| The shape of things |
[May. 31st, 2009|12:26 pm] |
Watching Gibson yesterday he said at some point that humans were motivated to find the shape of things, and likened it to a character in one of novels trying to find the shape of cyberspace. I understand what he meant by that, because I was motivated, at least in part, to research finance/economics because I was interested in the shape of the system itself.
However, it wasn't until I read Tim O'Reilly's write-up of Google's Wave demo that it really chimed with me. The first thing that came to mind was a documentary I saw about modern Jazz and the affect that Ornette Coleman's album The Shape of Jazz to Come had on the Jazz world. Or indeed, the Amen Break which spawned an entire subculture. It's about the affect something can have on living and growing system, like a phase change.
I expect in the months coming up to launch, you will see a lot of FUD and delaying tactics by people with vested interests to protect. So you better see what all the fuss is about, and then read Tim's Post if you want to have an idea of what comes next.
You can read Tim's post right here. Get to it! |
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| Imaginary spaces |
[May. 31st, 2009|01:49 am] |
I've just watched No Maps for These Territories which is an odd documentary film about the science fiction author William Gibson. I've read most of his books, and was strangely disappointed recently to find that he's on twitter. It's nothing to do with ethos so much as it works better if he's this gnome like creature from a bygone era writing stories about places he's never been and things he doesn't understand. It means he's not faking it, and he really is just making it up.
I mention this because in the film he mentions the day that his dad brought home an early television, only there was no TV at the time, then there was a test card at odd hours, then there were live broadcasts. The eagle had landed.
I remember when there was no internet, hell I remember when there were no computers or computer magazines. I remember going to ad-hoc computer fairs. These were not places to buy stuff, no, these were a motley selection of people who had brought their computers in and had them running odd programs on pasteboard tables. So the public could crowd round and have a look. Only there were never any crowds, just people who thought it was a jumble sale, and the odd proto geek like me, who at least knew what a computer was, and wanted to look at a few in the flesh so to speak. I still have the original copies of Personal Computer World where they did the first reviews of the Sinclair Spectrum and the Apple Lisa, the progenitor of the first Macintosh.
I remember compiling Mosaic from source on a UNIX box and surfing the entirety of the internet, (as it existed back then) in one evening. There used to an email that listed new sites as they became available. There was no google. I remember hearing about Netscape for the first time and switching to it as it allowed you to have background wallpaper. I preferred the terminal lab for internet work before the web existed as it was quieter, and I knew how to access everything from Archie & FTP, to WAIS and gopher, etc. via email.
I recently told somebody that I built my first computer with a soldering iron, and they replied, "and you think that's something to be proud of?"
The world has changed, if you want to know where it goes next look at this, now try to imagine life without gmail.
Like the man is reputed to have said, "the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed" |
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| probably |
[May. 22nd, 2009|07:31 am] |
Should I comment on the credit outlook of the UK? Probably. Given the size of the debt overhang of UK PLC, the fact that it was put on negative credit watch was not a surprise. I imagine when it happens to the USA thought, that that will spook a few people. Still pondering entry about Japan's relevance to the US, but the story is still evolving.
In other news, I'm this week's star letter in Micro Mart, now that did surprise me.
Happy birthday LJ! |
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| On the cards |
[May. 14th, 2009|06:34 pm] |
Frankly amazing article about customer profiling by credit card companies at the NYT. Like this bit:
But giving credit cards to riskier customers posed a problem: How do you know which cardholders will pay something each month, providing fat profits, and which will simply run up a huge tab and then disappear?
The Ph.D.’s arrived at two solutions. The first was to create thousands of new kinds of cards with their own credit limits, terms and interest rates. Such a strategy theoretically protected companies by limiting how much a cardholder could buy and by charging sufficiently high interest rates to ensure that if a few cardholders walked away, the companies still made plenty of money.
