eReader price war

As predicted, iPad sales seem to have sparked a price war between Amazon and Barnes & Noble for their ebook reader devices, which is good for consumers. I still like the look and concept of both platforms (tablet and e-reader, that is), and I would still prefer to use an ebook reader or touchscreen tablet for my Creative Commons PDF books than a netbook, if only because of the ability to do portrait orientation, but the prices are still a bit steep when there are format and DRM concerns to iron out. In the end, I'd probably go with the tablet because of its versatility. And I gravitate more to a reverse razor-and-blades arrangement where the device costs, but the content is free or cheap. The device price war, therefore, is focused on the wrong element, even though I welcome cheaper gadgets.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The ongoing cost of content always outstrips the device.
PPS - Like your bookshelf is far out-valued by the books on it.

A little poetry

Yesterday I found this little free-verse gem in my all-purpose writing file:

If this were a romantic comedy
I'd get out my umbrella
Just like when we met
But this time it's not raining
It would just be an excuse
To hold you close to me.

I should note that I have never met a girl this way, but the image is very meet-cute.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This may be one of the sappiest things I've ever written.
PPS - But I kind of like it.

Australian vs UK broadband plans

A new coworker who has just moved back to Oz from the UK told me he had trouble adjusting to the internet plans here, and when he told me the deal he had, I was floored. The equivalent of $10 Australian per month for 24Mbps and no download limits. For comparison, I pay 4 times that for less than half the speed and (if it was downloading non-stop all month) about 1/125th the effective download cap.

So what's making Australian internet plans suck out loud by comparison with the rest of the world? I'll grant they're getting better, and if the National Broadband Network ever gets past the politics stage we might do better. Still, I want to find whatever is holding us back and hurt it a little.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We're begging for unlimited downloads here.
PPS - Meanwhile, in the USA, the unlimited plans might be on the way out.

It's cool to hate vuvuzelas

Vuvuzelas, those long, atonal trumpets played by thousands of soccer fans, are not getting a good reputation at the moment. So much so that there is a guide going around on how to silence them from FIFA World Cup broadcasts. It's a clever idea, and one I'm sure a few people will implement for themselves. A better idea, however, would be to implement it at the broadcast end, so the sound never gets to your TV in the first place.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If you're of the polar opposite opinion on vuvuzelas, you may like to fantasize about Vuvuzela Hero.
PPS - I'd actually expect Vuvuzela Hero to look more like SingStar than Guitar Hero.

All work, no pay

Bosses love to praise workers who spend extra hours for the company and ask for no extra pay. They call them "team player" or "model employee", but there are other terms for someone who works long hours for no pay: "workaholic" if it's by choice and "slave" if not. These model employees are either sick or mentally enslaved by the company, neither of which sounds praiseworthy to me.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Then there are those that are literally enslaved.
PPS - Which is, of course, much worse.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Gingerbread Zombies

A while ago on BoingBoing, they featured these Left 4 Dead 2 gingerbread zombies of various shapes and sizes. They're fairly detailed, or at least I think so.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I am not much of a sculpted food afficionado.
PPS - So I don't know whether this is more or less detailed than typical gingerbread.

Handling (fictional) forensic tests that destroy evidence

It amazes me when there is a forensic test that destroys evidence that the good guys always allow a small discreditable group of people to handle it alone. It's come up a few times in Bones when they recover a very small biological sample - just enough to run a DNA comparison once. When it comes to trial, all they have left is their report, and the lawyers on the other side insinuate that the evidence must have been fabricated because it no longer exists and only a few people saw it.

So why not, when such scant evidence is discovered, bring in a large group of third-party observers to the tests and preserve the whole process on video too? At least that way when the snarky prosecutor starts saying things like "if it even existed at all" the defense team can say "actually, over 30 other scientists observed the whole procedure, and we have three independent video records from start to finish, too".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It would make me feel like someone is learning how to handle those situations.
PPS - The usual response is to be offended that someone would question your objectivity.

Where are the iPhone-compatibles?

I was wondering the other day: where are the iPhone-compatibles? When the PC industry took off, it was because some hardware guys bought some off-the-shelf components and started building desktop computers compatible with IBM configurations for a fraction of the cost. I guess what's standing in the way of the same kind of action for iPhones is proprietary everything in a tiny, well-engineered package. That doesn't mean you can't get a knock-off lookalike from a Chinese sweatshop, but I'll bet it won't run anything from the App Store or last even a third as long as the real deal.

And if someone legitimately tried to make a compatible non-iPhone, Apple would stomp them to the ground with a titanium sledgehammer of lawsuits before they even got to packaging the thing. Like it or not, Apple has taken over the smartphone space just like they took over portable music. There's not much hope of prying their iTunes claws out of music until DRM-free sales are the norm and it's easier to sync with any random player, but if another touch-screen smartphone ran App Store content, cost less and was otherwise indistinguishable, Apple's market share would start to shrink.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Then again, it might make that whole App Store ecosystem less attractive.
PPS - Because then you'd never be quite sure which apps would run on your phone.

Vast monitor space and losing focus

It's funny as monitor space increases, the mouse and keyboard cursor are more easily lost. My eyes aren't focusing where my cursors are, so sometimes I'll take actions that don't track with what the computer thinks I'm looking at. You minimise this app and look somewhere else, but meanwhile Windows has decided that some other app on the opposite side of your vast monitor array is where you're looking. Hit delete to try and remove an old email and accidentally wipe out a character in a document you were writing. It's a moment of discord, not badly out of place, but enough to make it feel like you and the computer aren't cooperating. Suddenly it's not an invisible window into the world of information. It's the dumb box in the corner that can't tell the difference between deleting spam and editing a report. And it matters primarily because a computer should be invisible and should never surprise you in a bad way.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I only have this problem at work.
PPS - At home my monitor arrangements are more singular than plural.

Facebook Likes Ambiguity

I hesitate these days to link my Facebook profile with some things, not because of any privacy issues but because it makes a weird phrase I can't contextualise. For example, I am a fan of the science fiction writing of Cory Doctorow, and in the past I could have expressed this on Facebook by "becoming a fan", which sounds okay. Since Facebook changed their system, however, my only option is to have my profile say "[Mokalus] likes Cory Doctorow". If you don't know who he is, that sounds weird. Moreover, do I like the man, his digital activist views, his science fiction or his posts on Boing Boing? You don't know, I can't say and Facebook doesn't care.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If that example is too obscure, consider a fan of Michael Jackson's music.
PPS - I guess the best option is to find specific books or albums to Like.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Zombie Meat

In Japan, for 399 yen, you can buy a package of "zombie meat" which is, apparently, peppered beef jerky dyed blue. Will it have lasting appeal, only be valued by zombie fans, or will everyone turn their noses up at what looks like chips of slate rock and probably tastes about as good?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't think I've ever tasted any kind of meat jerky.
PPS - And I don't think I'll start with a novelty variety.

Rechargeable Li-ion batteries need standard sizes

I think it's about time rechargeable lithium-ion batteries got some size and voltage standards for use in portable electronics. Most of the mid-to-high-end stuff we buy in that space runs on these rechargeable batteries, all custom-designed by the manufacturers. You'll have a hard time convincing Nokia or Nintendo to go with a standard 5 Volt, Size 4 battery for phones and the next portable game console, mostly because of their replacement battery market and the fact that it makes their designs harder to modify, but it seems silly to throw out electronics once a year just because the battery can't hold a charge any more.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And if battery technology improves, the standard sizes can still be used.
PPS - That's been happening with AA and AAA batteries for a long time now.

Phone paging system

Here at work we have a phone-based paging system, where reception can page you at your desk, and you can talk back without having to pick up the phone. In that way, it's better than disturbing the whole office, and it saves people running around trying to find someone. On the flip side, it's worse and more intrusive than the telephone. At least when the phone rings, you have the option whether to pick up or not. With the paging system, you're just automatically on the phone, because I say so, and you don't get to make the decision.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Can you imagine living in a world where all phones worked like that?
PPS - I don't want to try.

