I discover that at the moment at least, I share my name with not a single citizen of the US. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing…
| HowManyOfMe.com | ||
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Year: 2006
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Not Sensible
So there I was, making a backup of some data, when my eye happened to fall on the box containing the CD blanks. Pleomax, it proudly proclaimed, along with the tagline underneath: "a sensible bit of SAMSUNG".And that got me thinking. What on earth does that actually mean? Does it mean:Congratulations, you’ve bought these CD blanks from a sensible bit of our corporation, when you could, just as easily, have bought something from us that was not sensible. It could have been downright stupid, for example, or actively evil. For example, you could have bought this from this SAMSUNG division and you would have been exposing yourself to invisible sperm-destroying rays. So count yourself bloody lucky that you have purchased merely a sensible CD blank from a sensible SAMSUNG division. Phew, what a relief, eh?What is it about marketing people? They get paid to sit around to dream up this stuff? Ridiculous blue cartoon figures? I thought Belgium had the monopoly on that shite. Life is too short. -
Fingerpointing Again
Here we go again, the fun of trying to deal with organisations that just blame each other instead of resolving issues.I ordered a DVD recently from Bol.com ("the biggest mediashop in the Netherlands"). My purchases from them are charged to my American Express card.I noticed when the charge came through on the last statement that it had been charged, not in Euros, but in Singapore dollars. Odd, thought I. Particularly since the original invoice from Bol.com was in Euros. And it meant that I ended up paying more than the amount shown on the original invoice.So I rang American Express… "Oh yes, sir, Bol submitted the charge in Singapore dollars – we suggest that you contact them to find out why they did that".So I rang Bol.com… "But sir, our Finance department records show that we have only received the original Euro amount from your credit card company. We don’t know why you have been charged extra, perhaps it is commission costs from your credit card company. We suggest that you contact them to find out why they did that".Aaaarrrggghhh!!!Still, this particular cloud does seem to have a silver lining. I sent an email back to Bol.com expressing my frustration at the situation(!) and they have just sent me a coupon that covers the cost difference. No word of an explanation though. My nasty suspicious mind is thinking that perhaps someone inside Bol has got a nice little scam going on. It may be only a few cents on each transaction, but spread over enough customers and enough purchases, and it could add up to a tidy sum. On the other hand, it might have been just a single mistake at the keyboard. I guess I’ll never know. -
The Telepresence Spectrum
By coincidence, two major players have announced telepresence products this week. Microsoft announced their RoundTable products (due next year) and Cisco has announced their TelePresence range.The Cisco products are interesting in a number of ways. They’ve taken the approach of making the experience of holding a virtual meeting as realistic as possible, using big HD screens and compression technology to make latency as low as possible (a minimum of 150 msec end-to-end). Their top end product (the TelePresence 3000) gives a strong illusion that twelve people are sitting around a single table – but in fact half of the table and six participants are in one location and six are in another location, with the other half of the table. The approach doesn’t come cheap – each end costs $300,000.Microsoft, on the other hand are tackling the low end of the telepresence market, with products predicted to come in at around the $3,000 mark for setting up one end of a teleconference.I think there’s room for both, particularly if they can interoperate, so that, for example, the CEO, seated in her Telepresence meeting room, can address employees gathered in meeting rooms, or seated at their own PCs.In my time in Shell, I had experience of both ends of teleconferencing, with various degrees of success. Even with the high-end systems, though, the experience was far from realistic and too often not trouble-free. Cisco do seem to have pushed the envelope, and it will be interesting to see how well they do in the market against the established players. Cisco themselves are rolling out 110 TelePresence rooms inside their own company.To get an impression of what the Cisco product is like, download or watch Robert Scoble’s video Podcast. It has Guido Jouret, Cisco’s CTO explaining to a group of people what the technology is behind the illusion. For techno-nerds, like me, this was a very interesting video, with Jouret giving a lucid explanation of how the products came about and what the plans are. Fast forward a few years, and this technology will have come down in price to probably a tenth of the cost, and be much more widely available to small companies, and not just the Fortune 100. -
Odd Sympathy
Yesterday’s entry in the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society deals with the phenomenon of Odd Sympathy:The term “odd sympathy” was coined by the 17th-century Dutch mathematician and physicist Christiaan Huygens to describe the strange phenomenon he observed while laying sick in bed and looking up at two of his newly invented pendulum clocks hanging on the wall beside him. Inexplicably, the two pendulums always swung in opposite directions. Even when he would release them in different positions, they eventually fell back in synch (or antisynch, to be precise). Huygens had discovered the principle of coupled oscillation, but it took a recent study by physicists at Georgia Tech to prove that it was the miniscule force of the pendulums operating on a beam in the wall that caused them to link up.Interesting stuff (well, I think so, anyway) -
Cultural Collisions
Idle Words has a quite marvellous post reporting on a public lecture given by the great Jane Goodall in Beijing. One feels for the translator (but not too much). And as Maciej Ceglowski (the brain behind Idle Words) says:You get the impression that her tolerance for human imperfection comes from having seen some very dark things, and not just from our own species. After studying chimpanzees for over ten years and coming to see them as peaceful and benevolent animals with a bit of a temper, Goodall witnessed a four-year chimpanzee war of extermination, and discovered a mother-daughter pair who liked to kill and eat babies. To someone who always had higher expectations of chimpanzees than people, the petty hypocrisies of Western consumerism or even Chinese repression must seem like small potatoes in comparison. Her resilience and optimism are remarkable; they reminded me of how many times I have been content to adopt a convenient pessimism in the face of the terrible environmental damage taking place, and made me ashamed of it.Amen to that. -
Two Data Points
The first is a photo I took today in the gardens of a Dutch Manor House:
The second is one that Mike Caine, one of my contacts on Flickr, took during a visit to Poland:
One is a creation by humans to speak to our shared humanity, the other is a creation by humans to deny our shared humanity. -
The Gardens at de Wiersse
Today, we went with a couple of friends to visit the gardens at de Wiersse – a moated manor house in Gelderland. The gardens are only open a few times each year, but they are well worth a visit. Some of the photos I took can be found in this photo set up on Flickr. The main web site for the house and gardens is here.
