Rating quality by true or false questions

Games, movies and books tend to be rated on a 1-10 scale, 7 being the lowest and 9 being the highest, as they say. Or 1-5 stars, which is pretty much the same. As a game reviewer, I've heard, you can expect a hard fight to get anything outside that 7-9 range published as your official score, if you work for a major outlet. If you don't work for a big publisher, then obviously you do what you like, so this post doesn't apply to you.

This 1-10 or star-rating scale is heavily skewed to the top end, is what I'm saying, and it's hard to decide what it means. Is an "8" game always better than a "7"? Probably not, if they're in different genres and you prefer one genre over another. It all depends on the reviewer's taste, their mood on the day, the rest of the audience (for movies or live shows) and so on. Some publications try to get around this "all in one" score by rating individual aspects for their reviews. For games, it might be "music", "sound", "graphics", "gameplay" and whatever else. For movies it would include "plot", "script", "performances" ... you get the idea. It's slightly more helpful, but still not objective.

I think it would be instructive to try a binary categorised rating system. For a set of aspects of the work, the reviewer answers "yes" or "no" and that's it. "Was the music enjoyable?", "Was the plot free of gaping holes?", "Did the movie/book/game feel too long?" Things like that. Now we have a way to break down enjoyment of a work and give it an honest score percentage (depending on how many "good" boxes it ticked). No mucking about saying "Well, I thought the music might have been a 3, maybe 3.5 stars, but I said that about that other movie last week, and this was better than that. Better make it 4". Just "Yes, music was good". It's still subjective, but it's harder to lie to yourself and worm around your answers if they're "yes/no" questions. Hopefully, if you ask the right questions, preferably across a broad sample of people, you'll get a representative rating, plus a solid data set to back it up.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If you ask the right questions, this could work for a lot of situations.
PPS - And if you match answers with a user profile, the ratings can reflect the taste of individual readers.

Pegging the creepiness meter

I read recently about a way to sort-of-quantify creepiness. I thought I'd plug in my own self-assessment to the formula and see where I come out. The entire argument is kind of moot anyway, because I'm going on 7 years married now, but it's fun to see. I'm going to go with a star rating, 1-5, on the formula components to come out with a number at the end that's very difficult to interpret and almost totally context-free. Well, the four factors I need to assess for myself to use the formula are:

Awkwardness: High. I'm so awkward I'd rather lose contact than risk saying something stupid. 5.
Forwardness: I am not forward until I know you, and even then it's maybe once per year. Still, I'm not a total shut-in. Rating 2.
Attractiveness: Grading from "lice-bearded hobo" at 1 and "airbrushed supermodel" at 5, I'd rate myself a middling 3.
Persistence: Hmm. I am actually difficult to discourage, I suppose. I'd like to think I am going to back off if you are taken, but in all honesty, I'm likely to carry a torch for a while after that. 4? Go with 4.

The creepiness formula is:
Creepiness = ( (Awkwardness x Forwardness) / (Attractiveness) )^Persistence

In my case, then, that's: (( 5 x 2 ) / 3 ) ^ 4 = 123.45

Wow. That seems really high. How about we compare my score to a confident, go-get-'em jock who, nevertheless, takes "no" for an answer:
(( 1 x 5 ) / 4 ) ^ 1 = 1.25

So, compared to the "ideal" I've just invented, I'm creepier by about a factor of 100. Yikes. Well, that makes sense of my entire (lack of) high-school dating history.

So what adjustments can I make to lower my score? Step 1 should probably be to dial down the persistence. Don't be immediately discouraged, but take a hint (also, learn to read hints). Forwardness needs to go down, too. I can't affect my attractiveness enough to significantly swing the number up, and I can probably only affect my awkwardness for the better with a long process of confrontation therapy. Looking at the formula, it's probably worth it. New predicted result:
(( 3 x 1 ) / 3 ) ^ 2 = 1. Better than the jock. That's because, with these new scores, my awkwardness x forwardness score is the same as my attractiveness, which actually means persistence has no effect. I guess that's good.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The worst-case value for this formula used this way is about 9.7 million.
PPS - I guess, by that standard, I'm doing pretty well.

Automated interpersonal package delivery

What I would very much like to set up is a private package delivery network between my family and friends. If I want to borrow a physical book from a friend, I would just text them the request and send a quadcopter drone to them. They put the book in a box and send it back. I wouldn't need to wait until I see them next or arrange a meeting to exchange physical goods. Just send the drone.

I think this would also be a very neat way to use self-storage. If you have some automation inside a storage locker, then you can access it from anywhere with drones. To put something away in storage, tell the drone what it's picking up (so you can retrieve it later), then just put it in the drone when it arrives. To get it back, look it up in your index (presumably on a mobile app that lets the drone find you) and tap "deliver". You could even throw things out from storage or have them all moved to another facility or a bigger locker without ever going there.

You know what drone delivery reminds me of most? The little parachute "gifts" from sponsors in The Hunger Games. They float down from some unspecified location in the sky right to where you are. Swap the parachute for four little helicopter rotors and that's exactly what I'm talking about.

Basically, drone delivery lets you be as disorganised with your physical stuff as you currently are with your real-life plans since mobile phones came along.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This does ignore security.
PPS - Now your possessions can be "Only a Drone-Call Away(TM)".

Awkward

This is being awkward: I am too afraid of making a fool of myself to ever cut loose and have some fun. I am so afraid of losing my friends that I will stay quiet, lest I offend them, and just let them drift away to more fun places. It's the quietest, lamest form of self-destruction I know, but it feels like cautious self-preservation at every step from "good friends" to "who are you again?"

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I want to work on this.
PPS - Step 1, research.

What backups should be

"Backed up" means lots of copies. That should be obvious. "Fireproof" means that those copies are in lots of physical locations. "Secured" means strongly encrypted with keys that nobody else knows. "Recoverable" means that those copies can be obtained and restored in the event of disaster. For your most valuable personal data, you should have at least fireproof, recoverable backups and, preferably, secure them.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - You might be able to get away without securing your backups if they are merely personal, not sensitive.
PPS - You'd be surprised what counts as sensitive, though.

I need maps on all weather warnings

I need maps on every weather warning issued by the Bureau of Meteorology. I don't know, for instance, if I live inside the Calliope River catchment, so it's hard to tell if certain warnings apply to me. I can, however, locate my home and place of business on a map. Give me that.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm fairly confident I don't live in the Calliope River catchment.
PPS - That's only because I don't know where the Calliope River is. Geography is not my strong suit.

Computer user self-esteem

Some people seem to have low computer self-esteem. Being shown around my new workplace, several people introduced themselves as being "in the remedial class", "hopeless" or "the one who causes the problems". I just wonder how we got to that point. Why should people blame themselves for computer problems? Probably because programmers and sysadmins have spent years blaming them.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - You can stop blaming yourself now.
PPS - Well, maybe not for everything.

The source code of language

On a particular TED talk, an Ajit Narayan talked about his methods for teaching autistic children the structure of abstract language through the use of some concrete thought maps, and how those thought maps (which he called "Free Speech", not to be confused with the US Constitution's first amendment right) could be converted into grammatical speech in any language via fairly simple rules.

Being a software developer, this struck a particular chord with me, because that sounds like he has discovered the source code of language itself. His thought maps are the ideas we are trying to express, and the rule engine applied to them is the compiler of language. If you're looking to translate a document into many different languages, then, what you're doing is decompiling it into source code, which, for any language, involves a fair bit of nuanced understanding and reworking. If you succeed, though, you'll have a thought source document that can be compiled into any human language. If you are all for the preservation of languages, then these compiler engines are what you should be working on.

I'm sure there's a lot more complexity to the process than I'm getting, especially since the subtleties of language are many, but it is at least a good start. To include all human language subtleties, you would need to ask a lot of questions that aren't relevant for all target languages. In some cases, for instance, to talk about people's relatives, you may need to draw out a full family tree to illustrate the links, including ages, where, in English, the word "cousin" would cover all that detail. Also, technical vocabulary would be very complicated to convey. Unless there's an icon for "coeliac", how would you convey it in simple terms?

It sounds like the key to universal translators, the end of Babel, but picture this: people all have subtly different understandings of language itself. Not just dialects, but to the extent that my mental associations with the word "cat" might be very different to yours. All communication might be done via these thought maps, but what if every person maintained their own compiler engine for them? We would all be speaking slightly different versions of English, French, Spanish, Portugese, German, whatever, and they would drift further apart without interaction and correction. In the end, only the thought maps would make sense.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And maybe then our understanding of those would start to drift apart.
PPS - Hopefully not.

Kickstarter investor pain

The dream of sidestepping corporations via Kickstarter might be over. It might never have been realistic to begin with. Two recent events have led me to start thinking this way. There is, of course, the VR headset Oculus Rift being bought out by Facebook. There's also the Veronica Mars movie, whose backers were promised digital downloads and sorta-kinda got them, as long as they use Warner Bros crippled, horrible, device-limited DRM system. The promise of these Kickstarter projects wasn't just for the producers of these works, being able to get funding without needing to kowtow to big venture capitalists. The promise was also to the backers, that, when they put up the cash to make the project happen, they get the investor rewards.

