Twitter, MS "I'm broken" notices perhaps a little too polished

Twitter was down for a bit yesterday. Here's its error page:

(I far prefer the old one with the kitty, by the way...)

And here's Hotmail's error page, from one of its recent outages:

Is it just me, or does anyone who puts that much effort into their error pages expect them to be seen a lot? Twitter, in particular, have an actual drawing for broken.

Frankly, I'd be more reassured by one of those frightening 'Gateway Error' things that dynamic sites tend to present on exploding, or at least a simple, clear error page without artwork.

New advances in horrid UI design

Have a look at the page navigation on this. Horrible, confusing, and all there so that you get the impressive but pointless Javascript page transition thing.

The actual article is interesting, and well worth a read (it's about an eccentric Google high-up) but the navigation is very offputting. 

Lisp in Use

Zach Beane asks people what they use lisp for, and links to some older results for the same question.

See, not a dead language!

Time to get your lawyerin' suit on!

So, apparently Damien is going to get sued. Except, actually, he's not. It seems to be just the ranting of a slightly mad-seeming individual. He also complains about Damien's English in this 'professional' blog post. The mind boggles.

So, don't cross people who aren't actually part of Young Fine Gael but feel the need to defend it vigorously! Or you'll have your own imaginary lawsuit to deal with! The imaginary paperwork alone doesn't bear thinking about...

You have been warned. No, seriously, don't poke the crazy people! Or, at least, do it in an amusing way if you do.

A toolchain of ample carriage

I just noticed that the Lisp libraries required to run my poor humble little websites now weigh in at 32MB(!)

I blame my two newest acquisitions, the sveltely-named s-xml-rpc-hunchentoot and cl-xmmp (a Jabber client). Or, rather, their many, many, MANY dependencies.

On the plus side, they do cool stuff. Or, at least, they can be MADE to do cool stuff. Yay!

iPhone vs Blackberry

From Valleywag, on a news pitch they received from a magazine for teenage girls:

Please note that girl 1 answers interview questions immediately with her Blackberry. What does that even mean? And girl 2 watches movies on her iPhone when she goes to the gym? What? I don't follow!

Clearly, people who answer questions for magazines aimed at teenage girls are dangerously insane.

Web 2.0 wearies of hyperbole, prompts revision

Here's the Google cache version for the about page of a new Web 2.0 thingy (Newspond), before it hit TechCrunch.

And here's the same page now.

Please note the changes.

At the heart of Newspond lies a tireless electronic brain. This highly-advanced machine intelligence continually watches over and reads hundreds of different websites, including everything from major news portals, to the tiniest blog, or forum.

How very 50s science fiction movie! Anyway, that became:

At the heart of Newspond lies a fully automated news engine. This system continually watches over and reads hundreds of different websites, including everything from major news portals, to the tiniest blog, or forum.

And then there's:

Every detail is carefully noted, sized, and gauged, reading at a faster rate of speed than any human being could ever dream of.

Which became (who says 'rate of speed' this century, anyway?):

Every detail is carefully noted, sized, and gauged, reading much faster than any human editor.

This:

When you create a state-of-the-art news system, you need a revolutionary comments system to go with it

Became this:

Comments are more than linear discussions. They are fluid and dynamic. 

I assume that the wordings were changed because people made fun of the absurd originals.

Clearly, people have had their fill of total bloody insanity on the part of Web 2.0. No longer shall every RSS reader be revolutionary and life-changing. Good. It was all getting a bit silly.

Fake Wrestling Fun

From boards.ie, 'professional wrestling' fans discussing whether they tell people about their affliction. Quite frankly, it sounds like closeted gay people in the 80s.

Representative quote:

I'd often go down town or whatever and wear Kane's replica mask. I'd just walk into shops and buy a magazine or a book or whatever as if nothing was ever any different. People would kinda be taken aback by it at first, and you get some weird stares, but its hilariously funny.

Is Arrington Hot or Not?

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch on Hot or Not. (I assume he didn't put the photo up himself.)

Note that the centre states seem to have an affinity for him.

Interestingly, the map of people who don't hate him quite as much as the other people more or less corresponds to the map of the fattest people in the US. Hmm.

Chronic PHP Syndrome

This is an entirely unremarkable article about an actor babbling on about nuclear energy. Except for this:

Note the PHP magic_quotes infesting the title. Note, also, the DLL in the URL. Weird, eh?

Cake and Death

I know that in theory I shouldn't think this is funny, but really... Cake-eating contest death tragedy. He choked on five fairy cakes. Five.

The tabloids, predictably, are making a big deal of it. No doubt the Daily Mail will be calling for a ban on cake within the week.

Sun's fab not so ab?

Apologies to The Register for ripping off their rather wonderful article title. In compensation, here is Patsy.

Anyway, the thing is. Currently, as far as I know, Sun Microsystems are responsible for only the UltraSparc T1 and T2 chips (Niagara line); the rest has been given over to Fujitsu. These chips are actually manufactured by Texas Instruments, noted makers of calculators and bomb parts; this is normal enough in the world of microprocessors, with only the very largest companies actually making their chips themselves.