Denialism paranoia

In the middle of this article about "denialism" lies this tasty tidbit:

It is tempting to wonder if activists sympathetic to climate and evolution denial might be grasping opportunities to discredit science in general by spreading vaccine and HIV denialism.

So, having described how these "denialist" movements set themselves up as underdogs fighting a corrupt elite engaged in conspiracy, the author gets a touch of paranoia and conspiracy theory himself. Look out, everyone: denialist movements are all part of a big conspiracy to weaken the public's trust in all-powerful Science! Aiee!

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The statement may be made ironically.
PPS - I still prefer my interpretation.

How to write a generic serial killer character

I'm going to assume for a moment that you are an aspiring mystery or crime fiction writer and that you are okay taking tips from someone who is not. That's going to make all this a lot easier and much less weird. There are five things every serial killer character needs: motive, victim selection, mode of death, trophies and body disposal.

Motive is kind of important. Beyond how things go down, this is why your fictional killer is the way he/she is. A tip: if your motive is "because he wasn't loved", you'll need to paint in a few more colours.

Victim selection is part of what keeps the police busy. They want to know why and how these specific people were chosen. Again, it needs depth. Opportunity helps, but there needs to be something twisty to it. Something that leaves the detectives staring at a whiteboard and getting nowhere until other pieces fall into play.

The mode of death that your killer chooses should be related to the motive. It's the outward expression of what he/she is trying to do, but is somehow incomplete.

Trophies are obviously what is kept to remember the victims. To some, they might be memories of the kill, but to others they may be a way of holding on to what the victim meant. More like a keepsake than a trophy, in that case.

Finally, how the killer cleans up after him/herself. Some would hide what they've done, ashamed and unable to face it. These are more likely to have keepsakes. Others like to taunt police, flaunting their alleged intelligence. They're more likely to make a display. When all else fails, think of motive. It all comes back to that.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Sometimes I've considered trying to write a book.
PPS - Nothing ever gets finished, though.

Secret societies in an internet age

Keeping large-scale secrets in an internet age is much harder than it used to be. I'm thinking in terms of government conspiracies and secret societies here. Because everyone can get information (or at least popular opinion) easily and quickly these days, it gets less and less likely that anyone is hiding anything really big. So if you're looking to keep your secret society a secret, it's probably best to assume that word is going to get out and figure out how to deal with it. My own instinct would be to hide among misinformation. If there are a hundred different versions of "the inside scoop" about a secret society, all of them conflicting and very few even believable, most people would tend to write it off as a paranoid fantasy.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't believe anyone is actually doing this.
PPS - Or if they are, they're doing it really well.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Zombie Orchids

Matsumura Yoran has developed a technique for revivifying expired orchids. The undeadened flowers are being called "zombie orchids", and they have to be purchased from the company first. I don't know how you'd check whether you were returned your own orchids or just lookalikes.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I also suspect these "zombies" have little to no taste for brains.
PPS - Still, there's probably not a better term to use.

Voice synthesisers must be frustrating

If you had to use a voice synthesiser like physicist Stephen Hawking, I imagine you'd leave a few things unsaid in the course of a day, just because it takes longer to type them than would seem worthwhile. You'd probably want a dedicated button for each of a few very common phrases like "hello", "thankyou", "excuse me" and "sorry I ran over your foot with my wheelchair" but beyond that, I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to use such a device for all daily communication.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - On the plus side, if you're giving a speech, you could type it all out in advance then take a nap.
PPS - Assuming there are no typos, questions or technical problems.

Gut bacteria supplements and transplants

Might it be possible to supplement our gut flora with appropriate bacteria to make up for certain disorders related to diet? For instance, given inadequate vitamin C in the diet, what if we had vitamin-C-producing bacteria transplanted into our large intestine? It would be kind of like a scurvy vaccine.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It might produce more problems than it's worth, though.
PPS - And I'm certainly not the one to be taking far-out medical advice from.

Privacy falsehoods

I read an article called "I've Got Nothing To Hide and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy" by Daniel J. Solove. It's interesting stuff, especially how he dissects the misconceptions behind the assertion that "if you've got nothing to hide [from government surveillance] then you've got nothing to fear".

He has to present a taxonomy of privacy failures as a way of talking about the actual problems we face, because, as he says, privacy is such a slippery concept to define that we run the risk of being too narrow or too broad in our definitions, and either miss something or lose coherence in the process. His taxonomy is based on the idea that privacy is not one concept, but a related family of concepts, the whole of which is not reducible to a single essential common kernel.

That got me thinking that, rather than one kernel, there must be several, not all of which are necessarily present in every case. That would be the bottom-up equivalent of the taxonomy, defining the essential bits that are present in many privacy concerns, and combining them in different ways to construct privacy scenarios.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I haven't figured out what those aspects are.
PPS - Probably they contain Control and Anonymity.

Gaming can make a better world

I watched Jane McGonagal (via video) give a talk at TED about how gaming can make a better world. After establishing that we spend an extraordinary amount of time playing games, she posits some attributes this encourages, which pretty much add up to "social optimism" to me. She then went on to describe some AR games she designed to try and harness some of these attributes to change the world, which sounds cool, but none of the games she described struck me as fun, nor did they necessarily create the same optimism as other games, but more harness it as a fuel source.

That is, playing World of Warcraft, a game she references often in the talk, we build up optimism and a feeling of empowerment. Playing World Without Oil, her own game, we use that optimism and empowerment to do incredibly not-fun things like buy different groceries and not drive places. These AR games, to me, are either interesting fiction or crippling delusion, and nothing in Jane's talk made me believe that those things can change the world for good.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - None of this is to say that games can't make a better world.
PPS - I just don't think this is necessarily the way.

Accepting DRM for free games

Some time ago, I posted about why I don't use Steam to buy games. I still stand by what I wrote there, but I have since installed Steam for one reason: Portal was free, and I've been keen to play it for ages, but never had such a good opportunity as that. I'm aware that it's phoning home every time I start up the game, and I'm aware that they could revoke my access at any time, just because it was a promotional free copy that they don't want me to have any more. All things considered, I made a choice to play Portal for free, and will still not use Steam for anything that costs me money.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I finished it yesterday.
PPS - I haven't yet played the bonus levels.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Paul Is Undead

A new movie based on an illustrated novel, Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion will portray the Fab Four as zombies, but still performing their music.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I guess that's one way to get a reunion.
PPS - Probably the only way, come to think of it.

Excel extremely auto-fill

I've been using an Excel spreadsheet to track my working time at the office, and I have an interesting problem, which hardly anyone seems to have even mentioned online - even Microsoft themselves. I have the date and time of day, a couple of notes fields, and then some calculations in columns F to I, namely the Duration (time difference between entries), Week number (because I fill out a weekly timesheet), Year and a rounded duration that gives me times rounded to quarter-hours.

When I add the date and time to a new row, the week number and year happily auto-fill on their own, but the duration columns do not. Now, I want to be clear about this: the problem is not that I don't know how to use ordinary auto-fill, nor that the formula columns cannot be auto-filled. The frustration is that there seems to be some very-auto-fill option that doesn't even require ANY user input, and it works for the simple week and year columns, but not for anything else. The most advanced and most informative auto-fill articles online stop at custom series, and not one even mentions this fully automatic formula copying at all.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - One came close to suggesting it was related to auto-correction.
PPS - That also does not seem to be the case.

Device switches

Here's an observation I hope is interesting, if not original. We have speakers, keyboards, wireless networking, mice, trackpads, cameras and microphones on our laptops, but how many can you turn off selectively? And more to the point, how many might be hijacked without your knowledge with horrible results? There have been a few cases of schools spying on kids with laptop cameras, and for some time now there has been concern that mobile phone mikes could be turned on remotely and used for eavesdropping without the user being aware. So how come there's no equivalent to the speaker "mute" option for our laptop cameras and mikes?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Then again, I suppose any malware could breeze right past a simple software option.
PPS - And that makes it the same kind of security problem as every other one.