That hasn't been happening. As soon as a project reaches commercial viability, big companies are swooping in and taking over. And, in a way, that's okay, I guess. It's the way business works in a capitalist economy. The problem, to me, is that the ones being paid aren't the backers.

I think Kickstarter might need to grow up a little bit here. Instead of offering different rewards at different levels of support, the campaigns may need to offer a buy-back price option. Once their business or product gets off the ground, they can start buying back shares from their supporters at a given percentage rate, low for low investors and higher for those that risked more. This isn't quite the way Kickstarter has worked so far, and it might be a bit of a big cultural shift in their operations, so it should also be possible to offer their more "traditional" rewards as a selectable option for the buy-back. You can have our revolutionary 3D printer as a reward, or we can buy back your $100 worth of shares in our company for $110.

This isn't the form of investing that everyday people are used to, though. The promise of a $10 reward six months down the track might not inspire them to put up the cash, but it probably wouldn't leave quite as sour a taste in their mouths as the buy-out/kick-teeth model that is taking over.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Or maybe not. I'm not an expert on investor relations.
PPS - I'm not even an amateur or hobbyist. So, you know. Grain of salt, etc.

Squishy

I like the image of Chuck Wendig's "When Haters Give You Lemons" post, where he finishes his riff on the cliched saying with "Make haterade". It conjures up a little wordless scene where someone hands another person a hateful lemon. The recipient looks at it in his hand, looks up at the hater, with his hateful scowl, and squishes his head with a horrible squishy sound.

If I ever get hated on for making art - even art I know is bad - then I'm going to imagine that squishy sound.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Right now, I'm too obscure to be hated.
PPS - Which is actually kind of depressing.

How IMDb could make my life a bit easier

An app that would make my life so much easier would be photo face recognition for TV actors. A lot of my time watching TV seems to be spent looking up actors in IMDb and finding out where else we've seen them. The IMDb app is not really built for this. It's built to avoid overwhelming your screen and data connection by showing only the most relevant information for any given context that you happen to be viewing, but the path between the show we're watching and the full filmography of a particular extra on a particular episode is so long that and such a common operation for me that I frequently long for optimisation.

The path right now is:

IMDb -> search -> show name -> All episodes -> season -> episode -> All cast -> actor name -> All filmography -> [As] actor.

What I'd like is:

IMDb -> who's that (face recognition from camera) -> search results -> actor (all filmography displayed on same page).

Even better would be limiting the filmography to only what I've actually seen, but that would mean IMDb knowing everything I've seen. That would either be a creepy invasion of privacy or a lot of data entry. Or perhaps an import from Quickflix.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Quickflix doesn't know all about me, though.
PPS - I'm pretty sure I don't remember everything I've ever seen.

Unusable software doesn't mean it's complicated

There's a weird perversity in some circles of software development where difficulty of use is a point of pride. The twisted reasoning goes that, if you have mastered something that is very difficult, then you must be very good, and the task performed by that software must be exceptional too. The online support communities get quite snarky at newbies (presumably because the n00bs couldn't possibly understand what we geniuses are doing up here in the stratosphere) and nobody aims to make the software easier to use, not just because that sounds like "dumbing it down", but because they literally cannot imagine another way.

The problem is often that the biggest difficulty in the system is the badly designed software obscuring what should be a relatively simple task. Oracle database developers vs Microsoft SQL Server is an example I have seen in practice.

SQL Server is a robust, full-featured program that runs reliably and doesn't require constant hand-holding from developers. The online community is helpful and professional. Oracle is less stable, much more complicated to operate and operations that are simple in SQL Server require a lot of time and effort to accomplish in Oracle. The online community is elitist and hostile, in general, though there are some helpful people too.

Why should this be the case? Both programs are database servers. Both do essentially the same thing, but one does it better in terms of usability, and that seems to follow through to the community online.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My experience with Oracle is second-hand, but I trust my colleague.
PPS - I used to think the same way as those snarky, unhelpful ones. I've changed my mind.

Specialised currencies and revoking value

When you pre-pay for phone call credit, you are really just releasing some funds to your phone company to use. The same is true of my public transport card and store gift cards. This is what makes it all the more infuriating, to me, when companies decide that you've had long enough to use that money and confiscate it. This is routine policy in all the examples I've noted above. So what gives companies the right to take your money for the crime of taking too long to spend it? I think there's something deeply wrong there.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't have a pre-paid phone, but I've had store gift cards expire.
PPS - That really should mean "refunded".

Optimisation

Optimisation will never lead to real breakthroughs, only incrementally better or more focused versions of what you have now.

If you look at your sales data and see that most of your customers are male, then you start designing for men, you might sell more or better to those men, but you're going to miss the opportunities to think of new products that women want, or that everyone wants.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - To make real breakthroughs, you need to look at the situation fresh.
PPS - Don't optimise before you're finished.

Australian privacy laws and information security

With the new privacy laws in Australia, companies that deal with confidential data, such as my current employer, will need to take some extraordinary measures to try and control what data is copied externally. For instance, any flash drive plugged into a computer will need to be an encrypted, pre-approved device. This raises a few questions and problems. For starters, how do you even enforce a policy like that? It will have to be done at a system level, rather than an external guideline, or else we are not meeting our requirements. I don't think Windows has any way to do that, though I wouldn't know for sure. And if it does, how do you make sure that nobody can get around it? The control would have to be at a very low level, or else people will be able to bring in a live Linux drive, plug that in and work around all the security you set up in Windows. And if there's a security vulnerability discovered in the encryption software you use, which there may be, how do you make sure the flash drives all get updated?

Next, for anything you do allow to be copied off the machine, you need an audit trail to say who copied it, where and when. That's more complicated still. It's a DRM problem, and those always involve twisted thinking. There's always a hole.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Securing a computer against its own users means it's not really a computer any more.
PPS - I guess we just do our best and hope it's enough.

Personal backup recommendation update

I'm going to adjust my recommendations for personal offsite backup for you photos and videos, but not by much. I used to say "burn your photos and videos to a DVD and take that to work". These days, I have more than that. Lots more. So my new recommendation is to buy a portable hard drive and set up SyncToy (from Microsoft) to keep all your personal media synchronised to the drive. Bring it home every now and then, sync to it, then carry it back to work. If you've got the space on your work PC, you can sync to that hard drive, too, and use the external drive just for carrying the large data sets.

This is more expensive than the DVD option. If you've got small enough collections, you might do better to buy a large flash drive rather than a huge portable hard drive. Use your own judgement on that. One suggestion, though: don't bring it home every single weekend. If your house catches fire on a weekend, then you're still boned. Mix it up.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This is also relevant since many computers are being sold without disc burners these days.
PPS - I'm not sure what to do if a tablet is your primary computer. Online backup is probably your best bet.

Readiness

I keep a lot of windows open on my computer most of the time. At work, I'd typically have email, web browser (with up to 10 tabs), several file browser windows, two simple note-taking programs, a project timer, one personal wiki, one plain text file editor, a development environment and, quite often, a database management window. That doesn't count Dropbox, TeamViewer and Belvedere, the apps that run in my system tray. Oh, and I forgot Wunderlist, my action list program.

Is that excessive? Perhaps. Maybe it's a case of laziness or impatience. If I close things down when I'm not focused on them, I need to spend extra time doing that when I switch away, and I need to spend extra time waiting for it to come back when I need it again. This is about speed and convenience. It's how I need my computer to work for me. Quickly and without getting in the way.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I try to write my software that way, too.
PPS - It's why my note-taking program doesn't need a "new note" button. You jus start typing.

Defaults can trump quality

Defaults can trump quality more easily than you might think. There are several better web browsers in existence than Internet Explorer, but since IE is the default on Windows, that's what a staggering number of people use. Lots of other programs out-perform Adobe Reader for displaying PDFs, but, again, it's the default program and that can mean more than quality. If a default option is easy and works well enough, very few people are going to go looking for the best option, or even a slightly better one.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This is also how a lot of fast food places stay in business.
PPS - And a fair few TV shows.

Cleaning externalities

Practically everything about the quality of their work is an externality to a contract cleaner - it doesn't affect them. If the toilet looks mostly clean and they won't get fired for it, that's good enough. If the paper rolls are loaded the wrong way around for the dispenser and they're glued together, that can be a frustration for anyone who uses the bathroom, but not to the cleaner if it won't get them fired. If the floor is vacuumed in all the major traffic areas, but not behind the plants or under the stairs every day, that's good enough. Pretty much everything falls into that category. It is in their best interests to do their job just barely well enough to avoid getting fired. That is the only way their work directly affects them.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Once you start noticing half-hearted cleaning, you keep seeing it everywhere.
PPS - So, I guess I'm sorry for doing that to you.

Cushy jobs

The cushy jobs have to go to the stupid people. Do you want the best and brightest wasting their time somewhere that their work is essentially meaningless? Do you want the dummies in charge of critical, high-pressure situations?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Some would say dummies in power is how we ended up with failed banks.
PPS - I think that was greed, though.

Proposal quid pro quo

There may come a day when the response to a marriage proposal becomes as important as the proposal itself. I mean, do you want someone to go to the trouble of arranging a flash mob dance number with fireworks and a lion tamer only to say a simple "yes" at the end? A mere "yes" hardly does such effort justice, does it? Instead, you should go and plan your own surprise event with skywriting, fire jugglers and jet ski ramp jumps to deliver your positive response. It's only fair.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Where are those YouTube videos?
PPS - At some point in the distant future, I guess.

