Posts by Sirius Lee

RBS spokesperson said...

Last night on C4 'news' an RBS spokesperson seemed to me pretty catagorical that the source of the error and it's management was in Edinburgh.

Not the first time

When my BT internet connection stopped working yesterday I just switched the modem off and on again. It's not something BT needed to tell me because it happens twice a week every week. My hope is that there really is some underlying problem that, because of its huge impact this time, will be fixed for good now.

Desperately disappointing

What's desperately disappointing about the subject of this article is that its a profoundly European perspective. Anti-science exists everywhere but, in my experience, only in Europe is it so prominent. Sure, in the US there are supporters of anthropocentric causes of climate change that make some noise there but science is seen as a liberating force. Same in China, India, etc.

Why this is disappointing to me is that unless my kids want to grow up in an environment over which they have no control they will have to move abroad. That is, move to live in an environment where this nonsense is ignored at all levels and where they are able to have a productive life while Europe withers and dies.

Care with reporting

The challenge for reports like the one reviewed in this article is being extremely clear about terminology, transparent about limitations and precise about the measurements involved. Scrupulous care with facts and claim is a general requirement for all scientists but to often not ones that are allowed to get in the way of a good story.

This article appears to describes a situation across all the oceans. Since most of the billions of humans live in the northern hemisphere presumably this is where most of the errant heat is generated. So for me it raises a question about how this heat can be spread over the oceans so widely. Especially into the southern oceans because there seems to few ocean or atmospheric flows that cross the equator.

The ‘all oceans’ aspect raises another question, one that is likely to illuminate my misunderstanding and other errors. According to stats on Wikipedia the world’s oceans cover an area of approximately 3.6x10^8 Km2. Because the number is from Wikipedia it may be questionable but presumably not by many, if any, orders of magnitude. 3.6x10^8 Km2 is also 3.6x10^14 m2. The article refers to the heating of the top of the ocean so let’s be generous and assume that’s just the top 1 metre so it’s about the change in temp of 3.6x10^14 m3 or 3.6x10^23 cm3 (you’ll see why cm3 in a moment).

The volume heat capacity of water at 25dC is 4.1796 = J/cm3.K while at -10dC is 1.9 = J/cm3.K. (now you see why the ocean volume is in cm3). The oceans are not 25dC nor are they -10dC so I’ll pick a number in the middle: 3 J/cm3.K. You can pick another number in this range. The small difference doesn’t matter.

The article suggests that over the last 50 years the temp has increased by 0.1dC so now I’m in a position to compute the energy required to effect this change:

4.1796 x 3.6x10^23 x 0.10 = 1.5x10^23 Joules.

From Wikipedia (your source may vary) in 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules. That’s 4.74×10^20 J or 132,000 TWh. This is approximately *300 times smaller* than the energy needed to effect the warming claimed. Or, another way, if the entire world energy output could be dumped directly into the top 1 m of the oceans for all 50 years (which didn’t happen because most was radiated into space) it would not come close. If the ‘top of the ocean’ is not 1m but 10m or more then the effect is even smaller in proportion. So it’s clear the report cannot have made a claim with the sort of generality that I inferred from the article, an inference other readers may also have made, which illustrates why reporting accuracy is required. Of course my little back of an envelope calculation may be crap and, if so, please point out the flaws.

I don’t subscribe to Nature. If you do, may be you can help with some of the detail behind this article.

Windows 8: no choice

Why does it matter to Microsoft if Aero is in Windows 8 or not? Surely this is a user preference. If there's a performance problem on a specific implementation, it seems to me an appropriate course of action is to make the default something other than Aero. Maybe no one uses Aero? I do. How many Windows 7 users will this affect?

So I'm cheesy, huh? But then I have about 2 billion CPU cycles per second free so squander. How much effort does it for Windows to process key clicks (that's what my laptop does most of the day)?

Even modern A10 chips run at nearly 2Ghz (I know CPU speed is not always a good proxy for processing speed but we don't have anything else). So another question is: what is Windows 8 doing to consume so many cycle that it can't paint the screen? Maybe malware is built in to the OS?

Move the industry west?

I know this power transmission is endlessly fascinating and a great engineering challenge but wouldn't it be easier to move industry west a bit? Is the west of China so awful that no one wants to live there (except power generation engineers apparently)?

Beware long job titles

"Director of user experience for Microsoft Developer Tools Division"

I wonder if Monty (or any of his team) actually use the product. To be fair, Monty only appears to be responsible for user experience - good or bad is not specified.

What's with bashing the US over this?

This is the way it's been in the US for years. You may recall that Lotus tried to sue Microsoft on the grounds that Microsoft violated the Lotus copyright regarding the behavior of spreadsheets. The US courts threw that one out back in the early 90's. The various owners of WordPerfect have been trying for years to sue Microsoft with no joy. So, it seems this is the EU playing catch-up.