The article linked above mentions that Sun is planning to start using TSMC, a Taiwanese company which also makes chips for VIA, NVIDIA and ATI among others, to make these chips. The article implies that Sun is doing so because TI is unwilling to invest heavily in next-generation fabs. I think there may be a little more to it than that.

You can, at time of writing, buy an eight-core (which is the maximum) UltraSparc T1 machine for about $5,000, or a six-core (with less memory) for under $3,000. However, if you want an Ultrasparc T2, it will set you back, it seems, a minimum of $14,000, for a four-core machine; the machine itself is marginally higher-spec than the one that the T1 comes in. If you want the eight-core version (with more memory), it's over $30,000. Even allowing a few thousand dollars to make up the RAM difference between the machines, that's still over a $10,000 gap, for four extra cores.

Why might this be? Well, the normal source of N-core parts where N is a number less than the design calls for is parts where one or more of the cores were defective. The Cell chips in the PS3 have one of their secondary cores deliberately disabled for this reason; it cuts down on costs, because if they end up with a chip with one dead core they can just use that. That Sun's selling these systems at such a price difference, then, and that they're selling a four-core version rather than, say, a six-core version, possibly implies that they're having trouble producing the design without very large numbers of defective parts.

I'm not, by the way, pointing to the price gap between the T1 and T2 parts; Sun has always priced new chips at a huge premium. The T2 may even be worth that premium to some people; it has managed amazing performance-per-watt marks in some benchmarks. I'm more interested in the relative differences between the pricing of the T2s.

One more piece of evidence. The T2 was originally meant to be a 1.4GHz chip. And, in fact, it still is. Most of the T2 machines that you'll see on Sun's site are 1.2GHz, but, well, there's this. $60,000 dollars for a machine with a 1.4GHz one. I'm sure lots and lots of people are buying those.

Sun even seems to be going to some lengths to make the price differences unclear; machines with 8-core processors come with more memory than machines with 4-cores, muddying the waters. Ditto for 1.4GHz.

Anyway, my point is that I suspect that Sun is currently having difficulties manufacturing T2s (which use a smaller process than T1s) at all. Their new Rock processor, as well, despite having taped out some time ago, is apparently facing some delays. Possibly the flight from TI is less about the future, and more about immediate problems in the present.

Wii!

We got a Nintendo Wii the other day.

I'm actually amazed at how very, very good it is.

iBook near-catastrophe

So, today, I returned to my poor little laptop to find that its screen was blank and not coming on no matter what I did. The laptop itself was making "I'm alive" noises; it's just that there was nothing on the screen.

Fortunately, removing the battery and power, and then switching it on again, fixed it. Eventually. It took about twenty minutes to come back up. A great relief, as I really don't want to be going replacing it at this point, and in any case I'm rather attached to it.

Hopefully it isn't a first warning of imminent death...

Ask the Internet - Anyone got a Whirlpool Washer/Dryer?

So, we've got this Washer/Dryer contraption. It proclaims itself to be an AWZ410-4, and I suspect that it's a common model in rentals.

The issue is, the dryer bit has been getting gently less effective over the months. This leads me to believe that the lint filter is clogged. A lint filter is of course one of those things that collects lint in a dryer; this lint is always puce. Always. It's the law.

There's a little problem, though. Where is the lint filter?

Whirlpool, like all companies of a certain size and disposition, enjoys having a number of websites and scattering its products around them. I was eventually able to find two short manuals for this one, one of which claims that the thing isn't a dryer at all(!) It actually seems to be for an entirely different device. The other says it's a  dryer, and even mentions the lint filter; it neglects, however, to say where it is.

This Amazon review claims that it resides with the water filter for the washer in that scary little hatch that washing machines have, which, on opening, is designed to cover the floor with water retained for that purpose. I'm unwilling to investigate this option until all others are played out.

So, does anyone have one of these things? Know where the lint filter is? Please do comment!

Sick

Feeling sick as hell all this week; bah.

Hopefully, it'll go away soon...

The future of renewable energy may involve piles of dead cows

So, there's a power plant in Britain called Glanford Power Station. It's a combustion plant designed to burn entirely renewable material.

What is that material, you ask?

Well, why would you bother your pretty little head about that?

No, no, I'm not going to tell you; best you don't know.

You'll never guess, you know, not in a million years.

Oh, okay. It's chicken litter. Chicken litter, for the uninitiated, is chicken bedding and shit.

Right. Well, that wasn't too bad, eh? You can deal with that? Well, that's what it was designed to burn. What does it actually burn these days?

Meat and bone meal from BSE-suspect cows.

Back from the bathroom, yet?

Well, at least it's green, right? Nice and clean and safe?

It's the 27th largest emitter of arsenic to air in Britain. No, don't ask me why; I know little of burning cows. It also presumably produces CO2, and the ash must be disposed of in a landfill. Lots of sulphur and other nastiness, too.

And the damn thing produces less than 50MW.

Still so keen on biomass?

Also, are Vegans allowed use this electricity? :)

Feedburner numbers - Googletastic

I just noticed that only 93 people were reading my feed. I panicked, assuming that dozens had unsubscribed in disgust at my implying that computer architecture was fun.

Then I checked the Feedburner stats page:

Hmm, yesterday there were 49 Google Reader subscribers...