We need a mobile power breakthrough

We really do need a breakthrough in mobile computing. We keep wanting to run more powerful processors with bigger screens and more demanding software in a thinner package. The end result is dramatically reduced battery life, to the point that you can barely get through your waking hours on one full battery charge. People have started to look at this problem, but the answers so far are other ways to charge up - at the desk at work, a luggable backup battery, even solar panels. These stop-gap measures only stand in the way. We will soon end up with high-end phones that you unplug at 6am and expect to have dead batteries by the time you get home from work, without even really using it.

More compact battery technology would be a start, but our advances in this space have been incremental rather than revolutionary. Lower-power hardware would help, but probably not enough, especially if we take that as a cue to run ever more demanding software on it. Basically, our increasing demands on mobile computing technology are slowly eroding the very thing we designed them for. Eventually, if we continue on this path, the advantages of mobile will disappear altogether because the batteries suck so hard that they need to sit in a charging cradle non-stop.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Every couple of years I get a new phone and have to charge it more often. Right now it's often twice per day.
PPS - I know I wrote about this not too long ago, but it keeps coming up.

Windows Experience Index should consider RAM amount

I think it's a shame that the Windows Experience Index only takes RAM speed into account, not the RAM amount. You could be running Windows 7 on 2GB of very fast memory, and the Experience Index will tell you that is very good when, in fact, it's not good enough.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My computers all say they'd do better with a beefier graphics card.
PPS - I don't know if I've ever run a high-end graphics card in my machines.

The speed of progress indicators

As humans, we make progress on monotonous tasks in an uneven way. When we start out, we're full of energy and tend to make quick progress. In the middle, we're tired of it and there seems to be no end in sight, so we go more slowly. Near the end, we speed up again because we're getting closer and we just want to finish.

Computers, of course, are not like that. They make progress evenly, and so they should. Perhaps, however, we should scale progress indicator bars to allow for that fast-slow-fast pattern and make it look more natural to people. For the first parts of the task, mark off sections of the progress bar quickly, then slow down in the middle, then speed it up again at the end. I'd like to do some testing to see whether this affects people's perception of the speed of the task. It might actually turn out to be better to reverse the process, going very slowly at the beginning when users have the high energy to allow for that, speed up in the middle to offset the user's lowered energy, and slow down again at the end.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Some progress bars already seem to be fast in the middle and slow at the end.
PPS - So maybe someone already thought of this.

Hotel price comparison comparison, ad nauseum

Every hotel has a booking website. To make the comparisons easier, people have set up separate price comparison websites. But which one of those should you use? Perhaps we need a hotel price meta-comparison website, to help you find the best hotel comparison website before you start actually comparing hotels.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Just make sure we don't set up more than one of those.
PPS - Because that would get really messy.

Taxonomy doesn't lead to understanding

A lot of what I would call "taxonomic philosophy" questions, such as "do digital natives exist?" or "is this thing a 'real' game or not?" disappear when you consider what the results of the answer will be. If you figure out whether a certain piece of interactive art is a game or not, what will be the outcome of that answer? Will people have more or less fun playing it? Will its value go up or down? I don't think anything much changes, and that's the point. There's a difference between understanding something and classifying it. Classification is not an act of understanding but of filing and grouping. That doesn't really lead to anything but more refined definitions of the classifications that you yourself developed. If other people don't agree with those classifications, then there's very little basis to argue with them. You drew an imaginary line and said "these things belong here", but so what if they don't? Knowing the type of thing to call a particular object, person or concept doesn't put you in any closer relationship with it. In fact, it may distance you from it, because if you only play "real" games, there are all kinds of experiences, many of them positive, that you will never have, just because you decided already what did and did not fit into your world.

In short, classification and its related questions do not lead to deeper understanding.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We should do less of them.
PPS - And we should do more understanding of each other.

Motion-sensor lights

In what rooms of the house does it make sense to change all light switches to motion sensors? I think the only place it wouldn't make sense is anywhere you want it to remain dark - the bedroom and maybe home theatre. Everywhere else, it makes more sense, to me, to have motion sensors so that the lights are only on when people are present, and, furthermore, come on automatically when people arrive. I've seen motion-sensor lights becoming more common in offices. I think they'll start being used in homes before too long.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - You probably still need kill-switches for when you're going to change the bulbs.
PPS - Or else it would be like a heist movie every time as you try to move slowly enough not to set it off.

Spotting found footage fakes

Whenever alleged "found footage" begins a few seconds before the amazing, once-in-a-lifetime occurrence or the blink-and-you-miss-it weirdness, you should be suspicious.

It usually looks like several seconds of why-would-you-film-this banality until someone suddenly says "OMG LOOK AT THAT!" and the camera swivels around to see the monster/alien/cryptid/magic for a second. Real footage of such unusual events would begin several seconds after the exclamation, at best, and that's if someone whips out their phone immediately. Also, anything that zooms in was probably not filmed on a phone.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm not actually that familiar with high-end phone cameras.
PPS - They might zoom. But I doubt anyone thinks of that in the moment.

Amazon should have Kindle sales events like Steam

Amazon should take a cue from Steam and run limited-time specials on Kindle ebooks and send me email when books on my wish list go on sale. I'd end up buying more books, I'm sure, just the way I've bought a lot of games from Steam that I don't have time to play.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Perhaps their publisher agreements don't allow that.
PPS - Which is the equivalent of "we don't like money", but that's their loss.

Working better with YouTube subscriptions

When I subscribe to a YouTube channel, I do so because I want to watch basically everything they upload, or I at least want to have a clear view of new uploads on that channel. The best possible arrangement, for me, would be to have all new uploads from my subscription channels added automatically to my Watch Later playlist. For now, here's the best solution I've found:

Get an RSS Feed Of Your Youtube Subscriptions

This page describes how to get an RSS feed for all your subscriptions, which you can use in any news reader of your choice. I've added it to Feedly, which I use for my news since Google set fire to Google Reader. Anyway, it's a fairly simple matter of making your subscriptions public, finding your user ID and pasting it into a GData URL. It looks pretty good to me so far.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's made my subscriptions useful, anyway.
PPS - I like working with single feeds for similar purposes.

Witness protection

Hypotheticals: How would you handle permanent witness protection? I mean completely ditching everything about your life, deliberately disappearing and starting from scratch. It is difficult enough when you have to do something like change your phone number or your credit card. Imagine also having to abandon your Facebook profile, your email, your house, your car, all your possessions, your friends, your family, your job (and job history) and even your entire name. Call it the Men In Black treatment. All that remains of you - anywhere - are memories.

Let's assume, for the sake of sanity, that you are being taken in by a secretive government agency for some reason. They'll give you a new name, new house and a new job, but it won't be flashy, and it won't be familiar. How long before you snap and what is the thing that makes you break your cover?

For me, I think it would be the internet. Not in and of itself, but because it's the quickest, easiest way to blow my cover and reconnect with people I know and love.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Bonus question: how would you drop a hint to secretly tell your family that you're okay?
PPS - I'd probably try a cryptic letter, but then it would be hard to know if it worked.

Political incentives

On Extra Credits, a sort of gaming-philosophy-related YouTube channel, there's a video about political incentives, focusing on the USA, because that's where the video creators live. It makes some incredibly good points about members of congress being insulated from the effects of their actions, and ways to fix that, such as tying congresspeoples' wages directly to a multiple of the average US wage, and giving them exactly whatever health care options are available to an ordinary citizen of their age. Those are stellar suggestions, I think, and they would definitely result in a much more fair, balanced, involved and trustworthy government. We should enact those measures immediately, is my point.

The problem comes next. The people who would be 100% responsible for setting up those laws are the very same people who would be voting themselves a pay cut and more limited health care options as a result. That's not going to go down so well with the current members of congress. The crippling arterial blockage we are trying to remove is the very reason many of the most powerful congresscritters are there in the first place: it's a cushy job with tons of benefits and very little in terms of actual negative consequences of your actions, plus the ability to vote yourself more money at any time. Trying to root that out of the system is going to be practically impossible, and keeping it secure once it is miraculously accomplished is going to be a constant ongoing battle. As soon as you say "congressional wages will be 2.5 times the national average", someone will introduce a bill to say "actually, let's make it 3.5 times" and so on.

Because Congress is in power over itself, it is going to drift further and further into corruption as time goes on. The deeper it gets, the harder it will be to root out. In the end, a total collapse of the political system may be required to bring about the necessary change, and that assumes you can keep the warlords and backstabbers out of the revolution.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think political systems naturally drift towards corruption.
PPS - Or basically every one of them has so far, some slower than others.

Online retail needs different jobs

I don't think retail is dying as such with the move to online shopping. It's just that the kinds of jobs we require to support online shopping are different to what we needed for bricks and mortar shopping. We used to need shopfitters and signwriters, but now we need web designers. We used to need commercial landlords, but now we need web hosts. We used to need sales staff, but now we need warehouse staff to pack and ship orders. It doesn't mean that everyone's skills transfer directly over, but there should be room for everyone, at least in theory.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We need to train people for these jobs.
PPS - And, I guess, figure out what those jobs are.