The other solution was learning to predict how different types of customers would behave. Card companies began running tens of thousands of experiments each year, testing the emotions elicited by various card colors and the appeal of different envelope sizes, for instance, or whether new immigrants were more responsible than cardholders born in this country. By understanding customers’ psyches, the companies hoped, they could tell who was a bad risk and either deny their application or, for those who were already cardholders, start shrinking their available credit and increasing minimum payments to squeeze out as much cash as possible before they defaulted.
There are some real gems in the article, long but definitely worth it, go read. [HT Radar]
This article however, is complete tosh, if LLL is such a savvy user why is he not following basic computer security, you know, anti-virus, anti-spyware & firewall? The tag line for the article:
In short, alongside the ethical considerations surrounding casual piracy, there are also very good technical reasons why people should not try this at home
Is IMO a bit of blatant scare mongering propaganda, courtesy of FAST. If you read as many computer magazines as I do, you get used to the industry line. But it's never OTT. Things must be getting desperate if they're fostering such pseudo technical tosh onto otherwise respectable newspapers. |
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| miracles do happen |
[May. 6th, 2009|10:46 pm] |
BT are widely regarded as crap, the sort of crap that is legendary. Yet for some reason, (and I'm presuming it was all because of Be, my fabulous ISP) we have changed phone numbers, and billing in one day and still maintained an internet connection. BT's systems were down all morning, even the primary support line was telling people to phone back later, yet given that people have been known to be off the grid for weeks when this happens I'm back inside a day. Not only that, my download speed is now 4mbs faster. Yup, that's a whole 100% faster than the average internet speed in the UK. Meanwhile I'm rocking 15mbs truly spiffy!
So take a bow BT & Be, you have accomplished the seemingly impossible :) |
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| The once and future king |
[Apr. 25th, 2009|10:34 pm] |
A productive day of sorts. Finally got OSX installed on the new system, including network, audio and most importantly, my graphics card, all working. The odd twinge here and there but I'm sure I can smooth that out given time. She who must be snuggled had a fit when I brought back a retail copy a while back. But if you're going to use it, it's the reasonable thing to do. Looking forward to Snow Leopard to be honest. Looks like they're working on some really slick technology under the hood. as well as being a 64 bit release.
Now I just need anti-virus and decent outgoing firewall and I may be able to move in. Will need a new mouse though, since the Pro Mouse I have was misbehaving. Keyboard's OK though, if a little spongy. Need to get used to where the keys are, (US layout) keep hitting \ when I go for the delete key. May have to see if I can't find a UK keyboard. Speech marks are a bit awkward.
Minor problem with the screen since I've reached the limits of how far I can expand the image, and it's still has black bars. Will have to look into that. But overall fairly pleased. |
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| Damn Right! |
[Apr. 3rd, 2009|09:22 pm] |
We've a temporary technician at work, and his phone went off in the office today, playing the unmistakable first few seconds of this which manages to be ludicrous & fabulous at the same time.
It caused me to grin and remember when the mighty Gofwah played it in the house and I was forced to take off my shoes, and take a run up, to slide into the room arms open to duet the immortal line:
"But no one understands him but his woman"
It's totally un-PC, and so fabulously funky than I doubt you could get away with it today, perhaps the 1970's weren't so bad after all... |
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| The walk among us |
[Apr. 3rd, 2009|08:52 am] |
Or should that be, they shuffle? Which is a cracking new article from the new UK Journalist of the year, the one, the only, Gillian Tett. who writes stuff like this:
I have no idea whether such rumours are true (and unless you are a CLO investor it is almost impossible to check, and pretty hard even if you are.) But what is crystal clear is that the problem will not die away soon.
After all, the pressure on the CLOs and corporate world alike is mounting, as Europe’s economy worsens. Yet, as long as the incentive structure remains this perverse, the players have motives to keep propping things up. It all feels – dare I say it – terribly Japanese.
If that doesn't make any sense to you, then I'm sure, just like subprime & CDO's before them, the general media will eventually understand too late what a CLO is and inform you. For those of us that read greek/geek it's "the real thing" :)
As for japan, the economist has an interesting article up under the catchy title, "The incredible shrinking economy" pondering Japan's second lost decade.