This has actually happened before. Feedburner will occasionally fail to count Google Reader for a day or so. Why? Who can say? Just another day in poor old gently-stagnating Google. (Feedburner is another Google property.) 

Irony

A series of Facebook updates for one person. 'Synnott' refers to me.

May I draw your attention to the second-last update?

May I then draw your attention to all the other updates?

I think I've made my point.

Mystery Button

Picture of a microwave control panel seen recently:

Notice anything odd? What on Earth does the 'help' button do?

On International Relations and Faked Wrestling

America, this is why the terrorists hate you:

I mean, what right-thinking person wouldn't want to blow that up?

Stephen Fry is Podcasting!

Now, normally I hate podcasts, but this will clearly be an exception.

Best Map Reduce Explanation Ever!

TechCrunch, in covering Yahoo's conversion to Hadoop, tells you about Map Reduce:

It takes all the links on the Web found by a search engine's crawlers
and "reduces" them to a map of the Web so that ranking algorithms can
be run against them.

Is that the most frighteningly wrong technical explanation you've ever seen, or what?

Turns out the guy who wrote it used to write about space. I wonder was he the one who went on able Gallileo having a 'nuclear reactor' in it?

Laptop Experts clearly not PHP Experts

I just saw this ad:

Note that their ad-generation system (they seem to take actual queries from the site) has good ol' PHP magic-quotes syndrome.

Computer Architecture Fun

Here's a wonderful archive of articles on computer architecture. If you like that sort of thing. I suppose most of my readers don't...

Note that they're mixed in with far shorter blog-post type articles.

I was particularly interested to learn of the existence of MAJC, a much-hyped VLIW Sun chip design which never actually made it into production, but which seems to have more or less introduced a lot of the SMT concepts now used in the Ultrasparc T1/2. A shame, really, that it didn't survive...

Anyway, well worth reading if you're as nerdy about such things as I am.

Zoologists in exaggeration shocker

Apparently, there is now a frog from hell.

It was the size of a squashed beach ball.

Personally, I would expect a hell-frog to be going 'round eating people.

Think before you share

Alexia just made this post. Now, up to a point, I'd agree. If you want to, certainly you should share your work, and let others make use of it.

It is, however, very important that you be careful exactly how you do this.

Licenses which allow someone to use a copyrighted work under certain conditions can be complicated. They are probably most familiar, if they are familiar at all, to the general public in the guise of 'free software'. 

'Free software' licenses range from extremely restrictive licences like the GNU Public License, which mandates that full source code must be released for any work derived from a piece of GPL software and distributed, or in many cases using a piece of GPL software as a component (interesting example here) to things like the MIT and BSD public licenses, which generally allow derivatives to be made so long as it is acknowledged that the relevant software was used in creating them. There exist a few even more restrictive licenses, for instance the Affero license, which requires that source be released if the user simply makes use of the software over a network; websites would be an obvious example. For the time being, at least, this one hasn't seen much use. There exists much controversy in the 'free software' world over which licenses are better, and some of them can have odd consequences; see clisp's (GPL) FAQ on the subject for lots of examples.

There are also a selection of weirder licenses; one turned up recently, for instance, which forbade the use of the software which used it to non-Vegans. How enforceable this sort of thing is is not clear.

Rather later than the free software world, writers and photographers and so forth have started to embrace the idea of making their work available free of charge under limited circumstances in a formal manner. And here's where things get complicated.

Currently, the various Creative Commons licenses are popular for this purpose, no doubt helped along by their adoption by various blogging platform creators, Flickr, and others. On the face of it, they're inoffensive. Most Creative Commons licenses in common use involve some combination of clauses requiring attribution of the original author, non-commercial use of the work, banning the making of derivative works, or requiring that any derivatives be distributed only under the same license.

See how this could get problematic?

Firstly, these things are, really, moderately complicated, and not the sort of thing that most content creators are likely to bother themselves with too much. As a result, presumably, there have been cases where people have neglected to use the non-commercial clause, even when they never imagined or desired that a company would use their work. A recent high-profile one involved photos of an American teenager placed on Flickr ending up, apparently more or less legally, in Virgin Mobile ads in Australia. If the photos had been put up with no specific license, then the author would generally have had copyright automatically, and they could not be used without permission.

Even if you are careful about which license you use, remember, this is the Internet you're talking about. First, of course, shadier people will feel free to rip off your work regardless of how or if you license it. But it's more complicated than that. What does non-commercial mean? Is a charity or educational project non-commercial? Clearly. Is a large company non-commercial? Clearly not. Is a personal blog non-commercial? Clearly... wait a minute.

On the face of it, a personal blog probably wouldn't be considered by most people to be commercial. There are grey areas, though. First, the blogger might now or in the future use ads on their site. Are they really likely to go back and remove any non-commercial licensed CC content? For that matter, under certain circumstances it could be reasoned that the blog remained non-commercial with ads; they could just be to pay for hosting. What happens when the blogger makes more than they spend? Where is the line drawn?

Then there's self-promotion. I know a number of 'personal' blogs which, intentionally or unintentionally, end up promoting the author's skills or business or whatever. I myself have received unsolicited requests to write software for people for money, as a result of this blog. Does that in itself render the blog commercial?