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The 10 Biggest Computer Flops
Miguel Carrasco has put together his list of the 10 biggest computer flops of all time. Being the pendant that I am, I take issue with his list in a couple of respects. First, that "of all time" tag always irritates me. What he means, of course, is "time up until now". But, as I say, I’m in pedant mode.More seriously however, I would question his attribution of the "greatest flop" label against some of his list. Yes, the Xerox Alto and the NeXT did not become ubiquitous. But I would argue that they were seminal. They represented ideas and ideals that subsequent designers sought to emulate, and have led directly to today’s Macintosh and Windows operating systems. And CP/M was hardly "one of the greatest flops". It was remarkably successful for its time. It fell, not through a fault of its own, but because a meeting between IBM and its owner did not take place.Still, I would agree with his inclusion of the embarrassing IBM PC/Jr and the Apple Newton in his list. Both should have been strangled at birth. And on the software side, Microsoft’s BOB, Windows ME and IBM’s OS/2 probably deserve to be there. Although, to be fair, OS/2 soldiered on in ATMs for years before falling by the wayside. -
Captain Jack’s Back!
I see that Torchwood, the BBC’s spinoff from Doctor Who, starts tomorrow night on BBC Three with two full episodes. And sexy Captain Jack Harkness is back with it. He was last seen being vapourised by a Dalek, so I’m intrigued as to what the scriptwriters have come up with to rescue him. It had better be better than the TV equivalent of "with one bound he was free"…Trivia alert: Torchwood is an anagram of Doctor Who.Oh, and note that Torchwood is after the 9pm watershed, so that it will have "adult" levels of sex and violence. For an example of the latter look here. You have been warned. -
Losing Liberty, Drip By Drip
There’s the transcript of an excellent speech by Henry Porter reprinted in yesterday’s Independent. His theme is his concern that the current British government is mounting a sustained attack on civil liberties. I must say, when I listen to, or read, the twaddle that Tony Blair comes out with on the subject, that I think Porter puts forward a very good case.(hat tip to CuriousHamster over at A Big Stick and a Small Carrot for the link) -
A Gorey Death
Another quiz:
What horrible Edward Gorey Death will you die?
You will be smothered under a rug. You’re a little anti-social, and may want to start gaining new social skills by making prank phone calls.My result from the What Horrible Edward Gorey Death Will You Die? quiz, found via Lost in Books
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Darwin Online
The Guardian reports today that Cambridge University has put a microfilm copy of a notebook of Charles Darwin onto the web. The original has gone missing, presumed stolen. Cambridge University is putting the complete works of Darwin onto the web for free access to everyone. To date there are a staggering 50,000 pages of searchable text and 40,000 scanned images of Darwins writings and illustrations. This is only 50% of the material that is still to be published. -
When Worlds Collide
There’s a lovely little article in today’s Guardian that illustrates the phenomenon of colliding worlds perfectly. The worlds are that of rock stardom and astronomy, and the epicentre of the collision is in the totally unexpected figure of Brian May, guitarist of Queen. He has just co-authored a book on astronomy with Patrick Moore, renowned astronomer and eccentric, and Moore’s co-presenter on the BBC’s astronomy programme, Chris Lintott.The article is a delight, with some wonderful images, like the occasion when May was visiting an observatory on the Canary Islands, and a bunch of world-class astronomers shuffled up to him, produced their guitars and asked him to sign them… -
The Lady Is For Turning
Some good news today. The Dutch newspapers are reporting that Rita Verdonk, the hardline minister for immigration and integration has done an about face on her position regarding Iranian gays who seek asylum in The Netherlands. She was on record earlier this year as saying that Iranian gays should not be granted asylum, and should be deported back to Iran. This caused heated discussion in the Dutch parliament at the time.Now it appears as though she has seen reason and reversed the decision. -
Will You Help?
Doug Ireland posts a plea for help for an Iranian gay man who has had to flee the country. Check it out, and help if you can.
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