big network providers, I can’t help but imagine a big, greasy mafia guy threatening some poor family in their home… “dats a nice movie you iz downloadin’ dere. Would be a shame if sumthin were to happin to dat movie, ya know what I mean? Bits could get lost, mabbe the connection drop: things like dat, they just happen, ya know? I cud look out fer dat, ya know, keep yer bandwidth safe. Fer a fee…”

A couple of weeks ago I added a second network service provider to my home. The idea was to improve my home office internet access speed and provide redundancy. My thinking is that it is unlikely that both a cable broadband service from Shaw and ADSL service from Telus would both be down at the same time. Things, unfortunately, haven’t worked out quite as planned…

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