Another question presents itself. What, really, is the point of licensing your work in this way? Allowing redistribution may make sense for software. It may make sense for designs. It may, under certain circumstances, make sense for photos. But I can think of few realistic situations where it would make any sense for blog posts, and yet people are encouraged to do it for blog posts; a lot of blogging software has an option to display a variety of CC licenses at the bottom of each post, for instance. Do you really want random people republishing your writing? I know I don't. If someone wants to republish something, they are certainly at liberty to ask, but I don't want people barging in and copying posts wholesale.

Of course, I'm also terrible cautious of the more restrictive free software licenses, and I'm quite conscious of the fact that people steal content on the Internet all the time. What do you think? Should people be posting their photos and blog entries under a license which allows everyone to do more or less whatever they like with them?

iPhone Development

Involves lots of messing with obscure software written by mad people.

Thanks, loonies. Thoonies.

Quick Tumblr Review

I'm continuing with my little mini-series of dreadful Web 2.0 site reviews. Like last time, I'm taking on a service of slightly unclear purpose, which no-one actually uses.

Executive summary: Tumblr is like a blogging platform, only worse.

Right, so, that said, what's it like? Well, just that, really. It's a feature-free blogging platform. There really is no fairer way to sum it up. I can't understand why anyone would use it.

A few people do, of course. Mostly odd Web 2.0 celebs. The hot but dreadful Jakob Lodwick, for instance. His apparently also hot but even more dreadful ex. Their horribly embarrassing joint blog, on which they split up or something. A few other attention whores.

Anyway, yes. So it's like a blog, but without comments or an export feature. Posts don't have a name in their URL, they have a number. It's also all so terribly Web 2.0. Every corner is rounded, every URL uses that Ruby on Rails-inspired syntax. Look, rounded transparent thingies!

Crp lk ths s rmpnt:

Categories and proper archives are for real blogs, so you have stuff like this:

Want to customise your pseudo-blog? You'd better be aware that funny cog wheel thing means customise, because it's the only way to get to the customisation page and it isn't labelled:

The customisation page is, of course, a horrid jumble of AJAX-y features.

Minor issue, but why on Earth is this the default?

Search feature? Don't be silly! Whoever designed this thing frowns on features in general, it seems.

Typical post, from features page:

Yes, indeed!

A scary imaginary person talks to you as you post:

I'm sorry, but it wasn't a nice post. It was a content-free, mean-spirited post. But look, she's going to show me her Bookmarklet! Kinky!

Actual example post from customisation page. I'm embarrassed for them, I really am.

Especially that black hole thing. Stephen Hawking would be turning in his grave, if he was dead.

So, should you use it? Well, if you have a pathological fear of Google, Matt Mullenweg, and that Russian company that owns Livejournal, you don't want to pay Six Apart for TypePad, and you are morally opposed to hosting your own blog, then yes. Maybe. Quite frankly, you might still be better off writing blog entries on Facebook. Otherwise, certainly not. Don't even think of it. Use a proper blogging service like everyone else.

You know the worst of it? The demoralising, horrible thing? They've raised 750k series A funding. For this. I mean, what on Earth will they spend it on? How do they plan to make money? The whole thing is a bit mad. If I make an I-can't-believe-it's-not-a-blogging-service, will I be given a million or so to make better rounded buttons? Oh, and it's slow, too. Not sure why; it's not like it's doing much.

Obligatory Compete graph (Quantcast is actually less favourable, showing both sites as having the same rank, but it doesn't have a compare feature).

I mean, really.

If you like, you can see my Tumblr blog-lite here. I don't really plan on ever updating it again, though.

Defenestration and the Reformation

So, as one does, I was browsing Wikipedia when I came upon an entry on the rather wonderful word 'defenestration'. I've seen it used before, but hadn't realised that it was something that actually happened. Apparently, in Prague:

Historically, the word defenestration was used to refer to an act of political dissent. Notably, the Defenestrations of Prague in 1419 and 1618 helped to trigger prolonged conflict within Bohemia and beyond. It is said that some Catholics ascribed the survival of those defenestrated at Prague Castle in 1618 to divine intervention, while it is said that some Protestants claimed that it was due to their landing in a large pile of manure.[citation needed]

Isn't that wonderful?

Lessons Learned

Sometimes, keys are GOOD. Then again, sometimes, they are BAD.

It really all depends on the sanity of the person using the key...

Cultish nonsense infects British state schools!

Ben Goldacre explains it all.

I particularly like that processed foods contain no water. Delicious!

A Valentine from WebFrigerator

Remember my WebFrigerator game?



Look what someone did for Valentine's day!

I can't decide whether it's sweet or nauseating.

Duck and Cover!

You'll have heard by now that a large (10 tonne) US spy satellite is hurtling towards Earth, and is due to hit in a couple of weeks. It has a tank of lovely poisonous Hydrazine. The US have announced that they plan to destroy it with a ship-launched missile.

 My question, really, is why? There are a few possibilities.

 The first, and probably most likely, is that they expect it to land in enemy territory, and are worried that it might be reverse-engineered. 