HT Alphaville for the links. |
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| The joy of tech |
[Mar. 28th, 2009|04:37 pm] |
Coming back from an evening of financial hackery and discussion, I dropped into Smiths late at night, and found that there was a new edition of CustomPC, (the best hardware magazine in the UK) available. They're doing processors, which means it's time for benchmark porn, and going through them looking for your processor to see if it's still competitive. (It is, very :) but the good thing about the stats is that it gives you a way to compare. Especially in esoterica like power drain and other such obscure metrics, as well as how far your CPU can be clocked, nominally.
Then while reading this weeks Micro Mart I came across an advert from my favourite hardware shop, Yoyotech House of technology. Where there were advertising a homebrew box that had been pre-clocked for a very reasonable £750, given the contents. However the really interesting thing was the advert for one of these a Domino A.L.C by a company called coolit systems. Which is nothing less that a pre-sealed water cooling loop, in a very nice package, for very little money. In general such stuff is mediocre to abysmal in use, which is why people build their own. However Guru3D decided to do some destructive testing, by exposing it to a Quad Core QX9770 Extreme, clocked to 4Ghz. This is a CPU with a list price north of £1k it's stupidly fast and stupidly hot, more so when you clock the bollocks off it. (oh good, the grape has been found, I can now put it back in my ear :)
Somewhat surprisingly, the CPU cooler did not explode, melt, or cause the chip to go into thermal shutdown to save it's expensively doped silicon. No, it passed with flying colours. Which through the wonder of stats porn we know was sucking up 400W of juice at peak, with a heat output to match. Given that my Quad, takes 300W at load, it should be good for more heat, not to mention I found a review with it clocked a touch higher than mine where it was only at 50C load, while I'm on 70C on air, it should make for a much quieter & cooler experience.
Then of course I discovered that they've made a water loop using the same system for my GPU, one of these which is good as it's a separate loop and the GPU makes the sound like a hurricane in a box when it first winds up, God knows what it sounds like at load.
So, I'm thinking "yeah!" to both. :o) |
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| Fix CNBC |
[Mar. 17th, 2009|07:04 pm] |
If you happen to be of the American persuasion then the good people over at fixCNBC could use your signature on their petition. |
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| Catch 22 |
[Feb. 23rd, 2009|09:10 pm] |
Occasionally you come across people who are great thinkers who write well, Billmon is one of those people, and the post at that link is nothing short of amazing. It's very difficult to get all of this straight in your own head, so to have the lucidity of thought on display in the article, long though it is, is great achievement indeed.
[Hat Tip to Naked Capitalism for the link] |
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| Aardvark! |
[Feb. 20th, 2009|09:34 am] |
An analyst on Bloomberg (Rob Carnell, ING wholesale bank) has just compared the retail sales figures just issued by the govt, (up 0.7% apparently) to an aardvark, "for all the good it'll do"
Ab Fab! :) |
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| Get Miro! |
[Feb. 15th, 2009|12:30 pm] |
The new version, (2.0) of Miro is out, it's very slick, I spent an evening into the wee small hours, watching TED, with it, a few of which were really good. Especially Elizabeth Gilbert talking about creativity. However, if you only watch one, then this is just fucking amazing, I watched it several times, and saved it for later. Miro lets you do that :) |
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| A year and a day |
[Feb. 8th, 2009|11:28 pm] |
Yesterday was, depending on how you count, the one year mark. For a year we've been putting the word in the street, giving away cake, leaflets, and shouting memes and defiance. It was bloody cold so nobody was willing to wear a mankini like they did last month. Though a likeness was produced, and taped to the back of a telephone box. It was then augmented with an advert for a transsexual prostitute, that had fallen out of the phone box. It had that hideously funny "car crash" mojo working for it. It was so wrong I couldn't help but look at in wonder on occasion. (better shot here.)
