Quotulatiousness

April 30, 2010

The revolution is almost complete . . . hold on tight

Filed under: Economics, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 16:25

Charles Stross thinks he understands why Steve Jobs won’t allow Adobe Flash on to the iPhone and iPad:

Steve Jobs believes he’s gambling Apple’s future — the future of a corporation with a market cap well over US $200Bn — on an all-or-nothing push into a new market. HP have woken up and smelled the forest fire, two or three years late; Microsoft are mired in a tar pit, unable to grasp that the inferno heading towards them is going to burn down the entire ecosystem in which they exist. There is the smell of panic in the air, and here’s why . . .

We have known since the mid-1990s that the internet was the future of computing. With increasing bandwidth, data doesn’t need to be trapped in the hard drives of our desktop computers: data and interaction can follow us out into the world we live in. Modem uptake drove dot-com 1.0; broadband uptake drove dot-com 2.0. Now everyone is anticipating what you might call dot-com 3.0, driven by a combination of 4G mobile telephony (LTE or WiMax, depending on which horse you back) and wifi everywhere. Wifi and 4G protocols will shortly be delivering 50-150mbps to whatever gizmo is in your pocket, over the air. (3G is already good for 6mbps, which is where broadband was around the turn of the millennium. And there are ISPs in Tokyo who are already selling home broadband delivered via WiMax. It’s about as fast as my cable modem connection was in 2005.)

[. . .]

This is why there’s a stench of panic hanging over silicon valley. this is why Apple have turned into paranoid security Nazis, why HP have just ditched Microsoft from a forthcoming major platform and splurged a billion-plus on buying up a near-failure; it’s why everyone is terrified of Google:

The PC revolution is almost coming to an end, and everyone’s trying to work out a strategy for surviving the aftermath.

Read the whole thing. I don’t see any obvious flaw in his line of thought. It may not happen the way he predicts, but it is consistent with what we know, and it should frighten the heck out of Apple’s competitors.

Favre’s ankle still not recovered from NFC Championship game

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:15

For a second year in a row, Brett Favre will have to consider surgery in order to play in the coming season. Ed Werder has the details:

Favre, who would turn 41 during the 2010 season, told ESPN the ankle injury that he suffered three months ago in the NFC Championship Game against the New Orleans Saints continues to be swollen and painful.

That prompted tests to determine why healing had not occurred and Favre sent the results of those scans to orthopedic surgeon Dr. James Andrews, who told the quarterback his opinion that surgery is unavoidable.

“We have spoken,” Favre said in an e-mail. “To play again, I would need the surgery, as I suspected. This decision would be easy if not for my teammates and the fans and the entire Vikings staff. One year truly felt like 10 — much like Green Bay for many years. That’s what I was missing in my heart I suppose, a sense of belonging.”

Favre said he must determine whether his affection for the Vikings and his belief they are capable of winning the Super Bowl overrides his disdain for surgery.

Of course, the Vikings may have their quarterback of the future in Ryan Perrilloux . . .

Training to fight lower-tech aircraft in the air

Filed under: Military, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:41

Strategy Page rounds up information on US Navy efforts to keep their air-to-air combat skills fresh:

The U.S. Navy has refurbished a surplus U.S. Air Force National Guard F-16 flight simulator to help keep its F-16 pilots in shape for using F-16s to train navy pilots (in F-18s) how to best deal with Chinese, and other potential enemy, pilots. The navy uses F-16s because these aircraft are best able to replicate the performance of likely high end enemy fighters. That’s because Russia and China have used the F-16 as the model for most of their latest fighters (the Russian MiG-29 and Chinese J-10). The navy bought 26 of a special model (F-16N) of the aircraft in the late 1980s. But in the 1990s, the navy retired its F-16Ns, because of metal fatigue, and had to wait nearly a decade before it got sixteen more. The refurbished simulator had its cockpit modified to reflect the one the navy F-16s use.

The navy also uses F-5s to simulate lower performance enemy fighters. Two years ago, the navy completed a six year effort to buy and modify 44 F-5E fighters from Switzerland. The U.S. uses F-5s, a 12 ton fighter roughly similar to the MiG-21. The F-5 is normally armed with two 20mm cannon, and three tons of missiles and bombs. The U.S. Navy modified and refurbished the Swiss F-5s so their performance better matched that of Russian or Chinese aircraft.

It may sound odd to have older equipment still in service, but they are very useful for training purposes. Both the air force and the army will perform better if they’ve trained against the kind of equipment and tactics used by likely opponents, and it’s unlikely that you can arrange a “friendly” wargame exercise against a force you may be fighting for real in the near future.

The other thing is that the troops playing the “other side” in wargame exercises tend to have a lot more fun doing so . . .

QotD: A notable unintended consequence

Filed under: Economics, Quotations, Space, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:14

Hardly a day seems to go by nowadays without somebody with approximately the same kind of political attitude as me scratching his head, publicly, in writing, about President Obama’s bafflingly sensible space policy, which sticks out like a healthy thumb in an otherwise horribly mutilated hand of policies.

Critics are disturbed by the large and unprecedented role Mr. Obama sees for the private sector in space exploration. For a president who is often accused of being a socialist, he has more faith in the ingenuity of the private sector than his detractors do.

Brian Micklethwait, “On the unintended consequences of President Obama”, Samizdata, 2010-04-28

European map, rationalized

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Humour — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:02

The Economist would like to redraw the map of Europe:

People who find their neighbours tiresome can move to another neighbourhood, whereas countries can’t. But suppose they could. Rejigging the map of Europe would make life more logical and friendlier.

Britain, which after its general election will have to confront its dire public finances, should move closer to the southern-European countries that find themselves in a similar position. It could be towed to a new position near the Azores. (If the journey proves a bumpy one, it might be a good opportunity to make Wales and Scotland into separate islands).

In Britain’s place should come Poland, which has suffered quite enough in its location between Russia and Germany and deserves a chance to enjoy the bracing winds of the North Atlantic and the security of sea water between it and any potential invaders.

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