The second, and not very likely, is that it is actually something naughty, undeclared or illegal; a space-based atom bomb platform for instance. Such things were talked about at one point, and even, I believe, tested once or twice, but there is a Soviet-US treaty forbidding them. 

The third, and vaguely likely, is that they expect it to hit a populated area. Now, it's fine if it just comes down in the sea or the middle of no-where, but you do NOT want something like this hitting a city. If it's on course for New York or somewhere, they'd certainly have reason to worry.
 

Of course, these interceptor missiles do not actually have a particularly good track record. In tests, they often fail to hit or destroy their target.

If a huge satellite, or satellite-killing missile, lands in my living room, I will not be impressed. It'll make the case of the missing glasses look like a walk in the park.

Amerika Uber Alles Again

So, America may be making web filtering mandatory in colleges. Wonderful idea. Americans, remember that when you go to the urologist in 2020, the computer won't have let him look up penises on the Internet.

I do like that the US is so keen to restrict what adults can see, just to get the mad Christian vote.

Bloody Firefox...

Movable Type's (4.1) post editor thing doesn't seem to work properly in the new beta of Firefox 3, which my computer rather rudely upgraded me to last night.

You have been warned.

Valentine's Day

All blogs are required to mention Valentine's Day on said day.

All I can really think of to say is 'bah'. Sorry.

*wants boyfriend :( *

I can't believe they're not links - 13th Feb 2008

PayPerPost users hit by Google's stance on paid linking. The whole thing seems to be collapsing. Good.

They're helping each other spam. Charming.

In Korea, FANS KILL YOU.

Following in his sisters' footsteps.

Two more companies go mad on Internet

As you know, I am a great connoisseur of Internet mad people.

I have a couple for you today.

The first is an Irish company called Blueface, who do VOIP (possibly pronounced voyp; Voice Over IP). They found an old post on Tom Raftery's blog which didn't paint them in a favourable light (I suspect that they noticed it because it's one of the first Google hits for their name), and started commenting. The result is this. Great fun. In particular, note that they accuse him of not knowing how to set up port forwarding on a router; as he runs a data centre, one would hope that this is not the case.

The second is a possibly Australian company which makes magic pills alleged to make your car more efficient. They have taken on Daniel Rutter, who writes about technology and various other bits and pieces, with the usual mixture of personal insults and vague legal threats that this sort of person so enjoys. The results are here.

Oh, I do love it when CEOs lose it on the Internet! No, seriously, I do. Great entertainment, and advance warning of what products not to buy. Here's another from a few weeks ago.

CEOs, kindly grow up.

Movable Type 4.1

Upgraded to Movable Type 4.1. It isn't really all that different...

The post composition screen is a bit nicer, but that's about it.

Still, there are allegedly some performance improvements, and upgrading is fairly simple, so you should probably do it.

Oh, and there's a user picture management system as well, for some reason. So if you want to spatter your blog with pictures of yourself, you can do that. You can also assign arbitrary pictures to your registered commenters (those who either login or use some form of OpenID) of you so choose. I don't think I'll bother putting pictures of myself all over the place, as it might frighten people away.

Nothing to see here

Just claiming blog on technorati with this link:


Technorati Profile

Inhaling Pig Brains May be Cause of New Illness

As in title.

So, don't do that, then.

It turns out that there is, apparently, a commercial market for pig brains. Some slaughterhouses use compressed air to blow them out of the pigs' skulls (oh, joy). Inhaling microscopic bits of pig brain seems to cause an auto-immune disease.

Oh, joy.

I do love the 21st century. Never before in the history, I'm pretty sure, has the question of whether inhaling pig brains is okay come up.

Ah, so THAT'S why!

Otherwise, of course, Jews would be eating grasshoppers with wild abandon...

I think I'd quite like a religious exemption from eating grasshoppers, actually, on the off-chance that it ever comes up.

Web Giant Threesome

The proposed Microsoft Yahoo acquisition, priced up on Google Docs.

(!!?!?!!!)

On Credit Cards

So, in this day and age, why do credit cards exist? Originally, of course, they turned up as a convenient way of paying for things; you paid for stuff during the month, then paid the whole lot off at the end of the month. Then, at some point, they became a way to borrow vast amounts of money at very high interest rates, paying a tiny fraction off per month.

The thing is, at first, it wouldn't have made sense to use debit cards. Banks were small, and rather fragmented. If you wanted a form of payment that would work everywhere, you needed to go with one of the credit card companies.

It's hardly the case now, though. There are already debit cards which work nationwide in most developed countries, and international ones are starting to turn up. Once these are readily available and in use, is there any reason that credit cards should remain in use?

Well, unfortunately, probably yes. People seem to have gotten to like running up vast debts on them. That they are about the least sensible legal way of borrowing money doesn't seem to cross the mind of people whose credit card debt exceeds their annual income.

For that matter, why are they even legal? I seriously doubt that it'd be legal for a bank to lend someone 20,000 euro at 15% interest under normal circumstances, but it can do it quite happily on a credit card. Odd.

An Appeal

Hello,

While I know that hiding other peoples' things and throwing rubbish on their bed is the height of humour, I really would appreciate it if whoever hid my glasses would tell me where they are.

I found my phone (under the bin) and my monitor (in the cupboard) and even the disassembled power supply for my monitor (under my bed), but the glasses are still AWOL.