File everything

If you're looking to get more organised, it's really a whole journey to having a full system and the habits to maintain it. However, if you're just looking for that quick hack that will give you the most benefit with the least effort, start using a filing system. Buy a ton of manila folders and a filing cabinet, and start using it for literally everything that will fit. Don't leave things around the house in places where you'll "just remember", and definitely don't pile things on the desk, even if you have a piling system ("this is next week's bills, this is letters from Grandma, and these on the floor over here manuals for household appliances that stopped working five years ago"). Your goal in this filing-obsessed situation is that the first response when you wonder "where is such-and-such?" is always "filing cabinet". If you can't fit an item in there physically, you find a place for it elsewhere, then write down where it is in your filing system. It should be like the library card index of your house.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My filing system is not quite as good as this.
PPS - It needs some maintenance.

A possible future of social networking

There is a way - a bad way - that social networking online could go. It might look something like this.

In an effort to fight back against heavy-handed NSA surveillance and over-sharing on Facebook, ISPs are forced to take action to protect their customers. Rather than paying Facebook for access and not being sure that they really are protecting the privacy of their users, ISPs set up their own social networks as an opt-in extra. Users pay to have an account, but the ISPs, in a move designed to encourage more business, make these new networks walled gardens, exclusive to their own customers. If you want to network with your friends, better convince them to switch ISPs.

These buggy, awful, too-closed networks will, however, eventually win out, because they don't sell user data to third parties. At first. Then the allure of bringing back the Big Data economy will tug longingly at the wallet-strings of the ISPs and they will cave in. After all, someone else must already be doing that, right?

So, in order to save ourselves from government surveillance, we will sell our social data to our internet service providers instead, who will, in turn, behave exactly like little Facebooks, selling user data and, eventually, collaborating with government spy agencies anyway. We don't get a say. We never did. We are the product. The cow doesn't get a vote on the way to the abbatoir.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I know it's bleak.
PPS - Some futures, especially with little corporate responsibility, are just that way.

Modular design

I really do love modular design. Snap in, snap out customisation. It's something between bespoke designs built from scratch and one-size-fits-all, take-it-or-leave-it mass production. I think about it a fair bit, possibly because I played with LEGO as a kid. And as an adult, though less so. Lately I've been wondering about modular housing. You could, perhaps, use shipping containers for the bulk of the structure, and design individual ready-made rooms with power, water and lighting wired up and ready to go. I don't know how well it would work, but I'd love to see someone try.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - People do build the occasional house out of shipping containers.
PPS - I'm thinking more of mass-produced snap-together rooms to make a whole house.

Atypical writer

I feel like I might be a bit atypical as a writer. It's a common observation that writers have this kind of problem where they can't keep their word count down when it's required. They just write and write and before they know it they're 20,000 words into what started as an ad to sell their couch.

I'm not like that. Yes, I can be a bit wordy, but, to take up a horrible metaphor, my writing is more like constipation where other writers have diarrhoea. I have never written as much as I think, and every word comes slowly. My brain needs to slow down, stop and think about what I'm doing, and then the next word comes. It's painful and slow.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Then again, every writer is atypical in some way.
PPS - Just like every human.

Mockery and insecurity

One of the first things John Scalzi says about his Creation Museum visit article and photo essay is "if you don't want me to mock your beliefs, get better beliefs". I don't think he's kidding, because of aforementioned extensive mockery being the very purpose of the visit, the article and the photo captions. In other words, his position is "I will not mock you unless I don't like what you believe". That's not a moral position. That's schoolyard bullying. It's the same as saying "I will mock your beliefs", but it puts the onus on you. It looks like it's up to you whether you get mocked/punched/bullied, but it's really not.

Mockery doesn't change beliefs, it only reinforces prejudices when used this way. This form of mockery is rooted, deep down, in insecurity. If I am insecure about myself, then I need everyone else to validate my choices, my beliefs and my physical appearance by conforming to it. Your sheer comfort with believing something different to me is a threat to the security of my personal world view. It must be attacked.

The point is that, while you could change who you are, what you believe, the clothes you wear and the way you cut your hair in order to appease someone, why should you do that? They're the one with the problem. You are free to express your beliefs (as long as you can defend them with logical argument), just as I am. Instead of mockery, how about we have a proper discussion? We might not end up agreeing, but we should end up understanding our own beliefs better as a result, and that is always a good thing.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I just know the "get better beliefs" line is going to be repeated without thought.
PPS - Just know that, if you repeat it, it's more of a threat than a hilarious observation.

The people problems of communication

We solved the mechanical problems of communication and found out the real problem was people. I mean to say that these days we have phones that are always within reach, answering machines and voice mail, email, text, Facebook, Twitter, actual video phones, any number of ways of getting in touch with people, and we still fail to do so. We still don't respond to the messages people send us. We misunderstand each other or respond in anger or haste. The technology makes it faster to get in touch, but all of the people problems are still there.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm pretty bad at this, too.
PPS - I was bad at it before I got connected.

Importance

If we all had a crystal ball to see who would be important in the future, we would treat some people better, but we would also treat some people worse. I mean, most people you meet won't be critical to your future success, and especially not to history as a whole. If we had some mechanism to tell us who was most important, it would also tell us that most people are not, and we would definitely end up abusing that knowledge. Better to follow the Golden Rule and treat everyone as if they are as important (or more so) than yourself.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't do that nearly well enough.
PPS - It's so simple to say and so hard to do.

The grammar of mobile app interoperation

I have to think in Yoda grammar when navigating on my phone. "person, navigate to", not "navigate to person". It's a weird adjustment I've had to make, but I know where it's come from. It's just the way the software handles app interoperation. If you have data of a particular type - say, an address - then a contextual action on that data can be handled by any installed app that accepts it. It's pretty flexible, and it means you don't need every app to have browsers for data that the others hold. It just means a different way of thinking.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'll get used to it.
PPS - Eventually.

Business software needs integration

Business software customers already have a lot of people using a lot of other tools. If you want to sell some software to a business, it needs to integrate with those existing tools. Selling a customer service issue tracker to a software house that doesn't integrate with their source control is a non-starter. Selling a timesheet solution that doesn't integrate with HR databases and invoicing software won't get you anywhere.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Selling directly to consumers, on the other hand, makes "integration" a dirty word.
PPS - Go figure.

Mars operating systems

A computer on Mars doesn't need a whole different operating system. It just needs a different calendar and clock. Cory Doctorow wrote in his story Martian Chronicles about how computers needed to run on a Mars-specific operating system, to match the particular clock and calendar for that planet. It may also have been a point about the specific circumstances of that story, but it shouldn't really matter. You can run a different clock and calendar on the same operating system as everyone else. The computer doesn't mind, as long as there's a way to translate dates to and from a number of milliseconds. That's all it would need.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This is one of those technical discussions that bugs me, deep down.
PPS - It's also one of those with very little impact on my life.

Gaming comics

The reason I prefer Penny Arcade over Ctrl+Alt+Del is that I'm not a voracious consumer of games. I have a casual association with games, though not in the sense that would necessarily make me a "casual gamer". These days that means you only play Candy Crush. Anyway, because I do not, as my life goal, aim to play ALL THE GAMES, I don't always recognise a significant new cultural artifact a week after it pops up. Ctrl+Alt+Del does a comic about Rust, but to me it's just two naked guys in the woods discussing the merits of guns over pants. Which is fine, I guess? But when Penny Arcade references Rust, there's a comprehensive news post that goes along with it, incidentally explaining what Rust is and what they think of it. To be fair, Ctrl+Alt+Del does often also put up a blog post with it, though not always, and I'm not in the habit of reading it or looking for it, because it is so often absent.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm much more likely to read a book than play a game, in general.
PPS - Depending on the book and the game.

Chuck Wendig on spanking your children

On Christmas Eve, Chuck Wendig posted a long rant to his blog with the title "Spanking Your Children Is Hitting Your Children". Amid his usual profanity, he put forward the opinion that spanking your children is a form of abuse, which is not a new argument, but was backed up with some reasonable and well-thought-out logic.

His follow-up post attempted to address some of the comments he received, and he presents studies that support him, though none that found any alternative conclusions. The main thrust of the argument here is that spanking is the low-brow, knee-jerk reaction to tantrums and other behavioural problems in children. It only teaches them to fear you and that they should not behave that way, not why they should not.

Here's where I started thinking that, whether you spank or put your child in time-out, neither approach is going to accomplish any understanding without some long discussions where you outline expectations and that actions have consequences, choices and all that kind of thing to your tantrum-throwing two-year-old. Do they understand? Probably not. There is going to be a time in your child's life when they are punished for something and cannot know why.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't have kids, though, so I'm not actually qualified to weigh in on this.
PPS - You'll note that hasn't stopped me, but feel free to ignore me on that basis.

Google feature shrink

Google is betting a lot on Google+, shoehorning in a lot of features that used to be provided by other services. Chat? Google+ Hangouts. Latitude? Google+ location tags. YouTube comments? Google+ posts. I suppose, in one sense, it's good, and I didn't use some of those services anyway, so that's more neutral. On the other hand, when they're absorbed into Google+, those services inevitably lose features, and they seem to be the features I was using.