XMarks vs Delicious

I've been thinking about switching to XMarks for bookmark synchronisation, and since purchasing a netbook I decided to jump on in and start the process of transferring everything over from Delicious, where I currently keep my bookmarks for online access. Problem number one is that XMarks can only import the 100 most recent bookmarks from Delicious. No problem, I thought, I'll just go through Delicious deleting my most recent bookmarks since I plan to shut the account down anyway. It'll be a bit of a pain, but I'll get over it.

I also figured that XMarks would notice the duplicates (if any) and ignore them. After deleting a few from Delicious and trying a second import, I noticed two things. One, XMarks does NOT notice duplicates or remove them. It puts each import into a separate dated folder, duplicates and all. Two, XMarks lumps all tags for an item into one. So rather than being filed under the tags "video" and "funny", I have items filed under the one compound tag "video funny", and a hundred other combination examples. I don't like that.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - So now I don't know what to do.
PPS - For the moment, because of the import troubles, I think I'll stick to Delicious.

Database audit trails

I have a technology problem, and I can see that it's probably not going to be fixed any time soon. It goes like this. We have some databases that we develop at work, and of course they have to be deployed to client sites to be used. On those client sites, the client database administrators fix minor issues themselves (because it's quicker, easier and cheaper that way) while forwarding on more difficult or intensive tasks to us. Gradually, the scripts we used to create and update the database and the client's version drift apart. Eventually the day comes that we need to do a major update, but before we can do that, we need to get our scripts back in sync with the client's version.

All that is background. This is where the problem comes in. As we compare the databases, we have no audit trail, which means we don't know which version is the source of which difference and which particular version we want to keep. So my job has been to look over all the changes and decide which ones came from the client side or our side and update both sides appropriately. It's long, tedious, error-prone work that will just have to be repeated later.

Now, there is often a similar problem in regular old programming where two developers work on the same thing. We have tools that help track who made what changes, and they allow us to "merge" the two developers' work when we want to make one authoritative version. The tools know who made what changes to which files, which is more recent and what's in conflict (where both changed the same thing in different ways). If databases had the same kind of audit trails and merging tools, bringing two database schemas up to date with each other would be much easier, and would probably be done in an afternoon rather than a week and a half.

While I am a programmer and might be able to do something like this on my own, or add it to an existing open-source database engine, we work with Microsoft SQL Server which, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't provide any way to extend it in quite the manner I require. Besides that, most database systems are written with the general understanding that changes to production systems should be rare, and should be done through proper channels.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I did find one article that might be of use.
PPS - But the real solution, I believe, involves some new standards at work.

Modem, router, answering machine and web browser in one

I like the idea of the Telstra T-Hub, which is pretty much a very advanced touch-screen home phone plus basic web browser. It's very cool, but I think it has the potential to be more. First, it should include a wireless router for home networking. It should also comprise an ADSL modem, cordless phone base station (allowing both VoIP and traditional telephony) and an answering machine. I guess I'd just like to have fewer boxes plugged into the phone point in my kitchen, especially if the one replacement can do more than what it replaces.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - BoB from iiNet is another consolidated unit that seems pretty neat.
PPS - I want to own ALL the gadgets.

RepRap home 3D printing

I get carried away when I watch videos and read articles about 3D printing, and often fantasize about having my own 3D printer at home. Today I heard about the RepRap project, which aims to make a 3D printer that can print most of its own replacement parts, thereby allowing you to print printers. One of the first things that came to mind was updates.

With software, we have gotten used to the download-and-install process for handling updates, but with an ongoing hardware project, things get more complicated. Since RepRap printers make their own replacement parts and represent an ongoing project too, it would be possible to have them download updated specs from the internet and print out the new parts, but you would have to know how to attach them yourself. That's a bit more trouble than software patching.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm not sure exactly what percentage of its own parts a RepRap can print.
PPS - If it's just the plastic bits holding the metal together, it's not much.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Zombie Wonderland

This week BoingBoing posted a preview video of Zombie Wonderland, a zombie defense game for the iPhone. It looks like pretty simple gameplay with cartoony graphics. In between shooting out your windows at the approaching zombies and upgrading your weapons, you also have to clean up zombie guts (rendered as green puddles) off your floor.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The video also shows a Roomba-like device that can clean the guts for you.
PPS - Seems like it might be fun.

Truth serum and lie detectors

Following on from yesterday's "what makes a lie" post, I want to talk about truth serums and lie detectors. If either of these things were really reliable, not only would spy and terror suspect interrogations be very different (and much more civilised) but so would court rooms, police questioning and many other situations where we want to be certain of getting at least someone's subjective version of the truth without complications.

Instead of swearing people in, we'd just dose them with sodium thiopental or sodium amytal, hook them up to a polygraph and ask away. If you want to find out whether someone is a terrorist, do the same thing, and no need for waterboarding, sleep deprivation or other torture methods. Some believe that the fact such torture still goes on is good evidence that no reliable truth serum or lie detector exists, even in the most secret depths of underground government laboratories. If they did, then surely interrogating terrorism suspects would have been an excellent opportunity to put them to use.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Unless the torture was a cover-up to distract us from the secret truth serums.
PPS - But that's being a little too paranoid.

What makes a lie

Is it a lie if you did not intend to deceive anyone? If you said something you believed to be true, but was not, then your intent was not to deceive, and I would not call you a liar, merely ignorant. If, however, you start from the definition of absolute truth, then saying something that is not true is a lie, whether you knew it or not. The trouble with that second definition, though it is more useful in picking truth from untruth, is that it muddies the definition between who intends to deceive you (and cannot, therefore, be trusted) and who is merely ignorant (who may be trusted to be honest, but may need some fact-checking).

Mokalus of Borg

PS - A polygraph only aims to detect the intent to deceive.
PPS - If it could do more, it would be a very strange device.

Blog Interviewer doesn't really know me

I got a comment (apparently identical to many thousands of others posted to other blogs) suggesting that I fill out an "interview" for this blog on "BlogInterviewer.com". At first I figured the link was some kind of scam. Then, having checked out the site, I slightly reclassified it in my head as spam. This "blog interviewer" site, my theory goes, posts comments at random to thousands of blogs everywhere it can, in order to gather revenue for itself through the provision of semi-legitimate content.

The thing is, all of this content is generated by blog authors themselves, so what exactly have the interview site provided? They allegedly give unspecified prizes to the top-ranked blogs as an incentive to get their "interviews" into the database, and probably aim to be some kind of popularity ranking service for all blogs in general. I'm not really convinced. If they want an interview with me, I'll accept an actual personalised request, rather than the exact same text everyone else gets.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I might also accept if they can tell me who "recommended" me.
PPS - I suspect the answer is "random link following".

Facebook privacy chaff

It seems to me that if Facebook is going to retain and data-mine your info when you quit, it might be worthwhile muddying it up before you leave. So instead of retaining all your friends and applications, what if you had a program disconnect them all, then make some random searches and request them as friends? Next, delete all your applications and start fresh with more random searches so that the data Facebook gets for "you" in their unpersons archive actually represents a collection of random noise of no value to anyone.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Apparently they are holding an all-hands privacy meeting this week.
PPS - They probably want to increase the feeling of privacy without increasing actual privacy.

Space Cremation

I was talking with a friend on Sunday night about various funeral traditions and he suggested "space cremation" as a way of disposing of bodies that would be simultaneously cool and effective. You'd shoot the body out of a huge cannon practically into orbit, in order to have it burn up on re-entry. This probably wouldn't meet with any level of approval from environmental agencies, nor would it be especially cheap or easy to fire a projectile of that weight to such a height. You'd want to be sure you got it right, too, or else someone kilometres away could get struck (or at least very confused) by a ballistic coffin.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I wouldn't want to get falling ash in my eye and think it might be from a body.
PPS - I guess alternatively you could fire the bodies into the Sun.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Killer Zombie Satellite

If only for the headline that sounds like a terrible B-grade movie, I like this "Solar storm creates killer zombie satellite" story on BoingBoing. Apparently a solar storm knocked a satellite called "Galaxy 15" partially offline, so all it's doing now is traipsing around in orbit blasting random "C-band" telecoms signals and generally interfering the hell out of other satellites until it dies or gets turned away from Earth. At that point it becomes a "here we are and we're really bad with our own technology" beacon to attract ravaging alien races. Hurrah!

