Archive for the 'Rants' Category

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.

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…”

I’ve often wondered how the pre-flight security checks handle people with “intimate piercings”: now I know. Rather rudely, apparently.

On the one hand, I can feel sorry for the poor woman who was forced to rip her nipple piercing out with a pair of pliers…

On the other hand…

Read the rest of this entry »

I have very little patience for people online who think it is their right to disrupt, harass, and harm others purely because they can. I am talking about griefers: a term that began its life in multi-player games as a name for all the people for whom the primary source of fun was ruining everyone else’s fun. Griefers and their ilk come in all forms, some claiming to have a somewhat valid cause like harassing Scientology, most simply being out and out asshats.

At the root of much of “griefer” behavior is a belief that, if something is possible, it must not only be acceptable, but demand being done. If a game can be twisted to permit one to steal someone else’s virtual possessions, destroy their simulated house, or disrupt their electronic “wedding”, then it must be okay to do so. If a website can be hacked, images of horrific pornography posted, or seizure inducing videos posted, then obviously the website allows it so it should be done. A rallying cry amongst these Junior Psychopaths are terms like “it’s all fake, so who cares?” and “if they didn’t want me to do it, they’d make it more secure.” Purely because they can hide behind the mask of “anonymity”, they think their behavior is both acceptable and encouraged.

Earlier this week some of the most pathetic warts on the buttocks of humanity decided that it would be great fun to cause true physical pain and real harm using the computers their mummsies and dadsies gave them. They logged in to a support forum for sufferers of epilepsy and posted hundreds of messages that led to content intended to induce epileptic seizures.

Apparently these geniuses hail from one of the cesspits of the Internet, the hallowed halls of 4Chan and Anonymous. While some of the things done by denizens of these loose associations can be described equally loosely as “funny” or “creative”, what was done this time demonstrated no real skill, wit, or charm. Instead, what they they did was a form of physical assault with an intent to cause harm to hundreds of individuals. Those misguided individuals who say that the forum was at fault for not “securing” their service appropriately are so incredibly dense and lacking in empathy as to cast doubt on their claims of humanity.

This is not funny, it is not “harmless”, it is not tolerable in any way, shape or form. I would argue that these acts go beyond most incidents of electronic fraud, DoS attacks, or other digital crimes with purely financial impacts. Just like swatting, these so-called pranks can result in real harm, even death, to real people. The instigators of these acts of physical assault should be sought out, their guilt proven, and they should be charged with real crimes that will result in hard jail time.

Updated to add some explanation of the term “griefer” and related behavior

I’m looking out the window into our back yard, where we have several big flower bushes with hundreds of flowers in bloom. It is spring… except for the little fact that it is pelting down snow at the moment.

Snow… in lower mainland B.C…. at the end of March. Did someone forget to send the memo out indicating that it is spring? Any time this sort of thing happens, I really wonder about the whole “global warming… the sky is falling! We are all dooooomed!” mantra. Sure, it is just one isolated incident, but as an individual it is really hard to accept that the world is markedly warmer when I’m looking at snow falling at the end of March.

Ah well… back to watching the flowers droop under the increasing weight of the snow. I’m exaggerating, of course: the snow is melting as soon as it hits the ground, but who knows? We could be entering another ice age as I speak.

I apologize in advance for making light of a tragic and horrifying circumstance. But the defense put forth by a man in Britain accused of raping and murdering a young model just leaves me amazed.

Sally Anne Bowman was found dead on a driveway near her home. Semen that is a DNA match to Mark Dixie, the man accused of her murder, was found on the body. According to Mr. Dixie, who knew the victim, he came upon her lying on the driveway, seemingly unconscious, and decided to have sex with her. It was only after the fact that he noticed she was dead.

It bears mentioning that Ms. Bowman had been stabbed seven times and was lying in a pool of her own blood at the time. Mr. Dixie claims not to have noticed this. And he was never found guilty of a brutally violent assault and rape of which he was accused several years earlier in Australia, so his lawyer claims that the previous incident is immaterial to this current case.

Basically, this bastard’s defense is that he is a completely disgusting and apparently totally ignorant excuse for a human being. But he didn’t murder anyone. Because that would be, you know, *bad* or something.

It sounds to me like the world would be a better place if we just shot Mr. Dixie, cremated him, and shot his ashes into the sun to avoid any chance of contaminating the planet further.

That said, I have an interesting time visualizing discussions between Mr. Dixie and his lawyer. “No, I don’t think anyone will buy you having sex with her *before* she was dead…let’s go with the necrophilia defense, that’s easier to sell”

I found this parody video from the Onion to be a bit too close to the mark…

The truth is, I suppose, that the “real” issues are too hard to judge for most people. And answers to questions like “where do you stand on public health care” or “what is your position on America’s war in Iraq” don’t translate into nice, short soundbites.

But whether a politician wears a hard hat or jeans… now that’s bullshit the average voter can understand

I don’t know much about the U.S. elections. I’ve sort of been absorbing the democratic nominations… I think I would be more or less happy with either Hillary or Barack becoming President. The republicans? Hmmm: the only ones I’ve heard about seem to be Right wing evangelist fruitcakes who think the earth was formed in 7,000 years and that homosexuals will damn all of us to hell.

In any case, it isn’t often that I see something relating to a political process that makes me feel good. This video made me feel good- it is based on a speech given by Barack Obama that was turned into a video by a number of musicians. I like the message- enough with the policies of fear and hatred, lets start thinking in terms of hope and what we *can* do, not what we can’t.

Yes, I realize it is all just words, and politicians are masters of the Big Lie. But hope is something sorely lacking in American politics, and seeing a politician talking about hope is inspiring.