This says one of two things. Either Google is doing a sloppy job incorporating these new features into G+, implying they might come back later, or I am significantly atypical as a Google customer.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm willing to accept that I am atypical.
PPS - It seems to be the way I am.

Predicting the future

Predicting the future is hard. Some small things, especially extending technology to say that this or that will become smaller, faster, cheaper and more efficient is the baseline. Predicting exactly what effect that will have on society is nearly impossible. You could "predict" that cameras will get smaller, networks faster and batteries more efficient, and you could put those together to predict tiny wireless spycams that run for months on a single battery charge. You might predict that such cameras would be worn on glasses to document people's lives, or used by perverts in public toilets and change rooms, but maybe you wouldn't think they would, for instance, be shotgunned into burning buildings for real-time mapping or used to monitor national parks or any number of other applications. What people think to do with technology is always unusual and always astounding.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - People are the usual cause of unintended consequences.
PPS - They are the most creative and most unexpected part of any system.

Videogame brain health

Videogames may be good for your brain in certain ways, but it still matters what you're using it for when you're not playing games. You can't spend all your time on games and expect to come out a genius, even in very specialised arenas. You need to put your brain skills to use.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - As I clearly ... have.
PPS - I word good all time.

Retry, Reboot, Reinstall

My standard computer troubleshooting procedure is The Three Rs: "Retry, Reboot, Reinstall". There's quite often a Google step in between the last two, though, because reinstalling is a big operation and if there's a quicker route, you might as well try that before the scorched-earth policy. Still, that's the basics. If you're going to ask me for help, this is what I'll do.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Or this.
PPS - Some problems never get fixed.

What makes an urgent problem

The only things that are actually urgent are where nobody is in control. Need to eat right now and have no food? Urgent. Been shot or stabbed or poisoned? Urgent. Planetary alignment window for space launch? Urgent.

Rent and payday? Not urgent. Sort of. What I mean is that, at the other end of the "urgent" bill is a person, and the huge advantage of people is that we can be flexible. Get talking to the right person and anything "urgent" that they are in charge of can be moved, if the right motivators are in place.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Of course, there's only so much negotiating that one person can do, in the end.
PPS - When you reach that limit, your urgent problems are staying urgent.

Amazon.com.au doesn't know I have a wish list

Since the launch of Amazon Australia for digital content, my wish list is a mess. I had a lot of titles on there for my Kindle, and now when I log in, I am told that some of them are no longer available. This is because they are now to be exclusively sold through Amazon.com.au if I am in Australia, though this is not spelled out on Amazon.com. To make it all as difficult to use as possible, of course, my wish list itself is not accessible from the Australian site. So to buy a title from my wish list for my Kindle, I have to make sure I go to Amazon.com, but if the title is not actually available there, I have to go to Amazon.com.au and do a search to make sure I haven't been lied to.

Like I said, a mess.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm moderately confident this will get better in the future.
PPS - Moderately confident, not supremely confident.

Trust vs accountability

An act of trust is an act of faith. Some people say that we need total transparency to trust each other - everything out on the table up front. But total transparency is not trust. It's accountability.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's still a good thing.
PPS - Just not the same thing.

Home automation

If I were installing some home automation, and I could secure it properly, I would put internet-enabled sensors and controllers all over my house and get an app for my phone to control and monitor it. I'd want to get alerts when my doors and windows are open if I'm out of the house, and just a basic report on those states available at all times. I'd really like to be able to close the doors and windows remotely, in case I left them open and I hear there's rain coming. That also goes for the garage door: alerts when it's open, remote control to open or close it.

I'd want to be able to switch the lights on and off in blocks all at once, and be able to check and switch off appliances and power points too, in case I think I left the oven or iron on. It would be nice, but not essential, to be able to control my TV, DVD and media centre from my phone, but that can be a separate project.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - In a pinch, I would probably settle for an "all lights out" switch in the bedroom.
PPS - I think home automation would be cool, but then I struggle to think what I'd actually do with it.

Following your dreams

We can't all follow our dreams. First, the world won't work if everybody refuses to do anything that doesn't interest them. There just aren't enough truly passionate career janitors and retail salespeople in the world. Society would collapse on that alone. Second, for every successful musician, there are at least a thousand garage-band wannabes who will never make it, despite being just as hard-working and talented. There is just not enough room in the market.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We all have to do things we don't enjoy.
PPS - Sometimes, we have to do them to make a living.

Hugo Something

I am somehow constantly forgetting Hugo Weaving's name. I forget it for a while, go around in my head trying to remember it, usually bringing up "Hugh Jackman" as something similar and immediately discarding it, but the only other suggestion that ever seems to come to mind after that is "Jack Human", then "Something Hu-something" and white noise static. So I look it up, smack my forehead, vow to definitely, really remember it this time, only for it to come up a few days later and to draw a complete blank.

It's Hugo Weaving, brain. Hugo Weaving.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I very nearly typed "Hugh Jackman" again there.
PPS - Hugo.

Open plan

The promises of open-plan offices are that it makes everyone more available to help everyone else, and makes it easier to work with your neighbours. The reality of open-plan offices is that being available to help others means you are more likely to be interrupted and unable to get your work done, and even if you aren't the subject of an interruption, you will be aurally distracted any time coworkers strike up any conversation, work-related or otherwise. Open-plan offices have been shown experimentally to be terrible for productivity, and employees must usually deal with the overwhelming noise by drowning it out with headphones, further harming productivity.

If you want your workers to be productive and to cooperate with each other, almost any office layout will be far better than open-plan. Just keep it in mind if you've got an office on the drawing board. Open, flowing space is good for parties, not for getting work done, for identical reasons.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm not a fan of open plan.
PPS - Unless you're throwing a party. Then I'm in.

Technology in cars

I don't think we really know how we want technology to integrate with our cars just yet. There are some things that seem like good ideas (integrated GPS) and others that are boneheaded wrongness shoehorned in because the car manufacturer says so (DRM on batteries). Some are a mixed blessing, offering some benefit while keeping it locked up and adding unknown security vulnerabilities (Lojack/OnStar come to mind, that can track and remote control your car, including unlocking it with a phone call, but might be accidentally offering that capability to hackers). We're starting to see concept cars with computers that keep you up to date on social networks. Distractions are a terrible thing to build into a car, but apparently that doesn't occur to the designers.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think car technology should be halfway between real-time industrial monitoring equipment and mobile computers.
PPS - That's a lot to cram into a computer system.

Sexism at the office

A few times during my office-worker career, the admin assistants or receptionists have had occasion to complain that people are leaving unwashed dishes in the sink, and that they are having to wash them up. "We're not here to clean up after you", they say in the meeting. At this point I always notice the older men smirking and looking at each other as if to say "What does she think she's here for, then?". I realise that attitudes towards gender roles have changed over time, and that institutional sexism has, in theory, gone away, but it always stuns me to see that it was only a couple of decades ago that wearing a skirt in an office was the clear signal that you are here to look after the important men-folk who do the real work. It's funny how quickly and how slowly that change has happened, is what I mean. Quickly because it was not that long ago that it was normal, but slowly because it's technically not gone yet.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - That's usually the way deeply-entrenched ideas die.
PPS - By failing to be passed on to the next generation.

DRM from another perspective

I'm starting to see DRM from a different perspective lately. Not a positive one, just one of understanding. See, I would like to be taking steps to counter the actions of those who would prey on me. It's just that, because I'm an individual, the ones who would prey on me are big, powerful corporations. I use encryption and privacy-preserving services to keep them from taking advantage of me.

If, however, I were a big powerful corporation trying to sell things to the public, then those who would prey on me are the general public or, more specifically, the behaviours of certain members of the public, such as those who take what I'm selling without paying. If I were in charge of one of those corporations, I would take whatever steps I could to mitigate those behaviours. DRM is one of those "solutions" sold to such people. They're being told it works. It will protect them. It's not true, but they bought the lie anyway.

A better approach might be to look at those behaviours, at what motivates them, and try to change business practices to remove those motivations. For instance, lots of people in Australia pirate TV. It's the national passtime of our geek set. Some of the motivations given are that it takes far too long for content to get here from the USA, and then all the legal channels are either blocked or sold in ways meant to maximise the customer's bleeding. A lot of this has to do with regional distribution agreements that were designed last century to handle pre-internet-era TV, and have persisted mostly on momentum and habit.

So the best way to mitigate the behaviours being displayed is just to sidestep everything in the old system. Make your shows for the internet directly. If you need a lot of startup capital, go to Kickstarter. I think this can work.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Then again, I'm not the one who knows what works.
PPS - I just know the promises of DRM are lies.

City needs

For life in a city, electricity and running water are as much needs as food, shelter and clothing. When the power goes out and the water systems fail, cities get sick. They can't function the way they should.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - They become individual needs because the environment requires them.
PPS - It's a bit of an odd position.

Redundancy 2

Yesterday I was made redundant at work. Downsized. Regretfully let go. It's the second time in my career that's happened to me, and I think I handled it better this time around. The payout was nice. It will go a long way to keeping us afloat while I find another job. I could see on the video conference that my boss was not having a good day either. I gather he had to do this a few times today. I was hoping I could wheedle a last-minute title change to "Senior Professional", just to look better on the resume, but that was evidently not an option.