Don't get me wrong. Masterful piece of work. It is, in fact, quite possibly the first time in human history that a carton of grapefruit juice has been hurled in anger!

That said, however, I actually need those glasses for seeing with, and not having them is a major inconvenience to me.

Fortunately, everyone who could possibly have done it reads this blog, I believe. An anonymous comment telling me where they are will suffice. I don't, at this stage, even care who did it; I just need my sight back.

Thanks

Rob.

But is it KOSHER?

Kosher is one of these dietary restriction systems, like vegetarianism, which evolved in much simpler times. Three thousand years ago, monitoring the whole food production chain was easy; today, in our globalised world, it verges on impossible. What is E123d on the label, and where does it come from? A plant? A chemical factory? A cow? A pig? A horse? Who knows, really?

For this reason, Kosher certification agencies typically monitor food production all over the world. You can read about it here; it's really quite fascinating. Besides the Kosher aspect, it gives great insights into industrial food production; not really one for the squeamish.

Anyway, I mentioned Kosher in a previous article, on the grape-flavoured apples. It occurred to me; are genetically modified organisms which would otherwise be considered Kosher still Kosher?

GM food is big business, and getting bigger every day, especially now that the EU has started to allow its production. Generally, GM food consists of a standard plant (no animals yet, really, though some are in trials) with one or more genes or pieces of genetic material from elsewhere added. The genes really can come from anywhere; sources include bacteria, jellyfish, and even humans.

Bizarrely, to my mind, consensus seems to be that GM plants are Kosher, even if the genes added are from something non-Kosher. I do wonder, though; just how much do you have to change something for it to become non-Kosher? Birds, in particular, are subject to weird Kosher rules; while land animals and fish are generally accepted or rejected based on physical criteria, like presence of cloven hooves or scales, there is a list of birds generally considered acceptable. When is a chicken not a chicken?

For that matter, where do vegetarians stand on plants incorporating animal or bacterial genetics? Hindus? Jains? It'll be interesting to see how this one pans out, I think.

Vaccines are another thing. Many vaccines are animal-based. The standard Polio vaccine at least used to be, and as far as I know still is, made on a monkey (unquestionably non-Kosher) liver base. Kosher seems to allow essential medication, but, again, what do vegetarians think of this? Of course, most people probably don't actually know about it, but I wonder do people ever reject vaccines or other essential drugs on the basis of their diet?

Food Insanity - the Grapple

What's a Grapple? An apple that tastes of grapes, of course! Not, sadly, making this up. It's not, surprisingly enough, insane genetic engineering; just an apple soaked in grape juice. You can get them in the US and Canada, it seems.

My question is, who thought that this would be a good idea? Who, on contemplating an apple, thought 'nice, but what it needs is grape flavour'? Urgh.

Disturbingly enough, they mention that the Grapple is not Kosher certified. Now, maybe it's just not certified, but not objectionable, but I find it odd that they feel the need to mention it in the first place. Is bacon grease the secret ingredient?

"Country beef prawn roast - It looks like beef, it carves like beef, but it has the great taste of prawns!"

One to watch

Gawker takes on the subjective audiophile loons. This can't end well.

My friend, while he worked at Best Buy, explained to me that in cheaper audio cables, the low frequency noises will travel faster than the high frequency noises. The result is that the signal gets distorted before it hits the speakers. But Monster Cables do not have that problem, and that's why they sound so much better.

Changing the laws of physics while you wait!

Funny, monster has a pretty good rep for quality car audio cabling -- but w/power cables you really do see improvement w/quality and size.

I'm sorry, but no. Unless your cable is heating up dangerously, a power cable is, well, just a power cable.

From what I've been told the gold and silver connectors do make a difference. Too bad they're not exclusive to Monster Cables and even the sub $6 HDMI cable I bought on monoprice the other day is gold plated.

Sometimes, a digital signal just likes to feel pretty.

Also, double-blind testing makes Baby Jesus cry.

The whole digital HDMI cable thing is particularly ridiculous; you have a fully digital path right from the decoder to the LCD. Differences, if they exist, can be objectively demonstrated.

On Cathal Ó Searcaigh

So, the current scandal shaking Ireland; an 50 year old openly-gay Irish-language poet who's on the Leaving Cert. has allegedly been having his way with various boys (16 and up) in Nepal. That's the age of consent, there, so possibly not illegal; I'm not sure what Ireland's laws or lack thereof on sex tourism are this week.

However. You see, someone, previously a friend of the poet, has made a documentary on it. Now, I haven't seen the documentary, although I mean to, but there is an in-depth review from the Irish Times here. (Warning; PDF.) Go read it.

If what is said there is true, and mind you, I am unwilling to damn someone on the basis of reading a review of a documentary, then he is, in my opinion, a horrible, horrible person, and whatever the legal situation may be, he is morally very much in the wrong.

The scary thing is that people are defending him. In droves. Even people who I have a reasonable amount of respect for. Now, maybe they know more than I do. But from what I've seen, there are no reasonable grounds to defend him on.

The Gardai are investigating, and no doubt we will know more soon. Maybe it's a fuss over nothing; maybe the film is libelling him. Maybe it grossly misquotes him. I hope so, but somehow I don't think so.