And to the early posters: this is a copyright issue not a patent issue.

"Despite only debuting in North America, Amazon became the second biggest seller of tabs, and this is testament to the need for "compelling content", said Canalys."

Or a machine from a known supplier at a price regular people are prepared to pay? Oh, and with some content.

Also, P.Lee has it right in my book. Bought a tablet (everyone is doing so it must be good, right?) but I can't find a use for it, the kids can't find a use for it, my wife can't find a use for it. Guess what? We'll not be buying more.

How straight is BT being about the availability of Infinity?

Around the New Year I checked the availability of Infinity and at the time the BT site informed me it would be available from March 29th. On March 29th I checked again and its now June 30th. BTW I live in the outskirts of London not a remote island on the west coast of Scotland.

Is it that hard for BT to be able to offer realistic estimates for the availability of the service? The cynic in me wonders if offering jam just around the corner is an attempt to keep customers away from VM.

Control panel applets

Microsoft has been calling the mini applications usually launched from the Windows control panel 'applets' since there's been a control panel.

I'm sure there are much older references which could be found with a bit of effort, but search for the term has this link at the top of page 2 to a 2002 article referring to control panel applets:

http://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/522/

According to the OED the suffix -et (or -ette) is borrowed from french (as many words such a table are) and can mean:

denoting relatively small size

denoting an imitation or substitute

denoting female gender

Now I'm sure that when choosing the prefix 'app' Microsoft had only one idea in mind - that the programs run from the control panel are (app)lications. Not, for example, (app)liances, (app)aling or (app)ealing. Being focused on assisting with the configuration of a small sub-set of the OS it was understandable they would want to convey idea by using the commonly used -et suffix with its implication of the named thing being small.

So the term 'applet' has not only prior art but is the joining of acommon contraction and a common suffix. No judge is going to side with Apple on this one.

Dodgy science

"the only place in which the current study finds CO2 rises followed warming was in Antarctica"

This study may have discovered a different pattern of melting/CO2 emissions but that does not lead to the conclusion asserted by the report (or, at least, the article). To arrive at the desired conclusion one would need an explanation that *also* encompasses the evidence from Antarctica core samples which point the other way.

By happy coincidence I'm reading David Deutch's book The Beginning of Infinity in which he makes the case it is imperative that only explanations which are invariant should be accepted. Any explanation which is not invariant may form a useful guide but is not really an explanation at all.

In this case the contradictory Antarctica core samples makes it difficult for any explanation to be invariant. It probably points to a much more complex picture that either side in this *political* maelstrom could ever admit.

It's a shame the biology aspect didn't do so well though I'm sure the focus was on surviving the descent. It's not true there's no life at that depth and the BBC has a page covering unmanned visits to the same trench which also includes videos of life (shrimp sized not microbial) at those depths.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8426132.stm

This could get dangerous for all of us

The EU doesn't support software patents and, at the moment, they are not enforceable here except in the narrow circumstance that the software is tied to the hardware. If this were to change, the EU would be at a severe disadvantage because it would then have to enforce US (and other) patents which have been building up for many years while EU citizens have none to protect because we've not been allow to make the claim.

On the face of it this is not going to change. No EU parliament or government is going sanction giving the US such a prize. But the courts might.

The 'swipe to unlock' feature is clearly just software. A phone does not *need* this feature to be locked or unlocked - a button or entering a number or pressing an on-screen button will do just as well. By contrast an engine management system *needs* software with specific characteristics to operate. However it seem these distinctions are not clearly in the minds of the judiciary when considering these case.

Or maybe these cases are being fought in Germany in the hope judges there may be more inclined to equate smarphone software with, say, a BMW engine management system. Maybe Mannheim is waiting on BMW's home town for just this reason.

The consequence of judges upholding Apple's claims could be profound. This would set a precedent that US software patents are enforceable in the EU. While this would take a while to play out, companies with deep pockets which also hold US patents could then start protesting their cases in EU courts.

Maybe there's a simpler explanation

Maybe those who want to be in the Apple camp (for lots of different reason from brand loyalty to perceived image) will buy an iPad. For the rest of us we have a much wider range of choices. The tablet (any tablet, inc. iPad) is a delivery device. If that works for you, great. However in the non-Apple world you can choose from a range of alternative devices with very modest prices.

In October last year I bought my wife an Android (3.0) tablet which seems to work as well as any of her friends iPads (let's be honest, browsing is browsing and reading is reading). But she didn't use it because, in the real world, she does a lot of typing and no tablet is geared to this. She like the portability but not the limited functionality on offer. Not even the kids want to use it.

Now she uses a netbook bought for £205 running Windows 7 and is delighted. It's lighter than the tablet (which cost nearly twice as much) and it has a keyboard so she is able to type. As it turns out, she doesn't care for the touch screen.