I'm considering options at the moment. I could take a month off, attend some acting auditions, maybe try to sell some writing. If it doesn't work out quickly, I can always look for a more traditional job. Maybe it won't interest me enough at all. I guess we'll see.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - While it gets easier to receive redundancy, I wonder if it gets easier to give it out.
PPS - I doubt it.

Secret accountability is not accountability

FISC/FISA is clearly not working as a procedure for keeping the NSA in check. Why? Because "secret accountability" is a contradiction in terms. It isn't real accountability, it's conspiracy, because the wall of secrecy is drawn around the two of you, and all information is forbidden from leaving, ever.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Self-policing always devolves into no policing.
PPS - Because it's easier that way.

Trusted random number generation

When you're engaging in some activity online that requires random numbers and you don't know if you can trust the other side, you have a problem. Say it's a game, and you each need to roll dice regularly. If you each just generate random numbers and tell each other what they were, you can't know that your opponent isn't lying in their own favour. You also can't just generate the random numbers for each other, because that has the same problem. To trust the randomness, you need something that neither side can lie about, that can't be rigged to favour one side or the other, and that can't be known ahead of time.

Something like this:

1. Both encrypt a seed and send it.
2. Once you receive your partner's seed, send the key to decrypt your side. This is important, because your partner can't change their seed at this point, and neither can you.
3. Decrypt the seeds and combine them in some agreed way (say, by multiplying or adding them together).
4. Generate a random number using the combined seed.
5. Discard seeds and start over to avoid look-ahead cheating.

It seems simple enough, and there are some variations you can do for other, more complicated scenarios. Unfortunately, it doesn't stretch far beyond the limited concept of shared, verified randomness. It can't be used to verify identity, for instance. It only tells me that I can trust the random numbers generated this way, not that the other machine generating them is who I expect to be on the other end. Also, since I'm not a security expert, it's possible (or very likely) that there's a blatant flaw in the scheme that allows it to be biased for some purpose. I don't know.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - So far I've been unable to determine a version that allows the equivalent of both sides drawing random cards and keeping them secret.
PPS - For now, this is obviously a trusted P2P dice mechanism and nothing more.

Blank board game supplies

Just on a whim, I went looking for blank playing cards online, and I was delighted to find a whole range of blank board game equipment for sale: blank playing cards, plain white game boards, blank-faced dice with stickers, plain coloured pawns. This makes me very happy just because it's a kind of midpoint between total DIY and professionally-published games.

If you've got an idea for a board game, obviously you can find some cardboard and do a lot of cut-paste-draw-write yourself, but after some play testing, maybe you want your home-made game to look a little more professional. Something you can bring to family and friends game nights. This is just what you need. If I ever hear of a kid who is into board games and is pretty creative (as kids often are) then I will order a bunch of this stuff for their birthday or Christmas, probably along with some professionally-published game too.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't think the world has enough good board games.
PPS - I also don't think there is enough good board game software, but that's another story.

The interpretation of facts

People who think they are having a scientific argument online try to throw up supporting facts for their theory or falsifying facts against their opponents. This is what is happening with the anti-vaccination movement. Celebrities have bought some story about vaccinations causing autism, and are taking up the noble cause of terrifying parents into foregoing all vaccinations. As a result, preventable illnesses and deaths are on the rise in America, and autism ... well, autism is still doing its own thing exactly as before.

It would seem to be a simple cut-and-dry case of "What The Hell Were You Thinking?", but no matter the facts being shown, the scare-mongers are not backing down. It is therefore clear that this is not a fight about facts. It is a fight about mindset, about worldview, about basic scientific literacy. It is a fight about the interpretation of facts. If you start with the wrong axioms, you will view facts in a distorted way, but it is also the case that starting with the right axioms gives you a bias. Facts do not speak for themselves. They never have, and they never will, because your audience will always have a worldview ready to apply their own interpretation. Facts don't cut through delusion automatically. When you present facts about the number of preventable illnesses and deaths, compared to the number of autism diagnoses scientifically linked to vaccinations, someone with the "vaccination = autism" viewpoint will assume that not enough scientists are looking for the link, so they need to scream louder until the world wakes up. The same facts, wildly different interpretations.

Question the axioms. It's your only hope of winning an argument like that. Also, you can't change someone's mind for them. You need to ask the right questions to make them examine their assumptions.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Knowing what your opponent is assuming is always a good step in an argument.
PPS - At least for understanding them.

Weather warnings that aren't warnings

It's storm season here in Brisbane, which means occasional severe thunderstorms and warnings to pay attention to. What I need is an app on my phone that tells me when I or my home is in a storm warning area so I can react appropriately. The "Early Warning Network" has an Android app, but it seems to be nothing more than a slightly different version of going to the Bureau of Meteorology website and checking the warning areas manually. Not even a slightly better version, just slightly different. Either way, I need to check the warnings myself, and that's not a warning or alert system. That's a passive information system.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Doing it properly would require spatial data to be published by global weather services.
PPS - I don't know if they do that.

Spending movie marketing money on charity

I would like to see lots more charity projects as publicity stunts like this Walter Mitty Philippines trip, even if the studios get to write off their marketing budgets as charitable donations. Wouldn't that be great if all marketing budgets turned into foreign aid instead? Even if we get "Coca Cola Presents Uganda Aid 2014", I think we'll come out on top.

By the time Casey Neistat suggested spending $25K on a trip to help typhoon victims in the Philippines, 20th Century Fox kind of had to let him do it. They'd look like major douches if they turned him down, and it still kind of fits into the theme of the contest they were running. I understand Walter Mitty does some travelling to poor areas in the film. Plus they still get their publicity. It's not as if Neistat just took the money, quietly gave it to people and went home without a fuss. He gave it to them on video on behalf of 20th Century Fox and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and it's going viral. Everyone wins.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm not sure yet if I'll see the movie.
PPS - It's on the list, but so are lots of movies I might not end up seeing.

Setting priorities

I am terrible at prioritising my time. This is obviously not a boast. It's also how I ended up with over a hundred YouTube videos waiting on my attention, a growing backlog of podcasts, tons of unwatched TV and many articles and books (physical and ebook) to read, all sitting and rotting in multiple lists I might never get around to.

Recently I realised that I need to make some choices. Clean house. Admit my limitations. I also realised that I have a suitable toolset for the task already. I have a program I use to vote pending blog posts up or down, relative to each other, to help ensure I post the best stuff here. As it turns out, that same tool can let me prioritise my entertainment if I put it all into one giant list, and the only decisions I have to make, now and then, are whether I want to watch, for instance, this TV show more than I'd rather read a particular book.

So far, it's working pretty well. It's still a bit of a pain deconstructing my other playlists and wish lists, but because everything is in one big list, it's really no extra trouble once it's done. It's helping me to feel like I'm not going to neglect something important or fun. And eventually, if I keep at it long enough, the worst items, whether books, movies, TV shows, articles or YouTube videos, should naturally fall off the end of the list, never to be heard from again. That is the ultimate goal: discarding what I really didn't need to spend my time on while using my recreation time on the most enjoyable things. It's a system for strategically neglecting the least important entertainment.

I'm actually pretty excited about it at this point. My previous method had been to arrange one whole type of entertainment - say, my TV backlog - before all others, and to stick with that until I was completely done with everything in that category. I'd listen to all my podcasts on the train ride home until that queue was empty, then allow myself to read books. It wasn't working. This new way, with everything in one list, a good book has an actual chance of winning out against TV that, in the end, I might rather not watch at all.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I rewrote the voting algorithm just for this.
PPS - That's another bonus of this method: I get to write more software.

Blackjack

Playing on some fake blackjack tables for our company's Christmas party, I started wondering about dealer systems. Do casinos have a simple set of rules that blackjack dealers are to follow? Say, if hitting one more time on your own hand, the dealer's, might be safe a lot of the time, but you've already beaten half the table, it would be better if you don't hit and pay out half the table rather than hitting, busting and paying out the whole table. I'd be astonished if there weren't several such simple systems for blackjack dealers to follow, all with their own names, special rules, advantages and disadvantages. Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, a quick web search shows up lots of results for player systems rather than dealer systems.

I also gained some respect for people who are able to count cards, even in a very simple system. Those cards come quickly on a busy table. If you're able to keep track of a deck score by registering each card, counting up or down and still keep track of your own hand, deciding whether to hit or stay based on the deck score, your cards and whether you still need to beat the dealer, and do it all quickly enough not to raise suspicion, my hat is off to you, sir.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If systems exist for the dealer, they're buried under a lot of chaff.
PPS - It wouldn't need to be secret information for the casino, though. They'll win regardless.

How Facebook will retain dominance

How should Facebook combat open social networks as a business threat? Two possibilities. One, just be the better product. Use your head start to keep adding the features that people want in their social networking. Two, allow one-way interaction. You could view anyone else's external feed integrated with your Facebook page, but nobody can view Facebook anywhere but Facebook itself.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - So far, the threat of other social networks to Facebook is minimal at best.
PPS - And they're already doing one-way interaction of a sort.