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Apparently this kind of thing has happened before.
PPS - It must not be too big a problem, or we would have tried to shoot them down.

Ubuntu 10.04 fails a little bit

I've upgraded my older computer to Ubuntu 10.04, AKA "Lucid Lynx". On the whole, as with any upgrade, there's not much different, but there are a couple of problems that are starting to bug me. For one thing, since the upgrade, Ubuntu has forgotten how to work my sound card. It isn't even being detected any more. I can't remember if I did anything different to get it working in previous versions, but whatever I did, it should have carried over through the upgrade.

The other major problem is that the computer will no longer shut down. When I tell Ubuntu to shut the computer down, it logs off and won't allow anything else but to log back in. If I want to fully shut down, I have to restart, boot into Windows, then select Shut Down from there. I really don't get this one. I know my machine is a custom build, but it's got standard parts in there, and, again, this used to work.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I haven't had much more time to poke around yet.
PPS - Or look for solutions to my problems.

Update: Both of these problems seem to have sorted themselves out together after a hard reset then immediate shutdown from the login screen.

The trouble with e-books

The primary trouble with e-books, as I see it, is range, not device or price. Because publishers are so fearful that e-books will compromise "real" sales, they just don't offer most books electronically. That doesn't prevent them from being available electronically, though. It just prevents the publishers from being paid for electronic versions.

The second problem is that you can't even express interest in them without being treated like a criminal. The fear, again, leads publishers to demand DRM on what books they do offer. In most cases, the restrictions are so tight that you'll probably lose access to the book after you read it once.

Now, along with the iPad, Apple is trying their hand at e-book sales. I doubt apple's iBookStore will solve either the problem of range or open access, let alone price.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Apparently in some cases the iBookStore charges more than for a physical book.
PPS - That's because publishers set the prices, and they don't really want you buying books this way.

Smartphones could replace cash cards

Magnetic and chip key cards will eventually be replaced by smart phones for cash-like transactions. I think there will still be a place for cash itself, though. Now, although smart phones can conceivably perform this function, they have a few difficulties to overcome.

If I go to the supermarket and elect to pay by smartphone electronic transfer, then I need some way to be sure that I'm paying into the correct account. I need to be sure that the store is telling me the right details and that the person at the checkout is not scamming me by somehow giving me false information. Maybe there need to be several big official signs around the store advertising the correct info.

There's also a problem of trust. How do you know the small shop you visit on holidays won't use the information you leave behind to rip you off? The banks will need to put in safeguards of some kind. If you're connecting with someone else wirelessly, how do you know it's the right device you're connecting to?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's probably easiest if it's just friend-to-friend.
PPS - And that we already have.

Why streaming television is not more common

There's a good article up on BoingBoing about why so many TV shows are not streamed online or are region-restricted when they are. It's a good explanation of how the internet absolutely does not fit with the old media model, but it's written from the old model's point of view. My point here is that the internet is not some adjunct to old media that they can tack on and exploit. It's a whole new way of thinking about media.

Sure, if you're going to try selling your TV shows at a loss to broadcasters and cable channels, you'll get into exactly the kind of dead-end mindset described in the article. If, on the other hand, you think internet first, you put the shows up on, say, iTunes and start making money worldwide immediately. Once there's significant support in local areas, some broadcasters might pick up the series and start paying you for those rights. In the meantime, you don't need to be restricted by old media thinking about how long a season needs to be, or how many episodes you need to produce in advance. Just keep going as long as the iTunes sales are covering your costs.

Shows won't have such high budgets this way, or at least not for the first few episodes, so I suppose this is not really a way to think about moving old TV production online. It's about the way mid-length entertainment video should be made for profit on the internet. New distribution, new rules.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It might just be the perfect way to pilot a program.
PPS - It's easier to get and keep online distribution than broadcasting.

Watching internet TV on a big screen

I have noted that a few happy coincidences have recently resulted in my being able to watch internet-streaming video like the channel ten catch-up service on my big TV. First, that TV has a PC input option, so it can accept an AV signal straight from a computer. Second, our new netbook just happens to have a compatible AV output option, so we can plug it straight into the TV. The only down side is that we sit across the other side of the room, so we can't control the playback remotely. It's handy, but it only feels like a prototype arrangement. I'd rather have a dedicated media streaming box permanently connected that we can control with a remote.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Not that I need another remote in my life.
PPS - But I could always use more computers.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Zombie Farm

Zombie Farm is a free iPhone game similar to FarmVille, but with zombies. It seems to be about creating a pleasant environment for zombies to live in.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I do wish I had an iPhone.
PPS - The game is free.

Complimenting actors

For some actors, the greatest compliment you could pay them is to tell them breathlessly what a huge fan you are, then to list of everything BUT what they are most well-known for. I have a feeling Sarah Michelle Gellar and Leonard Nimoy would be two of those people.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Sarah Michelle Gellar doesn't attend any Buffy events like conventions.
PPS - Leonard Nimoy has publicly announced he's stepping down from a character he first played decades ago.

Alternative exercise entertainment

I've recently joined Jetts Fitness and I was interested to see that the treadmills in the gym have televisions in them. I'd be even more interested if they had DVD players or internet connectivity. With DVDs, Deb and I could do our exercise and watch movies at the same time, though we'd need two copies of any disc we wanted to watch together. Yes, broadcast TV is simpler, but DVD would make it so much more useful. Or if it had a touch screen and ebook reader software, I could get through more reading while I exercise. Maybe. Though if I'm that keen on reading, I'm sure I can bring a paper book.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - There's an input selector button on the TVs for alternative video sources.
PPS - But I couldn't see any actual alternative input plugs.

Anne Dudek is in every show I watch

It's a weird coincidence, but Anne Dudek seems to be a supporting actor in every TV show I've been watching lately: Psych, Bones, House and Castle. It might also be a coincidence that three of those four shows are about crime investigation, and the other is medical investigation. I guess that's what I enjoy, and it seems to be what Anne Dudek gets hired for, too.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Though for some reason I've never watched CSI.
PPS - Or any of its several derivatives.

Auction house bug follow-on effects

The auction houses in City of Heroes are currently not running. This change coincided with the release of Issue 17: Dark Mirror, which coincidentally introduced a new user interface for auctions. The Known Bugs release notes for Issue 17 indicate that the auction houses they will be offline until further notice.Now, this is going to cause some pretty significant, if short-lived, follow-on effects for the game.

For some players, the inability to sell certain Salvage artifacts for millions of Influence points will be unacceptable - they will refuse to play until it is fixed. Others will continue to play but attempt to hoard their Salvage for later, eventually running out of space (though extra space can be purchased in supergroup bases). Others will compromise and sell their Salvage at ordinary shops for vastly deflated prices. Once the auction houses come back up, there will be less Salvage available in general, so the prices will tend to be much higher than they were at the beginning of the trading pause.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I do hope it's back up soon.
PPS - The improved auction user interface does look pretty good.

Friday Zombie Blogging - How to Speak Zombie

How to Speak Zombie is a very short book about proper phrases and pronunciation in a zombie-filled world. Think of it as a phrase book with a very limited vocabulary.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Hopefully it includes "Please don't eat my brains".
PPS - Or "I am heavily armed and you are a slow target".

Propper copper coffee lobber

On TV, whenever a cop is sitting in a car drinking hot coffee and has to take off in a hurry, they throw the coffee out the window. Is that official procedure? It makes sense to save seconds and avoid injury to the driver, but I just wonder if it's one of those fiction standards that's become entrenched rather than something real that's been adopted.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'll have to ask the next officer I meet.
PPS - Assuming I meet them socially.