In the Apple world the alternative to an iPad is the Apple Air which is at least 5x the cost. Sure, advocates my point out this feature and that feature but it's just not a contender on our budget so there are no features which can make it sufficiently attractive to compete.

The points are:

1) Tablets may not be that relevant to non-Apple devotees who anyway

2) Have more product options which are able to meet their specific set of requirements

Fails to understand the essential flaw in the argument

Matt's background and preferences seem to make him blind to some of the forces at work around Microsoft products. When create a product for the Microsoft environment I want to make the money. In the Microsoft environment, I can do this. In the Apple environment I have to hand over an enormous chunk of that. Development for Linux is another story because though I don't have any cost, I either have very few prospects (Linux clients) or a huge number of incumbent competitors (for server tools).

Microsoft will continue to do very because they offer an environment where others can make lots of money. Sure, Microsoft stand to make from Windows, Office, SQL Server, etc. but so do I. And in many different areas. I can create retail products. I can offer consulting around Office tools. I can offer support services for Windows (clients want support for their purchases - ask RedHat). I can even sell licenses.

That is, Microsoft provides many, many routes for others to fill their boots in ways that is not so on other platforms. What's the average cost of an app in the AppStore? How many AppStore licences are sold with support? Few if any are able to make money with other platforms.

It is this aspect of the business model that will keep Microsoft alive forever so long as they bring out new product lines which support the model. Move away from the model in order to make a quick buck and Microsoft experiences problems. What's the upside for me to support any Windows Phone? Why should I care about Hotmail, Bing, Office 365, Zune - all products cut me out of the money making loop. I do care about Windows 8, Hyper-V, Unified Communications, Office 15 because I can be part of the story.

So Microsoft may well support iPad but if they do, the upside is that many other in the Microsoft eco-system will make money. Even Apple.

Premise of the survey biased

Nice idea for some populist journalism but I think this starter for 10 is too flawed. I agree with Michael Hudson and others. The survey could probably have obtained the same answers by asking CFOs: would you like to grow your empire and be paid more by taking on the responsibilities of the CIO?

Bear in mind that when I was a new recruit the CFO generally *did* have the responsibility for information and were the defacto CTO. Over the year these responsibilities have been largely taken away from the CFO because as often as not CFOs only saw IT in accounting terms. Important as this is, the benefit of IT to the wider business was often not recognized or not recognized systematically. The costs of IT are all to clear while the benefits all too intangible. In my experience the CFO, as leader of the no sales department, is not always equipped to make these judgments.

Anyway its good for the CEO to have more 'C's underneath (TO and IO alongside FO, OO, MO, etc.) as it make divide and conquer a little bit easier. I don't expect the role to go any more than any other role is likely to go in response to internal corporate intrigue.

Virtual desktop

Applications like remote spark allow a virtual desktop to appear on any device including the iPad. Remote spark also supports Microsoft's virtual application features built into Terminal Services. Since Office *must* run on a Windows machine, it's likely that this application is doing something like virtualizing a Windows PC. It would provide an explanation for why they 'ran out' of resources. At least one of the comments on the CloudOn page reports that it can be slow - which is likely to to be true if remote machines are shared or if the path to the remote machine is slow.

As a Remote spark user I can attest that it works really well. It works by drawing the RDP session on to an HTML5 canvas. This alone explains why the service is not also available on Android: HTML5 support by the native browser is not good enough.

Stating the obvious

"We heard from several people the are interested in using OpenStack, but don't have the sysadmins do build the KVM or networking"

Yep, that's why this developers uses AWS extensively. AWS seem expensive only when it's compared to the cost of buying a box. I look forward to a competitive product and, maybe, Microsoft or HP or Rackspace will get there but at the moment there's no true alternative. IMHO.

What are the SI units?

"the best price to experience ratio from a user perspective"

Anybody know what units 'experience' comes in?

Cost probably has something to do with it

Back in 2008 (Aug) I bought a Dell Vostro 1510 (dual core, 17" 1900x1440, 2GB RAM, 250GB HD) for £360. You can't even get the spec now and the closest is over £500. We've had a massive currency devaluation making imports more expensive but not double the price. So it seems there's some gouging going on and I don't want to play. Maybe others feel the same way. So that's domestic.

Also, my business has reduced it's purchase of kit because we now use so many more Amazon EC2 instances. Much better having Amazon look after hardware/OSs installs and maintenance than us. Maybe this type of behavior is fairly common and so reducing the need for hardware by businesses.

BTW I don't get foxyshadis's point about tablets. I bought an Iconia tablet last year (10.1", 1024x768, 1.2Ghz, Android 3.0). Everyone else was buy a tablet so the must be *something* useful to them right? No so far as our family can see. It's now used by my youngest to play games like Angry birds.