Freedom vs security

What is the point of safety if it takes away your freedom? You can be perfectly safe suspended in a tank, fed through a tube, guarded in an underground, nuclear-proof bunker, but then what? You won't be truly living at that point, just surviving. You aren't being kept safe for anything. You might as well be a food processor or, better yet, not exist at all and save everyone the trouble.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think that's what they mean when they say you shouldn't give up freedom for security.
PPS - Freedom is what security is for.

Disagreeing with substance

When you encounter someone with whom you disagree directly - a "yes it is/no it isn't" type of disagreement - please try something other than head-butting for resolution. If your first response to a conversation that started with "Yes it is", "No it isn't" is to say "Yes it is" more loudly, the next response is not going to be "Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't realise, but your loudness must indicate the force of your belief and therefore your correctness. I humbly apologise." Like five-year-olds who lack negotiation and proper argument skills, you're just getting into a yelling match. If you recall being in that kind of conflict at age 5, it ends when someone hits the other or backs down in tears.

There needs to be some substance to your argument. Try "Oh, I thought such-and-such meant that this was the case." At least that offers the possibility of debate rather than the suggestion that you are digging in your heels and stubbornly refusing to be swayed on an opinion you have pre-decided.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Sometimes I get sucked into a content-free disagreement.
PPS - It's hardest to step out of it when I'm tired.

Is it the future yet?

Our cars continue to get more amazing features, such as self-parking, reversing cameras and integrated GPS. Many car stereo functions, however, would be better served by an off-the-shelf tablet computer. Some US states allow test-driving of robot cars.

Speaking of magical handheld glass screens that put the entire world's knowledge at our fingertips at all times, we have a large variety of those now, but they're all incompatible with each other and still cost a fair bit. 7" tablets are cheaper than both 4" phones and 10" tablets. Smart watches and head-up displays are making consumer inroads.

Amazon wants to deliver your purchases by flying drone. Assume that pizza delivery and PO boxes will allow this, too, but not for a few years.

3D printers keeps getting cheaper, in general, but are still not regular household appliances.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - You can also buy internet-addressable light and power switches.
PPS - Facebook continues to grow into the size of a small country.

Non-standard office phone headsets

Why has nobody made a phone for office desks that includes Bluetooth, so you can use any wireless headset you want, or even one with a standard plug for mobile headsets? Even my home phone has a non-standard plug. I don't get it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Maybe some office phones do allow the use of standard headsets.
PPS - Just none I've ever seen.

Low-power tablet computers could run on ambient solar energy

We need tablets and phones that consume so little power that they can run on ambient solar energy. That's something I didn't think of when I was talking about orders of magnitude gains in power generation and consumption. If our devices are efficient enough and our ability to generate power grows far enough, then we won't need central power stations at all. Your whole house can run on a couple of solar panels on the roof, and your portable devices can run on ambient solar energy.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Unless it's cloudy.
PPS - In which case little wind turbines might suffice.

Paying and getting paid

There's always a tension between customers and producers. As software producers, for instance, we want to keep getting income on an ongoing basis. That means monthly or yearly subscriptions. As a business, we try to set up those ongoing yearly license fees to keep getting paid by our customers, and we congratulate ourselves whenever we succeed.

Our customers, on the other hand, would very much prefer to pay once for our software and never pay again, which is fair enough from their point of view. When I consider BuildMaster, the software I use to maintain my personal programming projects, I try not to hit the limits that require add-on subscription licenses to keep using it, such as having more than 10 projects or more than 3 distributed packages per project. I try to think of how I can organise my projects to avoid those limits, because otherwise I will have to pay every year to keep using the software.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And if I were selling my software, I would be trying to get yearly subscriptions.
PPS - Until someone undercuts me by selling a once-for-all license.

Putting the pieces together

On Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., one of the characters said that she was part of an organisation because one person might not have the whole answer, but 100 people with 1% of the solution will get it done. Those 100 people would still need a coordinator to fit them together, though. A 100-piece puzzle doesn't assemble itself.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Unless you count "badly, in a random pile" as "assembled".
PPS - I doubt anyone would count that.

Merry Cmas!

If you're going to abbreviate the word "Christmas", personally I much prefer that you use the English initial "C" than the Greek "X" (chi). Just a personal preference. Merry Christmas!

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If you celebrate Christmas as a pagan winter festival, don't say "Christmas" at all.
PPS - Better say "Yule" for that.

Gmail increased image security

Gmail has taken the excellent step of increasing image safety in emails by pre-loading them and presenting transcoded images by proxy. This means it's safe for you to always show images in Gmail now, and you as a user don't need to make a security decision whenever an email contains pictures. That's good, because people are, on the whole, pretty bad at making security decisions. However, Gmail's new functionality is also disruptive to old marketing email practices.

It used to be the case that embedded email images could track who had opened an email and when, by using a unique address for the image in each individual email. Whenever that address was accessed, you could know who was looking at that email. Now that Google hides all image loading behind a proxy, you can't really rely on it any more. It doesn't tell you that an email address is valid, because Google might open that image anyway for an invalid email address, and you can't tell that a particular person opened the email either, because of the same image pre-loading. This could be pretty big.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's one of those situations where we win, Google wins and spammers lose.
PPS - Google's win here is a more usable and more secure email service.

Where the phone connection belongs

If people are abandoning traditional home phones in favour of mobiles, then the wired phone connection is going to be exclusively (or at least primarily) for internet access. Therefore, the phone points that are normally placed in the kitchen would be better positioned in the lounge room (for media servers, game consoles and other set-top boxes). Has anyone done that yet?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I know it would make much more sense for me, personally.
PPS - When we move house next, we won't be connecting a landline.

Airline business conflicts

We have reached an odd situation with airlines now. The modern world requires airplanes to function, but they're so expensive to run that they are already optimised up to the eyeballs. Any little delays bump the whole schedule out of whack, plus they're cutting costs and services everywhere they can just to maintain an operating profit in one of the most competitive industries on the planet. There's no loyalty to speak of, so we all pick the cheapest flight we can get for where we need to go.

However, airlines are also businesses. They should, technically, have the right to refuse service to any person for any reason, from "I think you might be a danger to others" down to "I don't like that thing you said about us on Twitter".

And there's the conflict. Our world depends on airlines, so they're a necessity, and necessities should be rights, but they have the right to deny us their necessary service for arbitrary reasons. We need to fly, but we hate it, and if we say so, they can keep us from flying.

So what do we do? We need an airline that cannot deny us service for arbitrary reasons, only for operational ones. A not-for-profit airline. Well, providing necessary services where it is not profitable to do so should be one of the pillars of government. Perhaps this is a service the governments of tomorrow should consider investing in, along with education, public health care, roads and internet service.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - There are very few rights that I think governments should ignore.
PPS - I'm not sure what label that puts on me.

MediaSync

Apparently I haven't written about this before, or at least I can't find the post, so here goes. I have a custom file sync program I wrote myself, called MediaSync, in order to synchronise collections of files across very disconnected computers that don't have any way to connect with each other except flash drives. I wrote it for picture and video files, but it works on any files, of course. Since Windows Live Mesh shut down, our office network blocked BTSync and my personal photos and videos collections are too big to fit into Dropbox, I have opened up development on this project again, and it's going great.

Basically, it takes an index listing of every machine that participates, checks which files need to be copied around and puts them onto a flash drive. The unique feature it has is space limitations - you allocate, say, 2GB on your 8GB drive, and the sync copies will only ever take up that much space. It might take a few trips to get fully in sync, but you can run it on whatever flash drive you have lying around.

If you can, the whole process would be better served by a large external hard drive and SyncToy, but it's kind of neat to watch the collections gradually get in sync over the course of a week.

The big disadvantage is that it won't update or move files yet. If you rename a file in one location, MediaSync will detect that as a new file and will copy duplicates back and forth between machines. I'm working on that feature, to propagate renames instead of duplicating files, but it could be a while.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's not ready for the general public yet, though.
PPS - It still runs in a text-only interface and requires editing XML for full functionality.

Reviewing free items

The practice of sending free stuff to reviewers doesn't result in the same kind of review as you would get from someone who had to pay for the item. A person who got a gadget or accessory or whatever for free will naturally place a different value on it from someone who paid. The reviewer who gets, say, a free Microsoft Surface Pro 2 just because a lot of people follow him, will feel like it's a pretty sweet deal. And why wouldn't he? He's probably also got so many other tablet computers that he's already got his whole family covered for Christmas. It doesn't even have to last for him, because he'll probably get the next generation for free when that comes out in a year.

Someone who paid for the tablet will need it to last. They'll need it to be worth what they paid, not just do cool stuff. He probably already resents the cash outlay he had to make and so starts with a negative impression that needs to be overcome. A reviewer who gets the same gadget for free is already grateful for that, so the minor quibbles are forgiven and forgotten where they might be a dealbreaker for everyone else.

I'm not saying free stuff for reviewers should stop, or else a lot of reviews will also stop. I'm just saying I'd like to know up front whether a review unit was free so I can calibrate my reading accordingly.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If anyone wants to send me a free tablet computer to review, I'd be happy to do so.
PPS - Any make or model will do. :)

Software that's always with you

It's odd to me when I see internet services advertised as "always with you", when what they actually do is keep your data far away on a locked-up server and provide you a tiny little window via your mobile phone. That's not "with you", that's available, and it's only so long as you have mobile data, which can be spotty.