Middlemen, authors and the web

The web is great at cutting out the middleman. That's what Amazon was going to do with ebooks. Apparently their plan was to fix ebook prices across the board, then start going behind publishers' backs and appealing to authors directly. There's still a middleman in that equation, though: Amazon itself.

When the retail chain goes from author to publisher to retailer to customer, the author has to do very little for themselves except write. If they're selling directly to a retailer, they'll have to take over some of those functions themselves, like editing, proofreading and some advertising. Cut out the retailer (which is possible with the web) and authors also have to start managing sales, delivery and everything else. Although 100% of the sale price would be going straight to the author, some people would prefer to let others handle the non-writing part of the business.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My guess is the more you want to do those things yourself, the more you're writing for the money.
PPS - But since I'm only ever at the customer end of the chain, I'm not well-informed.

The media revolution in reverse

The media revolution hasn't happened yet. We've exchanged one lock in for another, so we're still stuck with what big media says we can and cannot do. Apple says what CDs you can and cannot rip for your iPod, and everyone says unilaterally that you cannot rip your movies for private viewing there too. We're still stuck, especially if the law keeps changing to keep us in the old business model.

And now the iPad has newspaper publishers all excited because, finally, there is an internet device with total lock-in designed as a pure media consumption device. It's the internet as television, the way they've always wanted. To a mind like that, the iPad is set to "fix" the internet. To my mind, the internet ideals of freedom should fix the iPad.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I know the iPad device itself will be pretty cool.
PPS - But in a lot of ways it's more like a Kindle than a netbook.

Throwing coffee out the window

On TV, whenever a cop is sitting in a car drinking hot coffee and has to take off in a hurry, they throw the coffee out the window. Is that official procedure? It makes sense to save seconds and avoid injury to the driver, but I just wonder if it's one of those fiction standards that's become entrenched rather than something real that's been adopted.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Unfortunately, I find it believable either way.
PPS - Anyone else have a theory?

Automatic Windows repair

Yesterday I had to repair my old Windows XP machine again, which was annoying but not too surprising. What didn't even strike me until now, 24 hours later, is that Windows was able to tell me that I needed to run the CHKDSK utility, which fixed everything, but could not do so itself. What would be the difference between me running CHKDSK and Windows invoking it automatically? When the computer is in that much trouble, it's far more effective to have the operating system take necessary steps to recover rather than relying on the user to do so.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I could have used the blue screen as an excuse to buy a new computer.
PPS - But I built that machine. I can't just not fix it.

Mad skills and what the internet is for

There are people on the internet who are super-duper AMAZING at the totally pointless things they do, like doing backflips off high walls, bursting balloons with business cards or juggling. The internet exists for the simultaneous purposes of giving such people 15 minutes of worldwide fame and reminding you that maybe, just maybe, you haven't completely wasted your life like they have. At least, not so far.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - But doesn't it make you wonder, if only you'd had more focus, what you could do?
PPS - I wonder about that.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Survival Flowchart

An undead survival flowchart. I want this printed in A3 to hang on my wall, even though every path ends with "YOU ARE DEAD".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's hard sometimes to know how exactly to read a flowchart in full.
PPS - But I guess if every end point is the same, it could be summarised a bit.

Who pays for Google traffic?

Internet providers sometimes complain that they don't get paid to send Google's traffic and that Google should foot the bill. They rarely get any sympathy on the subject, but my question is: aren't their subscribers supposed to pay for it? So in what sense are you "not being paid" for the things your customers are paying you to do?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I can't think of a good metaphor to describe the situation right now.
PPS - If I come up with one, I'll let you know.

Total Experience Design

I'm watching Paul Dawson talk about Total Experience Design, and I'm starting to realise that this is just the kind of thing I've been thinking is missing from TransLink's system. It's not just about an enhanced website to finally tell you where bus stops are, because once you're away from the machine again, you're off the network or, at the very least, you have some location awareness to make use of. Your trip planning should not only include times and vague place descriptions but place alarms and help finding the actual bus/train stops. There's a lot more to it, and I'm sure there's more to get out of it, but my main revelation is that the website is part, but not all of the problem.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Some website improvements would still go a long way, though.
PPS - I've ranted in this general direction before.

BitTorrent for legitimate work purposes

I've been going through something painful at work over the past few working days. I'm transferring some very large database backups from a client network to our own network for testing. The experience leaves something to be desired. It goes like this:

1. Back up databases (many hours)
2. Zip databases for faster transfers (another several hours)
3. Split zip files into 1GB pieces (because the server won't send the extraordinarily large files as-is)
4. Copy the pieces to a web-accessible server (many hours)
5. Download the pieces individually
6. Reconstruct the full backup zip archives
7. Unzip
8. Restore databases

All the while, I need to babysit the connection, because the VPN times out if there's no activity for a certain amount of time.

I couln't help but think that the whole thing could be a great deal simpler with BitTorrent. After the databases are backed up (and probably zipped, because the compression helps a lot), if I could create a .torrent file and open it on both ends, then nobody needs to babysit the connection and I could leave it going over the weekend instead of wasting entire workdays waiting for downloads and manually copying files. In terms of the list above, steps 3 to 6 become things that happen while I'm sleeping. Doesn't that sound better?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I know that's not quite the intention of BitTorrent, but it would work.
PPS - That's assuming both machines have direct internet access and BitTorrent is not blocked.

Sarcasm mark

At first, I didn't pay much attention to the idea of the "sarcasm mark" that's been making news recently. It just sounded like a joke or scam, and since it's for sale, that kind of lends to that theory. All English fonts in the world would need to change, and all keyboards too.

Then I started to think that maybe they're onto something. Sarcasm in DVD subtitles often seems to be indicated with a bracketed exclamation mark "(!)", which is relatively clear in context. Using a sarcasm mark in the same way could become standard if people adopt it. The trouble is that in the meantime, we don't have any way to directly type such a mark in plain text. So the transition period is going to be difficult.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The sarcasm mark for sale does look a bit like a bracketed exclamation mark.
PPS - There's a picture in the linked article.

A personal VPN

There is some progress towards an internet operating system, by which I mean a highly standardised set of protocols for single-sign-on internet access to a virtual private network (VPN) of all our files and machines. There are several companies in position to start offering this, and they're all taking different approaches, if they're thinking about it at all. Microsoft's solution would grow straight out of Live Mesh, Canonical would use Ubuntu One, Google has a mishmash of data services that could suffice, and Apple of course has MobileMe with the bonus (for them) of tyrannical control of hardware too. And unless any of these services are built on open standards (unadorned by proprietary "enhancements") then any one of them winning would be bad for everyone. The ones most likely to build an open platform are probably Canonical and Google, though I wouldn't bet on either of them.

What I'm thinking of here is the reverse of the old workgroup structure. Traditionally, the "workgroup" or "homegroup" on Windows has corresponded to a LAN subnet, or a way of segregating locally-connected machines into groups that cannot talk to each other. What we need to start enabling is for people to join groups that span across LANs and the internet so that joining a workgroup from anywhere means being connected to those machines too. In other words, leave the subnet concept behind and start to think of VPNs instead. "My Computers" should be accessible to me from wherever I am, at work or at home, visiting family or on the road.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - These companies can offer the central sign-in authority for your VPN.
PPS - All except Google would probably be platform-specific.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Birthday Cake

This Zombie Girl birthday cake was made by an anonymous mother for her 8-year-old daughter's birthday party. Must have taken ages.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The brain and zombie parts are made from "rice cereal treat" and chocolate fondant.
PPS - Plus apparently some wooden dowels for structural support.

Photo synchronisation over the internet

I've been thinking about synchronisation software lately. I'm very happy with Dropbox, but I would also like to use it to keep my photos backed up and synchronised across all my machines. The things keeping me from doing that are the 2GB storage limit, bandwidth use and the fact that I can't sync external folders.