I hoped one use case would be the one suggested by the AC of connecting to a remote desktop. But that really only works if you have a keyboard and mouse (I've really tried to use a stylus). I bought a keyboard with integrated mouse but then I have to carry a heavy device or have it propped up so I can see the screen and a then plug-in keyboard (the on screen one is useless). How is this better than, say, a laptop given the laptop costs less!?!

I'll agree with BristolBatchelor. I DID look at the report and it seems the usual flakey stuff - probably one of their consultant who studied English fiction at Uni. Take the panel "Facebook impact on advertising". You might think this would document how advertiser spend has changed with the advent of Facebook and show that spending on Facebook advertising is *in addition* to existing spend. No, it doesn't. I lists Ad companies using Facebook on behalf of clients. No comment about the distribution of cash spent on ads.

It's hard to see how advertising using Facebook can be anything but a zero sum game in an economy that's flat year on year. If Facebook *is* taking ad revenues that's great for Facebook. However, someone else must be losing income so it falls short of being a benefit to the economy.

It's just four people

The article says they're acquiring the skills of four individuals. You think they'll knock up something in a couple of weeks and hang you out to dry. Come on. Bezos is hiring people he believes are knowledgeable to help him work out what he can do with the 'social' stuff - if anything.

You'll remember a blog post by some oompa-loompa a few months ago. In it the author complained that Bezos fretted over every pixel and hired an Apple 'UI guru' to help with the design but ignored every suggestion and let the guru go.

The cost of four people is trivial. However, if it turns out they've some good ideas and it boosts business (because the site's users like what they've done) by even a fraction of 1 percent, they will have earned their money. If not, they'll be parting company and Amazon will move on.

It seems to me the merits of this article are dubious:

Journalist writes article

Someone takes issue ('flames' allegedly)

Journalist writes rebuttal

The journalist should not have written the rebuttal. A knowledgeable 3rd party should have. As it stands, the rebuttal might represent a fine analysis but we can never know how objective the journalist has been drafting the rebuttal.

In particular the journalist has sided with Williams (which might be the correct position). However as a dispassionate reader the basic criticism (that the goal posts have been moved whether by Chua or Williams) doesn't really seem to have been addressed. Rather the journalist has just disagreed with the criticism (no surprise there). So we 3rd parties are no wiser.

Expensive to do

You'd think he'd get a sponsor.

This is bad for Apple

The Apple argument has been that the Samsung device looks just like an iPad. I'd bet Samsung's marketing department will be using that idea with gusto. "We don't think so but even Apple thinks this is as good as an iPad - but cheaper".

Pi in the sky

It's a laudable objective. But as the article observes, who is going to teach these skills. Many 'ICT' teachers can just about show kids who to use Excel and Word. Is hacking a system in the skill set of any UK teachers?

It'll be interesting to see if the DoE has *any* interest. Aside from the dearth of teachers I'm sure HM Constabularies are going to be delighted they can look forward to a new generation of hackers in a few year time and will be lobbying accordingly.

To me learning to program is learning to use a tool like learning to drive or use a hammer. Not an end in itself. If it is the end, where are the jobs for this mass of kids? These days the grunt work of programming is done in India and China. Maybe there are a few specialists here and there and Uni CS departments will need a handful post-grads.

As an unrepresentative statistic we have a household stuffed to the gunnels with PCs with which which our boys can do what they please and the resources around them to learn about the innards of PCs and operating systems. Do they choose to hack and program? No. It's way too hard and there's too much else to do. The first thing any kid wants to do is develop COD and, at least in the case of my kids, were turned off the whole idea of programming when it became apparent just how hard that is.

For kids brought up with Windows even getting to a command prompt, much less hack a system, is an unwelcome experience.

So I applaud the Raspberry Pi initiative and I look forward to getting and using some of the devices. It's like reliving a youth, Z80 redux. And anyway I can think of loads of uses for a fleet of inexpensive headless devices like these. But I am not convinced of the case for the stated direction of the project.

Insects

A few weeks ago there was an article on Newsnight about a some of EU money given to a company in the Netherlands which is growing insect lavae as a food source.

Apparently for every 10Kg of input foodstuff (usually plant material) you get 8Kg of protein which compares favorably with using livestock: 10Kg in get 4Kg out. Allegedly insects like being factory farmed (and who would care if they didn't), they grow just about anywhere, the diseases they have are not communicable because they are genetically so remote.

Of course no one would stuff a handful of maggots in their mouth (today at least) but dried and ground up you have a protein substitute. I guess you could have the expensive high-brow variety processed stock with all the crunchy bits removed and the cheaper variety with the roughage left in.

So maybe insects will rescue humanity and feeding its teeming hoards in 2050.