Personally, I write portable software and allow it to sync via Dropbox. That's the way I like my data and apps "always with me". They keep working even when my internet connection drops out.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Online services are only "always with you" in the sense that the internet is.
PPS - And their servers are still running and not flooded with traffic...

Toll transponders for parking payments

You know what would be kind of handy for parking payments? Linking to vehicle toll transponders. That way, as long as everyone has a toll account, you wouldn't even need boom gates, just the archways that detect and charge accounts for entering and leaving. You'd still need to impose the same constraints as normal parking payments, such as being dependent on the duration of your stay. The biggest problem I can think of would be waiving the fee for big spenders. The current procedure is to take your receipts and your barcode card to the concierge who makes a note in the database that lets you out for free. Without taking your toll transponder directly to the concierge, you'd either need some other way to identify your vehicle to the database or you'd need a card to show, which brings back the boom gate and ticket reader. Maybe in that case you can do without the boom gate, though.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And you have to rely on toll transponders.
PPS - Which can sometimes be a bit unreliable.

For-profit social work?

I saw a TED talk saying that the best way to tackle poverty and other global social problems may be to get for-profit businesses involved. If there's a profit there, said the speaker, that motivates business to succeed and also means the solution will scale, because the more you do, the more profit there is, and that is a big carrot to business.

My objection is that "profit" is not some magical wealth created out of nowhere. Wealth is zero-sum. There's no such thing as making money, only taking money. So if your business is working on global poverty and making a profit as a result, where is that money coming from? If it's just you and a poor country's economy involved, then that wealth is coming out of a poor country and into the pockets of a rich company.

That is the exact opposite of solving the problem, and it is the only way that I can see for turning a profit from social justice projects to work. The only other thing they have to give is time and work, and that quickly turns into sweatshops.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Which is the time an ethical business will withdraw.
PPS - Here's the talk, if you're interested.

Art of any kind needs practice

I'm starting to think about writing in the same way that people think about music. To get started in music, you take lessons, buy instruments, practice in private, eventually allow your close friends and family to hear what you've painstakingly rehearsed, then, if you're good enough, get some live performance gigs or a recording contract.

People's general view of writing goes more like "pick up pen, if good, get published". There's no notion of practice, let alone tools, and no popular conception that getting good at writing is something that takes time. Of course, there are also people who don't think that getting good at music takes time, either, perhaps because they aren't willing to put in the work themselves.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I practice most days now.
PPS - Not every day, though.

Making a living from art

I feel like I would rather make my living from acting and writing, but that's not a sound economic plan. It's my art, not my trade, and most people can't make a living from their art, for a variety of reasons. It begins with a saturated marketplace: too many artists for the level of demand, therefore the natural price point is negative. If you want people to see your art, you'd better be prepared to pay them, rather than the other way around. It's simply unreasonable to expect to be noticed in that kind of environment. The other consideration is quality. If most artists are amateurs, then most art is going to be amateurish and not worth paying for even if it does get noticed. There's plenty of art of all forms, and there's no rush to see it all. Every cent spent on art is discretionary and non-vital. Nobody *needs* to spend a dollar on your painting, drawing, sculpture, novel, play, interpretive dance performance. They could just as easily spend that dollar on food or clothes or any other basic need. Art is never going to be a need, essential for survival, so convincing people to spend any money on art at all is going to be a bit of an uphill battle from the start.

In addition to all that, it's not even a matter of being good at what you do. Plenty of artists are good at what they do, but they aren't going to get far because they don't have the right connections. Does every single blockbuster movie draw from the same pool of 50 different actors because they're the only ones available and suitable for the roles? Of course not. They do it because they're the ones the top five Hollywood directors have worked with before, and learning to work with new people is really hard, you guys, like seriously. It's easier to stick with the club you know rather than give newbies a shot, so that's what you get.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Well, that plus big names have drawing power.
PPS - Which is another way of saying fame makes money which means more fame.

Android app permissions

One thing I always thought would make a brilliant addition to Android is individual app permissions. Some apps I don't want to be able to use 3G data at all. Some that are just greedy with their permissions need to be put in their place. All of this is in Android version 4.3, and I intend to make the most of it, if my phone ever gets to update to that version.

Now, what are the potential side-effects? Well, legitimate app makers will want to explain why they need certain permissions, but will need to write their apps to deal with the situation if they are running without them. Less scrupulous app makers will actively ensure their apps don't work at all unless all of their sleazy permissions are enabled. Don't expect to disable the ability of the Facebook app to read your contacts and messages and still have it work. They don't want to lose that permission and the juicy, juicy data that makes their money in the process, so the app will simply refuse to operate if those permissions are denied.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Probably.
PPS - It depends how many people actually try to turn the permissions off and how many kick up a stink about it.

The paradox of data convenience and unity

For me, having my own data all in one place, cross-referenced and easily queried is exactly what I want. It's convenient, useful and valuable to me, because that makes it easier to use. Unfortunately, having all that data together and easily-queried is just as valuable for anyone with access to the data, including identity thieves, spies, marketers and unscrupulous government agencies with too much power. So when I'm dealing with a corporate or government entity I can't trust, it is better for me to have all my information scattered, difficult to retrieve, error-prone and out of date. In other words, for myself, I want Facebook to expand and expand until it is the only online tool I ever need. For the NSA, I want Facebook to shrink, stagnate, fragment and die, because otherwise they will end up using it against me. That data is power, and I do not want to give over that power where it may (will) be abused.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Some would argue that governments naturally produce error-prone, out of date, scattered data.
PPS - But even that can be dangerous.

Dish soaking detergent

I wonder how long it will be before someone markets a dish detergent specifically for soaking prior to washing up. Never mind how necessary it is - deodorant wasn't "necessary" until it was for sale, and for a long time there was one type of soap, rather than the definitely non-interchangeable hand soap, face soap, body wash, shampoo, laundry soap and dish soap we have these days. If someone can convince enough people that a soaking detergent is a good idea, it will start to sell.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If nobody is doing that already, then patent pending.
PPS - I'd probably start with dishwasher powder.

Peak time bus information

TransLink should allow a search for which bus numbers go where I want, especially at peak time. At those times, buses don't run perfectly on time, and there tend to be a lot of them I could catch. They all go to the same places, and they often leave from the same stops in the city. This means I have a lot of options, so I don't need the specific time and number if an earlier one arrives and will do just fine. The way the TransLink website presents search results works well for off-peak travel, and shows several options for a specific journey, each on a separate tab and each assuming they run exactly on time. It's good for answering what's the best bus to catch for a given journey, but less useful for finding any bus for a given route.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It wouldn't even be so bad with more results and a slightly different interface.
PPS - Acknowledging that the schedule can be off at peak time, however, would be a good start.

Nothing to hide

The first response to "I don't worry about surveillance, I have nothing to hide" should be "Cool, what's your ATM PIN?" If you think you have nothing to hide, you're not thinking very hard. There are things you hide right now whose secrecy is such a natural part of your world that you don't even think of them as secrets. They're just private, personal details or actions that are hidden by default. They're not secrets because they're shameful. They're secrets because they have to be for the world to work. Those are the things you should think about when people talk about NSA-level global surveillance, not your empty criminal record.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The next question is usually "But why would they even be interested in me?"
PPS - In response I ask, "I don't know. Has anyone named like you ever done anything bad?"

In case of emergency

People don't know what to do in case of an emergency building evacuation. I was a fire warden at our previous office for nearly three years and I was still vague despite six-monthly training. Everyone else's idea of procedure is considerably less informed.

Buildings in Queensland (and probably all of Australia) have two-stage evacuation alarms. The first sound you'll hear is a constant tone, often written down as "Beep-Beep-Beep". On this tone, the fire wardens get up, put on their hats and look around for hazards. You, as a non-fire-warden, gather your belongings, lock your computer and stay in your seat to keep out of the wardens' way. Most people, rather than sit still and wait, get up and walk out the nearest door to mill about aimlessly or follow the first crowd they see. Often, this is not a big problem, but it is against standard procedure for a reason.

First of all, what if the danger is outside and your best course is to stay in? You are walking straight out into danger because you didn't wait for anyone to do their job and keep you safe. Second, what if the danger was in a hallway and, because you don't pay attention to stupid emergency evacuations, stumble straight into it before the wardens can determine a safe evacuation route and direct you there? Again, dead because you hate waiting. Third, you might not need to evacuate at all, in which case you're wasting time.

In short, everyone please remember that you don't evacuate until the rising tone, usually written down as "Whoop-Whoop-Whoop".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Unless your building has a different procedure for some reason.
PPS - Such as being located in another country with different regulations.

WiFi Terms and Conditions annoyance

I have a few public WiFi networks to which I connect regularly: Queensland Rail on my commute and the "guest" network at the office (because it doesn't block Dropbox). Each one of them requires a terms & conditions click-through or a manual login every single time, and I was thinking it would be nice not to deal with that more than once, or maybe not more than once per month. If Windows or Android had some kind of automatic click-through process for sites where I've already agreed or logged in, or the same was available via a browser plugin, that would make life a lot easier for me.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I did go looking for one, but didn't find anything yet.
PPS - If I ever do, I'll be sure to post a link.