To get around the 2GB limit, I'd just have to pay 10USD per month for a 50GB plan. There may be a better way, so I'm not taking that plunge just yet. As for bandwidth, the Dropbox client can be set to limit its bandwidth usage rate, so I guess that's okay too. I just think that the act of transferring my 15GB of photos over the internet might raise some eyebrows in the IT department at work.

What I mean by the external folders problem is that I would have to keep my photos inside Dropbox instead of the My Pictures folders on my various machines, and I'd rather not do that, even if I had the space. Live Mesh might be a better option, and it neatly sidesteps the storage limit too, but it doesn't work on Linux, which is a dealbreaker for me.

I did write a program of my own to copy files in and out of Dropbox one at a time to distribute to all my machines, and I learned a few things in the process. First, sync software always has more problems than you think. Second, Dropbox is probably not the best way to go about that kind of transfer.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I might look for a solution using rsync over a VPN.
PPS - That will probably also be harder than it sounds.

Transition to touch screens

Touch screens will change things in computing, but not before a confusing and weird transition period. I am of the opinion that touch screens will succeed only if they are flat on the table, but for now we have touch screens sitting upright like traditional monitors. A touch screen that lies down, or a two-monitor system with touch on the table and a stand-up monitor too, will feel more natural once touch is more at home in people's homes.

One thing that will be interesting is adaptive, personalised, touch screen keyboards. Depending on who is sitting at the machine, a touch screen can simulate a keyboard that is perfectly tailored not only to your individual typing style, but to your hands as well. It should be almost perfectly ergonomic that way. Keys can change size depending on how often you mis-strike them, and you can move them around to make them easier to find.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - For hunt-and-peck typists, this would be a major blessing.
PPS - My guess is nobody's done it yet because there's not enough room on current touch devices.

Facebook chat fail

Facebook's own servers are supposed to handle XMPP chat traffic, and they have instructions for signing in with Pidgin, the client I'm using. Regardless, it's not working. I receive messages, but can't send anything back. The most frustrating part was that it didn't look like it failed - there was no delivery failure response, just silence. I'm pretty sure I did everything right, and it's not like this is some third-party workaround with plugins and external servers. This is signing into Facebook servers with instructions they provided. Maybe I just caught it on a bad day or something.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It sure would be nice if chat systems were reliable.
PPS - Most of them are, I guess.

A stuck garage door opener

Last week, Debbie and I had some trouble with our garage door opener. The entire thing ground to a very final halt while fully open and refused to budge again. We tried the emergency release in vain and couldn't get anyone out to repair it for four days. It's all fixed up now, though.

What concerned me most about the whole issue was this: how do you design a garage door opener with an emergency release mechanism that is so dependent on the motor that they both fail at once? It seems to me that if it's designed properly, the emergency release should be more likely to work when the motor fails.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It seems that Friday was when I posted my 2000th post to this blog!
PPS - I meant to make a big deal of it when that happened...

Implanted medic alert chips

I had a thought the other day that perhaps the best place to keep medical records is in implanted microchips. That way, instead of looking for an alert bracelet for allergies, testing for blood types or asking the family about organ donation, doctors can just read the microchip. Of course it's not as fail-safe as a bracelet (what if your electronic reader gizmo dies?), the family may have different opinions on organ donation and there's always the possibility of data corruption. Also, securing data that is always carried on you to broadcast on demand is pretty hard to secure. So it seems unlikely that anything like this will ever take off, but it's interesting to think about.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - You could store a fair bit of info there if you wanted.
PPS - Maybe it could work for some things.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Plants vs Zombies lawn ornaments

Some guy called Moose Gueydan created some Plants vs Zombies lawn ornaments that are pretty decent. If I had a lawn, I'd love to have some of these.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't know whether the pea-shooter pots were bought or painted that colour.
PPS - For all I know, Moose may be a potter who made these items himself.

Of course the prize is free

When some promotion turns up saying "Win a free Wii" or something similar, I wonder why the word "free" was included. Did someone in the marketing department say "Well, I like the 'Win a Wii' promotion idea, but do you think people will know they don't have to pay for it once they win? They might get confused."? Besides wanting to show up in search results for "free Wii", I can't think of any other motivation.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I forget now where I saw this competition.
PPS - Obviously the brand didn't make an impression.

Little things

Little details matter, but there are so many little details that it is hard to tell which ones to focus on. You certainly can't process them all. So as cool as stories like Sherlock Holmes and TV shows like Psych and Lie To Me are, you can't just try to process little details to get at the underlying truth. You have to notice the right things.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I guess that's where training comes in.
PPS - Most of us are observant enough for our lives.

DVD "licensing"

I don't want to sound like I'm harping on a theme, but I'd like to talk about DVDs again today. Publishers often like to claim that DVDs are licensed, not sold, or some such nonsense. When you're buying a DVD, they claim, you're really buying a license to play that movie in that designated region (and only on the devices the publisher approves). The problem I have with this situation is that it is the most abusive license you're ever going to enter into.

For instance, this license is dependent on your ability to maintain the physical disc you purchased. They've said before that if you want a backup to avoid losing the movie, you buy another disc. How it should really go, if DVDs represent a license, is that you should be able to trade in a broken disc for a working one of the same movie, free of charge. Or, if you choose to rescind your license to play the movie, you should be able to turn in the disc for a full refund of your "license fee" (ie purchase price). Neither of these actions are considered by movie publishers to be necessary or realistic. Given that observation, I think it's safe to conclude that the licensing propaganda is bogus.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If the license was not so abusive, would you still buy?
PPS - I might, if the refund clause was there.

Protected by RipGuard

Why would a DVD publisher advertise on the disc that it is "protected by RipGuard" or something similar? It's obviously not designed to appeal to the customer. Nobody is going to pick up that case and say "Awesome! I can do so much less with this disc than with my others! I'm gonna buy it right now."

So it is clearly meant as a warning: "if you buy this, you won't be able to rip it, so back off". In other words, the publisher prints "protected by RipGuard" on the case in order to sell fewer copies. Does that seem right? Of course it's part of a larger, more elaborate plot with the contradictory goal of selling more.

The other problem with simply implementing RipGuard is that it is likely sometime in the near future to become fully legal to rip DVDs for personal use. Once that's done, circumventing RipGuard will have to become part of every perfectly legal DVD ripping program around. And it's quite possible that will require some license fees or other inside knowledge.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's time media customers were treated with respect and not like criminals.
PPS - Because some of us want to watch movies on the train or bus to work.

Something is wrong with video on the web

I think there's something wrong with video on the web. Not the fact that we need plugins, or that the attempted standards to get around that are now embroiled in a format war. I think what is fundamentally wrong with video on the web is that you can't deep-link into it, nor can you quote a part of it. With web pages and text, we have well-established tools, methods and standards for either copying and displaying a subsection of some text or posting a link that goes right to the relevant section of a page. It's easy, it's standard and everyone knows how to do it, or can find out really quickly. When someone takes special steps to break that functionality, we ridicule them for it.

Video is the opposite situation at the moment. Quoting part of a web video - embedding just the 2 minutes out of 60 that appealed to you, for instance - is practically impossible. You'd have to download it, edit it, re-upload it and link to that, assuming you could get permission. Deep-linking is unheard of. Instead we quote timestamps. There is no standard way of displaying it. Not even YouTube can claim that. I think it's astonishing that video has come as far as this without solving these problems.



Mokalus of Borg

PS - The web is made of links, above all else.
PPS - So I don't think it's unreasonable to expect this.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Zombie Prayer T-shirt

The Zombie Prayer t-shirt, available at Cafe Press, reads:

When I'm gone and six foot deep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
But should I come back from the dead,
Someone shoot me in the head.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'd consider buying one, but then my wardrobe would really start to look zombie-themed.
PPS - And I like to think I'm about more than that.

iPad to reduce demand for e-book readers

I'm not a futurist as such, but I like to speculate on the paths technology might take us, the unintended consequences of new tech and just plain old what-ifs. I'm thinking that once the world gets a taste of the Apple iPad, the recent crop of e-ink-based book devices like the Amazon Kindle will start to disappear. They may never go entirely away, but the demand for a device that can only read books is sure to diminish once we have devices with comparable battery life and big colour screens that can also play movies on the go.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Granted, it's going to be as much of a pain getting your movies on an iPad as on an iPod.
PPS - But there will probably be alternatives.