Whatever we do, we should not be making this a 'gay issue'. If a 50 year old man was reported to be doing the same things with 16 year old girls, we would, (I hope) be just as horrified. If you have reason to defend this man, defend him. Please do not defend him merely on the grounds that he is gay.

Broadly speaking, I agree with this, though I do worry, just a little, that maybe the film is a frame-up. Hopefully...

This MP3, from the radio (WARNING, WARNING, MP3, MAY CRASH YOUR BROWSER) is also quite interesting. Note that the major defenses seem to be 'I know him so he can't be bad'. Ooh-er.

JoikuSpot - Euro iPhone Killer?

You've all, by now, heard of the iPhone, right? Then there's the iPod Touch; an iPod Touch is essentially an iPhone without the phone or camera; it can still do WiFi, though. For many, the iPhone's killer feature is that it provides half-decent mobile Internet access, over EDGE.

Of course, you can't actually BUY an iPhone in Ireland, yet, and even if you get one jailbroken from elsewhere, you'll have difficulty convincing any provider to give you a cheap GPRS/EDGE dataplan. Irish providers went solidly with 3G.

So, what's a mobile Internet aficionado to do? Well, you could always go for a smartphone with 3G and a browser, but really, have you ever used one of those? And have you used an iPod Touch? Well, exactly. The iPod Touch is a joy to browse on; most smartphones are bloody awful, even if you do have Opera. Okay, so an alternative smartphone is probably out.

Well, the iPod Touch has wireless! All you need is something which can provide a mobile data connection wirelessly. There are a collection of expensive, non-battery-operated wireless HSDPA routers. Those are, again, probably out; do you really want to drag them around with you? Then, if you have a Windows Mobile smartphone, you can hack it to provide data over its wireless. The problem here is that Windows smartphones tend to be rather bulky, expensive and short on battery life, as smartphones go (which is quite far).

So, you're screwed, right? Well, not quite. Today, I learned that there now exists an application for Nokia's S60 platform which allows you to share an Internet connection over the phone's wireless. It's called JoikuSpot. They pitch it at all sorts of applications, but realistically, the only thing it's going to be used for is the iPod Touch; if you're using a laptop there are saner options.

Now, every silver lining has its clouds. JoikuSpot doesn't actually act as a base-station; it uses an ad-hoc network. In practice, this shouldn't really be a problem. A bigger limitation is that it only actually shares HTTP and HTTPS, currently. The company claims that the full version of the product will do proper NAT, but it won't be out until the second half of the year. Given the nature of the platforms, I wouldn't be totally astonished if the 'NAT' turns out to be SOCKS5, but that should be functionally equivalent for most people. So, you can still browse the web, but you can't do a lot of other stuff. It may or may not be possible to tunnel through the HTTPS.

Yet another flaw, this one maybe worse still, is that the network produced is completely unencrypted; anyone can connect, and for that matter anyone can trivially look at what you are doing. Been on a long-distance train lately? Each carriage has five or so people with laptops.

If you get over these flaws, would this be a reasonable replacement for an iPhone? Why not just wait 'til the iPhone turns up on these shores? Well, lets see.

I'm going to assume that the Irish iPhone follows UK pricing. Given Apple's eccentric pricing strategy, this is a bit of a jump, but it's the best we currently have to go on.

From O2, an 8gb iPhone currently costs 359 euro. The basic tariff is 47 euro a month, and gives you 600 minutes, 500 texts, and unlimited (subject to fair use) data. Minimum contract of 18 months.

In Ireland, an 8gb iPod Touch costs 279 euro. A Nokia E65, from Three (allegedly supported by JoikuSpot), costs 149 euro on the most basic plan (less or free on higher-end ones), which costs 20 euro a month and gives you 100 minutes. You can get an unlimited (subject to fair use) data add-on for 20 euro a month (or smaller data add-ons for less). Minimum contract 12 months, it seems. Also, I believe, same-cost roaming in a few Three areas.

So that's a total of 428 euro capital cost (69 euro more expensive) and 7 euro lower subscription cost per month. Of course, if you want the minutes, the O2 UK plan is still better, but many users will really just want light phone use and free data.

It has upsides and downsides, then. On the upside, it's faster, a bit cheaper per month (possibly a lot; mobile stuff tends to be more expensive here and the iPhone may turn out to be no exception), and you don't have to use your browser/mp3 player as a phone. On the downside, it's HTTP/HTTPS-only (interesting to see if that tunneling works) and battery life may not be stellar.

I'm actually thinking of getting a suitable phone; I have an iPod Touch and my current phone is on its last legs anyway. I think I'll wait for a few reviews first, though...

Bonus improbable statement found while searching to see if anyone was doing tunneling:
Note the date.

Oh, dear...

So, The Register just linked to my post on Arc.

That's not the interesting bit.

Look at the post they linked to where someone is 'applauding' Arc...

Me am CIX. Me Speak English Good.

CIX is a frankly rather bizarre effort to build a datacenter. In Cork. Scarily expensive.

This was on their blog. If there's one thing you don't want to spell incorrectly, it's the word 'competent', really. :)

Also, this. Not sure if it's just the world's worst attempt at SEO, or more spelling issues...