The general public were, as usual, generally supportive, with more than a few people staying to chat, even in the cold. Another small highlight was a leaflet bearing a gagged boxxy image which will make no sense to you unless you know of the civil war that broke out because of the footage, and even then you wouldn't understand. Hell, I don't understand it, and I was there. Needless to say I was hugely impressed. I was also impressed with the heroic flag waving and posing, especially as I know what it took to create the flag pole. Perseverance above and beyond the call of duty I reckon, luckily it can only get warmer, and wetter. |
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| A good day |
[Jan. 22nd, 2009|10:53 pm] |
Not because Sony took a beating, (along with the banks) no, that was just icing :)
I actually got to play with new hardware, one of these, a sun M4000. At first blush it looked like it might be a bit dull, but once you get inside the thing, (metaphorically speaking) it's a whole new world. I'm used to virtualised platforms, normally they abstract the hardware through software, or specialised subsystems in the hardware. This is broadly how Sun's Zones technology works. as well as Virtualbox. But the M400 is an enterprise class data server, an entirely different animal. I guess I should have realised there was something odd about it when my colleague couldn't even get the machine to boot normally, though there is allegedly an OS installed.
So I jumped in with my boots on, and quickly found myself out of my depth, or at least confused enough to RTFM, which in itself was cryptic. So I started digging, and it appears that there is a whole other OS inside this thing. Including a complete private internal network, and another form of "virtualisation" only at a hardware level, (which I had expected, but not understood) where you can flexibly segment the whole thing, even to the level of PCI slots. The things that appear to be virtualised, at last for the second domain are the drives. It appears these have to be configured much the way you'd configure the graphics card in software virtualisation. You also have to power them on individually, and can force them to panic etc. It's really rather odd. It's nothing so much as a different way of thinking.
It's only at that point do you go back to a small paragraph you'd ignored, that tells you you have to configure it, you always have to configure it. That you realise what that small paragraph is actually telling you. Then the task morphs from the normal walk in the park, to a journey through Terra Incognita, which is far more interesting. It's good to be surprised once in a while and reminded why you started doing the job in the first place.
Makes for a life less ordinary. |
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| Cheese! |
[Jan. 13th, 2009|10:18 pm] |
By way of BoingBoing, and Mark's unnatural love of the ukulele, the spiffiness of "Danielle Ate the Sandwich", Make some noise, but not while she's playing, obviously.
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| A good review |
[Jan. 11th, 2009|10:23 pm] |
Just occasionally you read a review that doesn't suck:
I don't know; maybe the best thing to do is not to ask too many questions about why you want it but just buy it anyway. If I may be French about it for a moment, it will complicate your life, like having a beautiful mistress as well as a beautiful wife. But it will be an enjoyable complication.
I won't tell you what for, because you'd only be disappointed, but I thought it was a great review nonetheless. :) |
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| Wont somebody think of the children! |
[Jan. 7th, 2009|10:48 pm] |
You know you're in a financial crisis, when even the porn industry is asking for a bail out, according to IMDB:
Porn moguls Larry Flynt and Joe Francis are appealing to the U.S. Congress to grant the adult entertainment industry a $5 billion (GBP3.3 billion) bail out - because it is suffering from the global economic meltdown just as much as others.
Hustler magazine entrepreneur Flynt claims adult DVD sales have plummeted in the last 12 months, with figures down 22 per cent from 2007.
Clearly a good man is hard to find :) |
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| Fairy tales. |
[Jan. 6th, 2009|01:08 pm] |
You can find it here But this comment by Tom O is just too good to not share with a wider audience:
Last year this time is was the “Goldilocks” market, not too warm, not too cold, and everyone was happy until the Papa Bear came home and ate them alive. Now it’s the “Tinkerbell” market, where it’s dead, but everyone thinks that if they all clap together as hard as they can they can bring it back to life.
Never a truer word spoken in jest. |
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| Here's to you Ahab! |
[Jan. 6th, 2009|12:20 am] |
I was watching one of those "top 100" programs you get around Christmas & new year, and this came out as number one:
I remember when the campaign was active and hunting the dial waiting for it to come on. It's still mesmeric.
Oh, and make sure you crank up the bass :) |
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