Nobody needs two mobile phones

With services like Google Voice, nobody should need to carry two phones (one for business, one for personal) and there should certainly not be any demand for dual-SIM handsets. When you join a company, they'll assign you a new Google Voice number. You can control when such a number reaches you at your mobile and when it forwards to your desk phone or voice mail. If/when you leave the company again, the number is simply deactivated. No cost to the company, no extra physical device to carry and no fuss on termination.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - They would still need to set you up with a phone on your desk.
PPS - And reimburse you for company calls on your mobile.

Visual call forwarding interface

I can imagine a visual drag and drop interface for phone system forwarding and call queue management that is vastly superior to the keypad-only systems currently in play. How do you forward a call from your extension at work to another? Chances are that, unless you're the receptionist, you don't know. Or maybe you're a phone geek and you do. As for me, I don't believe I have ever successfully transferred an incoming call from my phone to any other, whether it was the intended one or not. Either way, if your calls were coming through a controller on your computer and you needed to forward a call to someone else, you could select the call, choose "forward" and select or type the extension or the number to forward to, or just drag the call onto another contact. I'd bet you'd understand that the first time and never forget it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I know Microsoft Exchange now has some phone features like voice mail.
PPS - It's a step in the right direction, at least.

TV I've been watching: V and Psych

I tend to have at least one TV show I'm keeping track of at any given time. At the moment, I'm watching V and Psych.

With V, I have a vague recollection of the show from when I was a kid. And when I say "vague", I mean really vague. Like a 2-second shot seared into my childhood memories of a woman swallowing a live rat. Now that I'm older and watching the remake, there's a little more context, and so far I like it. I'm starting to feel like I might need a diagram to keep track of the different factions and attitudes towards the apparently-benevolent-but-secretly-evil visitor aliens and the humans who love or loathe them, but on the whole I'm enjoying it.

With Psych, I just enjoy watching James Roday playing his way through police cases like a kid with the best toy ever. At times his pseudo-psychic antics remind me of Ben Stiller, and once or twice I thought he reminded me of Jim Carrey, too. He's neither, since he does his own thing too, and I like the dynamic between him and his best friend. Hilarious stuff, and the quality of comedy writing that's usually reserved for movies.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Maggie Lawson as Juliet O'Hara reminds me a bit of Alicia Silverstone.
PPS - But a bit more cultured and articulate.

Typos on eBay

On eBay, sellers have an incentive to spell their item titles correctly so that they show up in searches, and buyers have an incentive to search for typos (as has been said before, you can usually pick up a bargain "pLAm pilot" on eBay). What would happen if eBay started incorporating typo search into their interface? The incentive for proper spelling goes down and the typo discount goes away too. The secondary effects are more careless spelling in auction descriptions and the end of services like Auction Bloopers.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm thinking of looking for a bargain "iopd touch".
PPS - But all the auctions I found were spelled correctly.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Fantasy Battle Royale

Apparently, out of a group of 16 fantasy creatures, the zombie comes out on top of an imaginary battle royale. You'll have to use your imagination, though.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm not entirely clear on how a zombie beats a ghost, though.
PPS - Thanks to Stu for posting the link.

Nokia Ovi Suite

Nokia has recently updated their PC Suite software to a newer, probably entirely rewritten program called Ovi Suite. It looks flashier, and has a few new features that I like, such as automatic scheduled backups and boasts an integrated UI rather than the several different programs and windows comprising PC Suite. The down side of installing this spiffy new software is that some features have been dropped.

After synchronising my phone data, I used to check the sync log to see what had been changed, and correct any errors or duplications that had occurred. This is no longer possible. The other thing I do is export my text messages to files on my computer, which also saves space on the phone. The only actions now possible with messages via Ovi Suite are "Reply" or "Delete". So on the whole, my feelings are mixed about the upgrade. I expect I'll adapt to the lack of a sync log, but being unable to export my messages is a real problem for me.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I may have just missed a feature.
PPS - At least the old suite is still available and should still work.

Automatic mobile phone volume adjustment

A mobile phone, since it contains a microphone, could easily sample the ambient noise level in a room and adjust the ringer volume accordingly, if you so desire. So you wouldn't need to switch between profiles where the volume is different for various situations, just set it once to "loud enough".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - You may still encounter environments too noisy for the ringer to overcome.
PPS - But it also won't blow out your eardrums in a quiet meeting, either.

The nickname for Terabyte

What will be the nickname for terabyte? Meg and Gig are well established, but Ter sounds weird and TB is tuberculosis. Maybe, like kilobyte, there will never be a good nickname for terabyte.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's going to become more of an issue in the next couple of years.
PPS - Bigger hard drives are already past the terabyte barrier.

Football tipping by imaginary mascot fights

I've heard that some people choose their football tips based on which team's mascot or name would win in a fight. For instance, the Cowboys should beat the Roosters (unless I'm mixing football codes). My point is that, if I had a team of my own, I'd name them the "Ninjas Riding Velociraptors" just to get on the top of everyone's tips.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Yeah, I know. Flawless, right?
PPS - Now all I need is the team.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Shadow Maker

What every home needs: a zombie shadow maker. Use it as a night light and traumatise your kids for life!

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Not that I'd do such a thing to my hypothetical kids.
PPS - Or anyone's kids. On purpose.

Smelling nice

The smells we like about other humans are artificial. If we meet someone and remark that they smell nice, we are always referring to the residue of some shampoo, soap, laundry detergent, hair spray, makeup or deodorant. Real men and women smell like blood and sweat.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Shouldn't we smell naturally good to one another?
PPS - Maybe it's a cultural thing we've been trained into.

Generic software and customisation

There's a problem with most software in that it needs to include a broad range of features to suit a broad range of users. However, if you only require a small subset of those features, generic software is unable to accommodate just that part. All features are exposed and all must be acknowledged, used or ignored, making the software seem like overkill for everyone. Your only real option is to find something more specifically tailored to you or to write it yourself, both of which present their own problems. What we need is a way to hide features we don't want, so that generic software seems more personally suitable. Not that everyone will take the time to customise their programs, however.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've been using Microsoft OneNote at work.
PPS - It's hard to adjust from my own custom note-taking program.

Agreeing to EULAs on behalf of others

I wonder, when installing software on a corporate machine, whether the IT department can agree to EULAs on behalf of the users of the machines, or whether the users should really agree themselves. What about users at net cafes or other public machines? Do they agree to what the software does, or is their agreement implied in sitting down at the machine? Who would you prosecute if a patron of an internet cafe broke an EULA? Can't be them, and can't be the owner.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And you can hardly set up a net cafe without agreeing to a few EULAs.
PPS - I don't think they're strictly enforceable.

Blu-Ray is region-free for DVDs

I've heard that most Blu-Ray players are region-free for DVDs. So, what, does Hollywood just not care any more, or was it too much effort to implement? Or perhaps it was too difficult to explain different regions for different discs, so they just hope you won't notice. The last possibility I can think of is that this is intended to be an incentive for people to upgrade to Blu-Ray, but it fails at that because there are region-free DVD players too.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - They've never used "actually does what you want" as a selling point before, though.
PPS - Blu-Ray prices are coming down. That's probably going to be where they start selling better.

What the VCR did for TV and why TiVo is different

The VCR was a revolution in television viewing. It was free to operate as long as you provided the tapes, it let you record any shows and watch them back as often as you'd like, you could fast-forward through the ads and even pass the tapes on to friends when you were done with them.