Eccentric behaviour and contract from LetsHost.ie

So, a business owner on boards criticises a webhost called LetsHost.ie on boards.ie. They suspend his account. Yep, that's mature. Apparently, their terms and conditions allow them to do this.

Two issues.

First, can you really specify in your terms and conditions that if people say mean things about you, you can disconnect them? IANAL, but it surprises me.

Second, even if you are entitled to do this, how fucking stupid do you have to be to actually do it? People criticise service providers all the time. The original criticism doesn't seem so bad, though LetsHost is claiming that it hasn't been reproduced correctly. Possibly a boards admin can assist. If they are sufficiently interested, it should be in the MySQL binary logs. But when it comes to it, no matter how bad it was, no good can come of responding so ridiculously.

Would you use a service provider who did this sort of thing? I know I wouldn't, nor would I even imagine recommending them to anyone. The people in the threads on boards largely seem to agree; only a few are endorsing such stupid behaviour.

More coverage here.

(I would like to make it clear that it is simply my opinion that alienating half the Irish Internet community is bloody stupid. Not a statement of fact. Subjective opinion. ;) )

Highly important Arc feature request

Dear Paul Graham,
Please remove the letter which comes between 'x' and 'z' from the arc-supported character set. It is, after all, only a Greek version of 'i' which was sneaked into English. Political correctness gone mad! People will be expecting 'e' with funny lines on top next.

Robert.

PS. Also, would 'loop' be acceptable if the symbol was 'lp'?

BBC on Itanium

From here:

"These chips go into a quite a unique market place," he said.

Well, that's certainly one way of putting it...

You're so vain, you prob'ly think this blog is about you...

Remember Technorati? It was originally intended, it seems, to be the Google of blogs. It failed, of course; Google is the Google of blogs, and has been for some time. These days, Technorati is more of a big pointless slow aggregator thing.

It does have one use, though.

Ego stroking.

I only just noticed this, but it is possible to subscribe to a feed so that every time someone links to something on your blog (from another blog), you will see it as a feed item.

Just add 'http://feeds.technorati.com/search/myblog.rsynnott.com' (substituting your blog url for 'myblog.rsynnott.com', of course) as a feed in your feed reader of choice, and you can see what people are saying about you! Wonderful!

ReFriendz.com - spamtastic marketing

Refriendz.com seems to be one of the run-of-the-mill MySpace clones, but it has an incredibly annoying marketing strategy; you give it email addresses when you sign up (I assume through allowing it to inspect your Facebook or gmail or something) and it sends all of your friends invitations.

So far, so ordinary; classic spammy Web 2.0 technique. Where it gets good is that it then sends you a reminder that your invitation is about to expire. Yes, your invitation to a crap social networking site which no-one has heard of will soon expire. They don't want you. It's absolutely not an excuse to pseudo-legitimately spam you again!

Sadly, I'm sure that this ridiculous behaviour is perfectly legal. Hopefully Google's spam filter will start catching it shortly.

A quick search shows that it has spammed all sorts of mailing lists, sending its special highly-important invites.

In conclusion, I'm afraid I'm going to have to do an Uncov:

Blueberry Juice!

I just noticed today that, along with the old faithfuls like orange, apple, grapefruit and cranberry juice, shops have started selling blueberry juice.

It sounds horrible to me, but I can't really put my finger on why. It's also way more expensive than the other juices. Wikipedia says that it was an early faddish 'superfruit', so maybe that's it...

Gaming magazines - demographics of

So, I was looking at one of those magazines for computer gamers the other day; we have a few lying around at work. Mostly articles and reviews... until you get to the last few pages.

Yes, ads for scary sex lines. I suppose it makes sense, in a way; the stereotype of a gamer as a youngish lonely male with disposable income probably aligns well with them.

Please note the precise nature of the ads. One generic, two 'dominant mistress', one 'lonely house wives', and one 'naughty forties'. This isn't just a section I selected because it was funny, by the way; nearly all the ads were in weird fetish land.

Gays are allowed play computer games now, too!

Who rings these lines, anyway? Listening in on people talking about sex can't be that appealing, surely.

And then, beyond all the filth:

Yep, nestled between ads for horny house wives and leather fetish chat lines, there is an ad, albeit an ad with a woman in it, encouraging people to recycle. Weird. Maybe she's a horny housewife.

Sadly, the companies which provide the chat lines have boring names; I always thought that the name of the company who provides most similar things advertised in the back of gay magazines, "Advanced Systems Services" (or something along those lines; note initials), was genius.

Microsoft and Yahoo

So, Microsoft has apparently put in a generous offer for Yahoo(!). Bizarre. Of course, there's more to this than the merger of two of the web's crap search engines that nobody uses.

This grand alliance will finally allow for humanity's greatest achievement. Yahoo(!!) Groups with talking paperclip!

Pretty certain that that's mentioned in the Book of Revelations somewhere.

On Emacs

I like today's XKCD.

Starting off the month with wacky search queries

Just two interesting ones for today, but they're quality.

• a wealthy gentleman's personal valet or butler pictures
• having sex in changingrooms

Perhaps sadly, they come from different IP addresses...