TiVo, on the other hand, requires a monthly subscription, lets you record only the shows they allow, may restrict the number of times you can watch them back, doesn't let you skip ads and certainly won't let you share recordings with friends. TiVo is trying to fill the void left by the passing of the VCR, but doing it so badly that we should be appalled.

We are not appalled. Instead, we bypass TiVo entirely and go to the internet to download our shows over BitTorrent. It's free (except for the ISP subscription you were paying anyway), you can watch any shows as often as you'd like, there are no ads and you can share them with friends (where "friends" in this case means pretty much everyone).

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've wondered about getting a hard drive recorder sometimes.
PPS - But then I remember where TV comes from these days: the internet.

No kitchen computers for a while

Why haven't computers taken off in the kitchen? My guess is that it's a question of utility and mess. There's not that much we want to do with a computer in the kitchen (and what we do want can usually be handled by cheap index cards). Even if the computer was a good solution to some kitchen problem, it would have to be built in such a specialised way that it could only be sold to that niche market, which reduces demand, which raises costs and so on.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Of course, similar arguments could be made about computers in cars.
PPS - And every year, those arguments get weaker.

Friday Zombie Blogging - The Pitch

You know what zombie movie I'd totally see? Zombies on a cruise liner. All those rich toffs getting turned into delicious undead pate while the captain sits up on the bridge in the foetal position trying to ignore the incessant banging and screaming from the decks below. Cue the plucky machine-room mechanic who rises up with a band of economy-class survivors, pushes all the zombies overboard through ingenious MacGyver-esque devices then gets the girl and plays shuffleboard for the remainder of the journey home. Then goes to jail for mass murder because who ever heard of a whole cruise turning into zombies and being pushed overboard?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - For the sequel: zombies on a submarine. Pretty much the same plot.
PPS - The zombies got to the ocean floor when some git on a cruise liner pushed them overboard without cutting them into pieces first.

The upgrade path out of MS Access

There needs to be a better upgrade path for databases from Microsoft Access to something else. Most people will go from paper records to Excel, outgrow Excel into Access (which entails a full but not excruciating rewrite) then hit a wall when they reach the limits of Access. The tools exist for better databases, but getting there involves a long and painful rewrite, including duplicating many built-in features of Access. It's not that Access is a bad tool, either. It does its job well enough, but once you're into Access you're pretty much stuck there, even if you're a software developer.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't know whether Access 2010 will improve the situation.
PPS - Perhaps I should research that.

I really could be on Twitter

I've realised that I probably could be tweeting right now. I don't know how interesting it would be, but the half-formed thoughts that eventually become full-fledged entries on this blog could just as easily be on Twitter. And the ones that never make it because they're too short would be shared instead of deleted. I think what's holding me back, then, is easy access. My mobile provider currently has temporary free access to Twitter, but that's designed to get you hooked and make you pay later. I want it free forever, because I'm cheap like that.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I guess I could still do it from my desktop computers.
PPS - But then it seems less in the spirit of Twitter.

Personality testing

I took a personality test for a new job application, and it consisted of 104 groups of three statements, one of which you had to pick as most true about yourself, and one as the least true. They were all starting to look exactly the same by the end. "I like to hypothesise" appeared in many different permutations, as did "I like to win" and "I am comfortable around others". I don't know what the 104 variations of the same questions told the examiners, but I hope they know it's really difficult sometimes to choose between "I finish things" and "I am organised".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And quite often one choice meant I had to say something negative about myself.
PPS - I guess that's all part of the process.

Justifying moral choices

You may at one time or another be confronted with a choice that highlights whether you are a force for good or evil in this world. You make your own choices, as do I, and of course I urge you to choose the side of good. (The villain option is often to deny that good and evil exist, or to claim that they are just relative, which is a way of denying you have chosen evil.)

The important thing to ask about your choice is why you align yourself that way. If it's just "good is good and bad is bad" then I answer that "tautologies are tautologies" and you might need something more solid. If it's because good is better for society, who are you to decide what's better for the rest of us?

A long-winded justification, drawing on many areas of statistics, law and speculation might make you feel better, but statistics change with time, as does the law, and none of us knows well enough to speculate without bias or error. So why have you made the choices you made?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm not giving answers here.
PPS - That would spoil the process for you.

Biotechnology and biomimicry

Personally, I see biotechnology having further-reaching and more readily-accessible outcomes than nanotechnology. The best nanotech work done so far is theoretical, but the best biotech - especially biomimicry - is producing results today.

It seems quite often when we accuse nature of having bad design that it turns out to be subtly brilliant. So how long before we cut nature some slack and assume it's designed pretty well? You may not choose to use the term "design", but you have to admit that all of nature seems to work pretty well, even when we think it's poor at first.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The allegedly "backwards wired eye" is a classic example.
PPS - Knees could probably be a little more robust, though.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Gummy Brains

This week I present:

Gummy Brains. Perfect for feeding to your miniature pet gummy zombie.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I thought it was supposed to be spelled "gummi".
PPS - Perhaps that's a trademark and these are just "gummi-like".

Chatroulette

Have you tried chatroulette.com? I have. I haven't provided the link just in case you click without knowing what you're getting into. The site connects you with strangers for video chat. It's okay, except for a few things. I think it would be improved if you could specify up front whether you are male or female and who you'd like to chat with. I suspect I was disconnected from a lot of my random strangers because they were young males looking for females. Of course you'd also need to be able to flag people as liars in that regard, and marking people as inappropriate would help too. The only words I exchanged were to gratefully receive a compliment on my beard.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't think there's any way to make the site kid-safe, as hysterical current affairs shows have noticed.
PPS - Fortunately, if you don't like what you see, you just hit "Next" and it goes away.

Music as a service

I wonder whether it is an artifact of my middle age that I don't buy so much music any more. It might be the changing world, or I might have less money available, what with having a mortgage and a wife, or maybe I just don't care about music the way I used to. Or it might be that music is more like a service now, rather than a product, and it's everywhere. Do you want to hear a particular song right now? Just go on YouTube and you can watch the video, or minimise the window and just listen. Wherever you drive, the radio plays the same few songs from their current playlist, and they do you the courtesy of updating it regularly too. Why would I ever need to buy more music?

Well, there are some things that I'd like to have, like Pink and Green Day (who should definitely do a collaborative album, with names that go together like their colours) and when we drive from Brisbane to Roma once or twice a year we pass through several radio dead zones where recorded music is a necessity. Apart from that, there's little reason to bother buying anything. My enthusiasm for a given song is likely to run out by the time it disappears from the radio.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Often my enthusiasm disappears long before that.
PPS - I don't understand why some songs get so much air play.

Experts online

We live in an age where most information (where I mean know-how and technical data) is available for free if you look hard enough. However, I think we are rediscovering the age of experts. We might be able to get the info ourselves, but we don't necessarily want to spend the time becoming our own travel agents, tax accountants, mechanics or landscape architects. It is usually more efficient to defer to someone who has already spent the time learning about these things and fortunately the internet is very good at putting people in touch with other people.

What it's not good at, however, is sifting the wheat from the chaff. There are as many opinions on the net as there are people, and it's only the true experts who know who the other experts are. So that's our dilemma: we can find experts online, but because we are novices or laymen, we can't tell experts from posers.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - There's probably ways to dig up the experts if you look at the conversations they have.
PPS - Or, more specifically, the conversations everyone else has about them.

AFACT vs iiNet in appeal

If the AFACT is so convinced that internet providers can and should stop all copyright violations on their network, they should start their own ISP. People on this ISP would be subject to all the restrictions that AFACT can dream up, and would furthermore be immune from prosecution for copyright violation, since AFACT is in total control of what happens on their network.

My guess is that this would result in two things. One, some copyright violation would still take place, which would leave AFACT in a tricky position. Two, most people wouldn't bother signing up, because they'd realise that increased surveillance, decreased bandwidth and increased cost is not worth the flimsy assertion that no prosecution will take place.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I mean, would you pay extra so your internet provider can spy on you?
PPS - Even if you're doing nothing wrong, it's a bad deal.